CRITICISM OF ESPEKANTO 39 



usage has doubtless also inspired such word formations as 

 elparoli and senkulpigi instead of the international pronuncar 

 and exkuzar (R. vygovarivat' and izvin'af, corresponding to 

 G. aussprechen and entschuldigen). The peculiarity of using 

 the adverb instead of the adjective in such cases as estas 

 necese vidi, "it is necessary to see," is probably to be 

 ascribed to the correspondence of the Russian adverb with 

 the neuter predicate adjective. This rule cannot be per- 

 mitted, however, in an international language, because, with 

 a free word order, it wouldbe impossible to say whether 

 estas vere necese means "it is really necessary " or "it is 

 necessarily true." The compound perfect (mi estas aminta, 

 " I have loved " = " I am having loved ") reminds one of 

 the Polish kochal-em. Finally, the frequent use of the 

 adjective (in -a) instead of the genitive (Zamenhofa lingvo) 

 and of the two sorts of action expressed by ek and ad 

 (ekvidi and vidadi used in many cases where the simple vidi 

 would be sufficient) are to be accounted for by Russian 

 usages. 



Naturally I do not object to the importation of national 

 peculiarities into the international auxiliary language when 

 the latter is enriched thereby. For example, one must 

 make use of the facility for forming compound words common 

 to the Germanic and Slavonic languages in preference to 

 the poverty of Romance languages in this respect, and 

 combine it with the more Romance characteristic of forming 

 new words by means of derivative syllables. But peculiari- 

 ties of national language which render mutual comprehension 

 and international usage difficult must be most carefully 

 avoided. 



The unpractical nature of the circumflexed letters has 

 been indicated previously. It may be remarked here, how- 

 ever, that in point of system Zamenhof 's letters are very 

 inferior to the similar ones employed in the Czech language, 

 since the parallelism in sound between 8 and s } z and j, dz 



