34 INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE 



Delegation will be evident from the statistics of Couturat ; 

 he counted the roots of the first dictionaries (5,379 in all) 

 and found that of these the following numbers occur in the 

 national languages : 



French 4,880, i.e. 91 per 100 

 Italian 4,454 83 

 Spanish 4,237 79 

 English 4,219 79 

 German 3,302 61 

 Russian 2,821 52 ,, 



For all these languages the above numbers are relatively 

 higher than in the case of Esperanto. 



One of the most effective means of simplifying the 

 vocabulary of a language is a carefully worked-out system 

 of word formation, which enables everyone, by means of a 

 series of regular prefixes and suffixes, to form with the 

 greatest ease a large number of new words, which are 

 immediately intelligible to all who know the rules. 



When one has judiciously chosen the roots which occur 

 under different forms in the various natural languages and 

 also selected the derivative terminations with all possible care, 

 it is astonishing to observe how great a number of words 

 derived with perfect regularity agree with the forms occurring 

 in living languages. 



With regard to grammar, the fundamental condition to be 

 required of every system claiming to be an international 

 language is that of perfect regularity. Every exception to 

 the rules only serves to produce complications and to render 

 the employment of the language difficult and uncertain. If 

 one 'knows the conjugation of one verb, one must know the 

 conjugation of all verbs, and so on. 



In the choice of grammatical terminations the statistical 

 method, which served us for the purpose of the vocabulary, 

 cannot be strictly applied, because living languages diverge 



