INTEENATIONAL AUXILIAEY LANGUAGE 33 



series of words appears to be the only means of avoiding 

 confusing homonyms (namely, for door pordo instead of 

 porto, on account of port = carry), hut this procedure must 

 be employed with great caution. Before everything else it 

 is necessary to avoid all disguising of words, which makes 

 them unrecognisable, aptly described by M. Blondel as a 

 masquerade. This was set up as a general principle in 

 Volapiik, and Esperanto is by no means free from it. 



As an example of the conflicts which occur now and then 

 may be quoted the expressions for the idea of " soul." 

 " Soul " is the word which would be immediately under- 

 stood by the greatest number of people, but we cannot 

 employ the English diphthong ou, as we must be very 

 sparing in the use of diphthongs, since they cause very great 

 difficulties in pronunciation. We cannot take over the word 

 in the form sol, because we require this for the word " alone " 

 (I. S. solo, internationally used in music, E. sole, F. seul). 

 G. seele, supported by the Scandinavian sjdl, is not familiar 

 to a sufficient number of people, and, besides, we require the 

 word Bel for " saddle " (F. I. S.). The French word dme will 

 not do either, because it is not sufficiently well known 

 outside France, and, besides, there is a difficulty here too, for 

 am- is absolutely required for the idea of "love" on 

 account of F. I. S. and many derivatives in E., not to 

 mention the god Amor. The use of the Latin anim-, which 

 is the basis of the Eomance forms, is impossible, since we 

 cannot do without the adjectival termination -al, and 

 animal would then mean partly "relating to the soul," 

 partly "animal," which cannot be permitted in an inter- 

 national language. We must resort to the device of 

 changing anim- a little, whereby we get anmo. This 

 example will show how complicated the task frequently is of 

 finding an international word which will give rise to no con- 

 fusion or misunderstanding. 



The degree of internationality of the language of the 



I.L. D 



