Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Antony Alexander, Lango: Language Organization, bahai-library.com.
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Lango:

Language Organization

Antony Alexander
Robert Craig

Isle of Man: n.p., 1996

single page

chapter 1

Prefaces and appendices

Introduction for Bahá'ís

Go to Deja.com Corres.

Main Introduction

Go to LangX - IAL Hierarchy

Go to Lang25 - Inaugural IAL

Go to LangX Vocabulary

Go to LangX Background

Go to Lang53 Orthography

Go to Lang29 Grammar

Go to Contact, Comment, & Criticism

Go to Relevant IAL Links

Lango Contents

Title Pages and Key

Preface and Introduction

Chapter 1

The Origins and Spread of English

Chapter 2

English as an Auxiliary Language

Chapter 3

English as a Primary Language

Chapter 4

English and Other Languages

Chapter 5

The Constructed Languages

Chapter 6

The International Auxiliary Language

Chapter 7

The International Language Committee

Chapter 8

Constructed and Organic Languages

Chapter 9

Language in Education and the Media

Chapter 10

Orthography and Orthoepy

Chapter 11

The Language of Empire

Chapter 12

Pidgins and Creoles

Chapter 13

English Grammar

Chapter 14

LANGO Grammar

Chapter 15

LANGO Vocabulary

Chapter 16

LANGO Phonology

Chapter 17

LANGO Orthography

Chapter 18

A History of English Spelling Revision

Chapter 19

A Suggestion Towards
Orthographic Reform

Chapter 20

International Pronunciation and Accent

Chapter 21

Names and Organisation

GLOSSARY

LANGX - An Introduction for Bahá'ís

The third Glad-Tidings

concerneth the study of divers languages. This decree hath formerly
streamed forth from the Pen of the Most High: It behoveth the
sovereigns of the world - may God assist them - or the ministers of
the earth to take counsel together and to adopt one of the existing
languages or a new one to be taught to children in schools throughout
the world, and likewise one script. Thus the whole earth will come to
be regarded as one country. Well is it with him who hearkeneth unto
His Call and observeth that whereunto he is bidden by God, the Lord
of the Mighty Throne.

Bishárát
Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh p 22

The sixth Ishraq

is union and concord amongst the children of men. From the beginning
of time the light of unity hath shed its divine radiance upon the
world, and the greatest means for the promotion of that unity is for
the peoples of the world to understand one another's writing and
speech. In former Epistles We have enjoined upon the Trustees of the
House of Justice either to choose one language from among those now
existing or to adopt a new one, and in like manner to choose a common
script, both of which should be taught in all the schools of the world.

Ishráqát Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh
p 127

Bahá'u'lláh gives mankind a choice between an existing
and a new language for the international auxiliary language (IAL). In
reality these alternatives are not as different as one might think,
since every prospective existing language has incorporated new words
and constructions at various times during its history, and a new
language would necessarily contain words and linguistic elements that
have proved their worth in existing languages.

The existing language most favoured for the IAL role is English,
though its official adoption is by no means the foregone conclusion
that many English-speakers anticipate (please see the
"Introduction" and/or the opening chapters of
"Lango"). English also has a special status within the
Bahá'í Faith, of course. For instance, we know that the
Guardian translated a large portion of the Bahá'í
Writings, as well as Nabil's Dawn-Breakers, into English, that
the UHJ conducts most of its proceedings in the language, and that
English has been the official language of global Bahá'í
conventions such as the Official Opening of the Terraces in May 2001.

Until quite recently, a number of Bahá'ís in the West
thought the "existing language" might be Arabic, based on
Adib Taherzadeh's comments regarding Bahá'u'lláh's
"Tablet of the International Auxiliary Language and Script":

"In this Tablet Bahá'u'lláh praises the
Arabic language for its expressiveness and eloquence, and remarks
that no other language can match its vast possibilities. He further
states that God would be pleased if all the peoples of the world were
to speak the Arabic language. But he does not require humanity
necessarily to adopt it as the international language; rather He
leaves the choice to the appropriate institutions."

Adib
Taherzadeh The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Vol
4, p 160

However, the following quotation from "Mahmúd's
Diary" - an authentic record of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's utterances
- seems to have removed that possibility:

He was invited later to the Golden Circle Club where He was asked
whether Arabic might become the universal language. He said that it
would not. He was then asked about Esperanto. He replied:

A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter from New York to one of the
promoters of Esperanto telling him that this language could become
universal if a council of delegates chosen from among the nations and
rulers were established which would discuss Esperanto and consider
the means to promote it.

Golden
Circle Club, Boston 24 July 1912 Mahmúd's Diary p 179
- 180

'Abdu'l-Bahá's advocacy of Esperanto is well-known, e.g.:

All through America I have encouraged the Bahá'ís to
study Esperanto and to the extent of my ability I will strive in its
spread and promotion.

quoted
by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, 18 Dec 1912 Star of
the West, Vol 3, No 19

.....From such illustrations you will admit that the greatest thing
in the world is to be able to make yourself understood by your
friends and to understand them, and that there is no greater handicap
in the world than not to be able to communicate your thoughts to
others. But with an auxiliary language all these difficulties disappear.

Now, praise be to God, that language has been created - Esperanto.
This is one of the special gifts of this luminous century, one of the
most remarkable achievements of this great age.

His Holiness BAHA'O'LLAH many years ago wrote a book called "The
Most Holy Book", one of the fundamental principles of which is
the necessity of creating an International Language, and He explains
the great good and advantage that will result from its use.

Now let us thank the Lord because the Esperanto language has been
created. We have commanded all the Bahais in the Orient to study this
language very carefully, and ere long it will be spread all over the
East. I pray you, Esperantists and non-Esperantists, to work with
zeal for the spread of this language, for it will hasten the coming
of that day, that millennial day, foretold by prophets and seers,
that day when, it is said, the wolf and the lamb shall drink from the
same fountain, the lion and the deer shall feed in the same pasture.
The meaning of this holy word is that hostile races, warring nations,
differing religions, shall become united in the spirit of love.

I repeat, the most important thing in the world is the realization of
an auxiliary international language. Oneness of language will
transform mankind into one world, remove religious misunderstandings,
and unite East and West in the spirit of brotherhood and love.
Oneness of language will change this world from many families into
one family. This auxiliary international language will gather the
nations under one standard, as if the five continents of the world
had become one, for then mutual interchange of thought will be
possible for all. It will remove ignorance and superstition, since
each child of whatever race or nation can pursue his studies in
science and art, needing but two languages - his own and the
International. The world of matter will become the expression of the
world of mind. Then discoveries will be revealed, inventions will
multiply, the sciences advance by leaps and bounds, the scientific
culture of the earth will develop along broader lines. Then the
nations will be enabled to utilize the latest and best thought,
because expressed in the International Language.

If the International Language becomes a factor of the future, all the
Eastern peoples will be enabled to acquaint themselves with the
sciences of the West, and in turn the Western nations will become
familiar with the thoughts and ideas of the East, thereby improving
the condition of both. In short, with the establishment of this
International Language the world of mankind will become another world
and extraordinary will be the progress. It is our hope, then, that
the language Esperanto will soon spread throughout the whole world,
in order that all people may be able to live together in the spirit
of friendship and love.

Edinburgh Esperanto Society 7 January 1913 Star of the West,
Vol 4, No 2

.....Praise be to God, that Dr Zamenhof has created the Esperanto
language. It has all the potential qualities of universal adoption.
All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for his noble effort,
for in this matter he has served his fellowmen well. He has
constructed a language which will bestow divine benefits on all
peoples. With untiring efforts and self-sacrifice on the part of its
devotees it gives promise of universal acceptation. Therefore
everyone of us must study this language and make every effort to
spread it so that each day it may receive a wider recognition, be
accepted by all nations and governments of the world and become a
part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that the
business of the future conferences and congresses will be carried on
in Esperanto. In the future two languages will be taught in the
schools, one the native tongue, the other the international auxiliary
language. Consider today how difficult is human communication. One
may study 50 languages and yet travel through a country and still be
at a loss. I, myself, know several of the Oriental languages, but
know no Western tongue. Had this universal language pervaded the
globe, I should have studied it and you would have been directly
informed of my thoughts and I of yours and a special friendship would
have been established between us.

Please send some teachers to Persia, if you can, so that they may
teach Esperanto to the young people. I have written asking some of
them to come here to study it.

I hope that it will be promulgated very rapidly - then the world of
humanity will find eternal peace; all the nations will associate with
one another like mothers and sisters, fathers and brothers, and each
individual member of the body politic will be fully informed of the
thoughts of all.....

Paris
Esperanto Society 12 February 1913 Star of the West, Vol 4,
No 2

From such passages in the Writings, some have gained the impression
that the only requirement is for Esperanto to be promoted. But a
careful examination of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's utterances on this
subject will show that He also required Esperanto to be revised, as
He hinted to the Esperantists of Paris in the above quotation, and
stated more explicitly elsewhere (my emphasis):

Praise be to God, that Dr Zamenhof has created the Esperanto
language. It has all the potential qualities of universal
adoption. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for his
noble effort, for in this matter he has served his fellowmen well. He
has constructed a language which will bestow divine benefits on all
peoples. With untiring efforts and self-sacrifice on the part of its
devotees it gives promise of universal acceptation. Therefore
everyone of us must study this language and make every effort to
spread it so that each day it may receive a wider recognition, be
accepted by all nations and governments of the world and become a
part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that the
business of the future conferences and congresses will be carried on
in Esperanto.

Paris, 12 February 1913 Star of the West, Vol 4,
No 2

We must endeavour with all our powers to establish this international
auxiliary language (Esperanto) throughout the world. It is my hope
that it may be perfected through the bounties of God and that
intelligent men may be selected from the various countries of the
world to organize an international congress whose chief aim will be
the promotion of this universal medium of speech.

Washington,
25 April 1912 Promulgation of Universal Peace,
p 61

Esperanto has been drawn up with this end (universal language) in
view: it is a fine invention and a splendid piece of work, but it
needs perfecting. Esperanto as it stands is very difficult for some people.

An international Congress should be formed, consisting of delegates
from every nation of the world, Eastern as well as Western. This
Congress should form a language that could be acquired by all, and
every country would thereby reap great benefit.

Paris, 13 November 1911 Paris Talks,
p 156

Thou hast written regarding to language of Esperanto. This
language will be spread and universalized to a certain degree, but
later on a language more complete than this, or the same language
will undergo some changes and alterations and will be adopted and
become universal. I hope that Dr, Zamenhof, become assisted by
the invisible connfirmation and do a great service to the world of humanity.

Tablets
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Vol III. p 692

The problem, of course, is that Esperanto has never been
fundamentally revised, or "perfected", as
'Abdu'l-Bahá required. In Chapter 5
of LANGO we offered some reasons for this serious omission. A
declining prestige and influence in the world appears to have been
the consequence. Moreover, it might seem that the force of
Bahá'í encouragement to learn Esperanto has declined in tandem.

Praise be to God, that Dr Zamenhof has created the Esperanto
language. It has all the potential qualities of universal adoption.
All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for his noble effort,
for in this matter he has served his fellowmen well. He has
constructed a language which will bestow divine benefits on all
peoples. With untiring efforts and self-sacrifice on the part of its
devotees it gives promise of universal acceptation. Therefore everyone
of us must study this language and make every effort to spread it so
that each day it may receive a wider recognition, be accepted by all
nations and governments of the world and become a part of the
curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that the business of the
future conferences and congresses will be carried on in Esperanto.

'Abdu'l-Bahá,
Paris, 12 February 1913 Star of the West, Vol 4,
No 2

Regarding the subject of Esperanto; it should be made clear to the
believers that while the teaching of that language has been
repeatedly encouraged by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, there is no reference
either from Him or from Bahá'u'lláh that can make us
believe that it will necessarily develop into the international
auxiliary langauge of the future. Bahá'u'lláh has
specified in His Writings that such a language will either have to be
chosen from one of the existing languages, or an entirely new one
should be created to serve as a medium of exchange between the
nations and peoples of the world. Pending this final choice, the
Bahá'ís are advised to study Esperanto only in
consideration of the fact that the learning of this language can
considerably facilitate intercommunication between individuals,
groups and Assemblies throughout the Bahá'í world in
the present state of the evolution of the Faith.

written on behalf of the Guardian to
the NSA of the US & Canada 4 June 1937

We feel that, within the framework of their efforts for the promotion
of peace, the Bahá'ís of Europe would do well to
increase their collaboration with the Esperanto Movement, and we
encourage Bahá'ís who feel the urge to assist in this
area, to learn Esperanto and take an active part in the activities of
the Movement. As you know, although both 'Abdu'l-Bahá and
Shoghi Effendi have made it clear that it is by no means certain that
Esperanto will be chosen as the international auxiliary language of
the world, 'Abdu'l-Bahá encouraged the friends in the east and
the west to learn it as a practical step in the promotion of the
concept of the adoption of an international auxiliary language to
break down the barriers to understanding between peoples.

Universal
House of Justice 17 September 1986 letter to NSAs
in Europe

In the absence of a fundamental revision of Esperanto, LangX
attempts to illustrate the qualities a constructed IAL might be
expected to possess. Left deliberately unfinished, it exists solely
for the purpose of criticism and discussion. There are many other
IALs out there which are better in various ways, but a competition
between IALs is really not the point. Now is surely the time for
synthesis. As 'Abdu'l-Bahá may well have said in London (see
below): "no one person can construct a Universal Language";
on the contrary, He asserted that the IAL must be "formed"
or "selected" by an international committee:

We must endeavour with all our powers to establish this international
auxiliary language (Esperanto) throughout the world. It is my hope
that it may be perfected through the bounties of God and that
intelligent men may be selected from the various countries of the
world to organize an international congress whose chief aim will be
the promotion of this universal medium of speech.

Washington,
25 April 1912 Promulgation of Universal Peace,
p 61

Esperanto has been drawn up with this end (universal language) in
view: it is a fine invention and a splendid piece of work, but it
needs perfecting. Esperanto as it stands is very difficult for some people.

An international Congress should be formed, consisting of
delegates from every nation of the world, Eastern as well as Western.
This Congress should form a language that could be acquired by all,
and every country would thereby reap great benefit.

Paris, 13
November 1911 Paris Talks, p 156

Ninth, a universal language shall be adopted and be taught by all the
schools and institutions in the world. A committee appointed by
national bodies of learning shall select a suitable language to be
used as a medium of international communication. All must acquire
it. This is one of the great factors in the unification of man.

The
Promulgation of Universal Peace, p 182

In order to facilitate complete understanding between all people, a
universal auxiliary language will be adopted and in the schools of
the future two languages will be taught - the mother tongue and this
international auxiliary tongue which will be either one of the
existing languages, or a new language made up of words from all the
languages - the matter to be determined by a confederation met for
the purpose which shall represent all tribes and nations. This
international tongue will be used in the parliament of man - a
supreme tribunal of the world which will be permanently established
in order to arbitrate international questions.

'Abdu'l-Bahá
on Divine Philosophy, p 84

Whether the said congress, committee or confederation will choose
"one of the existing languages, or a new language made up of
words from all the languages" is open to question. Many people
still believe that English will be the chosen language, and not
without reason: it is certainly the foremost auxiliary language in
the world today, whether in terms of geographical spread or global
influence. For instance, English has an official status in air and
maritime telecommunications, a shared primacy with French as one of
the two "working languages" at the United Nations, and the
biggest role of any language at international scientific conferences
and business conventions. Robert Craig and I examined the current
position of English in the first four chapters of LANGO.

However, since the institution choosing the IAL is likely to be
secular humanist, with corresponding tendencies towards
"political correctness", and away from possible imputations
of "élitism", "neo-colonialism" etc.,
there is every chance that it will choose neither English nor any
other major existing language, but rather "a new language made
up of words from all the languages". A well-known paragraph in 'Abdu'l-Bahá
in London addresses the linguistic constitution of the latter alternative:

A friend enquired concerning Bahá'u'lláh's prophecy in
the Words of Paradise that a universal language would be
formed, and desired to know if Esperanto would be the language chosen.

"The love and effort put into Esperanto will not be lost",
he answered, "but no one person can construct a Universal
Language. It must be made by a Council representing all countries,
and must contain words from different languages. It will be governed
by the simplest rules, and there will be no exceptions; neither will
there be gender, nor extra and silent letters. Everything indicated
will have but one name. In Arabic there are hundreds of names for the
camel! In the schools of each nation the mother tongue will be
taught, as well as the revised Universal Language."

'Abdu'l-Bahá
in London, p 94

'Abdu'l-Bahá in London has been referred to as
"Pilgrim's Notes"; and since the Universal House of Justice
has approved the Bahá'í Publishing Trust's statement
that the translation of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words cannot be
verified, because the original is no longer available, this is fair
comment. However, in view of this quotation's potential importance,
it might also be borne in mind that the expression "Pilgrim's
Notes" covers a spectrum of material from the dubious to the
very probably authentic, and that 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London
was published in 1912, well within 'Abdu'l-Bahá's lifetime,
and was presumably the object of close attention, given that not much
Bahá'í literature was then translated into English.
Moreover, Lady Blomfield, the compiler of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London
and Paris Talks, was an intimate friend of 'Abdu'l-Bahá
and His family, as testified by her book "The Chosen
Highway". Did anyone object at the time that the text of 'Abdu'l-Bahá
in London was inauthentic in any way?

Also, there is the following extract from a letter by Mirza Ahmad
Sohrab, dated 17 December 1912:

This morning 'Abdu'l-Bahá spoke about America and the
probability of his return to that country. He said: "God
willing! If I go to America another time I will go differently; but
it is very difficult. This first trip was made with great
exertion." As I was reading one of his addresses delivered in
America, he said it would be well if all his addresses in that
country could be printed in one or two volumes. At present, he
declared, they are all scattered and not collected. He called
attention to how quickly the Paris and London addresses delivered
last year were printed; and this was done through one woman, Lady
Blomfield. Some one mentioned the name of a prominent wealthy woman
and he said: "One of these poor, sincere and honest women is
more beloved by me than a thousand millionaires; just now this Lady
Blomfield is dearer to me than all the queens of the world."

Star
of the West, Vol 3, No 19

One problem with an unrevised Esperanto is that it is explicitly an
auxiliary language: Esperanto was designed to be an adjunct to the
various mother tongues, and remains so in concept. But
Bahá'u'lláh makes it clear that the ultimate goal is
for everyone to speak one rather than two languages:

We have formerly ordained that people should converse in two
languages, yet efforts must be made to reduce them to one, likewise
the scripts of the world, that men's lives may not be dissipated and
wasted in learning divers languages. Thus the whole earth would come
to be regarded as one city and one land.

Kalimat-i-Firdawsiyyih (Words of Paradise) Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh,
p 68

Second: Languages must be reduced to one common language to be taught
in all the schools of the world.

Lawh-i-Dunya
(Tablet of the World) Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, p 89

Likewise He saith: Among the things which are conducive to unity and
concord and will cause the whole earth to be regarded as one country
is that the divers languages be reduced to one language and in like
manner the scripts used in the world be confined to a single script.
It is incumbent upon all nations to appoint some men of understanding
and erudition to convene a gathering and through joint consultation
choose one language from among the varied existing languages, or
create a new one, to be taught in all the schools of the world.

Lawh-i-Maqsud (Tablet of Maqsud) Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh,
p 165

The transition from two languages (i.e. the multitude of
mother-tongues, each paired with the IAL), to a single global tongue
for every person on Earth in the distant future, is the central theme
of the World Language Program, LangX, The IAL Hierarchy etc..
Hopefully the errors and inadequacies of our approach will spark
others to greater endeavours and insights.

But regarding the universal language: Ere long significant and
scientific discussions concerning this matter will arise among the
people of discernment and insight and it will produce the desired result.

Tablets
of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Vol III, p 692

The day is approaching when all the peoples of the world will have
adopted one universal language and one common script. When this is
achieved, to whatsoever city a man may journey, it shall be as if he
is entering his own home. These things are obligatory and essential.
It is incumbent upon every man of insight and understanding to strive
to translate that which hath been written into reality and action....

from
the Lawh-i-Maqsud, Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 165

INTRODUCTION

(a) About the
World Language Program (b) A
Summary

(a) About the
World Language Program

1: What is the World Language Program?

The World
Language Program promotes the selection or formation of an
international auxiliary language and script (IAL) according to
scientific criteria by a globally representative congress or
committee. We envisage the IAL as the first step towards a single
world language and script in the distant future. The World Language
Program is also pursuing a number of related projects including
online translation and electronic databases. Construction of the
World Language Program Universal
Language Institute at Horning's Mills, Ontario, Canada is
scheduled to begin in 2005.

2: Assuming a globally representative congress or
committee could agree on an IAL, wouldn't it be an unwieldy
compromise? Wouldn't a functionable language require the coherent
vision that only an inspired individual could provide?

No single
person can possibly know enough to construct the IAL. The history of
the movement has demonstrated this, though Schleyer, Zamenhof and
others deserve every plaudit for their valiant attempts. Informal
collaborations have fared no better: they have always split on
controversial issues.

A congress or
committee solves these problems by vesting authority in its unanimous
or majority opinion. Of course there is a danger in this too, so a
properly constituted arrangement is necessary - one which
incorporates systematic consultation with all interested parties into
the decision-making process. There is no reason, in fact, why the
official committee and their consultees should not collaborate for
the benefit all concerned.

3: Wouldn't each member of the international committee
seek only that the IAL conformed as far as possible to their own
language, in whose favour they were likely to be prejudiced, albeit unconsciously?

The common
language question has returned to the fore as rising international
tensions have raised the tempo and importance of communications. The
deepening global recession has also served to move the IAL question
up the political agenda. In the context of straitened economic
circumstances the increasing cost of translation (and mistranslation)
in the world's expanding unions of nation states has come into focus,
as has the cost of foreign language teaching in state education
systems. International agencies are becoming ever more receptive to
the idea that an IAL would begin to eliminate these costs. At some
stage in the not-so-distant future an international committee is
likely to be appointed and told to get on with it - and its members
may have no choice but to give at least as much weight to facility of
global communication as to sectional familiarity, i.e.
"user-friendliness" for various peoples .

The advance of
scientific linguistics is another factor that will help to maintain a
proper balance with political interests. A great deal of high-quality
research now exists concerning subjects which might be expected to
inform and influence the course of IAL discussion and
decision-making: comparative grammar and phonology, childhood speech
and literacy acquisition etc..

4: Isn't English already the international auxiliary
language for all practical purposes?

Not really,
though some of its proponents in the media might convey that
impression. English does have semi-official status in a few
specialised fields, including air and maritime telecommunications,
but even there its use is far from universal. Having said that, it's
undoubtedly true that English is the leading auxiliary language in
the world today, and will continue as such for a long time to come -
whatever is decided concerning the IAL. As for English itself being
officially selected, we think it most unlikely - for historical
political reasons, and because of an irregular spelling system which
has proved highly resistant to reform.

Moreover, as
has often been pointed out, the pre-eminence of the English language
relates more to the current status of English-speaking civilisation
than to its inherent qualities. If the dominance of the
English-speaking countries - which has arguably lasted from 1815 to
the present - were to be superseded, the English language might
consequently be expected to go the way of Ancient Greek, Latin,
Arabic and French. The demise of the British Empire, the relative
economic decline of America, the reversion of several ex-colonies to
native languages, the establishment of rival languages in former
English-speaking heartlands, and the continued political and cultural
opposition to the English language from various quarters in several
countries - all these are indications that the dethronement of
English might already be proceeding.

The following
statements are pertinent in this regard, though over a decade old:

........"In
1989 a study conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the
Netherlands and Spain concluded: "The real correct understanding
of English in all the countries studied is notably inferior to the
most pessimistic existing evaluations and our own guesstimates"
Van de Sandt, Report in "Initiative Media News Bulletin"
(London: Lintas Worldwide, January 1989)

........In
1990 Sir (now Lord) Randolph Quirk, Professor of English at
University College in London, put it thus: "Despite the
persistent and glib assumptions in Britain and America, we are
witnessing a significant relative decline (perhaps even an absolute
decline) in the currency of English worldwide. This may come as a
surprise to those who think of English as the medium of high-tech
skills, international conferences, and professional journals: here
indeed continued growth is doubtless the order of the day. But these
are relatively slim and specialized lines of communication."

........In
1991 Richard Bailey, Professor of English Language and Literature at
the the University of Michigan and Associate Editor of the
"Oxford Companion to the English Language" was even more
specific: "The proportion of the world's population who
regularly use English is 15% - and falling".

5: Esperanto is a perfectly adequate IAL which only
needs support. Esperanto's official adoption and consequent
implementation through educational systems worldwide would be
hastened if sites such as this promoted it.

We believe
that the international congress or committee which chooses or forms
the IAL will in effect be revising Esperanto. The love and effort put
into Esperanto will be realised in the coming IAL, which will be
constructed very much upon its basis and inspired by its continuing
influence. However, Esperanto as presently constituted looks most
unlikely to gain the popular support necessary to become de facto
IAL, or even to be officially appointed for the role. The absence of
a thorough reform to make Esperanto more globally acceptable must be
partly responsible: for instance, Esperanto's grammar is especially
difficult for various peoples. There are a number of criticisms of
Esperanto on the Internet; this
one is probably the most comprehensive.

6: "East is East and West is West and never the
twain shall meet!" Kipling's sentiment remains as true today:
cultures are essentially self-contained and will remain so; no more
than the most basic IAL will ever be required.

There are two
schools of thought here. On the one hand, there are those who believe
that, after the IAL is officially instituted, everyone will always
and for all time speak at least two languages - the various
mother-tongues for domestic consumption and the IAL for international
communication. These hold that the primary focus of culture is
national or ethnic, but that international agencies are necessary in
order to support the requisite level of material civilisation -
through trade, tourism, transport, communications, science,
peace-keeping and the like. In other words, the international
agencies deal in mundanities, whereas the more spiritual side of life
- whether found through historic religions, secular philosophies,
national treasuries of literature etc. - is not "global" or
"international" in any real sense, since it is always
linked to a particular culture or tradition.

On the other
hand are those who discount the possibility of self-sufficient or
autonomous entities communicating indefinitely on a second-hand
basis, believing that all languages will eventually merge into a
single language by way of an official IAL, and claiming that this
process is merely a conscious continuation of what is already
occurring. Decades or centuries after the official IAL inauguration,
everyone might still learn at least two languages at school, but they
would expect the IAL to develop relative to the mother tongues.

They would
point to the precedent of pidgins and creoles, inasmuch as pidgins
were IALs on a smaller scale, formulated for essentially the same
reason - the pertinent fact about pidgins being their tendency to
become creolised: a process shown to derive from children learning
and using the pidgin as a mother tongue. Thus, although pidgins were
originally employed as purely auxiliary trading languages - second
languages that nobody used as a mother tongue - children of certain
traders, seafarers etc. evidently learned the pidgins as mother
tongues, and elaborated them with borrowed or intuitive grammatical
constructions and new words from various sources - exactly as tends
to happen with mother tongues or primary languages in their
developmental phase.

Correspondingly,
since the IAL will begin its life essentially as a global pidgin,
there is every chance that it will be elaborated by future
generations in a similar way and for the same reasons. The modern
world contains an ever-increasing number of itinerant key workers and
administrative personnel employed by transnational corporations and
international agencies. Such people will find the IAL particularly
useful, whether or not they possess other second languages such as
English, and consequently the children of some of them are likely to
pick up the IAL as a mother tongue. The intuitive elaboration of the
IAL might then be expected to follow, in concert with more formal and
conscious innovative attempts by authors, advertisers, film-makers
etc. who might well wish to write in the IAL directly in order to
access the global market, the whole being co-ordinated and kept
within acceptable bounds by the IAL committee.

Assuming this
process of development came to pass, the relationship between the IAL
and every national tongue would be comparable to that which formerly
existed between the minority ethnic tongues and the great national
languages which entirely surrounded them. Thus, even as islands of
minority ethnic tongues have been surrounded by a sea of English,
every language would eventually find itself within the matrix of the
IAL. And correspondingly, even as English formerly diluted and
absorbed minority ethnic tongues in its midst, English would itself
be absorbed, along with all other languages, into one universal
tongue of enormous capacity and subtlety.

The history of
the dogged survival of certain minority ethnic tongues clearly shows
that such a process would never be achieved by force, rather would it
happen for cultural and economic reasons. Thus, if speakers and
writers were to deliberately use the international auxiliary language
to reach the widest possible audience or readership, and listeners
were to learn it - and tune into it - to keep up with the latest news
and newest thought from anywhere in the world, there is little doubt
that this common language would develop its own character as a truly
global tongue, even as primary creative impetus went into it. If this
did indeed happen - whether through neologism, transliteration, or
other aspects of linguistic development - the national languages of
the world could be expected to successively abandon their separate
identities, over a period of centuries, in order to become part of
it: in the same way that some minority ethnic tongues have hitherto
become submerged in national languages.

Thus there is
no reason to suppose that an international auxiliary consciously
developed for creative usage would not gradually obtain the
linguistic and euphonic capacity to incorporate all useful features,
whether structural or decorative, from both "national" and
constructed languages. Indeed, it might well display these assets
more precisely and harmoniously than their own more or less irregular
grammars, partial phonologies and ramshackle orthographies. In such a
scenario the mother-tongues would continue to be preserved in written
and recorded form, but ultimately for sentimental value rather than
linguistic information.

7: Shouldn't the international committee choose an
entirely neutral language, equally easy or difficult for all nationalities?

An entirely
neutral language would be very difficult if not impossible to realise
in practice. For instance, unless the script were bi-directional, or
vertical perhaps, it would favour either the left-to-right majority
or the right-to-left minority. Similarly, there would have to be a
choice between logographic and alphabetic script - the former
benefiting East Asian countries such as China and Japan, and the
latter the rest of the world. Much the same might be said about
phonology and grammar. Moreover, even if a "horizontal"
neutrality were achievable between the very diverse languages and
scripts of the world, there might still be the problem of finding a
"vertical" neutrality, or median position, between
linguists and non-linguists. Briefly, there is no advantage in
reinventing the wheel, so far as the IAL is concerned. Even a brand
new solution of apparently impeccable political correctness would
inevitably contain hidden inequities - quite apart from its
difficulty for everyone due to unfamiliarity. An equally fair, but
much more practical and realistic system would borrow linguistic
features from as wide a variety of languages as possible, perhaps to
some extent on a population pro rata basis. There would then be a
certain amount of give and take. For instance, those who had to
master a quite alien script for the IAL might see a relatively large
proportion of their grammar and/or vocabulary incorporated into it,
and so on.

8: Would it be possible to guess what kind of IAL the
international committee might select?

They might
well operate within certain established norms endorsed by many
IALers, as by others with an interest in the subject. These include:

(a) alphabetic
script - logographic scripts take many times longer to learn

(b)
orthographic script - one-to-one correspondence between letters and
sounds with no duplicated or silent letters

(c) regular
grammar, with the simplest possible rules, and no exceptions

(d) no
linguistic genders

(e) an
international vocabulary - with the eventual goal of words from as
many languages as possible

(f) no
synonyms - only one word or name for each thing

9: Does the World Language Program have any additional preferences?

Only one at
this early stage: an IAL Hierarchy - which from the practical
viewpoint is the gradual introduction of a single IAL in stages. An
IAL Hierarchy addresses the problem of universal acceptability. A
median IAL, pitched somewhere between the usages of the various
national languages, and between linguists and non-linguists, might
purport to do this but actually discriminates against those at the
extremities. Although suiting those towards the middle, it might well
be regarded with suspicion as too easy by one part of the population,
and with trepidation as too difficult by another part.

Orwell's
"Newspeak", probably based on his perception of Esperanto
and Basic English, is an old chestnut that might be brought out by
way of illustration. Orwell's inference that an imposed IAL might be
used to limit the thought and expression of speakers of more complex
languages evidently struck a chord with his readers - unless it is
purely coincidental, and related only to the ascendancy of the
English language, that both Esperanto and Basic English have declined
so much since his book was published.

On the other
hand, a median IAL such as Esperanto is beyond the capacity of many non-linguists,
particularly those whose own languages have a very different or more
restricted grammatical structure or sound system. Certainly, speakers
of creoles and some Asian tongues have found Esperanto very
difficult. Many English speakers have also found Esperanto
challenging, since it uses grammatical constructions that English
manages without, apart from vestigially.

The two
alternatives to a median IAL have, of course, been an advanced IAL
and a basic IAL: Schleyer's "Volapuk" and Hogben's
"Interglossa" (forerunner to "Glosa") are
respective examples. However, for the reasons mentioned, neither of
these IALs would now be acceptable. The inadequacies of Volapuk
became evident when people tried to use it in everyday conversation;
it obviously lacked a basic version. Conversely Interglossa, with its
three tenses and absence of inflections, was in many ways an ideal
IAL - though its lack of expandability was a fatal drawback. No
current IAL is expandable or contractable: that is the problem with
all of them.

Any language
taught to children begins with "infant-speak". Those
transmitting the language to the very young instinctively employ the
simplest grammar, the easiest speech sounds and the shortest words,
often internally repetitive. However, the "infant-speak" is
really the same language as that used by adults, as are the other
gradations and variations.

The essential
problem with IALs at the present time is that none of them have a "infant-speak"
version and an advanced version and all the versions in between. For
practical reasons, it's necessary to start with an
"infant-speak" as the official IAL, whilst the other IALs
in the hierarchy are developed in the background. At the requisite
time, when all (or nearly all) peoples have attained the next level
as a result of cultural and linguistic development, the second IAL on
the hierarchy (which many if not most people in the world would
already be using unofficially) would be designated as the official
IAL, and so on. Thus the IAL hierarchy is really a single IAL,
introduced in stages.

The table
below, reproduced for illustrative rather than prophetic purposes,
shows the kind of scheme the World Language Program has in mind. For
mnemonic purposes, the number of consonants and vowels accords with
the year of introduction. Thus Lang25, with 25 phonemes in its sound
system - 20 consonants and 05 vowels - would be introduced in the
year 2005 AD.

Lang25 would
have an alphabetic script (possibly English-type, without
diacritics), a very basic grammar (possibly Chinese-type, word-order
based, wholly analytic), and the core vocabulary without consonant
clusters etc. would be limited to the twenty most universal
consonants identified by the UPSID survey and the five vowels (a, e,
i, o, u) which most languages employ, and to which Spanish, Japanese
and other tongues are restricted.

Perhaps the
year 2005, at least, will be prophetic since the beginning of the
construction of the World Language Program Universal Language
Institute at Horning's Mills, Ontario, Canada is scheduled for that
year (more
photos here).

Provisional
IAL Name

Number of
Consonants in the Vocabulary

Number of
Vowels in the Vocabulary

Inaugural Year
as Official IAL

First Language
or Mother Tongue

Second or
Auxiliary Language

Lang53

27

26

2726 AD

100%

0%

Lang49

26

23

2623 AD

98%

2%

Lang45

25

20

2520 AD

90%

10%

Lang41

24

17

2417 AD

70%

30%

Lang37

23

14

2314 AD

30%

70%

Lang33

22

11

2211 AD

10%

90%

Lang29

21

8

2108 AD

2%

98%

Lang25

20

5

2005 AD

0%

100%

Will the coming
IAL and script be like this - you decide!

Created
by a globally representative congress or committee

Promoted
in a co-ordinated manner by schools and education systems worldwide

SCRIPT

Alphabetic script
is much easier for children than logographic, pictographic etc.

Roman alphabetic
script is dominant worldwide; English script without diacritics is
its fullest and simplest expression.

DIRECTION

Left-to-right
script is dominant worldwide - perhaps because it is more ergonomic
for right-handed scribes.

Bi-directional
script is possibly more politically correct - and also more
ergonomic / economic for printing machinery!

ORTHOGRAPHY

Regular phonemic
orthography: one-to-one sound to symbol correspondence

It has been
demonstrated that a regular phonemic orthography tends to eliminate dyslexia

GRAMMAR

Regularised
grammar with the simplest possible rules and no exceptions

Globally
dominant subject-verb-object syntax and no linguistic genders

VOCABULARY

An international
vocabulary - words from all languages

No exact synonyms
- only one word or name for each thing

HIERARCHY

Continuum
between Chinese-style analytic grammar with strict word order and
complex synthetic grammar

Continuum
between core vocabulary of words with near-universal phonology and
unrestricted vocabulary / phonology including diacritics

ADVANCED

Consonantal script
not unlike the system in Hebrew, Arabic & Farsi

Global standard
pronunciation - for exact orthographic calibration

LangX - A Hierarchy of IALs

Provisional IAL Name

Number of Consonants and Vowels

Inaugural Year as Official IAL

First Language or Mother Tongue

Second or Auxiliary Language

Lang53

27
C 26 V

2726 AD

100%

0%

Lang49

26
C 23 V

2623 AD

98%

2%

Lang45

25
C 20 V

2520 AD

90%

10%

Lang41

24
C 17 V

2417 AD

70%

30%

Lang37

23
C 14 V

2314 AD

30%

70%

Lang33

22
C 11 V

2211 AD

10%

90%

Lang29

21
C 8 V

2108 AD

2%

98%

Lang25

20
C 5 V

2005 AD

0%

100%

LangX is a hierarchy of IALs, each one of which contains the phonetic
and grammatical attributes of those below it. Alternatively, it might
be regarded as stages in the projected development of a single IAL.
The above table is intended to be illustrative rather than prophetic
- but who knows!

The Initial IAL Must Be Very Simple

A major challenge to the concept of a single IAL is that the peoples
of the world speak different grades and types of language. For
instance, some pidgins and creoles have a very basic grammar and a
sparse spectrum of speech sounds, whereas other languages used by
peoples at similar levels of material civilisation employ advanced
grammars and phonologies. In like contrast, Chinese and some other
Asian languages use elementary analytic grammar, whereas Western
tongues tend to be highly inflected and synthetic.

The essential point to bear in mind, when considering a response to
this challenge, is that the IAL will be the only language required
to be taught in schools world-wide in addition to the mother-tongue.
Hence it will be learned by millions of children who not only speak a
relatively elementary mother-tongue but are themselves of that
significant proportion of students everywhere who are non-linguists.
For this reason alone the IAL must begin at a very elementary level.

Professor Hogben's Interglossa (1943), with its three tenses and
absence of inflections, was a very suitable candidate. He and his
successors may not have selected quite the optimum phonology /
vocabulary but the original grammar was easy enough to be mastered by
all non-linguists. A recent update of Interglossa's successor, Glosa,
is likewise excellent - but possibly goes a bit beyond the minimal
grammar necessary for the initial IAL.

An IAL Hierarchy

To begin with, the IAL will be a pure auxiliary, used solely for
communication between rather than within cultures. But will this
situation last? Will the peoples of the world be content to speak and
write to one another on a second-hand basis ad infinitum? The
barriers of race, nationality, politics and religion are gradually
being subsumed into the greater whole - why should linguistic apartheid
necessarily remain?

The initial IAL might fairly accurately be described as a global
pidgin. But the signal fact about pidgins is that they eventually
either fall into disuse or become creolised as the rising generation
spontaneously develops vocabulary and grammar whilst learning these
trading lingoes as mother-tongues. Why should the IAL be any
different? Sure, everyone will learn the IAL as an auxiliary to begin
with, but it is hardly conceivable that some of the next generation
will not learn it as their mother-tongue.

Those peoples, families and individuals who move around the world,
who no longer have roots more or less exclusively in one national
culture, are likely to include those who expand and develop the IAL
in this way. Additionally, primary creative impetus will enter the
IAL as orators, writers, film-makers, advertisers etc. use it
directly in order to address a global market. This theme is
elaborated upon in the first chapters of LANGO, in "Some General
Observations", and elsewhere via the links below.

The IAL must be expansible to allow for this development, whilst
retaining unity of focus. Hence, whilst Lang25 were the Official IAL
(in this proposed scheme), Lang29, Lang33 etc., each with a greater
phonology and vocabulary and more sophisticated grammar than the
last, would be perfected in practice. Then, in due time, Lang29 -
which would have incorporated all of Lang25 in an expanded and more
economical format - would be adopted as the new Official IAL (though
Lang25 would continue to be comprehensible), and so on.

So far as grammar is concerned, the likely progress up the hierarchy
would be from the entirely analytic (no inflections) with
Subject-Verb-Object syntax to the highly synthetic (infix,
agglutination etc.) with variable syntax. Since advanced
polysynthetic grammar is essentially no more than the agglutination
of elementary "spread out" grammar there is no reason why
the grammatical hierarchy shouldn't be as much a seamless gradation
or continuum as the phonetic.

Eventually the best features of all languages, whether
"natural" or "constructed", would be incorporated
into the hierarchy, according to their linguistic level. Using the
English alphabet, a phonemic constraint would appear with Lang53,
though the process might be continued with diacritics (unless a
completely new script were adopted at some point).

It might well be asked why only one level of the hierarchy should be
the Official IAL at any time. Why shouldn't the IAL be split into
graded but congruent levels for different peoples and purposes, all
of them being equally valid, and hence "Official"?

The danger, I think, is that in the present world - where educational
opportunities are so far from universal - the result would be a
"vertical" split into "class languages" just as
invidious as the "horizontal" division into national and
ethnic tongues that presently obtains. For the sake of linguistic
unity, therefore, the "Official IAL" should better remain
with the generality of non-linguists - only moving up a gear when the
grammatical / phonetic / lexical transition had already become a fait
accompli in mass usage.

Lang25
- The Inaugural IAL

Some
suggestions for the internationally-representative committee who will
form the IAL:

[1] English
script, probably without diacritics - the most widespread script,
long-tested for handwriting and configured into most typewriting
hardware. Bi-directional script as a possible introduction via child education.

[2] The
variety of phonemes is such that not one is present in all the
world's existing languages. A suggested compromise phonology for
Lang25 would consist of the 20 consonants identified by the UPSID
survey and the 5 vowels found in Spanish, Japanese and other tongues.
It so happens that the most universal words for things within the
common experience of the whole of humanity tend to fall within this
phonetic range. Further discussion at LangX Vocabulary.

UPSID
was a phonological inventory of 317 languages published in 1984 by
researchers at the University of California. Examination of the
selected tongues, each one representative of a different recognised
language family grouping, showed the following 20 to be the commonest
consonant phonemes:

The IPA fonts for viewing these character sets are downloadable from this site. However, the IPA characters might not display properly in Internet Explorer, even if you have installed the correct font set. We recommend using Netscape, Firefox, Opera, or Safari (for Mac) to view this page.

p, b

t, d

ʧ

k, g

ʔ

f

s
ʃ

m

n
ɲ

ŋ

w

l, r
j

h

Most
languages have 14 - 16 of these consonants. Also the five vowels [a
e i o u] are nearly universal.

All
the consonants are found in the table below, reproduced from Lang53
Orthography. Lang25 might avoid a consonantal script by using five of the
seven "spare" consonants as vowels.

CONSONANTS

a

ð

the, this

b
b

ban, bib

c

ʦ

once, cancel

d
d

den, rod

e

ʧ

church, cello

f
f

far, fun

g

ǰ

gel, giant

h

h

hat, hen

i
ŋ

anger, wing

j
ʒ

beige, azure

k
k

cat, like

l
l

cool, leaf

m
m

met, hum

n
n

ten, nun

o

θ

thin, theatre

p
p

pit, up

q
g

tag, go

r

ɾ

ran, rib

s
s

sad, so

t
t

tab, it

u

ɲ

union, canyon

v
v

valve, hive

w
w

win, wool

x

ʃ

she, fish

y
j

yet, young

z
z

zip, daze

'

ʔ

a lo'a bu'a

[3] As for the
grammar, we should look to the IAL's priorities. To begin with, the
IAL will mainly be used for essential international communication. It
will be a true auxiliary language - mostly limited to and focused
upon practical necessities. As such, its grammar might well be
initially based on the pidgin or Interglossa (original Glosa) model -
strict word-order, three tenses and no inflections. The opening phase
of the IAL might also be regarded as a global pidgin in terms of its
chiefly mundane concerns, and like these utilitarian tongues, which
are designed for real-time situations where context provides physical
subjects and objects and most of the action, it will require hardly
any grammar.

[4] An
international committee or convention to formulate the initial IAL in
2005 AD - impossible?

LangX
Vocabulary

SIL Encore IPA
fonts - including SIL
Doulos IPA 93
- are downloadable from this
site.)

To
raise the question of a vocabulary for LangX is first to ask what an
IAL is for. The answer, of course, is to communicate internationally.
As a consequence, an IAL must differ fundamentally from those
languages or dialects which may appear to exist only to reinforce
circumscribed cultures, and identify or exclude outsiders through the
operation of shibboleths, irregular orthography and grammatical
minefields. The rule of law in the realms of grammar, orthography and
vocabulary is therefore as essential to an IAL as the principle of
economy, but should not require a lowest common denominator approach
that also restricts the scope of dialogue. The ideal solution is
itself a dilemma: a linguistic continuum or hierarchy, embracing
words of varying semantic and phonological difficulty, and allowing
users to select their level of discourse. Hence, they might choose
one-clause utterances containing only words with the easiest and
commonest international speech sounds, or at the other extreme,
complex sentences interweaving words transliterated from any tongue,
living or dead, organic or constructed, commensurate only with the
linguistic capacity of LangX's grammar and orthography, and of the
participants in the discussion.

Since
the memorising of words is the most difficult and time-consuming
aspect of learning a language, vocabulary-design is the weightiest
part of creating one, though possibly the least onerous. Moreover, it
is a task well beyond the individual author, so at this stage it
would be invidious to place any restriction upon vocabulary - with
the exception of words with phonetic qualities that cannot be denoted
by a limited 53-phoneme spelling system.

Neologism,
which requires a sense of euphony as well as an understanding of
etymology, is a difficult art best practiced by the artless. Even its
geniuses - Bullokar, Shakespeare etc. - coined many failures. In the
modern age neologism has become universal in more ways than one,
through the globalisation of religion, science, literacy, culture and
brand names. Quite often, new words and names are accepted into many
tongues, varying only in accordance with the scripts and
orthographies in which they appear. In such cases it should be
possible to identify the word in its original or optimal form, for
use in the IAL.

The
notion that the IAL's lexicon of common words should contain the
most generally acceptable phonemes, rather than consonant clusters
and other speech sounds that some of the world's peoples find
particularly difficult, found confirmation in UPSID: the phonological
inventory of 317 languages published in 1984 by researchers at the
University of California. Examination of the selected tongues, each
one representative of a different recognised language family
grouping, showed the following 20 to be the commonest consonant phonemes:

p,
b

t,
d
ʧ

k,
g

ʔ

f

s
ʃ

m

n
ɲ

ŋ

w

l,
r
j

h

Most
languages have 14 - 16 of these phonemes (the West African language
Bambara is closest to the exact complement - it lacks [?]
but has [z]
and [dZ]).
So this table is a useful guide to the consonant phonemes the
commonest words of LangX might contain.
Similarly, some vowels are more universal than others, and these are
the ones that should tend to feature in common words.

Synonyms
and near-synonyms present difficulties in most languages - how much
more in an IAL which, initially admitting all words from all sources,
would be inundated by hundreds or thousands of synonyms and
near-synonyms - not to mention umpteen million words! Happily the
problem is much less daunting than it might appear at first sight,
due to a number of mitigating factors, including the following:

(1)
When most words from most languages can be rendered into the same
orthography, most of the world's words will become available to the
discriminating speaker or writer, who will then be able to choose the
best synonym for a particular purpose - for no reason except its
sound. In this way the ideal word might emerge - as it has in the
past. (Ultimately, for the sake of simplicity there should be no
synonyms within the IAL.)

(2)
A suitable word already existing in a living language should always
be chosen in preference to a neologism. The latter might be more
logical, etymologically speaking, but only the test of time proves euphony.

(3)
The extant original form of a word should be used rather than
transliterated versions in other languages.

(4)
Justice demands that the IAL's vocabulary be selected from all
languages. In fact this is not a limitation, since things and ideas
tend to originate in different countries - and often the best of them
in small nations, within minority tongues. The other side of this
coin is the requirement to maximise phonetic range and depth, so as
to minimise the number of homographs in an orthographic script.

(5)
It might happen that a word chosen for the IAL eventually failed:
perhaps because most people disliked its sound, or its historical
associations. However, synonyms would continue to exist in the
remaining mother-tongues for centuries, so replacing a word in the
IAL should not be too difficult.

(6)
The globalisation of commodities and ideas is not taking place
wordlessly. Thus the same processes that have raised one synonym
above others within national tongues have begun to work
internationally. In this way the best words for the IAL might appear.

(7)
Where synonyms of equivalent pedigree exist, it is probably better
to choose the older word, or, where that cannot be established with
certainty, the shorter. In many cases the shorter word, or - more
exactly - the word requiring less effort to articulate, will be the
older word (Zipf's Law).

(8)
Whereas the IAL is unlikely to borrow Chinese characters for its
script, it might adopt the Chinese system of word-formation - as
imitated by progressive constructed languages.

(9)
Where it is impossible to choose between alternative words, and a
compromise word has failed, it may be necessary to return to first
principles. Did Cratylus
identify one of these in Plato's eponymous dialogue? He pointed out
that rho
is a sign of motion, found in words such as "tremor, tremble,
strike, crush, bruise, tremble and whirl" because it is linked
to the physical activity of pronunciation. According to Socrates, the
tongue was "most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation
of this letter" and therefore it was originally used to express
motion. Aspirated phonemes requiring expenditure of breath, likewise
find themselves in windy, tempestuous words such as "shivering,
seething, shock and shaking". Lamda,
with its liquid smoothness produced by the slipping of the tongue,
is found in words like "slip, level, floor, flood, sleek"
(when combined with another syllable it denotes easy but repetitive
motion as in "handle, swivel, anvil, paddle"); gamma,
in which the tongue is detained, combines with lamda
to express the notion of stickiness, as in "glue, glutinous, glucose".

LANG53
Background

1.
LANGO
2. A Conflict of Brand Names 3. Esperanto
& English 4. A New IAL Template

LANGO

An
effective international auxiliary language & script (IAL) is
long overdue. Without one there is no alternative to translation,
which is more expensive and less precise. International agencies
spend £/$ billions every year on translation, the inadequacies
of which have sometimes led to serious gaffes or misunderstandings.

There
is, of course, more to the IAL than the saving of money and
misinterpretation at international conferences. As the universal
second language, learned by every schoolchild in addition to the
mother-tongue, the IAL would facilitate accurate translation of the
world's literature and bring the whole range of modern ideas to every
nation through tourism and the media. Moreover, the creative effect
of broadcasters, writers, advertisers, film-makers etc. using the IAL
to address a global audience would inevitably cause it to develop
independently of the mother-tongues, gradually acquiring their best
features, and eventually - in the distant future - absorbing them altogether.

As
is well known, there are two theories regarding the IAL: on the one
hand, the laissez-faire idea that English (or another existing
tongue) will become the de
facto
IAL; and on the other, that an IAL must be consciously-planned and
"culturally-neutral" from the start (à
la Esperanto).
It's worth noting that these two different routes to the IAL would
have to meet up at some point anyway. Any "natural" tongue
officially chosen as the IAL would not long survive in a recognisable
form, following the inevitable rationalisation of its spelling system
and grammatical constructions, and the substitution of most of its
vocabulary by words from other languages; and any
"artificial" language would be transformed in like manner:
the grammar and orthography might be changed less, but even more
vocabulary would probably be replaced.

Moreover,
since no major "organic" tongue (including English) exists
without a substantial "constructed" element in its make-up
- and vice-versa - a full combination of these complements in a
viable IAL is obvious. (Could the optimum balance be 50/50, as in the
two halves of the brain?) Briefly, both "natural/organic"
and "artificial/constructed" elements are necessary for
linguistic success.

The
two IAL attempts featured on this site reflect this dichotomy and
inter-relationship. LANGO would begin from a single existing
language, whereas LangX would start from a judicious mix of the best
grammar and vocabulary from many languages. Thus LANGO would be
initially derived from the "naturally evolved" speech
patterns of English, though subject to careful planning and guidance
thereafter; but LangX would be more obviously constructed, though of
more or less entirely organic elements.

"LANGO"
by Robert Craig & myself (1996, since revised) was subtitled
"a fully democratic approach towards an international auxiliary
language initially based on reformed English". It proposed that
a globally-representative committee should guide this potential IAL
from the English-speaking world to the whole world - via the simplest
grammar, a regularised orthography related to an international
standard pronunciation, and the gradual incorporation of words from a
variety of tongues.

LANGO
incorporated the idea that grammatical reform must accompany
spelling reform: a theory originally (?) promulgated by Professor JYT
Greig in his 1928 monograph "Breaking Priscian's Head: English
as She will be Spoke and Wrote" (but sadly neglected by English
spelling reformers before and since). Greig's treatise seems to have
been much influenced by Sylvia Pankhurst's 1927 classic
"International Language", in which she demonstrated the
superiority of analytic grammar over synthetic for IAL purposes (i.e.
the advantage of strict word-order and isolates over free word-order
and inflections).

A
Conflict of Brand-Names

After
Prof. Bruce Beach had generously posted LANGO on his World
Language Program
website, I received an email from a member of the East African LANGO
tribe, who claimed that the name LANGO should be reserved for
his language
(and not without justification - the LANGO people living across a
large area of Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan speak three dialects
of LWO, one of which is also called LANGO). Our
brand-name might have been defensible legally - there being a
precedent in Lango
du Mondo,
an IAL invented by J. de Ria in 1788 - but morally
- perhaps not!

There are also
other arguments against LANGO. Firstly, the considerable
international opposition to the use of English as the IAL would
probably extend to a scheme which even started
with English; for the same reasons, it might be difficult to persuade
all parties that the international committee appointed to oversee the
transition from English to a truly global language would carry out
their task as planned. An IAL comprised of grammar and vocabulary
from the various languages of the world would avoid this suspicion.

Secondly, the
international prestige of English may have further declined since
LANGO was published. With the almost simultaneous collapse of the
communist state apparatus in all countries except China and its
satellites, and the apparent victory of American-style capitalism,
many serious commentators in the early 1990s were predicting the
international triumph of the English language. A decade later the
situation is entirely changed: left-wing governments are resurgent
across the world and America finds itself in the throes of a severe
economic downturn, which may consequently dilute one of the main
reasons for foreigners learning English, not to mention an IAL
derived from it.

Thirdly, radio
and television greatly helped the spread of the English language, but
for mainly financial reasons the Internet may end up doing the
opposite. It costs a lot to set up and maintain terrestrial
broadcasting media. Generally speaking, only the major languages have
provided a sufficiently large market to make the enterprise
worthwhile. As we described in Chapter 4
of LANGO, the minority tongues have suffered at the expense of the
major languages as a result. Conversely, it costs relatively little
to broadcast over the Internet, once the initial marginal purchase of
a computer has been made. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that
displaced ethnic minorities, who once had to learn a major language
in order to follow media broadcasts, are now largely relying upon
Internet newsgroups, radio and TV, broadcast in their own language.

Fourthly, the
rapid growth of electronic communications is a serious drawback to a
medium-term scheme such as LANGO. Internet-users are rightly
impatient of translation; they want a fully-functional language now.
The LANGO approach might be a theoretical possibility, but realpolitik
demands an immediate advance by one foot or the other, which is why
the only practicable
alternatives are an existing language (probably English) and the
right "neutral" constructed language.

Esperanto
& English

Dr
Ludwik Zamenhof had the genius to see this over a century ago.
However, he somewhat overestimated both the linguistic ability of
certain peoples and the capacity or willingness of fledgling
international authorities to act - and thereby caught his excellent
initiative in a double-bind. In Chapter 5
of LANGO we showed how the revision of Esperanto, and hence the
prospect of its international endorsement, has continued to be
frustrated by the inviolable terms of Zamenhof's
"Fundamento". Esperanto will undoubtedly contribute hugely
to the IAL movement in the future, as it has in the past, but isn't
universally acceptable in its present form. In particular, Asians,
English-speakers, and various others tend to find the grammar
unnecessarily difficult. A number of sites present critiques - Justin
B. Rye's being the most comprehensive.

Esperanto's
hope remaining unrealised, at least under its current constitution,
attention has gone to English by default. Of course, it would be very
convenient for us English-speakers if our mother-tongue were adopted
by fait
accompli,
but there are indications - some of which we demonstrated in Chapters
1, 2, 3 and 4 of LANGO - that the real influence of English has
actually declined over the past half-century - in spite of progress
at the expense of French in a number of countries, and the
international consolidation of English usage in some specialised fields.

A
New Template for the IAL

It's
worth remembering that the IAL will be determined by an
officially-appointed global committee. They will form the IAL,
perhaps by endorsing a slightly modified "national" tongue
or constructed language, perhaps by formulating something almost
entirely new. In any event, they will certainly be influenced by
existing proposals, so the individual will continue to have an input (Chapter
7 of LANGO).

However,
individual or minority endeavours should have recognised limits:
attempts to exercise proprietorial rights over language - which is,
after all, a public rather than a private phenomenon - have always
been detrimental (vide Volapük, Esperanto, the French
Academy etc.). But whereas the IAL must be a product of many minds
from different cultural traditions, it might still be useful to have
an illustrative proto-language to act as a catalyst or vehicle for
progressive ideas (and hopefully to give fresh impetus to the IAL
movement). In the absence of a satisfactory alternative, LangX is
proposed for this role.

It
is intended to be a democratic endeavour and, as such, exemplifies
the dominant themes or characteristics within international
languages: regularised orthography, analytic Chinese-type grammar,
English script without diacritics, SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) syntax
etc.. Missing from this list would be the consonantal script found in
Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc.). This type of script has
signal advantages which might be fully realised in the IAL, given a
truly global vocabulary with a sufficient variety of consonant
sequences within words.

LANG53
Orthography

The IPA fonts for viewing these character sets are downloadable from this site. However, the IPA characters might not display properly in Internet Explorer, even if you have installed the correct font set. We recommend using Netscape, Firefox, Opera, or Safari (for Mac) to view this page.

1.
53 Phonemes 2. A
Dual Orthography 3. A Consonantal Script
4. Shorthand

53
Phonemes

An
IAL orthography can only be successful if it reconciles the
following facts:

Most
people in the world use no more than about 30 phonemes in their
speech, whether or not they speak the standard dialect of their language.

Around
15 phonemes are shared by most languages.

An
IAL which cannot be learned easily and used simply is likely to
defeat the resolve of the average student.

The
significant proportion of speakers who habitually employ a
relatively extensive phonology and grammar will ultimately reject an
IAL which lacks the potential capacity to incorporate the
mother-tongues (LANGO Chapter 6).

The
challenge, therefore, is to provide an IAL which can be used in
either a simple or a complex manner: in the case of orthography this
means common phonemes for common words, but also a gradation to rarer
speech sounds as words become more specialised, or specific to
particular cultures with certain preferences. Moreover, in order to
obtain an exact correspondence between orthography and phonology, it
would be necessary to establish a global standard pronunciation (GSP)
for reference purposes. Bearing in mind that LANG53 would be
international from the start rather than initially English-based,
more about a GSP may be found in Chapter 20
of LANGO.

The
53 phoneme orthography offered below - a revision of the scheme in
the first part of Chapter 19 of LANGO -
permits most of the more usual speech sounds to be displayed without digraphs:

CONSONANTS

VOWELS

LANG53

a
ð
the, this

A
æ
bad, lack, chat
bAd, lAk, eAt

b
b
ban, bib

B
ɑu
out, bough, crown
Bt, bB, krBn

c
ʦ
once, cancel

C
ə
other, sofa, a
UaC, sGfC, C

d
d
den, rod

D
ɨ
Wbl
(R), cblp (R)
mD, sDr

e

ʧ
church, cello

E
ɛ
bed, well, nyet (R)
bEd, wEl, uEt

f
f
far, fun

F
ɜː
fern, bird, peu (F)
fFn, bFd, pF

g

ǰ
gel, giant

G
ou
foe, know, go
fG, nG, qG

h

h
hat, hen

H
ɪə
dear, seer, weir
dH, sH, wH

i
ŋ
anger, wing

I
ɪ
bid, writ, gin
bId, rIt, gIn

j
ʒ
beige, azure

J
ʊ
put, full, bull
pJt, fJl, bJl

k
k
cat, like

K
ei
veil, day, raid
vKl, dK, rKd

l
l
cool, leaf

L
ɔː
paw, auk, talk
pL, Lk, tLk

m
m
met, hum

M
ɑː
car, rather, path
kM, rMaC, pMo

n
n
ten, nun

N
i:
bee, key, pizza
bN, kN, pNcC

o
θ
thin, theatre

O
ʋ
pod, frost, thong
pOd, frOst, oOi

p
p
pit, up

P
ʊə
poor, book, lure
pP, bPk, lP

q
g
tag, go

Q
ɔə
pore, boar, lore
pQ, bQ, lQ

r
ɾ
ran, rib

R
ɛə
fair, wear, mare
fR, wR, mR

s
s
sad, so

S
ø
coeur (F), hören (G)
kSr, hSrCn

t
t
tab, it

T
ɔi
boil, toy, koi
bTl, tT, kT

u

ɲ
union, canyon

U
ʌ
bud, worry, jug
bUd, wUrI, gUq

v
v
valve, hive

V
aiə
fire, ire, mire
fV, V, mV

w
w
win, wool

W
ɑuə
tower, power
tW, pW

x
ʃ
she, fish

X
u:
flue, do, boot
flX, dX, bXt

y
j
yet, young

Y
y
tu, mur (F), für (G)
tY, mYr, fYr

z
z
zip, daze

Z
ai
lie, why, knight
lZ, wZ, nZt

'
ʔ
a lo'a bu'a

The
above vowel representations are more or less arbitrary but the
consonant symbols might be rationalised to some extent: 19 are as in
English (and many other languages), whether as the sole usage, e.g.
[b], [d], or as one of two or more alternatives, e.g. [c], [g]; two
are used as in languages other than English - [j] as in French,
Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian and [x] as in Portuguese, Basque,
Catalan and Maltese; [q] ~ / g
/ may be unprecedented but fits morphologically; this leaves [a e i o
u], which have been allocated with some reference to
the corresponding I.P.A. symbol, thus [a] ~ / D
/, [e] ~ / tS
/ ([c] ~ / tþs
/ + / h /),
[i] ~ / N
/ (the participle
"-ing" suffix might be mnemonic
here), < o > ~ / T
/ and finally [u] ~
upside-down / J /
(!?).

The
initial core vocabulary of common words would employ many fewer than
53 phonemes, and as few consonant clusters as possible; words
containing rarer and more difficult speech sounds might be added
later, as the IAL developed. A relatively extensive phonology would
permit all words of most languages, and most words of nearly all
languages, to be transliterated - with the result that most
utterances from most cultures could be made under the banner of the
IAL and written down in its script, though this could not be done
adequately without some grammatical development.

The
above scheme may require fundamental modification in due course: its
anglicised phonology - including the 23 vowels of (non-rhotic) R.P.
English and only 3 exclusively heard in other tongues - is perhaps
too biased towards English for a universal language. Robert Craig has
suggested an alternative allocation of symbols to phonemes, as follows:

CONSONANTS

VOWELS

LANG53

a

&#x00f0;
the, this

A

&#x0259;
other, sofa, a
CaA, sOfA, A

b

b
ban, bib

B

&#x028a;&#x0259;
poor, book, lure
pB, bBk, lB

c

&#x02a7;
church, cello

C

&#x028c;
bud, worry, jug
bCd, wCrI, iCq

d
d
den, rod

D

&#x028b;
pod, frost, thong
pDd, frDst, oDg

e

&#x02a6;
once, cancel

E

&#x025b;
bed, well, nyet (R)
bEd, wEl, uEt

f
f
far, fun

F

&#x025b;&#x0259;
fair, wear, mare
fF, wF, mF

g

&#x014b;
anger, wing

G

&#x0251;u
out, bough, crown
Gt, bG, krGn

h

h
hat, hen

H

i&#x02d0;
bee, key, pizza
bH, kH, pHeA

i
&#x01f0;
gel, giant

I

&#x026a;
bid, writ, gin
bId, rIt, iIn

j
&#x0292;
beige, azure

J

&#x0268;
Wbl (R),
cblp (R)
mJ, sJr

k
k
cat, like

K

ai&#x0259;
dear, seer, weir
dK, sK, wK

l
l
cool, leaf

L

y
fire, ire, mire
fL, L, mL

m
m
met, hum

M

&#x0254;&#x02d0;
paw, auk, talk
pM, Mk, tMk

n
n
ten, nun

N
&#x026a;&#x0259;
tu, mur (F), f&uuml;r (G)
tN, mNr, fNr

o
&#x03b8;
thin, theatre

O
ou
foe, know, go
fO, nO, qO

p
p
pit, up

P

&#x0254;i
boil, toy, koi
bPl, tP, kP

q

g
tag, go

Q

&#x0254;&#x0259;
pore, boar, lore
pQ, bQ, lQ

r
r
ran, rib

R

&#x0251;&#x02d0;
car, rather, path
kR, rRaA, pRo

s
s
sad, so

S

&#x00f8;
coeur (F), h&ouml;ren (G)
kS, hSrAn

t
t
tab, it

T
ai
lie, why, knight
lT, wT, nTt

u

&#x0272;
union, canyon

U

u&#x02d0;
flue, do, boot
flU, dU, bUt

v
v
valve, hive

V

&#x028a;
put, full, bull
pVt, fVl, bVl

w
w
win, wool

W

&#x0251;u&#x0259;
tower, power
tW, pW

x
&#x0283;
she, fish

X

&#x00e6;
bad, lack, chat
bXd, lXk, cXt

y
j
yet, young

Y
ei
veil, day, raid
vYl, dY, rYd

z
z
zip, daze

Z

&#x025c;&#x02d0;
fern, bird, peu (F)
fZn, bZd, pZ

!
&#x0294;
a lo'a bu'a

A
Dual Orthography

The
"dual orthography", using English lower-case letters for
consonants and upper-case for vowels (as shown in the right-hand
columns of the above tables), is widely disliked, as those who have
tried it in English spelling reform schemes have discovered. People
tend to find it aesthetically objectionable, inimical to cursive
handwriting, and very awkward for typists - who must continually
operate the shift-key.

However,
a system analogous to that found in Hebrew, Arabic and other Semitic
languages would make the vowels or capital letters invisible in most
circumstances. For instance, in the Hebrew Nikud system the
diacritics or marks that signify vowels are normally omitted from the
text of books and newspapers; the vowel points are only shown where a
guide to the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word is required.
Children memorise the vowels and learn to recognise words by their
consonants alone. Using essentially the same system, the
"adult" script of LANG53 would be similar to the script on
this page.

A
Consonantal Script

The
potential print-saving achievable by a consonantal script is
astounding. With 27 consonants, 551,880 words of four letters or less
are possible (27 + [27 × 27 =] 729 + [27 × 729 =] 19,683 +
[27 × 19,683 =] 531,441 = 551,880) - four or fives times more
than the total vocabulary of English (if the endless progression of
names for numbers, chemical compounds etc. is excluded).

However,
this very brevity tends to produce homographs. For example, it can
be seen that the following English words: "rat, rate, rait, ret,
rete, writ, rit, (ritt,) write, rite, right, wright, rot, root,
route, (wroot,) (rought,) wrote, rote, rut, rout, wrought" would
all become "rt" in a consonantal script! The
three-consonant word-roots typical of consonant-based scripts such as
Hebrew are probably a response to this homographic tendency, given
the limited number of possible consonant sequences in these tongues.

The
need to reduce homography in its consonantal script is one reason
why LangX's vocabulary should be incorporated from the entire
range of the world's languages. Even then, many potential consonant
sequences would probably remain unused - simply because they do not
occur in the vocabulary of any existing language. Moreover,
artificial neologisms containing unprecedented sequences might prove unpopular.

Shorthand

A
shorthand convention might circumvent this difficulty by employing
"spare" consonant sequences. Shorthand systems using
English letters are not unknown. For instance, PitmanScript has:
"of ~ v, to ~ t, be ~ b, you ~ u, not ~ n, we ~ w, me ~ m, do ~ d".

A
shorthand system for LangX might specify:

Words
of one or two consonants may be shorthand or conventional spellings.

Words
of three or more consonants are always orthographically regular.

Mathematically,
there would be a maximum of 756 (27 + [27 × 27]) words,
abbreviations or logograms in the first category and an unlimited
number of words in the second. However, this would be no guide to the
frequency of words on the page. For instance, the following 69 words
make up about 50% of all average continuous running English, spoken
or written: "the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I, for, be,
was, as, you, with, he, on, have, by, not, at, this, are, we, his,
but, they, all, or, which, will, from, had, has, one, our, an, been,
no, their, there, were, so, my, if, me, what, would, who, when, him,
them, her, your, any, more, now, its, time, up, do, out, can, than,
only, she, made, us."

Reginald
J G Dutton, FRSA, author of Dutton
World Speedwords, was evidently thinking along similar lines
several decades ago. Here is his shorthand for some common words:

a

at, to

b

but

c

this

d

of, from

e

am, are, is (to) be

f

for

g

them, they

h

has, have

i

in

j

I, me

k

that

l

the

m

with

n

no, not

o

on

p

can

q

interrogative

r

will

s

he

t

it

u

a, an, one

v

you

w

us, we

x

if

y

was, were

z

as

Lang29 Grammar

1.
Synthetic Grammar 2. Analytic Grammar
3. Minimal Grammar 4. Lang29
Grammar

Synthetic
Grammar

Greek,
Latin, Arabic and French - major IALs up until recent times - have
grammars which employ affixes rather than fixed word order, i.e. they
are synthetic rather than analytic. Synthetic grammar is more
complex, and can be impenetrable, but it does have the ability to
reduce speech and text-length - since affixed words effectively
contain a phrase or clause within themselves.

The
decline of these great languages as IALs is related to the
spread of universal education and literacy. In days when education
was highly selective, an ability to cope with classical languages and
synthetic grammar was par for the course. The organised movement to
reform English spelling accompanied the advent of mass education for
much the same reason (LANGO Chapter 9).

Compactness
is a benefit of synthetic grammar, but also a potential drawback;
the abbreviation of a word into an affix - e.g. "I did jump ~ I
jump did ~ I jumpdid ~ I jumped" - makes the grammar harder to
analyse, and less accessible to non-linguists. Synthetic grammar is
further complicated by clumsy attempts at spelling reform, which
paint over the verbal origin of affixes. Orthographic revision can
also obscure the etymology of stand-alone words, but it normally
maintains their integrity as grammatical markers.

In
other words, the principles of synthetic grammar and orthographic
regularity can conflict. We demonstrated this in Chapter
18 of LANGO: "For example, "talked, edited,
banned" are grammatically regular on the page, but in speech
they tend to be "taukt or tokt, editid, band", likewise
"banks, cats, dogs, foxes" usually become "banks,
kats, dogz, foksiz"." English inflections being the
irregular factor in this case, we proposed that they might be
replaced, either by less phonetically mutable inflections or by the
kind of rigid-word-order inflectionless constructions typical of
pidgins and creoles.

Analytic
Grammar

Analytic
grammar facilitates the laboriously learnt second-language,
painfully acquired in isolation or small groups, much more than the
mother-tongue absorbed amid the varied life of a speech community;
the analytic sentence parses itself for the benefit of the busy or
discouraged student. Another important consideration is that those
with a synthetic mother-tongue can easily understand analytic
grammar, but not vice-versa. For such reasons alone, analytic grammar
would probably be best for LangX, at least in its initial stages.
Also, it would be difficult to inaugurate a consonantal script using
synthetic grammar, and quite impossible if vowel inflections were
used. However, the kind of consonantal script proposed on the Lang53
Orthography page - using shorthand or conventional forms - could
doubtless be made to work with analytic grammar.

Analytic
grammar is synthetic grammar at an earlier stage of development. It
is more verbose, of course, but the parts of speech which constitute
grammar are clearly shown. The analysis may then be synthesised,
simply by turning auxiliary verbs, cases, prepositions, articles etc.
into inflections. The reverse process - converting synthetic grammar
into analytic - is more difficult because many affixes are no longer
recognisable as words; even so, it has evidently happened in the past
- in the 12th Century, for instance, English changed from
Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) to Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) syntax and
lost most of its inflections.

The
subsequent success of the English language is not unconnected from
the fact that SVO syntax far outstrips SOV in global population
terms, though each is used by about 40% of all languages. Of the
remaining languages, about 15% use VSO, and the remainder VOS, OVS
and OSV. This evidence might suggest that LangX should employ SVO syntax.

Minimal
Grammar

In
English, the millennial dominance of word-order based analytic
grammar has rendered superfluous all noun inflections except the
possessive, as well as adjectival agreement etc.. In Chapter
14 of LANGO we showed how English-based Caribbean creoles have
pushed the word order principle harder in order to achieve further economies.

Moreover,
there is another factor at work, complementary to the word-order
principle. This is the grammar of context itself: where a thing is immediately
obvious there is no need to define the subject (article, noun
etc.) in terms of relationship or action (verb, adverb) with or
towards the object (preposition, adjective, noun etc.). In other
words, there is no need for parts of speech, never mind grammar -
whether analytic or synthetic.

This
phenomenon is not exclusive to the creoles, of course. In the
work-places, streets and homes of more or less any language community
many people - particularly those who know one another and each one's
circumstances well enough - tend to speak in ellipsis. The sentence -
the complete statement or question - is there, but it is conveyed in
one or two words or phrases; the rest of the words are understood.

The
abbreviation also extends to the word classes themselves in some
languages. Some do not have a noun, as such; instead of
"tree" they might say "it trees"; and word order
alone may determine whether the adjectival or adverbial sense is
meant, e.g in creole:

"he
walk silent; she sing soft"

(Obviously,
the position of the adjective and adverb in the sentence would have
to be strictly defined. Typical creole usage has the adjective before
the noun and the adverb after the verb. This also seems to be the
predominant order among languages worldwide.)

One
of the main defects of Esperanto was that it formalised words into
classes or parts of speech. Even in English there are hundreds of
words which may be used without variance in two or more classes:
"under, head, right, love, dog etc.".

As
for noun case suffixes, we English-speakers may pride ourselves that
word-order has rendered most of them unnecessary, and jib at the
accusative ending and adjectival agreement in Esperanto - perhaps
oblivious to the fact that creole users might regard our genitive or
possessive inflection in a similar way. Thus a creole speaker might say:

"this
woman money stolen; that village corn ripe".

It
might sound strange to us, but the context determines whether the
meaning is possessive or descriptive. Is the genitive inflection
essential? If not, we should consider losing it in the initial stages
of LangX. In any case, analytic grammar would demand a preposition -
if absolutely necessary - (as in French etc., but used only as
required) rather than an inflection. Other languages also omit the
genitive, e.g. Welsh:

"llyfr
John, llyfr coch" "John's book, red book".

The
creoles also tend to drop the plural inflection, e.g.:

"two
house; them rabbit"

So
does Chinese; also English - for items regarded as game rather than
as individuals, e.g. "sheep, deer, cod, grouse, Portuguese,
Swiss etc." However, most languages employ a plural inflection
(often [-s]). It's not difficult to see why. The plural is a useful
device. For example, 10 kg of stone, wood or oil is very different
from 10 kg of stones, woods or oils. The numeral quantifies; the
plural diversifies.

The
analytic approach would employ auxiliary markers, such as Chinese
"xie" ["some"] and the French singular and plural
definite articles "le" or "la", and
"les" (gender in the linguistic sense being banned in
LangX, of course).

Some
languages are more advanced than others in terms of economical
expression or succinct syntax. Chinese grammar is exemplary in this
regard, not least in its approach to word formation.

The
creole approach to negation is likewise economical:

"he
no work today"

Old
English used the same construction, with the prefix "ne-"
for "no", exactly as in Scottish English, Russian and other
languages. English uses "never" in a similar way.

Creoles
tend to drop the copula between subject and predicate:

"the
sun hot; he old man; them hungry; why you bring this?"

This
too is common - e.g. Russian "he engineer" - and might be
adopted at least in the initial stages of LangX.

Creoles
also tend to use serial verbs:

"she
go try find it; he start run escape"

The
infinitive is understood. English often does the same, e.g. "Let
my people go!; I heard you call; I watched her paint a picture; he
felt a hand touch him" - cf. Shakespeare's old-fashioned
"Tranio! I saw her coral lips to move." Another one for Lang29?

As
for recursion, creoles tend to use discrete one-clause sentences and
anaphora, rather than embedded clauses headed by correlatives. We
used the following example in LANGO:

"Man
plough. He my brother." "The man
(who is) ploughing is my brother."

The
complex construction can, of course, be used outside the immediate
context. It could be commentary on a video. However the simplest form
of recursion is perfectly functional, and might well be the better
alternative for Lang29.

Creoles
use few tenses or verb inflections. Chinese is the same. As always,
context is the key. In Lang29, at least, there would certainly be a
case for keeping all verb stems invariant, i.e. without inflections,
and relying upon auxiliaries to change the tense.

Prosody
is rather a non-issue in creoles. They are fast-growing IALs largely
because they are easy. Naturally, the prevailing prosody of a
culture may be syllable-timed, or stress-timed in a particular
fashion, and speakers moderate their intonation accordingly in order
to be better understood, but they do not seek to place an
extra burden on the listener.

The
interrogative might also be mentioned in this preliminary sketch.
One extra word added at the start of the sentence - such as
Esperanto's [tSu:]
- is probably quite sufficient to turn a statement into a question.

Finally,
from all these considerations we might arrive at a conclusion re the
relationship between the different levels or degrees of grammar. It
might be expressed as follows:

no
grammar » minimal grammar » analytic grammar »
synthetic grammar

As
we have seen, synthetic grammar is the most technically advanced,
but isn't compatible with a minimal grammar which doesn't require
parts of speech to be defined.

In
any case, LangX will be be an auxiliary language for a very long
time, i.e. generations or centuries. There will be no need, in the
forseeable future, for it to compete with the advanced grammar of
certain mother-tongues. Analytic grammar will be quite sufficient.

Lang29
Grammar

These
provisional (and still very incomplete) conclusions re the right
grammar for Lang29 might be summarised:

analytic
grammar - strict word order - SVO syntax

no
case inflections, i.e. no genitive or plural noun inflections

no
verb declension or inflection, including imperative/infinitive

all
tenses/moods/voices shown by auxiliaries

no
word class inflections: noun, verb stem, adjective and adverb are identical

adjective(s)
always precede noun; adverb(s) always follow verb

maximum
succinctness in grammar and word-formation

form
of negation and omission of copula

use
of anaphora rather than correlatives for recursion

no
rules re prosody: users of an IAL should strive only to be heard

single
head-word for interrogative

Contact,
Comment & Criticism

First
published 29 February 2000; 9th Edition 18 February 2001; 10th
Edition 31 August 2001.

Your
comments and criticisms are welcomed - please email
Antony Alexander, who would like to
acknowledge the assistance of Robert Craig (my co-author on
"LANGO" - qv here) in the early
stages of this new project.

Some
Relevant IAL Links

LOGLAN

LOJBAN

CEQLI

RAP
LIN RIE

aUl

GILO

Essays on Language Design

Design of
an Optimal IAL

Principles
of Language Planning

How to Build a Language

Richard
Kennaway's links

International
Phonetic Assoc.

Language Construction Kit

James
Chandler's IAL page

UCL
Linguistics & Phonetics

Want
a change from IAL and language sites? Why not try:

Skolnick's
Report GATA Worldwatch RENSE
Bahá'í
World Center

Some Observations about the
International Auxiliary Language

The following
"thread" resulted from a message posted on 21/1/01 at the
Deja newsgroup "alt.language.artificial" under the title
"Some General Observations regarding the IAL":

[1] 21/1/01 Antony Alexander

The IAL will begin as an auxiliary, an international pidgin, the only
language children in every country will be required to
learn at school in addition to the mother-tongue. However, even as
pidgins sooner or later become creolised or fade away, the IAL - not
permitted the latter option - will eventually take on a life of its
own as authors, advertisers, film-makers etc. use it directly to
address the global market-place. The end result of this process will
be a single global tongue.

The IAL will develop in two phases. It will begin as no more than a
universal second-language; its grammar will be simple and entirely
regular (and probably analytic, with SVO syntax and rigid
word-order); its vocabulary will be chosen from existing languages
according to the most popular phonology (probably no more than about
20 consonants and 10 vowels); and in all likelihood it will have
neither consonant clusters, nor diacritics, nor rules regarding prosody.

The IAL will be formed by an internationally representative congress.
Anyone who doubts this - except from conviction that English will
become the de facto IAL - has underestimated the
politicisation surrounding this issue. We should be certain that the
initial composition of the IAL will be very much determined by the
need for universal acceptance. For instance, English-speakers will be
unwilling to accept Esperanto's level of grammar, as will many Asian
peoples. In fact a European-based IAL is now out of the question. The
rise of Middle-Eastern and East Asians countries towards economic
parity with the West is not without consequence. The Chinese rate of
development, if projected onward from the past quarter-century, would
enable that nation to surpass all others within a few decades. If a
compromise IAL is not implemented soon, schoolchildren two
generations hence might be required to spend months learning Chinese
characters, rather than a far more logical and assimilable alphabetic
script (the inferiority of Chinese script is compensated by superior
aspects in Chinese grammar, vocabulary and word-formation).

The same applies to phonology (and hence vocabulary). The
international committee formulating the IAL will have to take into
account both the speech preferences of various nations and the need
to promote a unified and coherent system. They will have to steer a
middle way between the lowest common denominator tendency, which
would jettison all but the few phonemes that all nations can accept
unreservedly, and the highest common factor tendency which would
argue that children possess the inherent capacity to master
unfamiliar phonemes, and might easily do so but for nationalist
education and class acculturation.

Briefly, neither too simple nor too complex an IAL would be
countenanced, whatever reason be given. A compromise will have to be
found between the extremes. But this won't mean an absolutely
equitable outcome. Inevitably, the IAL will be easier for some than
for others. There is no way around this. No compromise could possibly
suit everyone, and in some things compromise is impossible. Take
script, for instance. Script normally reads from left to right, or
from right to left. One or other of these directions must be chosen -
both at once would be disastrous! Similarly, alphabetic script does
not mix with certain kinds of logographic, ideographic and
pictographic script.

It's not unlikely that the IAL will start with English script,
without diacritics. Peoples whose script goes from right to left,
isn't Roman, or isn't even alphabetic, will find this a challenge.
They will have to be compensated, in all fairness, probably by
getting an extra dose of familiar vocabulary and/or grammar. Nations
with a relatively large phonology will have few problems with the
initial IAL vocabulary, but those with a narrower - though probably
more allophonic - range of speech sounds will find many common words
difficult to pronounce correctly, in spite of the best efforts of the
international committee. SVO syntax - probably the front-runner at
present - is hard for those habituated to one of the other five basic
syntactic structures, and so on.

Peoples differ widely in their political, social and linguisitic
advancement. Anyone who doesn't believe this should travel more. The
consequence of this essential fact is that the IAL will have to
remain fixed, subject to the repair of any obvious defects, until the
more linguistically backward sections of global society get up to
speed with it.

And this will take a long time - decades or centuries at least.
Meanwhile it is inevitable that many people will begin to use the IAL
in a more complex manner, informally, though upon the same fixed
basis. They might do this by increasing the scope of the grammar and
introducing transliterated words from outside of the minimum phonetic
range - at the very least there is likely to be a feeling that the
correct pronunciation of names should be reflected by the orthography.

There is no reason why these accretions should be discouraged.
However, those who wish to be understood everywhere and to reach the
widest possible audience, should limit themselves to the official
IAL. Additionally, there should be no grounds for any suspicion that
the mother-tongues were being suppressed or extirpated. Finally, it
will come to pass that all nations use the IAL with confidence, at
which time the second phase should come into operation.

All the words and grammatical expressions validated and perfected by
informal usage over a long period of time should then be
incorporated. In practice this will mean the best features of the
mother-tongues, which everyone will have already willingly abandoned,
finding in the IAL a better means of communication. In effect the
remaining mother-tongues will have died a natural death, though they
continue to subsist in recorded form, and only one language will exist.

[2] 22/1/01 Ernobe

Gees! If those are the "general
observations" I hate to think what the particularities will look like!

[3] 26/1/01 SleatorESM

That was a weird post. Just plain bizarre (not
to mention wishful).

[4] 2/2/01 Alan Giles

We all have our own reasons for getting
involved in language creation. For some it is the wish to see an
international auxiliary language, for others, the simple satisfaction
of creation and intellectual stimulation.

For those of us who have a particular interest
in an IAL, it is necessary to lift our gaze from our navels sometimes
and look around the world and also to look into the future. By
thinking about the practical realities of the worldwide adoption of
an IAL, Antony has drawn our attention to aspects of language
development that we are going to have to take into account, whether
we like it or not.

The basic theme of the IAL, starting as a
second language and eventually becoming a first language, makes a lot
of sense. Hence the importance of building in right from the start
sufficient flexibility to absorb particular national language
characteristics. As an example, Antony mentions the need for an
ability in the orthography to include the correct pronuniciation of
names. This is an important point that we need to take into account
right at the beginning if we hope that our particular IAL will be
attractive to all foreign language speakers.

There is also no doubt that the matter will
eventually become highly political, since national governments would
need to agree what IAL would eventually be taught in their schools.

With regard to the role of an international
committee, I see this as the only politically acceptable way that an
IAL can be agreed. However I do not see such a committee playing a
part in the initial development of the IAL itself. Committees study,
modify, refine and finally agree, they do not create. There is a
saying that a camel is just a horse designed by a committee!

There is still a role for the individual or
small team of language inventors to create the IAL.

[5] 2/2/01 Antony Alexander

Thanks a lot, Alan. I think you're right that the coming
international language congress or committee will have a mainly
passive role. It's most unlikely that they will be called upon to
create an entirely new language and script out of thin air; most
probably they will ratify a previously agreed scheme, though with
certain modifications, so as to assert their authority as a united body.

The EU currently spends over £2 billion ($3 billion) p.a. on
translation (often mistranslation); the UN and other international
agencies even more. The EU consists of 15 members going on 27. For
pressing social and economic reasons an IAL is going to be instituted
in the not too distant future. Left to themselves, the politicians
will choose the IAL promoted by the best-funded lobby group. This
won't necessarily be the best choice.

A scientific approach is necessary. I hope LANG53 will be judged by
that criterion and that at least some of it will pass muster.
Certainly not all of it: creating an IAL is far too big an enterprise
for one person. Moreover, it's high time to face reality, so far as
the IAL issue is concerned. Lest a version of Newspeak be foisted
upon us we should be looking at existing IAL attempts with a view to
synthesis. Why don't we start with Alan Giles' GILO at http://www.gilo.org
- a very well laid out site and an exemplary grammar, don't we agree?

[6] 2/2/01 Ernobe

It may seem that creating an IAL is too big an
enterprise for one person, but the only reason for this is that none
of the existing languages have found it that easy to become accepted
and actually learned for the sake of international cooperation and
understanding. In fact, the whole concept of an IAL is so new to
history that it is diametrically the opposite of what politicians
would want to use it for (their own concerns). Concerning this I've
said elsewhere:

Historically there has not been so far a
widespread Christian government of the world, even though some may
refer to the Catholic theocracy of earlier times as an example of it.
The truth is that not ever within Islam, where it is known that major
aspects of public life like the judicial system and education are
controlled by the religious authorities, has the true religious
character of humanity received an adequate representation. Since the
ineptitude of communication of peoples' true thoughts and intentions
always favors those in power, and these have so far refused to really
take religion seriously, therefore the long outdated and already
useless concepts and irregularities of ancient languages are
perpetuated, leaving most of us unable to improve our communication
skills, which would increase our awareness of realities, and enable
us to meditate profoundly on the significance of God's Word.

It is one of our misfortunes that language in
general, and "modern" ones in particular, prove to be such
a poor medium for the expression of human thought. For this reason,
I've begun a project to spread a little known but highly effective
IAL, Dutton Speedwords. Download a free glossary at http://info.babylon.com/cgi-bin/temp.cgi?id=6679&layout=gloss.html

[7] 6/2/01 Antony Alexander

Dutton Speedwords an IAL? I thought it was a shorthand system. Since
I included a small part of Dutton's system in the Orthography section
of LANG53 some months ago, shorthand text messaging on mobile phones
seems to have become the latest thing. "WAN2TLK - ltle bk of txt
msgs" is a best-seller (in the UK, anyway). Could be that
shorthand is here to stay. Comments, please, about my suggestion for
combining a Dutton-type system with a consonantal script analogous to
that in the Semitic languages (further details at http://www.alexander.iofm.net)

[8] 6/2/01 Ernobe

I'd like to comment on some of the sections of
your website:

"The significant proportion of speakers
who habitually employ a relatively extensive phonology and grammar
will ultimately reject an IAL which lacks the potential capacity to
incorporate the mother-tongues (LANGO Chapter Six)."

This would be true if everyone spoke each
other's language and had some particular reason or need for favoring
their own phonology and grammar. But since these don't even have any
semantic value of themselves, the language that quite self-evidently
has the simplest phonology and grammar will be the easiest for any
person to incorporate, regardless of his own previous language.

"The need to reduce homography in its
consonantal script is one reason why LANG53's vocabulary should be
incorporated from the entire range of the world's languages. Even
then, many potential consonant sequences would probably remain unused
- simply because they do not occur in the vocabulary of any existing
language. Moreover, artificial neologisms containing unprecedented
sequences might prove unpopular. A shorthand convention might
circumvent this difficulty by employing "spare" consonant
sequences. Shorthand systems using English letters are not unknown.
For instance, PitmanScript has: "of ~ v, to ~ t, be ~ b, you ~
u, not ~ n, we ~ w, me ~ m, do ~ d"."

Again, if everybody spoke everybody else's
language, the inclusion of the precise words of each language might
be an issue that demands solution, but the truth is that even if this
were the case, we would realize that each of the languages does not
have some particular contribution to make to the IAL, but that each
of them has their own way of saying the same things. A shorthand is
useful not only for economy's sake, it allows a more precise
systematic arrangement of the words (morphemes) for a more
comprehensive understanding of the languages' expressive potential,
which provides for a more intelligent and effective use of it. Such
is the case with Dutton Speedwords. I have yet to read the section of
your site on the grammar, but it may be useful to point out that
Speedwords utilizes letters to signify semantic qualities of words
that make up their definition, so that the grammar (the construction
of the actual sentences) will be determined by self-evident
considerations which follow from the meaning of the words. Rather
than having grammatical features as an aid to understanding,
Speedwords relies on the effectiveness of its word formation, that
guarantees a one meaning per word system which covers all words
without any synonyms and even provides words to substitute a word
whose meaning is ambiguous. The grammar is thus the simplest that can
be imagined, even simpler than English.

[9] 11/2/01 Antony Alexander

>I'd
like to comment on some of the sections of your website:

>"The significant proportion of
speakers who habitually employ a relatively extensive phonology and
>grammar will ultimately reject an IAL which lacks the potential
capacity to incorporate the mother->tongues (LANGO Chapter Six)."

Unless a hacker has got to the online edition you are looking at, you
won't find this sentence in LANGO Chapter Six. However it does look
familiar, as though I did actually write it, so I'll assume you found
it elsewhere in my site.

In that case, the context from which you excised it would have
emphasised that by "ultimately" I meant a time in the
distant future - as in the following passage at the end of the
"Minimal Grammar" section of "LANG53 Grammar":

".....LANG53 will be an auxiliary language for a very long time,
i.e. generations or centuries. There will be no need, in the
forseeable future, for it to combine with the advanced grammar of
certain mother-tongues. Analytic grammar will be quite sufficient."

>This would be true if everybody spoke each
others language

Whether through my fault or not, you don't seem to have fully
understood the fundamental thesis of LANGO and LANG53.

For argument's sake, let's divide all IALers into two camps. On the
one hand, those who believe that, after the IAL is officially
instituted, everyone will always and for all time speak at least two
languages - the various mother-tongues for domestic consumption and
the IAL for international communication. On the other hand, there are
those who agree with the underlying theme of LANGO and LANG53: that
all languages will eventually merge into a single language, by way of
an official IAL, and that this process is merely a conscious
continuation of what is already occurring.

It seems to me that the first of these two groups believes neither in
the feasibility of a single universal language and associated
voluntary global culture of free peoples, nor in the other extreme,
where culture is exclusively defined as national or ethnic. In this
latter restricted sense, each culture is perceived as a unique
combination of historical, national, racial, political and religious
elements, to which only one particular language can do justice.
Supporters of this position don't like the concept of an official
IAL, and some would go further by denouncing internationalism itself
for mixing together what should be kept separate, and for introducing
national and racial conflict into the world.

Hence the "two languages forever" brigade disbelieve in the
possibility of a single universal language and culture (of free
peoples), and yet endorse the idea of an IAL. They hold that the
primary focus of culture is national or ethnic, but that
international agencies are necessary in order to support the
requisite level of material civilisation, through trade, tourism,
transport, communications, science, peace-keeping and the like.

Thus the international agencies deal in mundanities, whereas the more
spiritual side of life - found through historic denominations, modern
sects and media, secular philosophies, national treasuries of
literature, and all the arts to which language is peripheral rather
than central - is not "global" or "international"
in any real sense, since it is always linked to a particular culture
or tradition.

The fact that international agencies restrict their sphere of
operation to material necessities allows for a rudimentary IAL
employed solely as an auxiliary or second language. The use of a
pidgin between trading nations is a microcosmic analogy. A true
(uncreolised) pidgin does not develop its own internal structure, and
cannot survive independently, precisely because nobody is using it as
a primary language or mother-tongue.

I think Glosa is one of the best IALs of this type. It has no
inflections and only four tenses (in fact three would be enough, as
the original author pointed out). Words can be used interchangeably
as noun, adjective and verb, and twenty auxiliaries constitute the
grammar around the SVO syntax (incl. SVO subordinate clauses).

Notice, however, that the fewness of moods and tenses limits Glosa's
ability to discuss moral questions and report events from different
perspectives, that the inability to distinguish parts of speech
except in context invites confusion at second-hand, that the paucity
of phonemes restricts vocal expression, that the Greek / Latin basis
of the vocabulary hardly favours international acceptability, and so on.

>and had some particular reason or need for
favoring their own phonology and grammar. But since >these don't
even have any semantic value of themselves,

Everyone has "some particular reason or need for favoring their
own phonology and grammar", which is that they see it as
superior to others. It might have no semantic value internationally,
in some cases, but it certainly does for that people. Wouldn't you
value English if the New World Order suddenly announced that all
languages were henceforth forbidden except for "Newspeak"?

>the language that quite self-evidently has
the simplest phonology and grammar will be the easiest >for any
person to incorporate, regardless of his own previous language.

Essentially, I believe that "unofficial creolisation" will
take place whilst "the official IAL", whether it is called
LANG53 or anything else, remains at a very simple and basic level
until all the people of the world (some of whom have an even simpler
and more basic language) have caught up with it. Later on - in the
distant future - the "unofficial IAL" will become the de facto
language of the world, since the best qualities of all languages will
be expressed within it.

I don't personally believe that an official IAL could long survive
without this process happening. Everywhere two languages are
constantly and habitually used there is transfer of vocabulary and
import of grammatical structure: vide "Spanglish" in
the USA and "mix" in Singapore. An official IAL
artificially constrained from all fundamental development would
simply be rejected after a while. Look what's happening to Esperanto.

The secret of success, so I believe, is to incorporate scope for
expandability and expansibility into the orthography and grammar of
the very basic "official IAL". For instance, the alphabet
might have the capacity to represent 53 phonemes without the use of
digraphs, even though the initial core vocabulary would employ no
more than about 30 phonemes. The essential point is that the
"official" and "advanced unofficial" versions of
the IAL, and all stages in between, should always be exactly the same
language: thus the "official" IAL should result from an
"advanced unofficial" version of the IAL being used in a
simple way.

What you write about Dutton Speedwords seems valid enough. I can only
repeat that the best parts of all languages, "national" or
"constructed" (the difference is only one of degree), will
eventually be found in the single global tongue.

(From 12/2/01 Deja.com Newsgroups were operated by
Google.com, under a different format.)

[10] 15/2/01 Ernobe

You seem to believe that the formation of the
IAL will come about as the beginnings of language itself in human
evolution. In other words, everybody is just learning language skills
and prone to form creolizations, or mixes of idioms, as if we were
still in the age in which, thru lack of contact between peoples, they
were still forming their languages as significant aspects of their
cultural identity. But even though recent examples of creolization
exist, these are evidently dying out, or at best examples of where
the civilising process that distinguishes our age has gone amuck.
They occur in those areas where we are learning how not to civilize peoples.

On the other hand, you would not be involved in
the IAL movement if you hadn't realized the drawbacks of language as
we now use it to further human progress. These are subtle drawbacks,
because with the spread of science and education, the immense
separation that keeps peoples apart from the simple fact of not
understanding each others speech is hidden by the no less dramatic
changes that everyone has experienced because of the advances of
science. Everybody seems too busy to simply look over their shoulder,
so to say, and behold the vast vistas that could unfold for their
future progress if only they could reach out to their fellows, who
are day to day coming ever closer to them by means of the marvellous
advances in communication and scientific and cultural exchanges.

Besides these observations, your logic is
flawed in that if the international agencies are and will continue to
affect mainly our material development, as opposed to the spiritual
side, an official IAL would by that token alone be impeded from
realizing the internal developments you forsee. Whenever an official
IAL has been linked with "official government business"
that pretty much spelled its doom as far as any development is
concerned (Latin). If, as you say creolizations naturally devolve
into unified languages, why are there dead languages? Under these
circumstaces, can anyone claim to have the proper standard for
creating the IAL? Since international endeavours are still in their
infancy, what can be said that defines international acceptability? I
think that the misunderstandings of the moral significance of
language and communication has taught us the hard way, by trial and
error, that an effort is required this time to get our moral
priorities in order and invest the time and effort necessary to learn
the language that can demonstrate that it has been specifically
designed for this purpose. The present and future errors in the
political arena will make people fed up with the vagaries of
rhetoric, and unwilling to accept anything but that which will most
effeciently communicate their hopes and aspirations.

L A N G O

"Language Organisation"

L angue

L anguage

L engua

A uxiliaire

A uxiliary

A uxiliar

N eutre

N eutral

N eutral

G lobale

G lobal

G lobal

O rganique

O rganic

O rganica

A FULLY DEMOCRATIC APPROACH TOWARDS

AN INTERNATIONAL AUXILIARY LANGUAGE

INITIALLY BASED ON REFORMED ENGLISH

by

Robert Craig & Antony Alexander

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

" E P L U
R I B U S U N
U M "

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* *

First Published in 1996 by

LANGO, PO Box 141, Douglas, Isle of
Man, IM99 1ZQ, U.K.

&copy; Robert Craig & Antony Alexander 1997

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 0-9529446-0-X

Revised 1998

For this 1998 Internet edition we have taken the opportunity to
correct a handful of factual and typographical errors and to remedy a
few infelicities of style and/or punctuation. Apart from these minor
changes, and rewrites at the end of Chapter 8 and in the middle of
Chapter 20, the text and layout are as in the first edition.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

ADDITIONAL NOTE, 2001

In the process of posting LANGO on to this new site an opportunity
was taken to bring the text up to date and effect a few other minor
changes. There are no plans for a second edition of LANGO.

LANG53
(ninth edition, Feb. 2001)

is a continuation of LANGO in a less-anglicised form.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Key

This publication is principally aimed at the general reader who may
be unacquainted with basic linguistic terminology and symbols. For
this reason, references, footnotes and the International Phonetic
Alphabet are omitted and a glossary is
included at the back.

[ ]
identifies letters on the
page
/ / indicates their pronunciation.

For example, [sc] = /sh/ (4th para. of Chapter 1) means that the
digraph "sc" (in Old English) is pronounced "sh"
as in "she"; likewise /dh/ and /th/ (6th para. of Chapter
2) represent sounds - the initial consonant phonemes in
"that" and "thin".

Preface

The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel reminds us that the notion
of a universal language has existed for a very long time. There have
been numerous candidates including Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite,
Babylonian, Persian, Aramaic, Greek and Latin in the West; and
Sanskrit, Pali and Chinese in the East.

The motto of the U.S.A. is reproduced above to signify the goal of
global language unification - which no doubt will be ultimately
realised through an international auxiliary language. The authors of
the Constitution of the United States would have been mindful of
Latin as the most successful universal language when they chose this
aphorism - linking what would become the foremost English-speaking
country with the Roman civilisation of antiquity.

For almost two thousand years Latin had played the role of common
language to the known world, but the founders of the American
Republic would have known it as a long-unchanged predominately
written language used by scholars. At that time, French was still the
accepted universal language of culture and diplomacy, but subsequent
events, influenced by the failure of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in
Scotland, conspired to pass the mantle of the international auxiliary
language on to English - which still retains it, though with less
than wholehearted support from other language groups.

Indeed, the unwillingness of the great powers to agree upon one of
their own languages for use as a common tongue led to the concept of
a politically neutral and orthographically consistent artificial
language. The past 150 years have seen numerous attempts to construct
such a language from familiar elements like common word-roots.
Esperanto has remained pre-eminent among these constructed languages
but has failed to correct serious defects of grammar and vocabulary.

As we have seen in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, a shared
language is no guarantor of peace; but it does allow a wider
understanding of the issues, so that the cause of problems may be
identified and rooted out. With the world facing an unprecedented
range of potential disasters, from terrorism to ecological breakdown,
the need for a universal language to facilitate co-operation has
never been greater.

Moreover, unmistakable signs of progress towards a lasting peace and
harmonious civilisation are evident throughout the world, inseparable
from the remarkable 20th Century advances in standardisation, in all
branches of arts and sciences, in religious understanding, and in
education. This outpouring of knowledge, though pictured by a global
media, can really only be shared through the use of language. A
common tongue may not be the whole answer, but is certainly part of it.

Introduction

The present account attempts to promote our belief that a reformed
version of the English language, prepared according to democratic
procedures, would now be the best starting-point for a planned
international auxiliary language.

In theory there are two strands of thought here: the concept of an
international auxiliary language, and the idea of English spelling
reform. Hitherto, these causes have usually been treated separately -
an artificial auxiliary language on one hand, and proposals to
improve English for use within the English-speaking world on the
other - but in practice they are already inseparably combined in the
form of the pre-eminent multinational status of the English language.

The following 21 chapters build upon this realisation by advocating
the orthographic reform of an offspring of English to an
international standard, the substitution of words from other
languages, and the possible incorporation of certain rationalised
grammatical forms pioneered by the creoles. The intention is to
initiate an empirical process of reform towards a revised version of
English, not only for everyday usage, but also for the attention of
the globally representative committee of linguists that will
eventually be appointed to choose the international auxiliary language.

The cost of translation between increasingly interdependent language
groups might well force the convention of this body of experts sooner
rather than later. Currently it would have to choose between a
traditional, organic, "natural" language such as English,
Spanish, Russian, Arabic or Farsi, and one of the rationalised but
limited constructed languages such as Esperanto or Glosa. We are
offering proposals towards a third alternative which would
incorporate and harmonise the essential qualities of both national
and artificial tongues.

The suggestions in Chapter 19 are offered as concrete examples in the
hope of stimulating discussion. The result of such schemes would be
perfectly comprehensible to English speakers, at least for a
considerable period of time, though the spelling would be different
from the start. Moreover, a language so revised would always be an
auxiliary - at least in name - so traditional varieties of English
could remain in their present roles as long as demand for them continued.

It is all very well to set out the linguistic requirements of a world
language, and project a path from an existing tongue towards it, but
the exercise is merely academic unless various cultural phenomena
expressed through language are taken into consideration. One of these
is the now well-established democratic point of view which would
challenge the primacy, though not at all the validity, of
"autocratic" and "objective scientific"
approaches to language reform.

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chapter 1

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