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ON AN INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE. 393 
English fidelity, fortitude, and in German like jfidel and foliant, which would suggest 
the meaning of the Latin word to speakers of English and German. 
5. Capacity for New Development.—The machinery for forming new words in 
Latin is well established and well known. For example, the use of the endings -atio 
to denote a process ; -tia to denote a quality ; -wm a concrete thing; -are to denote 
making ; -isare to denote impregnating one thing with another: -atwm to denote a 
product; and -tor to denote a person acting. A great deal of new coinage will be 
necessary whatever language be adopted ; if Latin is chosen, the Classical Association 
will no doubt be prepared to appoint a small standing committee, which could meet 
periodically to draw up lists of suitable Latin equivalents for any terms, however 
numerous, which might be submitted to it. 
6. Hxisting Use.-—In Botany, Anatomy, Zoology, and Medicine all technical 
terms are in Latin by international agreement. In Chemistry all the terminology is 
based on Latin or Greco-Latin endings, for example, Sulphate, Sulphide, Sulphite, 
Sulphuric, Sulphurous, and nearly all the technical terms, e.g., Molecule, Atom, Acid, 
Precipitate, are derived from Latin. Further, the religious use of Latin in all Catholic 
countries, and in the headings of the English Prayer Book renders the Jook of many 
Latin words familiar; not to speak of the numerous Latin phrases in daily use, like 
vice versa; sine qua non; nolens volens. 
7. Lucidity as compared with English.—F¥our characteristics of Modern English 
render it exceedingly difficult to use and still more difficult to learn. They are :— 
(a} The non-rational character of English spelling, which is more anomalous than 
that of any other language, though some of the anomalies are necessary to distinguish 
words of like sound but of different meaning. 
(6) The almost total absence of inflexion, which involves constant doubt as to 
whether a particular form is a noun, or verb, or adverb, or adjective. For example, 
lead, appeal, escape, move, glance, catch, hold, grasp, return, cool, second, arrest, make, 
press, crowd, rise, fall, temper, try, reach, desert, shock, time, pain, touch, seal, line, 
hammer, smile, laugh, cry, fix, set, stand. Whether any one of these words is a verb 
or a noun can only be discovered by a careful study of the whole sentence, a study 
which in Latin the inflexions make entirely unnecessary. Take a sentence like this ; 
* The French use. of all these methods, only the first. and that in moderation, attempts 
all the time being made to improve upon it.’ This kind of ambiguity a foreigner 
finds most baffling. The further ambiguity of the English word ‘that’ and the 
absence of any inflexions to mark the adverbial use of the accusative time, or the 
absolute use of the noun and participle (attempts and being) are additional difficulties 
of very common occurrence. Arising from this are many peculiar necessities of order 
in English which can only be indicated here (e.g., Without support the man will fail 
means something different from The man without support will fail). 
(c) The disuse of hyphens in English compounds, so that any noun can be used 
as an adjective, has introduced a new and grave difficulty to foreigners in reading 
English. Phrases like the old town road, the white ladies’ dress material are simple 
examples of the ambiguity which this practice creates. 
(d) One fundamental difficulty lies in the very nature of English ; it often happens 
that a simple noun or verb, frequently monosyllabic, is of Saxon origin, but that the 
corresponding derivative ideas are expressed by words of Latin origin. For example ; 
sea: marine; to see: visible vision; to melt: fusible; to carry: portable, 
exportation; town: municipal; bed; clinical; life: vital; health: sanitary; 
death ; mortal, mortality. 
No difficulties of this kind arise in Latin for learners who speak any one of the 
Romance Languages. 
III. The Claims of English. 
There are strong reasons in favour of regarding English as the probable world- 
language of the future, not to the exclusion of national languages, but as the forcign 
language most likely to appeal to those who do not possess it as their mother tongue. 
_ That English is more widely used than any other language appears even from 
the statistics usually quoted; yet these refer only to countries where English is the 
national language, and leave out of account the foreigners who have acquired a speaking 
or reading knowledge of it, or both. Of these, there were many, and the number 
1921 BE 
