no 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXI. No. 786 



that root being chosen in each case which will 

 be most readily understood by the greatest 

 number of civilized people. A few examples 

 will show the contrast between Esperanto 

 (given first) and Ido; I add the English 

 translation : 



bedauri — regretar, " regret " ; 



chiu — omnu, " everybody " ; 



eco — qualeso, "quality"; 



elparoli — pronuncar, " pronounce " ; 



malsupreniri — decensar, " descend"; 



farto — stando, " state of health " ; 



ghojo— joyo, "joy"; 



kial — pro quo, "why"; 



kiom — quanto, " how much " ; 



neniam — nultempe, " never " ; 



nepre — absolute, " absolutely " ; 



parkere — memore, " by heart " ; 



tago — jorno, "day"; 



vosto — kaudo, " tail." 



Now, what has been the attitude of the 

 Esperantists towards this new language? I 

 am happy to say that a great many of them 

 have frankly acknowledged its merits and are 

 now active propagandists for it. If one looks 

 through articles published before 190Y and sees 

 the names there praised as those of the best 

 Esperantists, one recognizes many of those 

 who are now ardent Idists (Schneeberger, de 

 Beaufront, Kofman, Lemaire, Ahlberg, Gril- 

 lon). Among four Americans who were 

 elected members of the Esperantist Lingva 

 Eomitato, three are now Idists. But on the 

 other hand a great many Esperantists have 

 stuck to the old language and tried to kill 

 Ido, first by a conspiracy of silence and then 

 by a misrepresentation of facts and of persons 

 connected with the whole affair. And a great 

 many people seem to take everything told in 

 the Esperanto papers as truth instead of ac- 

 quiring a first-hand knowledge of the new 

 language. Two letters in Science of Decem- 

 ber 10 seem to call for an answer, as they are 

 rather more fair than many articles in Espe- 

 ranto periodicals. And I am thus obliged, 

 against my usual practise, to say something 

 about personal matters that have very little 

 bearing on the real question at issue : it is not 

 the persons supporting or deserting a lan- 

 guage, but the essential features of the lan- 



guage that are of real importance in the long 

 run. 



Ever since the first appearance of the new 

 language it has been the tactics of the Espe- 

 rantists, not to examine the language itself, 

 but to discredit it by relating how now this, 

 now that member of the Delegation Committee 

 had " resigned from it in disgust." Thus I 

 read at one time in the Amerika Esperantisto, 

 that Professors Jespersen and Ostwald had 

 left the committee; this piece of news made 

 a profound impression on me, though I must 

 add that I know from the very best sources 

 that it was not true. Now I read in Science 

 that Professor Dr. Adolph Schmidt also is one 

 of those members who left the committee. 

 Unfortunately, I do not know just how deep 

 my regret should be, as I have not the slightest 

 idea who that gentleman is; the only thing 

 I know with certainty is that he was not 

 elected a member of said committee and was 

 not present at a single one of its meetings, all 

 of which I attended from beginning to end. 



Only one member ever left our committee, 

 and that was Professor Foerster, of Berlin, 

 who saw fit to resign — exactly one year after 

 the committee had finished its work and 

 printed its official report. I fail to see the 

 significance of his act of resignation at that 

 moment, but it constitutes the only fact of 

 what Mr. Spillman calls the disruption of the 

 International Language Committee. 



Mr. Spillman goes on to say that " these 

 gentlemen are not at all agreed as to the struc- 

 ture of their language." It is a usual thing 

 for Esperanto papers to say that we change 

 our language about once a month. Now, I 

 defy any one to find any difference between 

 the first specimen ever printed in Ido and the 

 language used in the very last issues of Pro- 

 greso or Belga Sonorilo, etc. But the former 

 periodical has invited criticism of Ido in a 

 thoroughly open-minded and scientific spirit 

 and has printed articles by authors experi- 

 menting with other " dialects " ; but that of 

 course does not change the language any more 

 than Danish is changed by the admission in a 

 Danish periodical of articles written in the 

 closely related Norwegian and Swedish Ian- 



