January 21, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



111 



guages. I quote from the latest number 

 (December, 1909) of Progreso a few lines 

 which the readers of Science will be able to 

 make out for themselves if I explain that 

 Fundameniisis are the orthodox Esperantists 

 who look upon Zamenhof's Fundamento as a 

 holy book of which not one jot or one tittle 

 must ever be altered: 



La Fundamentisti, per salvar la lingual uneso 

 [unity], supresas omna [all] libereso; ni [we] 

 ne devas imitar li; ni devas, ne nut [only] tolerar, 

 sed admisar la kritiko, nam [for] se ni ne admisus 

 ol [it] inter ni, sub forme di amikal e bonvola 

 diskutado, ol eventus exter ni, e konseque kontre 

 ni; nulu povas [no one can] supresar, sufokar 

 la kritiko; la max grava eroro e kulpo di I'Esper- 

 antista cheii esis, ke li malsaje [unwisely] volis 

 exterminar ol ek lia armeo. Segun la paroli di So. 

 Sterrett, la kritiko ne esas la morto, sed la vivo 

 di ciencala entraprezo quale la nia [ours]. 



Thus on all points we substitute scientific 

 methods and procedures for haphazard and 

 arbitrary word-coinages and a blind swearing 

 in the words of the " majstro " Zamenhof. 



Just as some people have two religions, one 

 for Sunda.vs and another for week days, Espe- 

 ranto has two spellings. One is the real thing 

 with five circumflexed consonants ; if you hand 

 in a telegram in that orthography, it can not 

 be correctly transmitted, and most printing 

 offices can not print texts thus written; type- 

 writers have to be specially equipped for these 

 letters, and in ordinary writing they are cum- 

 bersome because the pen has to be lifted very 

 frequently from the paper. No other system 

 of artificial language has anything like these 

 letters, which are thus shown to be unneces- 

 sary. Zamenhof himself in 1894 recognized 

 these circumflexed letters as a " very impor- 

 tant hindrance to the spreading " of Esperanto, 

 but still he opposes any attempt to discard 

 them and only allows his followers to use an 

 h after the letter as a permissible spelling 

 whenever the real Esperanto letters can not be 

 had. This leads to such spellings as hhemio, 

 which few chemists will gladly accept as the 

 name of their science, and even in extreme 

 cases to four successive h's (monahhhhoro!). 

 Therefore some Esperantists have tried other 



desperate remedies, writing s'ang'o or sango 

 instead of sango with circumflex over s and g, 

 or shangho (Ido, chanjo). Whichever way you 

 spell Esperanto, it looks unsightly, and in. 

 many cases unnecessarily alters the aspect of 

 international words. 



Mr. Kellerman finds that Ido is less musical 

 and more monotonous than Esperanto ; I have 

 not yet found any one who was of the same 

 opinion after listening to one half page of the 

 same text translated into both languages, as 

 the numerous aj-oj-ujs and the frequent sibil- 

 ants of Esperanto are avoided in Ido. Mr. 

 Kellerman also speaks of the "harsh Anglo- 

 Saxon pronunciation of the letter /" in Ido. 

 He will allow a phonetician to say that it is 

 neither harsh nor Anglo-Saxon ; besides, is Ido 

 joyo harsher than Esperanto gojo with a cir- 

 cumflex over g or ghojo? The sound is iden- 

 tical in both cases, but Esperanto spells the 

 initial sound in two ways unexampled in any 

 language, living or dead, while Ido here as 

 elsewhere selects the most international form. 



The only refutation of Mr. Kellerman's as- 

 sertion that Esperanto is more logical and 

 more truly international than Ido and that 

 Ido lacks definite rules is by a comparison of 

 the two systems : I hope many of the readers 

 of Science will undertake that comparison for 

 themselves by a study of our grammars and 

 readers or of parallel texts in both languages. 

 Such an examination will soon make them 

 see where the truth of the matter lies. 



The main consideration with Mr. Keller- 

 man seems, however, to be the number of 

 adherents, and I must admit that Esperantists 

 still are more numerous than Idists. But, as 

 the boy said when applying for some work and 

 being met with the objection that he was too 

 young : " I shall improve in that respect every 

 day." Ido certainly gained more followers in 

 the first twelve months of its existence than 

 Esperanto did in the first twelve years of its 

 life. Mr. Kellerman quotes from the title 

 page of the Internacia Scienca Revuo seven- 

 teen names of noted men of science who sup- 

 port that periodical. There is no doubt that 

 Scienca Revuo would be a more valuable paper 

 if these men also appeared inside the cover. 



