Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education | Page 6

six or seven days after he took it up, and he declared
that Esperanto ought to be introduced into the educational system of the
country. He was professor of the Latin language at the Oxford
University. He declared Esperanto ought to be introduced into the
schools, into the kindergartens, where children of 5 years of age should
begin with Esperanto, and I hold with him, because if children were to
learn Esperanto it would be of help to them in their English. It is
extremely easy to learn and can be learned in a very pleasant fashion,
because it is so scientific and so simple. (5)
If children understood Esperanto, they would understand English better,
and much of the time we waste in trying to teach them English would
be profitably spent, for they would have something to go upon,
something to compare English with, and that something so scientific
and so logical as Esperanto. Take, for instance, analysis. I will not say
it is difficult but I will say it is impossible to analyze an English word,
because every word can be so many things. It can generally be an
adjective, a noun, a verb, a preposition, a conjunction, and an
interjection, that is, the same word, without any structural change, so
that it is difficult for a child to discriminate and label the word. Take
the word "benefited." That might be used in the past tense (I benefited),
or as a past participle: (We may have benefited), and it is impossible
for a child to sense the difference, and such confusion occurs to a great
extent with most words in the English language.
I am a teacher of languages and have done nothing all my life but study

and impart languages. If I had to teach you gentlemen, say, French
upon the theory that you were going on an important mission this day
12 months, and that it was absolutely necessary that you should speak
French (or any other language that I could impart you) by that time, I
would say it was impossible for a number of busy men to acquire a new
language inside one year; that I could not guarantee useful results, but
that if you would take two months to start with for the learning of
Esperanto, then I might be able to teach you the other language in the
rest of the time, because Esperanto is the best foundation for learning
any language. And, as I say, an English-speaking student, be he young
or old, knowing Esperanto would more easily distinguish the parts of
speech in English and possess a real and valuable "linguistic feeling"
(which he now entirely lacks) because of his Esperanto.
The CHAIRMAN. Is Esperanto made up of the derivatives of the
various languages?
Prof. CHRISTEN. I will explain that, if you like, in a very few words.
Esperanto is the work of a Polish scholar, Dr. Ludovico L. Zamenhof,
who started with an inspired mind. I should say he was a great genius.
He had studied a large number of languages, for, as a boy, nay, as a
child in the cradle, he spoke four languages, because so many different
languages were actually spoken in his home town. Then at school he
learned several more and it is due to this polyglotic experience and the
evils caused daily by Babel in his own circle that as a child, almost, he
conceived the idea of constructing a language that should at once and
for all time put an end to a foolish and intolerable situation. He must
have been inspired in what he did, because he at once hit upon the only
possible solution of the thing, and he hit upon it without knowing that
scores of others, older and more learned, had tried the same thing and
failed. His first stroke of genius was in the composing of his entire
vocabulary by borrowing all his words from well-known sources. With
the true insight of the genius he decided that the words of an artificial
international language must be taken from international sources, and so
he first of all hit upon the good idea to use first of all those words
which are already common to most languages, and there are a great
many more such words than we have dreamed of. He decided that that

should be the starting point of his world tongue, because everybody
would know those words to start with. Take the names of animals and
produce that come from certain parts of the world and carry their names
with them, such as elephant, tiger, lion, camel, and a great many more.
Take the rose: the rose is a rose in every language; so an orange, a
lemon, a nut, and tea, coffee, and tobacco, etc., are the