In the Land of Invented Languages

projects, and the enthusiasm for them, began falling off in the 1930s, and by the end of the war the era of the international language was over.

There were a few reasons for this. One was the rise of a new lingua franca, on a scale more global than any had been before—English. The era of the international language coincided with the greatest period of growth and consolidation in the British Empire. English was spread to every continent. And Britain’s position at the center of the Industrial Revolution ensured that wealth, status, and power became associated with English. The rising power of the United States during this time added fuel to the English fire, and it soon took over as the primary engine of spread.

In some ways, the noticeable expansion of English was good for the international language movement. The language inventors, looking at the growth of English, saw a threat to their own national languages (most of them were not native English speakers) and worked that much harder to convince the world that a universal neutral language was needed. They found a sympathetic ear. The most active international language supporters were in France and Germany—countries whose languages had the most to lose from the encroachment of English (French was losing its position as the primary language of diplomacy, and German as the primary language of science).

However, in most ways, the advance of English was very bad for the international language movement. The more common reaction was to stick up not for an invented neutral language but for your own home language, as France did in meetings of the League of Nations. Another alternative was to just accept English as the new lingua franca, as Sweden and Norway did in those same meetings. (Denmark wanted Ido.)

By the beginning of the 1920s, English had accumulated a heap of advantages—economic power, political power, large numbers of speakers—but it was not the only potential world language in town. French, Portuguese, Russian, and other colonial languages also enjoyed such advantages (though none on as grand a scale). However, by the end of the 1920s, English had added to its arsenal even more compelling advantages: jazz, radio, Hollywood. It became the language of a new, media-driven popular culture. It was the lingua franca not just of elite pursuits —diplomacy, business, science, belles lettres—but of good ol' entertainment. It swaggered around with a gum- cracking friendly confidence, shaking hands and winning people over.

It also seemed to already possess many of the qualities that the language inventors were after. When Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, son of an Austro-Hungarian father and a Japanese mother, founded the Paneuropean Union in 1923, he proposed that English be the language of its administration, claiming that the “ease with which the English language may be learned, and its intermediate position between the Germanic and the Romance language groups, predestine it to the position of a natural Esperanto.”

The 1920s was the last decade of vigor in the second era of language invention. Though a few international language projects continued to crop up every year (as they still do today), even the language inventors were turning toward English. These inventors accepted English as an international language, but thought it could be made into a better international language by getting rid of some of its messy inconsistencies.

Some focused exclusively on spelling reform, as the Swede Robert Zachrisson did in his Anglic (1930):

Forskor and sevn yeerz agoe our faadherz braut forth on this kontinent a nue naeshon, konseevd in liberty, and dedicated to the propozishon that aul men ar kreaeted eequal.

 

Others sought to regularize the grammatical irregularities, as Ruby Olive Foulk did in her Amxrikai Spek (1937):

Pronouns and verbs:

Plurals:

man, mans

Comparatives:

good, gooder, goodest

Other regularizations:

Frenchman, Americaman, Italiman, Mexicoman historiman, scienceman, artman, musicman

 

The best-known project of this kind was C. K. Ogden’s Basic English, first published in 1930. Ogden was a Cambridge-educated editor, writer, translator, and mischief maker. As a student, he opposed compulsory attendance at chapel and, with a few of his like-minded friends, founded a group called the Heretics Society, where he honed his skills in questioning authority and challenging dogma. He supported progressive social causes like women’s rights and birth control, and generally enjoyed being on the wrong side of stuffy propriety. At his own request, his entry in Who’s Who says that he spent 1946–48 “bedeviled by officials.”

Basic English was his proposal for an international language based on a reduction of English to 850 words. Though he believed in spelling reform, he was practical enough to see how unlikely it was to be accepted (he called it “a problem waiting for a Dictator”), and instead tried as much as possible to build his Basic vocabulary around words that presented “no special difficulty.” He claimed that of the 850 words he had chosen, “less than a hundred involve wanton violations of orthographical decency.” He also objected to irregular plurals and past-tense forms, blaming their persistent existence on a dastardly cabal of “printers, lexicographers, and schoolmasters.” However, realizing that an English that looked like English was more likely to succeed, he left the grammar alone.

Instead, he simplified the language by doing away with words like “disembark,” “tolerate,” and “remove” and replacing them with “get off a ship,” “put up with,” and “take away.” In this way, he eliminated almost all verbs—including “to eat” (“have a meal”) and “to want” (“have a desire”)—from his list of 850, leaving them to be expressed with what he called “operators” like “get,” “put,” “take,” “come,” “go,” “have,” and “give.” Ogden believed that such a recasting not only made English easier to learn and understand but also had the potential to cure our minds of some bad habits. He believed that much of the world’s troubles could be traced to the negative effects of what he called “Word Magic,” the illusion that a thing exists “out there,” just because we have a word for it. When we are under the spell of Word Magic, we fail to see that “sin” is a moral fiction, “ideas” are “psychological fictions,” “rights” are “legal fictions,” and “cause” is “a physical fiction.” (He also feels compelled to pick on “swing” by pointing out that it is a “saxophonic fiction.”) Word Magic makes us lazy; we don’t question the assumptions that are hidden in words, and so we allow ourselves to be manipulated by “press, politics, and pulpit.” Ogden thought Basic English could work as an antidote to Word Magic by forcing people to express themselves in simple terms, thus forcing them to really think about what they are saying.

Winston Churchill, himself a tireless advocate of plain language, was a fan of Basic English and made efforts to promote it. He thought it could help create a different kind of empire, one based not on “taking away other people’s provinces or land or grinding them down in exploitation” but on a shared language. He encouraged the BBC to take it to the airwaves and teach it far and wide.

He also appealed to President Roosevelt to join the cause of Basic English. Roosevelt promised to look into the matter, but he couldn’t resist teasing that Churchill’s inspiring speech about offering his “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” to his country may have been less effective if he “had been able to offer the British people only blood,