An international language is an attempt to save the greatest amount of labour and open the widest fields of thought and action to the greatest number.
PART II
HISTORICAL
I
some existing international languages already in partial use
Though the idea of an artificially constructed language to meet the needs of speakers of various tongues seems for some reason to contain something absurd or repellent to the mind of Western Europeans, there have, as a matter of fact, been various attempts made at different times and places to overcome the obvious difficulty in the obvious way; and all have met with a large measure of success.
The usual method of procedure has been quite rough and ready. Words or forms have been taken from a variety of languages, and simply mixed up together, without any scientific attempt at co-ordination or simplification. The resulting international languages have varied in their degree of artificiality, and in the proportions in which they were consciously or semi-consciously compiled, or else adopted their elements ready-made, without conscious adaptation, from existing tongues. But their production, widespread and continuous use, and great practical utility, showed that they arose in response to a felt want. The wonder is that the world should have grown so old without supplying this want in a more systematic way.
Every one has heard of the lingua franca of the Levant. In
India the master-language that carries a man through among a hundred different tribes is Hindustanee, or Urdu. At the outset it represented a new need of an imperial race. It had its origin during the latter half of the sixteenth century under Akbar, and was born of the sudden extension of conquest and affairs brought about by the great ruler. Round him gathered a cosmopolitan crowd of courtiers, soldiers, vassal princes, and followers of all kinds, and wider dealings than the ordinary local petty affairs received a great stimulus. Urdu is a good example of a mix-up language, with a pure Aryan framework developed out of a dialect of the old Hindi. In fact, it is to India very much what Esperanto might be to Europe, only it is more empirical, and not so consciously and scientifically worked out.