Los Angeles herald., 1906-06-10
BY w. C. simkin
Number II


IT. HE learning and the using of Es-
peranto have all the fascinations
of a game.
You are liable, almost any day, to be
met by a stranger who hands you a
leahet with something like this writ
ten across the margin:
mi dezir'as por vi montri al mi kie
mi trov'os hotel'o'n."
The leafiet will bear the heading:
"ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL VO-
CABULARY,"
with these words Immediately follow
ing:
Everything written in the interna-
tional language can be translated by
the help of this vocabulary"
Then you will be ready to get to
work. You will find that mil, dezir'-
desire (as-sign of present tense), por
for, Vi-you, montr'i-to show, alto,
mil Cor me), kie-where, mil, trov'
find (os-sign of future tense: trov'os
shall find). hotel'o-hotel (n-sign of
the objective caSe).
You are at once interested in the dis
coVery that you are talking with a
standin gthe first word of the others
language or of the language by means
of which you are conversing! Evil
IDENTIFY the man wishes you to direct
him to one of the many hotels of Los
Angeles.
You look little further and find that
to answer him all you have to do is to
choose your English words; then look
in the English vocabulary for the cor
roc n inf In. Ion
word and in the gramma tical appendix,
under the respective headings of the
parts of speech you desire to express. "
Suppose you happen to be standing
in front of The Herald office, Chamber
of Commerce building, on Broadway.
You find you can readily answer him
as follows:
If-se; you-vi go-ir' Culture tense
os shall or will go-iro os); south
sud'o; to-al the-la; fve-kvin (ad-
jective termination-a. fifth-kvin'a) /;
street-strato; and-kaj; east-ori-
ento; to-al; theta; one-unu (adjec-
tive termination-a, first-unu'a) /;
street-strat'o; you-vi; come-ven'
future. tense-os, shall or will come
Venos): to-al; the-la; new-nov'a
Alexandria; hotel-hotel'o.
OF course in replying to him you use
only the International words-those
Following the daSheS-and whether you
pronounce them or write them doesn' I
matter. The fact that it is possible SO
to use language at sight is the twen-
tieth century miracle.
Where lies the secret?
In general terms it is traceable to
three leading principles:
By the most skillful use of a very
small proportion of the words employed
is possible to express all the ideas
known to the human mind with but a
small proprtion of the words employed
in any of the existing languages
For examples Since nearly every idea
has it's opposite, suppose we fix upon
some uniform syllable which, being
prefiXed to any given word shall
change the meaning of that word to its
opposite Let this syllable be NAL
Then If bona means good, malbon' a
will mean bad; IL acid'a Is sour, then
NAL acid'a will be sweet; estimi, to es-
teem, gives marestimI to despise; ami
to love, gives malami to hate etc II
| Is hardly exaggeration to say that this
prefix alone might be so used as tC
render nearly half the words of any
known language unnecessary
Every language must make some
provision for the expression of degree
we Frequently have occasion to express
the little of some object or idea with
out going TO the full limit of an oppo-
site. Suppose we affix the syllable "et'
to denote this. Then. IL bird'o Is bird
bird 'et'o win be little bird warm a
warm; yarm'eta, tepid, lukewarm
! mal'varm'a. cold mal'varmeta, cool