International Language Part 5

Latin, pure or mongrel, won't do.

VIII

CAN THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE BE GREEK?

This chapter might be as short and dogmatic as Mark Twain's celebrated chapter upon snakes in Ireland. It would be enough to merely answer "No," but that the indefatigable Mr. Henderson, after running through three artificial languages of his own, has come to the conclusion that Greek is the thing. Certainly, as regards flexibility and power of word-formation, Greek would be better than Latin on its own merits. But it is too hard, and the scheme has nothing practical about it.

IX

CAN THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE BE A MODERN LANGUAGE?

Jingoes are not wanting who say that it is unpatriotic of any Englishman to be a party to the introduction of a neutral language, because English is manifestly destined to be the language of the world.

Reader, did you ever indulge in the mild witticism of asking a foreigner where the English are mentioned in the Bible? The answer, of course, is, _The meek shall inherit the earth_. But if the foreigner is bigger than you, don't tell him until you have got to a safe distance.

It is this att.i.tude of self-a.s.sertion, coupled with the tacit a.s.sumption that the others don't count much, that makes the English so detested on the Continent. It is well reflected in the claim to have their own language adopted as a common means of communication between all other peoples.

This claim is not put forward in any spirit of deliberate insolence, or with the intention of ignoring other people's feelings; though the very unconsciousness of any arrogance in such an att.i.tude really renders it more galling, on account of the tacit conclusion involved therein.

It is merely the outcome of ignorance and of that want of tact which consists of inability to put oneself at the point of view of others.

The interests of English-speaking peoples are enormous, far greater than those of any other group of nations united by a common bond of speech. But it is a form of narrow provincial ignorance to refuse on that account to recognize that, compared to the whole bulk of civilized people, the English speakers are in a small minority, and that the majority includes many high-spirited peoples with a strongly developed sense of nationality, and destined to play a very important part in the history of the world. Any sort of movement to have English or any other national language adopted officially as a universal auxiliary language would at once entail a boycott of the favoured language on the part of a ring of other powerful nations, who could not afford to give a rival the benefit of this augmented prestige. And it is precisely upon universality of adoption that the great use of an international language will depend.

To sum up: the ignorance of contemporary history and fact displayed in the suggestion of giving the preference to any national language is only equalled by its futility, for it _is_ futile, to put forward a scheme that has no chance of even being discussed internationally as a matter of practical politics.

A proof is that precisely the same objection to an auxiliary language is raised in France-namely, that it is unpatriotic, because it would displace French from that proud position.

The above remarks will be wholly misunderstood if they are taken to imply any spirit of Little Englandism on the part of the writer.

On the contrary, he is ardently convinced of the mighty _role_ that will be played among the nations by the British Empire, and has had much good reason in going to and fro in the world to ponder on its unique achievement in the past. When fully organized on some terms of partnership as demanded by the growth of the Colonies, it will go even farther in the future. But all this has nothing to do with an international language. Howsoever mighty, the British Empire will not swallow up the earth-at any rate, not in our time. And till it does, it is not practical politics to expect other peoples to recognize English as the international language as between themselves.

There are, in fact, two quite separate questions:

(1) Supposing it is possible for any national language to become the international one, which has the best claims?

(2) Is it possible for any national language to be adopted as the international one?

To question (1) the answer undoubtedly is "English." It is already the language of the sea, and to a large extent the medium for transacting business between Europeans and Asiatic races, or between the Asiatic races themselves.[1] Moreover, except for its p.r.o.nunciation and spelling, it has intrinsically the best claim, as being the furthest advanced along the common line of development of Aryan language.[2] But the discussion of this question has no more than an academic interest, because the answer to question (2) is, for political reasons, in the negative.

[1]Another argument is that based on the comparative numbers of people who speak the princ.i.p.al European languages as their mother-tongue. No accurate statistics exist, but an interesting estimate is quoted by Couturat and Leau (_Hist. de la langue universelle_), which puts English first with about 120,000,000, followed at a distance of 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 by Russian.

[2]This is explained in Part III., chap. i., _q.v._

X

CAN THE EVOLUTION OF AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE BE LEFT TO THE PROCESS OF NATURAL SELECTION BY FREE COMPEt.i.tION?

"You base your argument for an international language mainly on the operation of economical laws. Be consistent, then; leave the matter to Nature. By unlimited compet.i.tion the best language is bound to be evolved and come to the top in the struggle for life. Let the fittest survive, and don't bother about Esperanto."

On a first hearing this sounds fairly plausible, yet it is honeycombed with error.

In the first place, it proves too much. The same argument could be adduced for the abandonment of effort of all kind whatever to improve upon Nature and her processes. "You can walk and run and swim. Don't bother to invent boats and bicycles, trains and aeroplanes, that will bring you more into touch with other peoples. Let Nature evolve the best form of international locomotion."

Again, Nature does not tend towards uniformity. She produces an infinity of variety in the individual, and out of this variety she selects and evolves certain prevailing types. But these types differ widely within the limits of the world under varying conditions of environment. What we are seeking to establish is world-wide uniformity, in spite of difference of environment.

Again, the argument confuses a sub-characteristic with an organism. A language is not an organism, but one of the characteristics of man.

After the lapse of countless ages there are grey horses and black, bay and chestnut, presumably because greyness and blackness and the rest are incidental characteristics of a horse. No one of them gives him a greater advantage than the others in his struggle for life, or helps him particularly to perform the functions of horsiness.

Just in the same way a man may be equally well equipped with all the qualities that make for success, whether he speaks English or French, Russian or j.a.panese. It cannot be shown that language materially helps one people as against another, or even that the best race evolves the best language.[1] Take the last mentioned. If there is one people on the face of the globe who rejoice in an impossible language, it is the j.a.panese. In the early days of foreign intercourse a good Jesuit father reported that the j.a.panese were courteous and polite to strangers, but their language was plainly the invention of the devil. To a modern mind the language may have outlived its putative father, but its reputation has not improved, so far as ease is concerned. Yet who will say that it has impaired national efficiency?

[1]Greece went down before Rome. Which was the better race, meaning by "better" the more capable of imposing its language and manners on the world? Yet who doubts that Greek was the better language?

The fact is, that for purposes of transaction of ordinary affairs by those who speak it as a mother tongue, one language is about as good as another. Whether it survives or spreads depends, not upon its intrinsic qualities as a language, but upon the success of the race that speaks it.[1] There is, therefore, no presumption that the best or the most suitable or the easiest language will spread over the world by its own merits, or even that any easy or regular language will be evolved.

Printing and education have altogether arrested the natural process of evolution of language on the lips of men. This is one justification for the application of new artificial reforms to language and spelling, which tend no longer to move naturally with the times as heretofore.

[1]A curious phenomenon of our day suggests a possible partial exception. In Switzerland French is steadily encroaching and bearing back German. Is this owing to the intrinsic qualities of French language and civilization? Materially, the Germans have the greater expansive power.

As regards free compet.i.tion between rival artificial languages, the same considerations hold good. The worse might prevail just as easily as the better, because the determining factor is not the nature of the language, but the influence and general capacity of the rival backers.

Of course a very bad or hard artificial language would not prevail against an easy one. But beyond a certain point of ease a universal language cannot go (ease meaning the ease of all), and that limit has probably been about reached now. Between future schemes there will be such a mere fractional difference in respect of ease, that compet.i.tion becomes altogether beside the point. The thing is to take an easy one and stick to it.

XI

OBJECTIONS TO AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE ON AESTHETIC GROUNDS

One of the commonest arguments that advocates of a universal language have to face runs something like this:

"Yes, there really does seem to be something in what you say-your language may save time and money and grease the wheels of business; but, after all, we are not all business men, nor are we all out after dollars. Just think what a dull, drab uniformity your scheme would lay over the lands like a pall. By the artificial removal of natural barriers you are aiding and abetting the vulgarization of the world.

You are doing what in you lies to eliminate the racy, the local, the picturesque. The tongues of men are as stately trees, set deep in the black, mouldering soil of the past, and rich with its secular decay. The leaves are the words of the people, old yet ever new, and the flowers are the nation's poems, drawing their life from the thousand tiny roots that twist and twine unseen about the lives and struggles of bygone men. You are calling to us to come forth from the cool seclusion of these trees' shade, to leave their delights and toil in the glare of the world at raising a mushroom growth on a dull, featureless plain that reaches everywhither. Modern Macbeths, sophisticated by your modernity and adding perverted instinct to crime, you are murdering not sleep, but dreams-dreams that haunt about the mouldering lodges of the past, and soften the contact with reality by lending their own colouring atmosphere. You are hammering the last nail into the coffin of the old leisurely past, the past that raised the cathedrals, to which taste and feeling were of supreme moment, and when man put something of himself into his every work."

The man must be indeed dull of soul who cannot join in a dirge for the beauty of the vanishing past. Turn where we may now, we find the same railways, the same trams, music-halls, coats and trousers. The mad rush of modernity with its levelling tendency really is killing off what is quaint, out of the way, and racy of the soil. But why visit the sins of modernity upon an international language? The last sentence of the indictment itself suggests the line of defence. "You are hammering the last nail into the coffin of the old, leisurely past...."

Quite so, you _are_.

The universal ability to use an auxiliary language on occasion rounds off and completes the levelling process. But the old leisurely past will not be any the less dead, or any the less effectually buried, if one nail is not driven home in the coffin. The slayer is modernity at large, made up of science, steam, democracy, universal education, and many other things-but especially universal education. And the verdict can be, at the most, justifiable, or at any rate inevitable, pasticide.

You cannot eat your cake and have it; you cannot kill off all the bad things and keep all the good ones. With sterilization goes purification, pasticide may be accompanied by pasteurization. At any rate, "the old order changeth," and you've got to let it change.

The whole history of the "progress" of the world, meaning often material progress, is eloquent of the lesson that it is vain to set artificial limits to advancing invention. The subst.i.tution of cheap mechanical processes of manufacture for hand-work involved untold misery to many, and incidentally led to the partial disappearance of a type of character which the world could ill afford to lose, and which we would give much to be able to bring back. The old semi-artist-craftsman, with hand and eye really trained up to something like their highest level of capacity, with knowledge not wide, but deep, and all gained from experience, and not from books or technical education-this type of character is a loss.

Many, with the gravest reason, are dissatisfied with the type which has already largely replaced it, and which will replace it for good or evil, but ever more swiftly and surely. But no well-judging person proposes on that account to forgo the material advantages conferred upon mankind by the invention of machinery. If the world rejects, on sentimental grounds, the labour-saving invention of international language, it will be flying in the face of economic history, and it will not appreciably r.e.t.a.r.d the disappearance of the picturesque.

There is another type of argument which may also be cla.s.sed as aesthetic, but which differs somewhat from the one just discussed. It emanates chiefly from literary men and scholars, and may be presented as follows:

"Language is precious, and worthy of study, inasmuch as it enshrines the imperishable monuments of the thought and genius of the race on whose lips it was born. The study of the words and forms in which a nation clothed its thoughts throws many a ray of light on phases of the evolution of the race itself, which would otherwise have remained dark.

The history of a language and literature is in some measure an epitome of the history of a people. We miss all these points of interest in your artificial language, and we shall, therefore, refuse to study it, and hereby commit it to the devil."

This is a particularly humiliating type of answer to receive, because it implies that one is an a.s.s. In truth the man who should invent an artificial language and invite the world to study it for itself would be a fool, and a very swell-headed fool at that. It seems in vain to point this out to persons who use the above argument; or to explain to them that they would be aided in their study of languages that do repay study by the introduction of an easy international language, because many commentaries, etc., would become accessible to them, which are not so now, or only at the expense of deciphering some difficult language in which the commentary is written, the commentary itself being in no sense literature, and its form a matter of complete indifference.

Back comes the old answer in one form or another, every variation tainted with the heresy that the language is to be studied as a language for itself.