THE DREAM OF ONE INTERNATIONAL TONGUE
by Mike Cummings

Imagine if a common world language existed. Men, women, and children from all lands could communicate with each other--and build goodwill

     One day a curious, elderly woman approached the renowned linguist Mario Pei (now deceased), who could speak, read, or write a goodly number of the world's languages, and asked him how to say "bread" in Russian, French, and Spanish.

     When Pei rattled off the words--kleb, pain, and pan, respectively--the elderly woman replied, somewhat confused: "But why do these people go to all that trouble? Wouldn't it be far simpler and easier for them to say 'bread'?"

     Her endearing naivete notwithstanding, the woman had a point. Why don't the world's people speak a common language? Wouldn't they all stand to benefit from reading one another's books and magazines, seeing and enjoying one another's films and plays, and listening to and understanding one another's songs and poems?

     Every child who wanted to, even those who now speak such exotic tongues as Tagalog, Sango, and Bugi, could have a pen pal.

     "Indeed, an international language would be a wonderful idea," says Shulin Ding, a professor of comparative literature at Beijing Normal University in the People's Republic of China, "if we could work it out--if we could overcome the political, linguistic, and cultural barriers that divide nations."

     Supporters of the idea of a common world language cite lofty and noble goals, including peace and universal brotherhood, as reasons for adopting one. Most interlinguists would not replace native tongues with the universal one; instead, they would use the latter as an auxiliary medium for international discourse.

     Some recommend adopting a "natural" language such as English, Spanish, Russian, or Chinese. Others tout "artificial" languages, most notably Esperanto because of their political and cultural neutrality.

     Though many scholars tend to view the dream of a common world tongue as hopelessly idealistic and naive, interlinguists press on, heartened by the words of visionaries such as Lewis Mumford.

     In 1944, that American sage wrote: "The art of politics, the arts of enlightened behavior and orderly communication, must become the main field of new inventions. A world language is more important for mankind at the present moment than any conceivable advance in television and telephony...."

     E. J. Lieberman, a Washington, DC, physician and member of the Universal Esperanto Association headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, once wrote: "The curse of Babel grows heavier and heavier upon us, as the world becomes smaller and smaller. Whether as travelers or scholars, citizens or professionals, we inevitably need to communicate across language barriers, and most of us get stuck.

     "Without an international language, we are greatly limited. Man has the means to realize his universal brotherhood--and there is precious little time to hesitate!"

     Pei himself wrote in 1966: "At the present moment, the chances of success of an international language are excellent, since at no time in history have people been more aware of its need and its possible benefits."

     Admirers of Pei acknowledge that he may have been a tad too optimistic--by a century or two. But no one denies that computers, communication satellites, international commerce, tourism, and grass-roots diplomacy are knitting nations into little more than wards or precincts of the same neighborhood.

     Even now, the twelve member countries of the European Economic Community, representing more than 300 million persons, are forging a 1992 unity plan to ease restrictions on trade and investment. Under consideration is a proposal to adopt a common language for computer translations.

     A seventy-member United Nations Committee on Information recently called for the establishment of a new "world communications order." Though not directly addressing the topic of an international language, the committee did recommend steps to broaden access to information and increase the interchange of ideas between nations.

     "We must all work together to ensure that corridors of communication can be constructed between the UN and persons from all corners of the world," says Therese Paquet-Sevigny, UN undersecretary general for public information.

     In 1980 in Manila, the Philippines, the World Tourism Organization officially acknowledged the importance of languages, including Esperanto, as bridge-builders between nations and peoples.

     In 1983, the distinguished American journal Science, concerned that the native languages of developing nations may be inadequate for scientific and technological purposes, editorialized: "In the second half of the 20th century, a large number of new nations that have emerged from the shadow of colonialism are facing serious language problems.

     "Many of these problems stem from the multilingual character of the diverse populations that have been collected into single nations. Others are due to inadequate appreciation of the national and international uses of language....It seems reasonable to assert...that knowledge of a world language, especially English, is essential to the welfare of new nations."

     The Soviet Union's liberalizing policies of glasnost and perestroika have opened up new ties with the West, resulting in Moscow's first McDonald's restaurant and a roving truck dispensing American-style pizza. "Big Mac attack" and "pepperoni pizza to go" have entered the Russian vocabulary.

     Radio and television programs also are sailing across national borders. East Germans now are watching the American TV programs "Dallas" and "Dynasty" by satellite. Czechs receive West German, Austrian, Polish, and Soviet broadcasts. And radio stations in Rome's Vatican City, Brazil, China, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Switzerland, and Austria regularly broadcast in Esperanto.

     In the publishing industry, the United States' rock music magazine Rolling Stone now publishes a French edition. Random House Inc. soon will debut an English-language version of the Talmud, the 1,500-year-old compilation of Jewish oral law, to make it more widely accessible.

     Professor Sulin Ding says the Chinese people, recognizing the importance of participating in the world community, now eagerly embrace the English and Japanese languages for commerce.

     US students, long cocooned in the cultural comfort of their country and their language, increasingly are showing interest in the world and its people. During the 1985-86 academic year, more than 48,000 US students studied abroad, compared with 27,000 during 1982-83.

     One of the reasons for the heightened interest, says Bette Landman, president of Beaver College in Glenside, Pennsylvania, "is an increasing sensitivity...to the kinds of understanding we as world citizens must bring to our lives."

     People, then, are reaching out--across geographical, ideological, and linguistic barriers. As never before they are communicating with one another--via satellite, computer, picturephone, facsimile, and telex machine; in airplanes and trains; at international conferences; in classrooms--even in space on joint missions.

     US economist Barbara War wrote: "Modern science and technology have created so close a network of communication, transport, economic interdependence--and perhaps nuclear destruction--that planet Earth, on its journey through infinity, has acquired the intimacy, the fellowship, and the vulnerability of a spaceship."

     Does all of this interaction mean that Pei was right, that the world is ready to embrace an international language?

     Not by a long shot, most experts say.

     Political rivalries and national prejudices still are too strong. And no mechanism is in place to spearhead the effort and establish a pedagogy. Without a concerted international effort, prospects for a universal language will be dim for generations to come.

     "It's possible that over a number of centuries--that's the range we should be talking about--there will be at least one so-called lingua franca that everybody uses alongside his native language," says Harm Pinkster, professor of Latin at the Klassiek Seminar in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

     It's not that nations deny the obvious benefits of a world language, says Andrew Large, author of THE ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE MOVEMENT. But, he maintains, "the apparently logical answer to people's needs is often the most difficult to achieve. Presumably a good many people are more than ever aware of the need for, and the likely benefits from, universal nuclear disarmament, yet this goal still remains elusive."

     Ever since the biblical Tower of Babel, when God cursed prideful man with a multiplicity of tongues, humankind has dreamed of a common world language. History records countless efforts to establish one--first by force of arms, later by commerce, religion, the arts and sciences, and a long list of bizarre, whimsical, and ingenious linguistic inventions.

     During the 17th century--when religious expeditions, expanding trade, and increasing worldwide interest in scientific research underscored the need for improved communications-- artificial languages came into being.

     In 1629, French philosopher Rene Descartes developed an artificial language in which numbers represented words and ideas. In 1657, English schoolmaster Cave Beck expanded on that concept, forming words from numbers and letters. "Honor thy father and mother" became leb2314p2477pf2477.

     Two centuries later, Jean Francois Sudre devised a language based entirely on the musical notes do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, and ti. Used in combination, the notes formed words. Misol meant "good"; solmi meant "bad."

     But good, bad, or indifferent, Sudre's, Beck's, and Descartes' systems weren't exactly what the world had in mind. Nor were Timerio, in which "1-80-17" means "I love you," or Volapuk, in which a verb can take more than 500,000 different forms.

     In all, interlinguists have developed about 500 artificial languages, along with modified versions of existing languages. One of the latter, Basic English, pares the English dictionary down to just 850 words.

     Of all these new language systems, only the artificial language Esperanto, developed in the 1880s by Polish oculist Ludovic Zamenhof, has proved durable enough to survive to present day with an international community of speakers.

     Simple, logical, and politically neutral, Esperanto uses many easily understandable words derived from Latin, French, German, English, and Slavic. Estimates of the number of Esperanto speakers worldwide range from 1 million to 16 million. But because it is artificial, most experts say Esperanto's chances of becoming an official international language are slim compared with those of popular natural languages.

     Of the latter, English is the most likely candidate to gain preeminence. Though Mandarin Chinese has more speakers--788 million compared with 420 million for English--English has a wider constituency of speakers.

     "I can't see any possibility other than English," says Beijing University's Shulin Ding. "In our own country, English is by far the most popular foreign language."

     David Iovino, world traveler and professor of Spanish at Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, agrees with Ding's assessment.

     "In Bogota, Colombia, you can't walk two blocks without seeing an advertisement for English classes," Iovino says. "In other countries, everybody who is even the slightest bit ambitious to get up in the world takes English.

     "And, of course, English is the language of technology and of international travel. Everywhere in the world, the control tower speaks English to the pilot. I myself support the idea of an international language, so long as it does not mean that we have to abolish our native languages."

     English is firmly rooted as the language of international commerce, according to Lawrence D. Krohn, first vice-president for international economies for Shearson Lehman Hutton Inc., one of the world's largest brokerage companies.

     "In the business world," Krohn says, "I think there is definitely a movement toward a world language, and nothing comes remotely close to English as far as Europe is concerned. In the Netherlands, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries, English is well-established. In Spain, it's getting there. In the French- speaking countries and Italy, it's come a long way during the past twenty years.

     "And I don't see any political impediments. My experience is that foreigners are eager to show off and practice their English. They don't have to embrace the culture to embrace the language, which they know is their tool to success in an international environment."

     Maria Pasterska and Malgorzata Wawrzyszuk, professors of English at Maria Curie Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland, agree that English is the "in" language.

     "One of the reasons young people in our country learn it," Wawrzyszuk says, "is so they can understand the words to American and British rock music."

     Although Russian courses are compulsory in Poland beginning in the fifth grade, Pasterska adds, "Students will take English whenever they have a choice. In bigger cities it's very fashionable for parents to send children for private lessons. Even in nursery school some children are already taking English."

     There are doubters, however, who don't believe that the world ever will have an international language--English or otherwise. One of them is Denys Gary, a drama professor at Pennsylvania's Lock Haven University, who also has served as a French English translator for Piper Aircraft Corporation.

     "I'm not sure we'll ever move to the point where we'll have one language that will satisfy everybody, whether that's English or French or German or Spanish or one of the Slavic or Far Eastern languages," Gary says. "It would have to be simplified, and when you simplify something there tends to be a movement back to making it complicated again."

     In other words, the advance of technology and science, as well as other fields, would add new words and complicated terminology, ultimately making the simplified language complex.

     "We see this happening with people who work with computers," Gary says "They're actually developing their own language to talk with one another."

     But even if a universal language retains its simplicity, according to Gary, it may in fact be too simple to express profound ideas or deep emotions. Moreover, persons would use the international language only on special occasions, relying on their native tongues for day-today discourse.

     "Which means they wouldn't be skilled in the use of the universal language," he says.

     Another doubter is Frederick C. Mish, editorial director of Merriam-Webster Inc. of Springfield, Massachusetts, publisher of widely used English-language abridged and unabridged dictionaries.

     "I think that probably the chances are not good for a single language to gain dominance over other languages," Mish observes. "I am aware that English has developed in the 20th century into a `world language.' It's probably the most frequently learned second language in most countries.

     "There have been various proposals over the years to simplify the language to make it easier, and there have been other proposals to create a form of English that sidesteps some of the syntactic problems that English presents. It might be that some efforts in that direction would make English less formidable. But that still puts it far away from being the kind of single, central language that all the citizens of the world would speak."

     An artificial language is not the answer, according to Mish.

     "I am not aware that any of them has ever had enormous success, at least in reaching down into the general populations of countries. Any language of that sort, just like a natural language, must be learned as a second language. There has to be a very strong motivation.

     "And though I think you always will have a certain number of people who are interested in acquiring an artificial language to overcome the barriers between natural languages, my guess would be that those people are always going to be fairly limited in number."

     But Mish does concede this much: "If you think about an international language as a goal and make it a sufficiently long-term goal, I suppose your feelings might grow more optimistic about it."

     Linguist Mario Pei contended that the adoption of a world language, whether artificial or natural, would be far simpler than most scholars believe. The problem, he said, is that too many interlinguists plan their schemes for the present generation of adults instead of for future generations of children.

     "Interlinguists...lose sight of the fundamental fact that every language, however intricate it may seem to those who try to learn it as adults, is simple to its own native speakers, who have learned it from childhood by natural speaking processes," Pei wrote.

     His plan envisions appointing an international commission to select one of the world's natural or artificial languages--any one of them would do, he said--with the condition that it be spoken and written phonetically.

     "It must be adopted, by international agreement, in all countries at the same time, not in the high schools or colleges or universities, but in the lowest grade of the elementary schools, side by side with the national tongue, so that it may be learned easily, naturally, and painlessly by oncoming generations," Pei said.

     Whether the inhabitants of Spaceship Earth eventually adopt a common world language--one to be spoken and written by the peoples of all nations--no one can predict. The examples of music, mathematics, and mime suggest that it is not impossible.

     Clearly, no one can dispute that the dream of a common world language has its appeal. For men, women, and children of every nation to be able to communicate, to be able to write poetry that someone on the other side of the world can read and understand, would appear to be one of the most extraordinary achievements in human history.

     Esperanto: a language for all people

     "I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all men were brothers...."

     So wrote Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917), the Polish Jew who developed the artificial language called Esperanto. Its name means "one who hopes."

     In 1887, when he was not yet thirty years old, Zamenhof, an eye doctor, introduced his remarkable linguistic creation. Its hallmarks were unrelenting simplicity, steadfast logic, and cultural neutrality. It was a language for the people--all the people.

     Like no other lingua franca before it, Esperanto caught the fancy of the dreamers who shared Zamenhof's vision, and, during the next century, it spread worldwide.

     In the 1930s, it survived Nazi Vilification and suppression after Germany's Adolf Hitler branded the language a Jewish scheme for world domination. Today, Esperanto ranks as the world's most widely used artificial language.

     A schoolchild's delight, Esperanto has only sixteen rules of grammar. Though its alphabet contains no "q," "x," "y," or "z," the language uses the circumflex to advantage to achieve a variety of sounds. All words spelled and pronounced phonetically with the stress falling on the next-to-the-last syllable.

     Esperanto has no indefinite articles and only one definite article, la. Singular nouns end in "o," including recent additions such as transistoro for transistor and softvaro for software. Plural nouns end in "j" (pronounced as a "y"), so that transistoro becomes transistoroj in the plural.

     Verbs end in "as" in the present tense, "is" in the past, and "os" in the future.

     Though the vocabulary derives mainly from Latin and the romance languages, English, German, Russian, and Polish also make their contributions.

     Because many of the words and word roots instantly are recognizable to speakers of English and other languages, it's often possible for novices to translate Esperanto on sight; for example, La patro sendas leteron translated means, "The father sends a letter."

     One very practical use of Esperanto today is as a bridge language between dialects in a particular language such as Chinese.

     The Universal Esperanto Association, headed in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has members in more than ninety countries and stages annual world congresses attended by as many as 2,500 Esperanto speakers and supporters. Separate Esperanto organizations exist for lawyers, journalists, physicians, scientists, mathematicians, musicians, and members of various religions.

     Esperanto received a boost in 1985 when the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved a resolution recognizing the language's achievements in fostering international cooperation and understanding. In so doing, UNESCO encouraged increased use of Esperanto in schools and international organizations.

     Esperanto speakers and writers publish more than 100 magazines and journals and have translated major literary works from English, French, German, Chinese, Swahili, Hungarian, Spanish, Hebrew, ancient Greek, Croatian, and other languages. Approximately 125 universities offer courses in Esperanto. Albania once considered making the language compulsory in schools.

     Pen pals worldwide use Esperanto, and through a program called Pasporta Servo, youth may stay as nonpaying guests in the homes of Esperanto speakers in any country.

     For further information about Esperanto, write to the Universal Esperanto Association at Nieuwe Binnenweg 176, 3015 BJ Rotterdam, the Netherlands, or at 777 United Nations Plaza, New York, New York 10017.