200  Esperanto,  Universal  or  French  ?  {AmApriia9(»arm' 
language,  a  man  must  first  learn  six  others !  This  is  hardly  follow- 
ing the  line  of  least  resistance.  For  queue,  Esperanto  uses  the  word 
vost.  This  is  as  easy  for  those  who  know  its  Russian  analogue, 
koosty  as  it  is  for  a  German  to  understand  trink,  and  for  a  Greek, 
whose  and  is  kai,  to  find  kaj  simple.  But  what  would  these  words 
signify  to  a  Frenchman,  who  would  have  to  learn  them  just  as  he 
would  the  Arabic  words  bent  (woman)  and  efta  (key)? 
As  for  the  languages  that  derive  from  one  source,  a  Frenchman 
would  readily  comprehend  the  sentence  in  Universal,  "  Lingi  pure 
artifizial  es  totale  inkomprensibil  a  prim  vist,"  which  in  French  is, 
"  La  langue  purement  artificielle  est  completement  incomprehensible 
a  premiere  vue ;  "  but  what  would  it  convey  to  a  German  accus- 
tomed to  "  Eine  ganz  kiinstliche  sprache  ist  vollkommen  unver- 
staendlich  zum  ersten  Blicke,"  or  to  a  Russian  used  to,  "  Vpolnie 
iskonstvennyi  yasyk  soverchenno  ne  poniaten  na  pervye  vxgliad  ?  " 
"  As  for  me,"  says  M.  Novicow, "  although  I  know  the  six  sources  from 
which  Esperanto  is  drawn,  I  have  difficulty  sometimes  in  understand- 
ing some  of  its  sentences.  Judge  what  it  must  be  for  one  who  under- 
stands only  Italian  or  Swedish."  There  seems  very  little  reason  for 
learning  a  new  and  difficult  language,  without  tradition  or  literature — 
for,  as  M.  Novicow  says,  "  Esperanto  will  never  have  its  Cicero  or 
Bossuet " — when  there  is  ready  to  hand  (or  to  tongue)  a  language 
like  French,  that  has  been  used  all  over  the  continent  as  a  court 
language,  and  to-day,  as  every  traveler  in  Europe  knows,  will  carry 
one  almost  anywhere. 
He  cites  Italy  as  a  land  where  a  universal  language  coexists  with 
many  dialects.  French  might  be  the  universal  language,  and  all  the 
other  nations  could  keep  their  dialects  for  home  use.  Certainly  the 
prospect  is  more  attractive  than  that  of  having  the  burden  of 
another  language  added  to  our  over-burdened  minds,  especially 
when  our  minds  would  really  receive  no  reward  for  the  labor  of 
learning,  as  only  our  tongues  could  wag  in  Esperanto.  We  should 
still  want  to  know  French  for  the  sake  of  its  literature,  and  it  seems 
hardly  worth  while,  in  these  labor-saving  days,  to  try  to  build  the 
Tower  of  Babel  any  higher. — Putnam's  Monthly  and  the  Reader, 
April,  1908. 
