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A_FULLY_DEMOCRATIC_APPROACH_TOWARDS
by
Robert Craig & Antony Alexander
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First published 1996 by:
Revised 1997, 1998
KEY
INITIALLY_BASED_ON_REFORMED_ENGLISH
"E PLURIBUS UNUM"
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LANGO, PO Box 141, Douglas, Isle of Man,
IM99 1ZQ, U.K.
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-9529446-0-X
Published on these web pages by permission
This publication is principally aimed at the general reader who may be unacquainted with basic linguistic terminology and symbols. For this reason, references, footnotes and the International Phonetic Alphabet are omitted and a glossary is included at the back.
[ ] identifies letters on the page.
/ / indicates their pronunciation.
For example, [sc] = /sh/ (near the middle of page 5) means
that the digraph "sc" (in Old English) is pronounced "sh" as Click here to return to World Language Program Home Page
CONTENTS
The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel reminds us that the
notion of a universal language has existed for a very long
time. There have been numerous candidates including Sumerian,
Akkadian, Hittite, Babylonian, Persian, Aramaic, Greek and
Latin in the West; and Sanskrit, Pali and Chinese in the East.
The motto of the U.S.A. is reproduced on the first page to
signify the goal of global language unification - which no
doubt will be ultimately realised through an international
auxiliary language. The authors of the Constitution of the
United States would have been mindful of Latin as the most
successful universal language when they chose this aphorism -
linking what would become the foremost English-speaking
country with the Roman civilisation of antiquity.
For almost two thousand years Latin had played the role of
common language to the known world, but the founders of the
American Republic would have known it as a long-unchanged
predominately written language used by scholars. At that time,
French was still the accepted universal language of culture
and diplomacy, but subsequent events, influenced by the
failure of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, conspired
to pass the mantle of the international auxiliary language on
to English - which still retains it, though with less than
wholehearted support from other language groups.
Indeed, the unwillingness of the great powers to agree upon
one of their own languages for use as a common tongue led to
the concept of a politically neutral and orthographically
consistent artificial language. The past 150 years have seen
numerous attempts to construct such a language from familiar
elements like common word-roots. Esperanto has remained
pre-eminent among these constructed languages but has
failed to correct serious defects of grammar and vocabulary.
As we have seen in Northern Ireland and former Yugoslavia, a
shared language is no guarantor of peace; but it does allow a
wider understanding of the issues, so that the cause of
problems may be identified and rooted out. With the world
facing an unprecedented range of potential disasters, from
terrorism to ecological breakdown, the need for a universal
language to facilitate co-operation has never been greater.
Moreover, unmistakable signs of progress towards a lasting
peace and harmonious civilisation are evident throughout the
world, inseparable from the remarkable 20th Century advances
in standardisation, in all branches of arts and sciences, in
religious understanding, and in education. This outpouring of
knowledge, though pictured by a global media, can really only
be shared through the use of language. A common tongue may not
be the whole answer, but is certainly part of it.
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The present account attempts to promote our belief that a
reformed version of the English language, prepared according
to democratic procedures, would now be the best
starting-point for a planned international auxiliary language.
In theory there are two strands of thought here: the concept
of an international auxiliary language, and the idea of
English spelling reform. Hitherto, these causes have usually
been treated separately - an artificial auxiliary language on
one hand, and proposals to improve English for use within the
English-speaking world on the other - but in practice they are
already inseparably combined in the form of the pre-eminent
multinational status of the English language.
The following 20 chapters build upon this realisation by
advocating the orthographic reform of an offspring of English
to an international standard, the substitution of words from
other languages, and the possible incorporation of certain
rationalised grammatical forms pioneered by the creoles. The
intention is to initiate an empirical process of reform
towards a revised version of English, not only for everyday
usage, but also for the attention of the globally
representative committee of linguists that will eventually
be appointed to choose the international auxiliary language.
The cost of translation between increasingly interdependent
language groups might well force the convention of this body
of experts sooner rather than later. Currently it would have
to choose between a traditional, organic, "natural" language
such as English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic or Farsi, and one of
the rationalised but limited constructed languages such as
Esperanto or Glosa. We are offering proposals towards a third
alternative which would incorporate and harmonise the
essential qualities of both national and artificial tongues.
The suggestions in Chapters 18 & 19 are offered as concrete
examples in the hope of stimulating discussion. The result of
such schemes would be perfectly comprehensible to English
speakers, at least for a considerable period of time, though
the spelling would be different from the start. Moreover, a
language so revised would always be an auxiliary - at least in
name - so traditional varieties of English could remain in
their present roles as long as demand for them continued.
It is all very well to set out the linguistic requirements of
a world language, and project a path from an existing tongue
towards it, but the exercise is merely academic unless various
cultural phenomena expressed through language are taken into
consideration. One of these is the now well-established
democratic point of view which would challenge the primacy,
though not at all the validity, of "autocratic" and "objective
scientific" approaches to language reform.
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