In this way all that part of language-study which tends to be dead weight in teaching the young is got rid of in one fell swoop, and this though the language taught and learnt is a highly developed instrument for reading, writing, speaking, and literary expression. This dead weight includes most of the unintelligent memorizing, all exceptions, all complicated systems of declension and conjugation, all irregular comparison of adjectives and adverbs, all syntactical subtleties (cf. the sequence of tenses, oratio obliqua, the syntax of subordinate clauses, in Latin; and the famous conditional sentences, with the no less notorious ου and μη in Greek), all conflicting and illogical uses of auxiliaries (cf. être and avoir in French, and sein and haben in German), besides a host of other old enemies. Some of these things of course are not wholly memory work, especially the syntax, which involves a real feeling for language. But these would be much better postponed until one easy foreign language has been learnt thoroughly. Every multilinguist knows that each foreign language is easier to learn than the last. With a perfectly regular artificial language you can make so much progress in a short time that you can use it freely for practical purposes. Yet it does not come of itself, like the mother-tongue. This free manipulation of a consciously acquired language is the very best training for forming a feeling for language—far better than weary stumbling over the baby stages of a hard language. When you can read, write, and speak one very easy artificial language, which you have had to learn as a foreign one, then is the time when you can profitably tackle the difficulties of natural language, appreciating the niceties of syntax, and realizing, by comparison with your normal key-language, in what points natural languages are merely arbitrary and have to be learnt by heart. Those who have early conquered the grammar and syntax of any foreign language, but have had to put in years of hard (largely memory) work before they could write or speak, e.g., Latin Latin, French French, or German German, will realize the saving effected, when they are told that Esperanto has no idiom, no arbitrary usage. The combination of
words is not governed, as in natural languages, by tradition (which tradition has to be assimilated in the sweat of the brow), but is free, the only limits being common sense, common grammar, and lucidity.
To those who do not know Esperanto it may seem a dark saying that language riders can be worked out in the same way as geometrical ones. To understand this some knowledge of the language is necessary (for sample problems see [Appendix A]). But for the sake of making the argument intelligible it may here be stated that one of the labour-saving, vocabulary-saving devices of Esperanto is the employment of a number of suffixes with fixed meaning, that can be added to any root. Thus:
| The | suffix | -ej- | denotes | place. |
| " | " | -il- | " | instrument. |
| " | " | -ig- | " | causation. |
| Final -o denotes a noun. | ||||
Given this and the root san- (cf. Lat. sanus), containing the idea of health, form words for "to heal" (san‑ig‑i = to cause to be well); "medicine" (san‑ig‑il‑o = instrument of healing); "hospital" (san‑ig‑ej‑o = place of healing), etc.
This is merely an example. The combinations and permutations are infinite; they give a healthy knowledge of word-building, and can be used in putting whole pages of carefully prepared idiomatic English into Esperanto. Practical experience shows that, given the necessary crude roots, the necessary suffixes, and a one-page grammar of the Esperanto language, an intelligent person can produce in Esperanto a translation of a page of idiomatic English, not Ollendorfian phrases, without having learnt Esperanto.
(b) Experience also shows that the intelligent one thoroughly enjoys himself while doing so; and having done so, experiences a thrill of exhilaration almost amounting to awe at having made a better translation into a language he has never learnt than he could make into a national language that he has learnt for years, e.g. Latin, French, or German.
And what is exhilaration in the dry tree may be sustained working keenness in the green. The stimulus to the young mind of progress swift and sure is immense. A child who has learnt to read, write, and speak Esperanto in six months, as is very possible within the natural limits of power of expression imposed by his age, not only has a sound working knowledge of grammatical categories and forms, which will stand him in good stead in subsequent language-learning; he has also a quite different attitude of mind—une tout autre mentalité, to use recent jargon—towards foreign languages. His only experience of learning one has been that he did so with the object and result of being able to read, write, and speak it within a reasonable time. "By so much the greater and more resounding the slump into actuality," you will say, "when he comes to grapple with his next." Perhaps. But even so, the habit of acquiring fresh words and forms for immediate use must surely tell—not to mention that he will incidentally have acquired a very useful Romance vocabulary, and a wholly admirable French lucidity of construction.
(3) And this question of lucidity brings us to the third great educational advantage of Esperanto. Its opponents—without having ever learnt it to see—have urged that its preciseness will debauch the literary sense. Surely the exact opposite is the fact. Le style c'est l'homme, and the essence of true style is that a man should give accurate expression to his thoughts. The French wit, satirizing vapid fine writing, said that language was given to man to enable him to conceal his thought. There is no more potent instrument for obscuring or concealing thought than the ready-made phrase. Take up many a piece of journalese or other slipshod writing, and note how often the conventional phrase or word slips from under the pen, meaning nothing in particular. The very conventionality disguises from writer and reader the confusion or absolute lack of idea it serves to cloak. Both are lulled by the familiar sound of the set phrase or word and glide easily over them. On the other hand, in using a language in which you construct a good deal of your vocabulary