The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1912-05-10
Esperanto
By Richard H. Geoghegau, Fairbanks, A

A language, simpler and more
perfect than any existing tongue,
by meals of which people of all ma
tionalities might readily communi-
cate one with another, has been the
dream of scientific men for centur-
les and numberless attempts have
been made to devise such form of
speech.
In the year 1887, Louis Zamen-
hoff, a physician residing at War
saw, Poland, presented to the world
the result of his studies along this
line wherein, profiting by the la
bors of his predecessors and avoid
ing, as far as might be, the errors
into which they had fallen, he
strove to combine scientific accura-
cy with the utmost practical SIM
plicity. DR.. Zamenhoff styled his
scheme "la lingvo internacia" (the
international language), but it has
since become universally known by
the shorter name Esperanto" At
ter an existence of over a quarter
of a century, during which it has
been subjected to innumerable at
lacks from the supporters of rival
systems and has undergone the Sc
verest criticism, Esperanto has, by
its intrinsic merits and proven ca
pacity to meet any and all demands
made upon it as medium of COM
munication, attained permanent
place among the great achievements
of our time. A few weeks study
will suffice to enable anyone, who
has a moderate acquaintance with
the elements Of English grammar,
to read anything written in Esper-
anto, and the ability to write and
converse in the language may be ac-
quired in hundredth part of the
time necessary to reach like pro-
ficiency in any of the natural
tongues. Esperanto has received
the highest commentator from
some of the leading educators of
the world and many universities
and other public bodies are giving
it their support. To the last year
ly congress of Esperantists no less
than sixteen governments sent Off
cial delegates, the United States
War Department and Bureau of
Education being among those rep
resented.
The principle upon which Esper-
anto is based is "the greatest ease
of requirement for the greatest
number of people, In studying
the vocabularies of the more impor-
tant modern languages Zamenhof
found that, in many cases, the same
or understanding word-stem is
used by four or five different ma
lions to designate the same or
closely related object; for instance,
the word-stem "telephone"-wit
unimportant variations in spelling
is found in every European Ian
guage. The idea at once occurred
to him that, by utilizing this al
ready existing material, he might
avoid, to a very great extent, the
necessity of inventing arbitrary
new word-stems, and as such ex-
listing word-stems would be per-
fectly familiar to millions of people
of several different nationalities,
and that they would not need to
learn them anew, an immense
amount of time and labor would be
saved by those learning Lis Ian
guage. In accordance with this
self-evidert, but Heretofore unex-
plotted idea, the Esperanto vocabu-
larry was selected, and following ont
the theory, it was assumed that it
was more logical and economical to
choose stem known to four or five
nations rather than one common
only to two or three, wheneve. such
stem could be found or, ac it has
been otherwise expressed, to give
the preference in all cases to words
possessing the maximum of 'inter-
nationality"
Reviewing the word-material thus
accumulated, it was noticed that
very frequently, words expressing
related ideas were quite unlike in
sound. For instance, we have faith
er,a brother, son, rooster, on the
one hand, and the entirely different
words, mother. sister, daughter,
hen, tor the feminine form of the
same objects. In the same way.
contraries like light, darkness:
good, evil; love, hate; deep, shall
low; are indicated by words quite
unlike in sound. Zamenhof con-
~ceivsd the idea that if we were to
say, father-ess, brother-ess, son-ess.