Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language
- Автор: Garvía Roberto
- Год: 2015
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language». Краткое содержание книги:
These rumors were corroborated in February 1908, when Jespersen re- ceived a letter from Couturat that was originally addressed to de Beaufront but put in the wrong envelope. The content of this letter convinced Jespersen that Ido was the collaborative undertaking of Couturat and de Beaufront. Jespersen had supported Couturat, and now he felt he had been manipulated.
Incensed, Jespersen informed Ostwald about this double game and asked both Couturat and de Beaufront to come out in open.14 It took de Beaufront four months to come forward. In his public confession, and in order to save Couturat's reputation, de Beaufront assumed the entire responsibility for Ido's authorship. This satisfied Jespersen. As he retrospectively explained, progress and scientific advancement were more important than occasional upheavals in personal relations: "Despite my misgivings about the per- sons involved, I did feel that they were on the right track, in contrast to the bullheaded stand which the Esperantists were putting up against any im- provement of the language."15 And to some extent, it also satisfied the Espe- rantists. They had unveiled de Beaufront, the Judas of Esperantism, a villain whose last service to the movement was to unite all Esperantist against him and Ido.
Following the break with the Esperantists, the Idists' Permanent Com- mission set out to polish the new language according to Couturat's ideas about word formation rules, which were going to give Ido the highest possible de- gree of logicality and perfection. As he saw it: "There is only one ideal inter- national language, being the current projects more or less proximate realizations of this ideal language . . . and [subsequently] dialects of the same [ideal] language."16 Translated into practical terms, this search for higher de- grees of perfection involved a permanent reform process, and, ultimately, a language in constant motion. Hence, rather than a standardization battle dominated by increasing returns mechanisms, Couturat and most Ido lead- ers perceived themselves working their way in a diminishing returns scenario where the best technology necessarily crowds out competing designs. In the words of a leading Idist:
The bicycle, the motor car, and the typewriting machine have undergone successive improvements till finally they have attained to their more or less definite form. We see from this that when inven- tions have once reached a certain degree of suitability they are not afterwards easily replaced by others. There is, therefore, only one adequate criterion of the stability of an international language, namely, that of suitability or adaptation to its purpose, and we main- tain that it is only by means of continuous reforms and improvements that it will succeed in satisfying this criterion and finally attain stability.17
To implement this program, Idists launched Progreso, their official jour- nal, in March 1908. That same year they established the central organization of the movement, the Uniono di l'Amiki de la Linguo Internaciona (Union of the Friends of the International Language). The Uniono was composed of two bodies, independent from each other: the Academy and the Central Com- mittee. The Academy, composed of twelve to thirteen people, was entrusted to make changes in the language, and its decisions were binding. On its side, the Central Committee, which did not have veto power over the Academy's decisions, had to financially assist the latter and organize public relations cam- paigns. More significantly, membership in the Academy was restricted to sci- entists and linguists, while members of the Central Committee had to be elected according to their organizational skills and social status.18 By mid- 1909, both the members of the Academy and the Central Committee were elected by all registered members of the Uniono. Couturat was named secre- tary of the Academy, and Jespersen was president.19
Like members of the old Volapukist Academy, Ido Academy members worked by correspondence. But unlike the Lingva Komitato of the Esperan- tists, the Ido Academy was entrusted to make decisions on behalf of the speak- ers. This was exactly the same mistake that the Volapukists had made and the Esperantists had avoided. By agreeing on the basic properties of the lan- guage at an early stage, and letting speakers to develop the language accord- ing to their communicative needs, the Esperantists had established the mechanism that would allow their language to expand in different directions.
Couturat and leading Idists, on the contrary, were more than happy to reform Ido as they thought it necessary. And they did so at lightning speed, in order to perfect the language as soon as possible. To give an idea of the rate of these changes, the 1914 English reprint of Couturat et al., International Language and Science, first published in 1910, does not include specimens of the original edition, "since the difference between 1910 Ido and that of 1914 onwards is great enough that it may cause confusion for those learning the language."20
This reformist zeal and the philosophy behind it created problems. Not everyone was happy with the changes, or with Couturat's leadership style, sometimes perceived as disingenuous and manipulative.21 For these reasons Ostwald stopped working with him, although he later agreed to be named honorary president of the Uniono.22 Similarly, in 1908, Baudouin de Cour- tenay discontinued his contacts with the Idists, regretting the "fatal conse- quences" of a new movement for the international language ideal.23 Otto
Jespersen, the other prominent linguist in the Ido ranks, and president of the Academy, quit in mid-1910 because of disagreement with Couturat's linguis- tic ideas.24 For the same reasons, the British linguist Paul Hugon, vice-secretary of the Ido Academy, abandoned the movement, as did the German A. Haugg, editor of the Idist journal Internaciona Pioniro.25 More aggravating to Cou- turat was that the Idist journal the International Language changed allegiance to Peano's Latino sine flexione, as had also been the case a year earlier with the Italian Rivista della Lingua Internatiozionale.26
Peano was a particularly menacing rival to Couturat. The fact that Peano was also applying the tools of symbolic logic to create his own artificial lan- guage eroded Couturat's scientifically based legitimacy discourse.27 On top of this, Peano proved to be a tough nut to crack. In 1908 he took over Rosen- bergers ex-Volapukist Academy, changed its name to Academia pro Interlin- gua, and began publishing the journal Discussiones the following year. Both his Academy and journal became instruments to promote Latino sine flex- ione and undermine Ido.28 The confrontation between Couturat and Peano ended a twenty-year professional relationship. Their fight became so acrimo- nious that in the last letters they exchanged, Couturat stopped using French and shifted to Ido, to which Peano counterattacked by using his Latino—an interesting outcome coming from two people who had invented international languages to facilitate communication and understanding.29 By February 1910, they were no longer on speaking terms, much to the chagrin of their com- mon friend Bertrand Russell. As he complained to his longtime confidant Ot- toline Morrel,