112 



SCIENCE 



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



but as a matter of fact the great majority of 

 them never published anything in Esperanto. 

 Their support is purely platonic, and as it was 

 given before the birth of Ido, it shows their 

 approval of the general idea of an interna- 

 tional language more than of that particular 

 form of such a language. It is a significant 

 fact that not a single philologist has accepted 

 Esperanto in its Zamenhofian shape; the only 

 one mentioned in Esperanto papers is Bau- 

 douin de Courtenay in St. Petersburg, but he 

 has publicly declared that " Of course, Espe- 

 ranto needs improvements," and though he 

 does not accept Ido in every detail, he says 

 that it is better than Esperanto in many 

 respects. But the leading French Esperanto 

 paper {Lingvo Internacia) refused to print a 

 protest from Baudouin de Courtenay after 

 they had printed what purported to be an 

 article by him entirely in favor of Esperanto, 

 which he had never written. 



I am optimist enough to believe that the 

 present tactics of many Esperantists will soon 

 cease, and that they will then see that a good 

 cause can only be furthered by a loyal discus- 

 sion of the pros and cons without regard to 

 persons. No great invention, no great scien- 

 tific discovery, ever sprang into the world full- 

 fledged; they all have required the patient 

 cooperation of many minds. Yet we are to 

 believe that Dr. Zamenhof's invention of 1887 

 stands in no need of improvement in its vital 

 elements; and it is considered a sacrilege to 

 whisper that its alphabet is cumbersome, many 

 of its roots badly selected, much of its gram- 

 mar too capricious and its methods of word- 

 formation insufficient and amateurish, and 

 that by setting to work on scientific prin- 

 ciples it is possible to devise a much better 

 language of a much more truly international 

 character, " not perfect," perhaps, " but always 

 perfectible." 



Otto Jespersen 



Columbia University 



SCIENTISTS AND ESPERANTO 



In Science for December 3 appears an in- 

 teresting note on Esperanto from the pen of 

 Professor Tingle, in which he criticizes the 



statement made in a former article of my own, 

 that the adoption of an international lan- 

 guage is the solution of many difficulties for 

 scientific men. Waiving the fact that he ap- 

 plies the quotation he makes in a manner 

 other than the context will strictly warrant, 

 his remarks still leave unshaken my convic- 

 tion that the use of the international lan- 

 guage would be a means of lightening the 

 linguistic burdens of all scientific workers, 

 and among them, of the chemists; even under 

 the somewhat drastic conditions of the hypo- 

 thetical case he cites. 



I venture to believe, that if, as he supposes, 

 subsequent to January 1, 1910, all chemical 

 communications were compelled to be made 

 in Esperanto, the result would not be, as he 

 fears, simply the additional burden of another 

 language to be learned, but that, on the con- 

 trary, chemists would discover that they did 

 not need to be also expert linguists in order 

 to keep in touch with the movements of their 

 science throughout the world, and that, while 

 possibly a reading knowledge of certain mod- 

 ern national tongues, for perusal of matter 

 already chronicled, was still desirable, a 

 speaking and writing knowledge, a very differ- 

 ent matter, had become, almost, if not en- 

 tirely, unnecessary in their scientific work. 

 Such an intimate knowledge would be needed 

 of one language only and that, the simplest of 

 all, Esperanto. The authors of the communi- 

 cations would also find a much larger audi- 

 ence, to the advantage both of themselves and 

 of the world in general. 



It is true that sometimes, in quoting from 

 existing writings, it is desirable to use the lan- 

 guage in which the author wrote, in order to 

 clearly express his thought, and to this extent 

 would it be necessary to permit the use of 

 other tongues than the international one, but 

 this would be a very small item compared with 

 the immense gain that all the new facts and 

 theories of the science would be expressed in 

 the world language, and, as the years rolled by, 

 the necessity of using any national language 

 in such international communications and 

 contributions would grow less and less — to 

 finally disappear. 



