EELATIONSHIP OF LANGUAGE TO SCIENCE 59 



vortfarado (i.e., word manufacture !), with the result that 

 their language falls into the error of creating idioms. For 

 example, in Esperanto the beginning of the sentence "A 

 rotary transformer might he called a motor-generator, but the 

 latter name is usually applied to machines with independent 

 armatures," is translated in the following way : Turnighan 

 alispecigilon oni povas nomi motorproduktanto, which lite- 

 rally translated reads, "A self-turning otherwise-making 

 instrument can be called a motor-producer." 



Apart from these fundamental errors of Esperanto, it 

 lacks a systematic method of word formation, the importance 

 of which has been demonstrated in a masterly and convinc- 

 ing fashion by Couturat in the previous chapter. Hundreds 

 of times the puzzled reader of an Esperanto text is in doubt 

 about the sense of an adjective, even such common expres- 

 sions as stony and made of stone being rendered in Esperanto 

 by the same word (shtona). A phrase such as "It is 

 perhaps possible " cannot be accurately translated into 

 Esperanto, since, on account of its " simplicity," the words 

 perhaps and possible are both rendered by the same d 

 priori word, eble. With regard to choice of vocabulary, 

 other systems, in particular "Neutral Idiom," are exceed- 

 ingly superior to Esperanto. In this last product of the 

 Volapiik movement the principle of internationality has 

 been finally recognised. A language academy was founded 

 which constructed a lexicon according to this principle. 

 Unfortunately, as Jespersen has very fully shown in 

 Chapter III., this principle was not interpreted in the right 

 manner, so that the language lacks logical clearness in spite 

 of the international character of its vocabulary. 



We need not, therefore, be surprised that science has 

 hitherto been unable to adopt any of the artificial systems as 

 the international auxiliary language. That would have been 

 a false step, and would only have produced confusion. 



It is only at the present time that one has arrived at a 



