International Language | Page 4

Milan. Indeed, it is at
these points of international contact that language is a real bar, actually
preventing much intercourse that would otherwise have taken place,
rather than in business, which is organized in view of the difficulty.
Then there is the whole realm of scientific and learned literature--work
of which the accessibility to all concerned is of the first importance, but
is often hindered because a translation into one language does not pay,
or, if made, only reaches a limited public. Such bars to freedom of
interchange cannot be reckoned in money; but modern economics
recognizes the personal and social factor, and any obstacle to research
is certainly a public loss.
But important as are these various spheres of action, an even wider
international contact of thought and feeling is springing up in our days.
Democracy, science, and universal education are producing everywhere
similarity of institutions, of industry, of the whole organization of life.
Similarity of life will breed community of interests, and from this arises
real converse--more give and take in the things that matter, less purely
superficial dealings of the guide-book or conversation-manual type.

(2) "Business," meaning commerce, in so far as it is international, may
at present be carried on mainly in half a dozen of the principal
languages of Western Europe. Even so, their multiplicity is vexatious.
But outside the world of business other languages are entering the field,
and striving for equal rights. The tendency is all towards self-assertion
on the part of the nationalities that are beginning a new era of national
life and importance. The language difficulty in the Austrian Empire
reflects the growing self-consciousness of the Magyars. Everywhere
where young peoples are pushing their rights to take equal rank among
the nations of the world, the language question is put in the forefront.
The politicians of Ireland and Wales have realized the importance of
language in asserting nationality, but such engineered
language-agitation offers but a feeble reflex of the vitality of the
question in lands where the native language is as much in use for all
purposes as is English in England. These lands will fight harder and
harder against the claims to supremacy of a handful of Western
intruders. A famous foreign philologist,[1] in a report on the subject
presented to the Academy of Vienna, notes the increasing tendency of
Russian to take rank among the recognized languages for purposes of
polite learning. He is well placed to observe. With Russia knocking at
the door and Hungary waiting to storm the breach, what tongue may
not our descendants of the next century have to learn, under pain of
losing touch with important currents of thought? It is high time
something were done to standardize means of transmission. Owing to
political conditions, there are linguistically disintegrating forces at
work, which are at variance with the integrating forces of natural
tendency.
[1]Prof. Shuchardt
From an economical point of view, a considerable amount of time,
effort, and money must be unreproductively invested in overcoming the
"language difficulty." In money alone the amount must run into
thousands of pounds yearly. Among the unreproductive investments
are--the employment of foreign correspondence clerks, the time and
money spent upon the installation of educational plant for their
production, the time and money spent upon translations and interpreters

for the proceedings of international conferences and negotiations, the
time devoted by professors and other researchers (often nonlinguists in
virtue of their calling) to deciphering special treatises and learned
periodicals in languages not their own.[1]
[1]These are some of the actual visible losses owing to the presence of
the language difficulty. No one can estimate the value of the losses
entailed by the absence of free intercourse due to removable linguistic
barriers. Potential (but at present non-realized) extension of goodwill,
swifter progress, and wider knowledge represent one side of their value;
while consequent non-realized increase in volume of actual business
represents their value in money. The negative statement of absence of
results from intercourse that never took place affords no measure of
positive results obtainable under a better system.
The tendency of those engaged in advancing material progress, which
consists in the subjection of nature to man's ends, is to adapt more and
more quickly their methods to changing conditions. Has the world yet
faced in a business-like spirit the problem of wiping out wastage on
words?
Big industrial concerns scrap machinery while it is yet perfectly
capable of running and turning out good work, in order to replace it by
newer machinery, capable of turning out more work in the same time.
Time is money. Can the busy world afford a language difficulty?
(3) The proposition that it is economically sounder to carry on
international intercourse in one easy language than in a large number of
hard ones rests upon the principle