The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-07-23
Facts Regarding Esperanto


 T should like, if you will permit to present few facts regarding Esperanto for the information of your correspon- dent, N B. M. In the first place, Espe- ranto is an artificial language created by Dr. l.. L. zamenhof, a Hebrew and native of Bialostock, Poland and now in Warsaw. It is not intended to supersede the national Cor naturaD languages, but to supplement them as a medium of in tercommunication between people of diff ferent nations and tongues; it therefore would be more correctly described as an international auxiliary instead of a uni- versal language.
 Tn it's construction Esperanto is strict ly scientific and it's roots. selected from the words most common to the various European languages. are in themselves, it might be said, of international char aeter. The entire grammar, which is without exceptions or irregularities. is contained in a set of sixteen rules so brief that they may be and have been many times printed on a post card. There are but sixteen grammatical endings for the student to learn, and what that means can perhaps be better understood when | flection of the verb. The alphabet has l twenty eight letters, each having one and only one sound
 l "The language being, therefore, pho- netic It must not be supposed for a moment that Esperanto is dead or even morbund because you see so much less about it in the daily papers and other publications these days than you did a l few years ago. It is much alive but | the intense curiosity which in the first year or so of it's introduction into this country gave occasion for so much news paper attention having been long since satisfied, the propagation of the lan- guage has been allowed to make it's way along less sensational but more stablS and permanent lines. Thousands of busi- ness houses throughout Europe and else where use Esperanto daily in their cor respondence and advertising, and because of it's simplicity and the ease with which l it may be acquired it's uses every year are spreading more and more into other | lines of endeavor. For instance, interna- tional organizations find such language l is just what they need in conducting and reporting their periodic congresses. These are in most cases held successively in quite different parts of the world, and without Esperanto some such medium most of their members have to depend
 upon transations of the proceedings, a method that costs much in time, labor and money, especially when they have to
 be published in several of the national | languages. In fact, member hardly sue | ceeds in mastering the discussions of one | congress before he is called upon to at tend another. By using Esperanto at such congresses a few months previous study makes it possible for any member
 to understand all that is read or said
 and even to take part in the discus l sions.
 "The language has not suffered much from the disapprobation of a few philolo- gists or others who object to it upon purely technical grounds. In fact, like most other things created for the use
 and benefit of mankind it's ultimate test is not that it severely conforms to any
 set of theories of language but that il
 is practicable for the purpose for whicf
 it was created Its simplicity and ease
 of requirement, together with a range
 of expression hardly surpassed by any
 natural language are the qualities upor
 which Esperanto depends for it's sue cess ''K. c. NJ