THE QUESTION OF NOMENCLATURE 63 



life have found their way into science, whilst the newly dis- 

 covered elements all possess international names. It follows 

 from this that the further problem of assigning an inter- 

 national system of sounds to scientific concepts has been in 

 certain departments of science already approximately solved. 

 It is true that the sound is still somewhat dependent on the 

 speech basis of the particular nation, so that, for example, 

 not inconsiderable deviations may occur in English. But, 

 as the written and printed word is always simultaneously 

 known, the recognition of a name as pronounced by a 

 foreigner does not cause any very great difficulty. 



There exists here a field of work for those who are interested 

 in the idea of an artificial language which is as fertile as it 

 is interesting. As is well known, we scientific men suffer a 

 good deal from the fact that the same words are frequently 

 employed for the vague ideas of daily life as well as for the 

 perfectly definite concepts of science. This is indeed one of 

 the most important reasons why new designations for 

 scientific concepts should, as far as possible, be taken from 

 the dead languages, such designations being thereby already 

 international. It ought therefore to be a comparatively easy 

 task to devise by means of this international material and 

 the linguistic rules of the language of the Delegation a system 

 of international names for the clearly defined concepts of the 

 different sciences. 



Such a system possesses a double purpose. In the first 

 place, it could, I think, be used in our present natural 

 languages. Certain English expressions occurring in 

 electrotechnics, such as shunt, extra current, are employed in 

 German and French just as if they were national words. 

 The international names in their international form might 

 be employed in every case where a precise scientific 

 terminology was required, without doing much violence to 

 our natural languages. The inflow of foreign words through 

 the channels of technology and science as well as those of 



