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Page 6 TOMORROW— THE STARS AND STRIPES Wednesday, April 4 , 194!% W O U L D W IDE SPEECH A much-discussed issue, International Language so far has proven a dud, but proponents are still hope ful o f developing it as a weapon o f peace. Tomorrow's U.S. Bureau About as fleeting and elusive as the dove of lasting peace Is the international lan guage issue, thus far a colossal fizzle. But. despite Its erratic, faltering start, international language .backers claim It would be a first-class war preventive, a medicine to keep nations from flying at each other's throat at the drop of a hat Their argument: Wars are inevitable un til people converse In a common tongue. Its failure to materialize into something worthwhile is attributed to bad manage ment: its creators have stumbled into old pitfalis. such as complicated "basic" lan guages. thousands of tough words which can't be stomached by the man-in-thestreet, and a general lack o f public interest. Volapuk was the first “universal" lan guage to appear (1879), and then Esperanto bobbed into being in 1887. Dr. L. L. Zemenhoff. Polish founder of Esperanto, gave it elements o f Latin, Slavic, German and C hart gives breakdow n o f m a jor languages. Chinese, spoken by 23 percent o f w orld's population, heads list but its m any dialects m ake m any Chinese people "foreig n ers" to neighbors w ithin their boundaries. An inte rnalional language, proponents hold, would lead to better understanding— perhaps en a b lin g w ould-be belligerents to settle differen ces w ith the tongue in stead o f the sword. English. It received a heavy shower of publicity, caused a few minor rows among opposition members, then cooled o ff alto gether Growled anti-Esperantos: It’s a code, not a language. It’s built mostly on basic Ger man, which is far too complicated for the rest of Jthe world. A whole slew of world languages then flowed into existence (Mondollngue, Universala. Kosmos. Novilatin. Idiom Neutral. Ro. Spartari-Radio-Code, Ido. Occidental, Basic English, Phonetic Alphabet, Angelic. Global Alphabet), none of which stood the test and stuck. During the past 60 years, numerous nations groups of nations and educators formed organizations to study and lick the thorny language problem. Most prominent is the International Auxiliary Language Association, the work of which met the approval of linguists and psychologists the world over. Basic Elements Pooled ■. IALA's plan is to extract from all lan guages their common elements o f vocabu lary and grammar. This basic file o f words (still in the laboratory stage) would serve to create an auxiliary language that could be understood with relative ease by every body. Another com mittee sprang up for the same purpose, comprising ministers of edu cation from nine non-English-speaking Eu ropean countries. Rather than a combina tion of languages (as suggested by I ALA), this committee offered English or French as the-world language, with slight leanings toward English. Reasons: English, they said, would play a major rfile in International Intercourse and postwar collaboration; English also was understood and spoken by more people (some 270 millions) than any other single language. Sim plicity Is K eynote The committee pointed out that though China boasts an astronomical 500-mllhon population figure, the Chinese actually speak dozens of dialects, each a language in Itself. With Russia, the same story: 156 of her millions speak Russian, with the rest of the provinces and republics speak ing more than 40 different tongues. Noting'-that simplicity was the password to a successful language. Cambridge's (Eng land) C. K. Ogden spent the better part of 10 years in stripping the English lan guage down to its basic structure. From an originial 500.000 words, Ogden emerged with an astonishing low 1 .200 —of which 600 are nouns A working knowledge of this basic English can be acquired in 60 hours, whereas ordinary courses in most modern languages demand two, three or more years of study. V Thus basic English may be the answer, and the eyes of educators are upon it. They stipulate, however, that no language —despite its good or bad points—can be foisted on the rest o f the world. It must be a matter o f all nations studying and accepting a proposed language. With an. established international lan guage. future wars may well be fought by diplomats with pens and paper—not by little guys with guns.i i
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