Lango

Bahá'u'lláh gives mankind a choice between an existing and a new language for the international auxiliary language (IAL). In reality these alternatives are not as different as one might think, since every prospective existing language has incorporated new words and constructions at various times during its history, and a new language would necessarily contain words and linguistic elements that have proved their worth in existing languages.

The existing language most favoured for the IAL role is English, though its official adoption is by no means the foregone conclusion that many English-speakers anticipate (please see the "Introduction" and/or the opening chapters of "Lango"). English also has a special status within the Bahá'í Faith, of course. For instance, we know that the Guardian translated a large portion of the Bahá'í Writings, as well as Nabil's Dawn-Breakers, into English, that the UHJ conducts most of its proceedings in the language, and that English has been the official language of global Bahá'í conventions such as the Official Opening of the Terraces in May 2001.

Until quite recently, a number of Bahá'ís in the West thought the "existing language" might be Arabic, based on Adib Taherzadeh's comments regarding Bahá'u'lláh's "Tablet of the International Auxiliary Language and Script":

However, the following quotation from "Mahmúd's Diary" - an authentic record of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's utterances - seems to have removed that possibility:

From such passages in the Writings, some have gained the impression that the only requirement is for Esperanto to be promoted. But a careful examination of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's utterances on this subject will show that He also required Esperanto to be revised, as He hinted to the Esperantists of Paris in the above quotation, and stated more explicitly elsewhere (my emphasis):

The problem, of course, is that Esperanto has never been fundamentally revised, or "perfected", as 'Abdu'l-Bahá required. In Chapter 5 of LANGO we offered some reasons for this serious omission. A declining prestige and influence in the world appears to have been the consequence. Moreover, it might seem that the force of Bahá'í encouragement to learn Esperanto has declined in tandem.

In the absence of a fundamental revision of Esperanto, LangX attempts to illustrate the qualities a constructed IAL might be expected to possess. Left deliberately unfinished, it exists solely for the purpose of criticism and discussion. There are many other IALs out there which are better in various ways, but a competition between IALs is really not the point. Now is surely the time for synthesis. As 'Abdu'l-Bahá may well have said in London (see below): "no one person can construct a Universal Language"; on the contrary, He asserted that the IAL must be "formed" or "selected" by an international committee:

Whether the said congress, committee or confederation will choose "one of the existing languages, or a new language made up of words from all the languages" is open to question. Many people still believe that English will be the chosen language, and not without reason: it is certainly the foremost auxiliary language in the world today, whether in terms of geographical spread or global influence. For instance, English has an official status in air and maritime telecommunications, a shared primacy with French as one of the two "working languages" at the United Nations, and the biggest role of any language at international scientific conferences and business conventions. Robert Craig and I examined the current position of English in the first four chapters of LANGO.

However, since the institution choosing the IAL is likely to be secular humanist, with corresponding tendencies towards "political correctness", and away from possible imputations of "élitism", "neo-colonialism" etc., there is every chance that it will choose neither English nor any other major existing language, but rather "a new language made up of words from all the languages". A well-known paragraph in 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London addresses the linguistic constitution of the latter alternative:

'Abdu'l-Bahá in London has been referred to as "Pilgrim's Notes"; and since the Universal House of Justice has approved the Bahá'í Publishing Trust's statement that the translation of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's words cannot be verified, because the original is no longer available, this is fair comment. However, in view of this quotation's potential importance, it might also be borne in mind that the expression "Pilgrim's Notes" covers a spectrum of material from the dubious to the very probably authentic, and that 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London was published in 1912, well within 'Abdu'l-Bahá's lifetime, and was presumably the object of close attention, given that not much Bahá'í literature was then translated into English. Moreover, Lady Blomfield, the compiler of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London and Paris Talks, was an intimate friend of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and His family, as testified by her book "The Chosen Highway". Did anyone object at the time that the text of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London was inauthentic in any way?

Also, there is the following extract from a letter by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab, dated 17 December 1912:

One problem with an unrevised Esperanto is that it is explicitly an auxiliary language: Esperanto was designed to be an adjunct to the various mother tongues, and remains so in concept. But Bahá'u'lláh makes it clear that the ultimate goal is for everyone to speak one rather than two languages:

The transition from two languages (i.e. the multitude of mother-tongues, each paired with the IAL), to a single global tongue for every person on Earth in the distant future, is the central theme of the World Language Program, LangX, The IAL Hierarchy etc.. Hopefully the errors and inadequacies of our approach will spark others to greater endeavours and insights.

The World Language Program promotes the selection or formation of an international auxiliary language and script (IAL) according to scientific criteria by a globally representative congress or committee. We envisage the IAL as the first step towards a single world language and script in the distant future. The World Language Program is also pursuing a number of related projects including online translation and electronic databases. Construction of the World Language Program Universal Language Institute at Horning's Mills, Ontario, Canada is scheduled to begin in 2005.

2: Assuming a globally representative congress or committee could agree on an IAL, wouldn't it be an unwieldy compromise? Wouldn't a functionable language require the coherent vision that only an inspired individual could provide?

No single person can possibly know enough to construct the IAL. The history of the movement has demonstrated this, though Schleyer, Zamenhof and others deserve every plaudit for their valiant attempts. Informal collaborations have fared no better: they have always split on controversial issues.

A congress or committee solves these problems by vesting authority in its unanimous or majority opinion. Of course there is a danger in this too, so a properly constituted arrangement is necessary - one which incorporates systematic consultation with all interested parties into the decision-making process. There is no reason, in fact, why the official committee and their consultees should not collaborate for the benefit all concerned.

3: Wouldn't each member of the international committee seek only that the IAL conformed as far as possible to their own language, in whose favour they were likely to be prejudiced, albeit unconsciously?

The common language question has returned to the fore as rising international tensions have raised the tempo and importance of communications. The deepening global recession has also served to move the IAL question up the political agenda. In the context of straitened economic circumstances the increasing cost of translation (and mistranslation) in the world's expanding unions of nation states has come into focus, as has the cost of foreign language teaching in state education systems. International agencies are becoming ever more receptive to the idea that an IAL would begin to eliminate these costs. At some stage in the not-so-distant future an international committee is likely to be appointed and told to get on with it - and its members may have no choice but to give at least as much weight to facility of global communication as to sectional familiarity, i.e. "user-friendliness" for various peoples .

The advance of scientific linguistics is another factor that will help to maintain a proper balance with political interests. A great deal of high-quality research now exists concerning subjects which might be expected to inform and influence the course of IAL discussion and decision-making: comparative grammar and phonology, childhood speech and literacy acquisition etc..

4: Isn't English already the international auxiliary language for all practical purposes?

Not really, though some of its proponents in the media might convey that impression. English does have semi-official status in a few specialised fields, including air and maritime telecommunications, but even there its use is far from universal. Having said that, it's undoubtedly true that English is the leading auxiliary language in the world today, and will continue as such for a long time to come - whatever is decided concerning the IAL. As for English itself being officially selected, we think it most unlikely - for historical political reasons, and because of an irregular spelling system which has proved highly resistant to reform.

Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the pre-eminence of the English language relates more to the current status of English-speaking civilisation than to its inherent qualities. If the dominance of the English-speaking countries - which has arguably lasted from 1815 to the present - were to be superseded, the English language might consequently be expected to go the way of Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic and French. The demise of the British Empire, the relative economic decline of America, the reversion of several ex-colonies to native languages, the establishment of rival languages in former English-speaking heartlands, and the continued political and cultural opposition to the English language from various quarters in several countries - all these are indications that the dethronement of English might already be proceeding.

The following statements are pertinent in this regard, though over a decade old:

........"In 1989 a study conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain concluded: "The real correct understanding of English in all the countries studied is notably inferior to the most pessimistic existing evaluations and our own guesstimates" Van de Sandt, Report in "Initiative Media News Bulletin" (London: Lintas Worldwide, January 1989)

........In 1990 Sir (now Lord) Randolph Quirk, Professor of English at University College in London, put it thus: "Despite the persistent and glib assumptions in Britain and America, we are witnessing a significant relative decline (perhaps even an absolute decline) in the currency of English worldwide. This may come as a surprise to those who think of English as the medium of high-tech skills, international conferences, and professional journals: here indeed continued growth is doubtless the order of the day. But these are relatively slim and specialized lines of communication."

........In 1991 Richard Bailey, Professor of English Language and Literature at the the University of Michigan and Associate Editor of the "Oxford Companion to the English Language" was even more specific: "The proportion of the world's population who regularly use English is 15% - and falling".

5: Esperanto is a perfectly adequate IAL which only needs support. Esperanto's official adoption and consequent implementation through educational systems worldwide would be hastened if sites such as this promoted it.

We believe that the international congress or committee which chooses or forms the IAL will in effect be revising Esperanto. The love and effort put into Esperanto will be realised in the coming IAL, which will be constructed very much upon its basis and inspired by its continuing influence. However, Esperanto as presently constituted looks most unlikely to gain the popular support necessary to become de facto IAL, or even to be officially appointed for the role. The absence of a thorough reform to make Esperanto more globally acceptable must be partly responsible: for instance, Esperanto's grammar is especially difficult for various peoples. There are a number of criticisms of Esperanto on the Internet; this one is probably the most comprehensive.

6: "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet!" Kipling's sentiment remains as true today: cultures are essentially self-contained and will remain so; no more than the most basic IAL will ever be required.

There are two schools of thought here. On the one hand, there are those who believe that, after the IAL is officially instituted, everyone will always and for all time speak at least two languages - the various mother-tongues for domestic consumption and the IAL for international communication. These hold that the primary focus of culture is national or ethnic, but that international agencies are necessary in order to support the requisite level of material civilisation - through trade, tourism, transport, communications, science, peace-keeping and the like. In other words, the international agencies deal in mundanities, whereas the more spiritual side of life - whether found through historic religions, secular philosophies, national treasuries of literature etc. - is not "global" or "international" in any real sense, since it is always linked to a particular culture or tradition.

On the other hand are those who discount the possibility of self-sufficient or autonomous entities communicating indefinitely on a second-hand basis, believing that all languages will eventually merge into a single language by way of an official IAL, and claiming that this process is merely a conscious continuation of what is already occurring. Decades or centuries after the official IAL inauguration, everyone might still learn at least two languages at school, but they would expect the IAL to develop relative to the mother tongues.

They would point to the precedent of pidgins and creoles, inasmuch as pidgins were IALs on a smaller scale, formulated for essentially the same reason - the pertinent fact about pidgins being their tendency to become creolised: a process shown to derive from children learning and using the pidgin as a mother tongue. Thus, although pidgins were originally employed as purely auxiliary trading languages - second languages that nobody used as a mother tongue - children of certain traders, seafarers etc. evidently learned the pidgins as mother tongues, and elaborated them with borrowed or intuitive grammatical constructions and new words from various sources - exactly as tends to happen with mother tongues or primary languages in their developmental phase.

Correspondingly, since the IAL will begin its life essentially as a global pidgin, there is every chance that it will be elaborated by future generations in a similar way and for the same reasons. The modern world contains an ever-increasing number of itinerant key workers and administrative personnel employed by transnational corporations and international agencies. Such people will find the IAL particularly useful, whether or not they possess other second languages such as English, and consequently the children of some of them are likely to pick up the IAL as a mother tongue. The intuitive elaboration of the IAL might then be expected to follow, in concert with more formal and conscious innovative attempts by authors, advertisers, film-makers etc. who might well wish to write in the IAL directly in order to access the global market, the whole being co-ordinated and kept within acceptable bounds by the IAL committee.

Assuming this process of development came to pass, the relationship between the IAL and every national tongue would be comparable to that which formerly existed between the minority ethnic tongues and the great national languages which entirely surrounded them. Thus, even as islands of minority ethnic tongues have been surrounded by a sea of English, every language would eventually find itself within the matrix of the IAL. And correspondingly, even as English formerly diluted and absorbed minority ethnic tongues in its midst, English would itself be absorbed, along with all other languages, into one universal tongue of enormous capacity and subtlety.

The history of the dogged survival of certain minority ethnic tongues clearly shows that such a process would never be achieved by force, rather would it happen for cultural and economic reasons. Thus, if speakers and writers were to deliberately use the international auxiliary language to reach the widest possible audience or readership, and listeners were to learn it - and tune into it - to keep up with the latest news and newest thought from anywhere in the world, there is little doubt that this common language would develop its own character as a truly global tongue, even as primary creative impetus went into it. If this did indeed happen - whether through neologism, transliteration, or other aspects of linguistic development - the national languages of the world could be expected to successively abandon their separate identities, over a period of centuries, in order to become part of it: in the same way that some minority ethnic tongues have hitherto become submerged in national languages.

Thus there is no reason to suppose that an international auxiliary consciously developed for creative usage would not gradually obtain the linguistic and euphonic capacity to incorporate all useful features, whether structural or decorative, from both "national" and constructed languages. Indeed, it might well display these assets more precisely and harmoniously than their own more or less irregular grammars, partial phonologies and ramshackle orthographies. In such a scenario the mother-tongues would continue to be preserved in written and recorded form, but ultimately for sentimental value rather than linguistic information.

7: Shouldn't the international committee choose an entirely neutral language, equally easy or difficult for all nationalities?

An entirely neutral language would be very difficult if not impossible to realise in practice. For instance, unless the script were bi-directional, or vertical perhaps, it would favour either the left-to-right majority or the right-to-left minority. Similarly, there would have to be a choice between logographic and alphabetic script - the former benefiting East Asian countries such as China and Japan, and the latter the rest of the world. Much the same might be said about phonology and grammar. Moreover, even if a "horizontal" neutrality were achievable between the very diverse languages and scripts of the world, there might still be the problem of finding a "vertical" neutrality, or median position, between linguists and non-linguists. Briefly, there is no advantage in reinventing the wheel, so far as the IAL is concerned. Even a brand new solution of apparently impeccable political correctness would inevitably contain hidden inequities - quite apart from its difficulty for everyone due to unfamiliarity. An equally fair, but much more practical and realistic system would borrow linguistic features from as wide a variety of languages as possible, perhaps to some extent on a population pro rata basis. There would then be a certain amount of give and take. For instance, those who had to master a quite alien script for the IAL might see a relatively large proportion of their grammar and/or vocabulary incorporated into it, and so on.

8: Would it be possible to guess what kind of IAL the international committee might select?

They might well operate within certain established norms endorsed by many IALers, as by others with an interest in the subject. These include:

(b) orthographic script - one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds with no duplicated or silent letters

(e) an international vocabulary - with the eventual goal of words from as many languages as possible

Only one at this early stage: an IAL Hierarchy - which from the practical viewpoint is the gradual introduction of a single IAL in stages. An IAL Hierarchy addresses the problem of universal acceptability. A median IAL, pitched somewhere between the usages of the various national languages, and between linguists and non-linguists, might purport to do this but actually discriminates against those at the extremities. Although suiting those towards the middle, it might well be regarded with suspicion as too easy by one part of the population, and with trepidation as too difficult by another part.

Orwell's "Newspeak", probably based on his perception of Esperanto and Basic English, is an old chestnut that might be brought out by way of illustration. Orwell's inference that an imposed IAL might be used to limit the thought and expression of speakers of more complex languages evidently struck a chord with his readers - unless it is purely coincidental, and related only to the ascendancy of the English language, that both Esperanto and Basic English have declined so much since his book was published.

On the other hand, a median IAL such as Esperanto is beyond the capacity of many non-linguists, particularly those whose own languages have a very different or more restricted grammatical structure or sound system. Certainly, speakers of creoles and some Asian tongues have found Esperanto very difficult. Many English speakers have also found Esperanto challenging, since it uses grammatical constructions that English manages without, apart from vestigially.

The two alternatives to a median IAL have, of course, been an advanced IAL and a basic IAL: Schleyer's "Volapuk" and Hogben's "Interglossa" (forerunner to "Glosa") are respective examples. However, for the reasons mentioned, neither of these IALs would now be acceptable. The inadequacies of Volapuk became evident when people tried to use it in everyday conversation; it obviously lacked a basic version. Conversely Interglossa, with its three tenses and absence of inflections, was in many ways an ideal IAL - though its lack of expandability was a fatal drawback. No current IAL is expandable or contractable: that is the problem with all of them.

Any language taught to children begins with "infant-speak". Those transmitting the language to the very young instinctively employ the simplest grammar, the easiest speech sounds and the shortest words, often internally repetitive. However, the "infant-speak" is really the same language as that used by adults, as are the other gradations and variations.

The essential problem with IALs at the present time is that none of them have a "infant-speak" version and an advanced version and all the versions in between. For practical reasons, it's necessary to start with an "infant-speak" as the official IAL, whilst the other IALs in the hierarchy are developed in the background. At the requisite time, when all (or nearly all) peoples have attained the next level as a result of cultural and linguistic development, the second IAL on the hierarchy (which many if not most people in the world would already be using unofficially) would be designated as the official IAL, and so on. Thus the IAL hierarchy is really a single IAL, introduced in stages.

The table below, reproduced for illustrative rather than prophetic purposes, shows the kind of scheme the World Language Program has in mind. For mnemonic purposes, the number of consonants and vowels accords with the year of introduction. Thus Lang25, with 25 phonemes in its sound system - 20 consonants and 05 vowels - would be introduced in the year 2005 AD.

Lang25 would have an alphabetic script (possibly English-type, without diacritics), a very basic grammar (possibly Chinese-type, word-order based, wholly analytic), and the core vocabulary without consonant clusters etc. would be limited to the twenty most universal consonants identified by the UPSID survey and the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u) which most languages employ, and to which Spanish, Japanese and other tongues are restricted.

Perhaps the year 2005, at least, will be prophetic since the beginning of the construction of the World Language Program Universal Language Institute at Horning's Mills, Ontario, Canada is scheduled for that year (more photos here).

LangX is a hierarchy of IALs, each one of which contains the phonetic and grammatical attributes of those below it. Alternatively, it might be regarded as stages in the projected development of a single IAL. The above table is intended to be illustrative rather than prophetic - but who knows!

A major challenge to the concept of a single IAL is that the peoples of the world speak different grades and types of language. For instance, some pidgins and creoles have a very basic grammar and a sparse spectrum of speech sounds, whereas other languages used by peoples at similar levels of material civilisation employ advanced grammars and phonologies. In like contrast, Chinese and some other Asian languages use elementary analytic grammar, whereas Western tongues tend to be highly inflected and synthetic.

The essential point to bear in mind, when considering a response to this challenge, is that the IAL will be the only language required to be taught in schools world-wide in addition to the mother-tongue. Hence it will be learned by millions of children who not only speak a relatively elementary mother-tongue but are themselves of that significant proportion of students everywhere who are non-linguists. For this reason alone the IAL must begin at a very elementary level.

Professor Hogben's Interglossa (1943), with its three tenses and absence of inflections, was a very suitable candidate. He and his successors may not have selected quite the optimum phonology / vocabulary but the original grammar was easy enough to be mastered by all non-linguists. A recent update of Interglossa's successor, Glosa, is likewise excellent - but possibly goes a bit beyond the minimal grammar necessary for the initial IAL.

To begin with, the IAL will be a pure auxiliary, used solely for communication between rather than within cultures. But will this situation last? Will the peoples of the world be content to speak and write to one another on a second-hand basis ad infinitum? The barriers of race, nationality, politics and religion are gradually being subsumed into the greater whole - why should linguistic apartheid necessarily remain?

The initial IAL might fairly accurately be described as a global pidgin. But the signal fact about pidgins is that they eventually either fall into disuse or become creolised as the rising generation spontaneously develops vocabulary and grammar whilst learning these trading lingoes as mother-tongues. Why should the IAL be any different? Sure, everyone will learn the IAL as an auxiliary to begin with, but it is hardly conceivable that some of the next generation will not learn it as their mother-tongue.

Those peoples, families and individuals who move around the world, who no longer have roots more or less exclusively in one national culture, are likely to include those who expand and develop the IAL in this way. Additionally, primary creative impetus will enter the IAL as orators, writers, film-makers, advertisers etc. use it directly in order to address a global market. This theme is elaborated upon in the first chapters of LANGO, in "Some General Observations", and elsewhere via the links below.

The IAL must be expansible to allow for this development, whilst retaining unity of focus. Hence, whilst Lang25 were the Official IAL (in this proposed scheme), Lang29, Lang33 etc., each with a greater phonology and vocabulary and more sophisticated grammar than the last, would be perfected in practice. Then, in due time, Lang29 - which would have incorporated all of Lang25 in an expanded and more economical format - would be adopted as the new Official IAL (though Lang25 would continue to be comprehensible), and so on.

So far as grammar is concerned, the likely progress up the hierarchy would be from the entirely analytic (no inflections) with Subject-Verb-Object syntax to the highly synthetic (infix, agglutination etc.) with variable syntax. Since advanced polysynthetic grammar is essentially no more than the agglutination of elementary "spread out" grammar there is no reason why the grammatical hierarchy shouldn't be as much a seamless gradation or continuum as the phonetic.

Eventually the best features of all languages, whether "natural" or "constructed", would be incorporated into the hierarchy, according to their linguistic level. Using the English alphabet, a phonemic constraint would appear with Lang53, though the process might be continued with diacritics (unless a completely new script were adopted at some point).

It might well be asked why only one level of the hierarchy should be the Official IAL at any time. Why shouldn't the IAL be split into graded but congruent levels for different peoples and purposes, all of them being equally valid, and hence "Official"?

The danger, I think, is that in the present world - where educational opportunities are so far from universal - the result would be a "vertical" split into "class languages" just as invidious as the "horizontal" division into national and ethnic tongues that presently obtains. For the sake of linguistic unity, therefore, the "Official IAL" should better remain with the generality of non-linguists - only moving up a gear when the grammatical / phonetic / lexical transition had already become a fait accompli in mass usage.

Some suggestions for the internationally-representative committee who will form the IAL:

[1] English script, probably without diacritics - the most widespread script, long-tested for handwriting and configured into most typewriting hardware. Bi-directional script as a possible introduction via child education.

[2] The variety of phonemes is such that not one is present in all the world's existing languages. A suggested compromise phonology for Lang25 would consist of the 20 consonants identified by the UPSID survey and the 5 vowels found in Spanish, Japanese and other tongues. It so happens that the most universal words for things within the common experience of the whole of humanity tend to fall within this phonetic range. Further discussion at LangX Vocabulary.

UPSID was a phonological inventory of 317 languages published in 1984 by researchers at the University of California. Examination of the selected tongues, each one representative of a different recognised language family grouping, showed the following 20 to be the commonest consonant phonemes:

The IPA fonts for viewing these character sets are downloadable from this site. However, the IPA characters might not display properly in Internet Explorer, even if you have installed the correct font set. We recommend using Netscape, Firefox, Opera, or Safari (for Mac) to view this page.

Most languages have 14 - 16 of these consonants. Also the five vowels [a e i o u] are nearly universal.

All the consonants are found in the table below, reproduced from Lang53 Orthography. Lang25 might avoid a consonantal script by using five of the seven "spare" consonants as vowels.

[3] As for the grammar, we should look to the IAL's priorities. To begin with, the IAL will mainly be used for essential international communication. It will be a true auxiliary language - mostly limited to and focused upon practical necessities. As such, its grammar might well be initially based on the pidgin or Interglossa (original Glosa) model - strict word-order, three tenses and no inflections. The opening phase of the IAL might also be regarded as a global pidgin in terms of its chiefly mundane concerns, and like these utilitarian tongues, which are designed for real-time situations where context provides physical subjects and objects and most of the action, it will require hardly any grammar.

[4] An international committee or convention to formulate the initial IAL in 2005 AD - impossible?

SIL Encore IPA fonts - including SIL Doulos IPA 93 - are downloadable from this site.)

To raise the question of a vocabulary for LangX is first to ask what an IAL is for. The answer, of course, is to communicate internationally. As a consequence, an IAL must differ fundamentally from those languages or dialects which may appear to exist only to reinforce circumscribed cultures, and identify or exclude outsiders through the operation of shibboleths, irregular orthography and grammatical minefields. The rule of law in the realms of grammar, orthography and vocabulary is therefore as essential to an IAL as the principle of economy, but should not require a lowest common denominator approach that also restricts the scope of dialogue. The ideal solution is itself a dilemma: a linguistic continuum or hierarchy, embracing words of varying semantic and phonological difficulty, and allowing users to select their level of discourse. Hence, they might choose one-clause utterances containing only words with the easiest and commonest international speech sounds, or at the other extreme, complex sentences interweaving words transliterated from any tongue, living or dead, organic or constructed, commensurate only with the linguistic capacity of LangX's grammar and orthography, and of the participants in the discussion.

Since the memorising of words is the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of learning a language, vocabulary-design is the weightiest part of creating one, though possibly the least onerous. Moreover, it is a task well beyond the individual author, so at this stage it would be invidious to place any restriction upon vocabulary - with the exception of words with phonetic qualities that cannot be denoted by a limited 53-phoneme spelling system.

Neologism, which requires a sense of euphony as well as an understanding of etymology, is a difficult art best practiced by the artless. Even its geniuses - Bullokar, Shakespeare etc. - coined many failures. In the modern age neologism has become universal in more ways than one, through the globalisation of religion, science, literacy, culture and brand names. Quite often, new words and names are accepted into many tongues, varying only in accordance with the scripts and orthographies in which they appear. In such cases it should be possible to identify the word in its original or optimal form, for use in the IAL.

The notion that the IAL's lexicon of common words should contain the most generally acceptable phonemes, rather than consonant clusters and other speech sounds that some of the world's peoples find particularly difficult, found confirmation in UPSID: the phonological inventory of 317 languages published in 1984 by researchers at the University of California. Examination of the selected tongues, each one representative of a different recognised language family grouping, showed the following 20 to be the commonest consonant phonemes:

Most languages have 14 - 16 of these phonemes (the West African language Bambara is closest to the exact complement - it lacks [?] but has [z] and [dZ]). So this table is a useful guide to the consonant phonemes the commonest words of LangX might contain. Similarly, some vowels are more universal than others, and these are the ones that should tend to feature in common words.

Synonyms and near-synonyms present difficulties in most languages - how much more in an IAL which, initially admitting all words from all sources, would be inundated by hundreds or thousands of synonyms and near-synonyms - not to mention umpteen million words! Happily the problem is much less daunting than it might appear at first sight, due to a number of mitigating factors, including the following:

(1) When most words from most languages can be rendered into the same orthography, most of the world's words will become available to the discriminating speaker or writer, who will then be able to choose the best synonym for a particular purpose - for no reason except its sound. In this way the ideal word might emerge - as it has in the past. (Ultimately, for the sake of simplicity there should be no synonyms within the IAL.)

(2) A suitable word already existing in a living language should always be chosen in preference to a neologism. The latter might be more logical, etymologically speaking, but only the test of time proves euphony.

(3) The extant original form of a word should be used rather than transliterated versions in other languages.

(4) Justice demands that the IAL's vocabulary be selected from all languages. In fact this is not a limitation, since things and ideas tend to originate in different countries - and often the best of them in small nations, within minority tongues. The other side of this coin is the requirement to maximise phonetic range and depth, so as to minimise the number of homographs in an orthographic script.

(5) It might happen that a word chosen for the IAL eventually failed: perhaps because most people disliked its sound, or its historical associations. However, synonyms would continue to exist in the remaining mother-tongues for centuries, so replacing a word in the IAL should not be too difficult.

(6) The globalisation of commodities and ideas is not taking place wordlessly. Thus the same processes that have raised one synonym above others within national tongues have begun to work internationally. In this way the best words for the IAL might appear.

(7) Where synonyms of equivalent pedigree exist, it is probably better to choose the older word, or, where that cannot be established with certainty, the shorter. In many cases the shorter word, or - more exactly - the word requiring less effort to articulate, will be the older word (Zipf's Law).

(8) Whereas the IAL is unlikely to borrow Chinese characters for its script, it might adopt the Chinese system of word-formation - as imitated by progressive constructed languages.

(9) Where it is impossible to choose between alternative words, and a compromise word has failed, it may be necessary to return to first principles. Did Cratylus identify one of these in Plato's eponymous dialogue? He pointed out that rho is a sign of motion, found in words such as "tremor, tremble, strike, crush, bruise, tremble and whirl" because it is linked to the physical activity of pronunciation. According to Socrates, the tongue was "most agitated and least at rest in the pronunciation of this letter" and therefore it was originally used to express motion. Aspirated phonemes requiring expenditure of breath, likewise find themselves in windy, tempestuous words such as "shivering, seething, shock and shaking". Lamda, with its liquid smoothness produced by the slipping of the tongue, is found in words like "slip, level, floor, flood, sleek" (when combined with another syllable it denotes easy but repetitive motion as in "handle, swivel, anvil, paddle"); gamma, in which the tongue is detained, combines with lamda to express the notion of stickiness, as in "glue, glutinous, glucose".

An effective international auxiliary language & script (IAL) is long overdue. Without one there is no alternative to translation, which is more expensive and less precise. International agencies spend £/$ billions every year on translation, the inadequacies of which have sometimes led to serious gaffes or misunderstandings.

There is, of course, more to the IAL than the saving of money and misinterpretation at international conferences. As the universal second language, learned by every schoolchild in addition to the mother-tongue, the IAL would facilitate accurate translation of the world's literature and bring the whole range of modern ideas to every nation through tourism and the media. Moreover, the creative effect of broadcasters, writers, advertisers, film-makers etc. using the IAL to address a global audience would inevitably cause it to develop independently of the mother-tongues, gradually acquiring their best features, and eventually - in the distant future - absorbing them altogether.

As is well known, there are two theories regarding the IAL: on the one hand, the laissez-faire idea that English (or another existing tongue) will become the de facto IAL; and on the other, that an IAL must be consciously-planned and "culturally-neutral" from the start (à la Esperanto). It's worth noting that these two different routes to the IAL would have to meet up at some point anyway. Any "natural" tongue officially chosen as the IAL would not long survive in a recognisable form, following the inevitable rationalisation of its spelling system and grammatical constructions, and the substitution of most of its vocabulary by words from other languages; and any "artificial" language would be transformed in like manner: the grammar and orthography might be changed less, but even more vocabulary would probably be replaced.

Moreover, since no major "organic" tongue (including English) exists without a substantial "constructed" element in its make-up - and vice-versa - a full combination of these complements in a viable IAL is obvious. (Could the optimum balance be 50/50, as in the two halves of the brain?) Briefly, both "natural/organic" and "artificial/constructed" elements are necessary for linguistic success.

The two IAL attempts featured on this site reflect this dichotomy and inter-relationship. LANGO would begin from a single existing language, whereas LangX would start from a judicious mix of the best grammar and vocabulary from many languages. Thus LANGO would be initially derived from the "naturally evolved" speech patterns of English, though subject to careful planning and guidance thereafter; but LangX would be more obviously constructed, though of more or less entirely organic elements.

"LANGO" by Robert Craig & myself (1996, since revised) was subtitled "a fully democratic approach towards an international auxiliary language initially based on reformed English". It proposed that a globally-representative committee should guide this potential IAL from the English-speaking world to the whole world - via the simplest grammar, a regularised orthography related to an international standard pronunciation, and the gradual incorporation of words from a variety of tongues.

LANGO incorporated the idea that grammatical reform must accompany spelling reform: a theory originally (?) promulgated by Professor JYT Greig in his 1928 monograph "Breaking Priscian's Head: English as She will be Spoke and Wrote" (but sadly neglected by English spelling reformers before and since). Greig's treatise seems to have been much influenced by Sylvia Pankhurst's 1927 classic "International Language", in which she demonstrated the superiority of analytic grammar over synthetic for IAL purposes (i.e. the advantage of strict word-order and isolates over free word-order and inflections).

After Prof. Bruce Beach had generously posted LANGO on his World Language Program website, I received an email from a member of the East African LANGO tribe, who claimed that the name LANGO should be reserved for his language (and not without justification - the LANGO people living across a large area of Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan speak three dialects of LWO, one of which is also called LANGO). Our brand-name might have been defensible legally - there being a precedent in Lango du Mondo, an IAL invented by J. de Ria in 1788 - but morally - perhaps not!

There are also other arguments against LANGO. Firstly, the considerable international opposition to the use of English as the IAL would probably extend to a scheme which even started with English; for the same reasons, it might be difficult to persuade all parties that the international committee appointed to oversee the transition from English to a truly global language would carry out their task as planned. An IAL comprised of grammar and vocabulary from the various languages of the world would avoid this suspicion.

Secondly, the international prestige of English may have further declined since LANGO was published. With the almost simultaneous collapse of the communist state apparatus in all countries except China and its satellites, and the apparent victory of American-style capitalism, many serious commentators in the early 1990s were predicting the international triumph of the English language. A decade later the situation is entirely changed: left-wing governments are resurgent across the world and America finds itself in the throes of a severe economic downturn, which may consequently dilute one of the main reasons for foreigners learning English, not to mention an IAL derived from it.

Thirdly, radio and television greatly helped the spread of the English language, but for mainly financial reasons the Internet may end up doing the opposite. It costs a lot to set up and maintain terrestrial broadcasting media. Generally speaking, only the major languages have provided a sufficiently large market to make the enterprise worthwhile. As we described in Chapter 4 of LANGO, the minority tongues have suffered at the expense of the major languages as a result. Conversely, it costs relatively little to broadcast over the Internet, once the initial marginal purchase of a computer has been made. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that displaced ethnic minorities, who once had to learn a major language in order to follow media broadcasts, are now largely relying upon Internet newsgroups, radio and TV, broadcast in their own language.

Fourthly, the rapid growth of electronic communications is a serious drawback to a medium-term scheme such as LANGO. Internet-users are rightly impatient of translation; they want a fully-functional language now. The LANGO approach might be a theoretical possibility, but realpolitik demands an immediate advance by one foot or the other, which is why the only practicable alternatives are an existing language (probably English) and the right "neutral" constructed language.

Dr Ludwik Zamenhof had the genius to see this over a century ago. However, he somewhat overestimated both the linguistic ability of certain peoples and the capacity or willingness of fledgling international authorities to act - and thereby caught his excellent initiative in a double-bind. In Chapter 5 of LANGO we showed how the revision of Esperanto, and hence the prospect of its international endorsement, has continued to be frustrated by the inviolable terms of Zamenhof's "Fundamento". Esperanto will undoubtedly contribute hugely to the IAL movement in the future, as it has in the past, but isn't universally acceptable in its present form. In particular, Asians, English-speakers, and various others tend to find the grammar unnecessarily difficult. A number of sites present critiques - Justin B. Rye's being the most comprehensive.

Esperanto's hope remaining unrealised, at least under its current constitution, attention has gone to English by default. Of course, it would be very convenient for us English-speakers if our mother-tongue were adopted by fait accompli, but there are indications - some of which we demonstrated in Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 of LANGO - that the real influence of English has actually declined over the past half-century - in spite of progress at the expense of French in a number of countries, and the international consolidation of English usage in some specialised fields.

It's worth remembering that the IAL will be determined by an officially-appointed global committee. They will form the IAL, perhaps by endorsing a slightly modified "national" tongue or constructed language, perhaps by formulating something almost entirely new. In any event, they will certainly be influenced by existing proposals, so the individual will continue to have an input (Chapter 7 of LANGO).

However, individual or minority endeavours should have recognised limits: attempts to exercise proprietorial rights over language - which is, after all, a public rather than a private phenomenon - have always been detrimental (vide Volapük, Esperanto, the French Academy etc.). But whereas the IAL must be a product of many minds from different cultural traditions, it might still be useful to have an illustrative proto-language to act as a catalyst or vehicle for progressive ideas (and hopefully to give fresh impetus to the IAL movement). In the absence of a satisfactory alternative, LangX is proposed for this role.

It is intended to be a democratic endeavour and, as such, exemplifies the dominant themes or characteristics within international languages: regularised orthography, analytic Chinese-type grammar, English script without diacritics, SVO (Subject-Verb-Object) syntax etc.. Missing from this list would be the consonantal script found in Semitic languages (Hebrew, Arabic etc.). This type of script has signal advantages which might be fully realised in the IAL, given a truly global vocabulary with a sufficient variety of consonant sequences within words.

The challenge, therefore, is to provide an IAL which can be used in either a simple or a complex manner: in the case of orthography this means common phonemes for common words, but also a gradation to rarer speech sounds as words become more specialised, or specific to particular cultures with certain preferences. Moreover, in order to obtain an exact correspondence between orthography and phonology, it would be necessary to establish a global standard pronunciation (GSP) for reference purposes. Bearing in mind that LANG53 would be international from the start rather than initially English-based, more about a GSP may be found in Chapter 20 of LANGO.

The 53 phoneme orthography offered below - a revision of the scheme in the first part of Chapter 19 of LANGO - permits most of the more usual speech sounds to be displayed without digraphs:

The above vowel representations are more or less arbitrary but the consonant symbols might be rationalised to some extent: 19 are as in English (and many other languages), whether as the sole usage, e.g. [b], [d], or as one of two or more alternatives, e.g. [c], [g]; two are used as in languages other than English - [j] as in French, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian and [x] as in Portuguese, Basque, Catalan and Maltese; [q] ~ / g / may be unprecedented but fits morphologically; this leaves [a e i o u], which have been allocated with some reference to the corresponding I.P.A. symbol, thus [a] ~ / D /, [e] ~ / tS / ([c] ~ / tþs / + / h /), [i] ~ / N / (the participle "-ing" suffix might be mnemonic here), < o > ~ / T / and finally [u] ~ upside-down / J / (!?).

The initial core vocabulary of common words would employ many fewer than 53 phonemes, and as few consonant clusters as possible; words containing rarer and more difficult speech sounds might be added later, as the IAL developed. A relatively extensive phonology would permit all words of most languages, and most words of nearly all languages, to be transliterated - with the result that most utterances from most cultures could be made under the banner of the IAL and written down in its script, though this could not be done adequately without some grammatical development.

The above scheme may require fundamental modification in due course: its anglicised phonology - including the 23 vowels of (non-rhotic) R.P. English and only 3 exclusively heard in other tongues - is perhaps too biased towards English for a universal language. Robert Craig has suggested an alternative allocation of symbols to phonemes, as follows:

The "dual orthography", using English lower-case letters for consonants and upper-case for vowels (as shown in the right-hand columns of the above tables), is widely disliked, as those who have tried it in English spelling reform schemes have discovered. People tend to find it aesthetically objectionable, inimical to cursive handwriting, and very awkward for typists - who must continually operate the shift-key.

However, a system analogous to that found in Hebrew, Arabic and other Semitic languages would make the vowels or capital letters invisible in most circumstances. For instance, in the Hebrew Nikud system the diacritics or marks that signify vowels are normally omitted from the text of books and newspapers; the vowel points are only shown where a guide to the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word is required. Children memorise the vowels and learn to recognise words by their consonants alone. Using essentially the same system, the "adult" script of LANG53 would be similar to the script on this page.

The potential print-saving achievable by a consonantal script is astounding. With 27 consonants, 551,880 words of four letters or less are possible (27 + [27 × 27 =] 729 + [27 × 729 =] 19,683 + [27 × 19,683 =] 531,441 = 551,880) - four or fives times more than the total vocabulary of English (if the endless progression of names for numbers, chemical compounds etc. is excluded).

However, this very brevity tends to produce homographs. For example, it can be seen that the following English words: "rat, rate, rait, ret, rete, writ, rit, (ritt,) write, rite, right, wright, rot, root, route, (wroot,) (rought,) wrote, rote, rut, rout, wrought" would all become "rt" in a consonantal script! The three-consonant word-roots typical of consonant-based scripts such as Hebrew are probably a response to this homographic tendency, given the limited number of possible consonant sequences in these tongues.

The need to reduce homography in its consonantal script is one reason why LangX's vocabulary should be incorporated from the entire range of the world's languages. Even then, many potential consonant sequences would probably remain unused - simply because they do not occur in the vocabulary of any existing language. Moreover, artificial neologisms containing unprecedented sequences might prove unpopular.

A shorthand convention might circumvent this difficulty by employing "spare" consonant sequences. Shorthand systems using English letters are not unknown. For instance, PitmanScript has: "of ~ v, to ~ t, be ~ b, you ~ u, not ~ n, we ~ w, me ~ m, do ~ d".

Mathematically, there would be a maximum of 756 (27 + [27 × 27]) words, abbreviations or logograms in the first category and an unlimited number of words in the second. However, this would be no guide to the frequency of words on the page. For instance, the following 69 words make up about 50% of all average continuous running English, spoken or written: "the, of, and, to, a, in, that, it, is, I, for, be, was, as, you, with, he, on, have, by, not, at, this, are, we, his, but, they, all, or, which, will, from, had, has, one, our, an, been, no, their, there, were, so, my, if, me, what, would, who, when, him, them, her, your, any, more, now, its, time, up, do, out, can, than, only, she, made, us."

Reginald J G Dutton, FRSA, author of Dutton World Speedwords, was evidently thinking along similar lines several decades ago. Here is his shorthand for some common words:

Greek, Latin, Arabic and French - major IALs up until recent times - have grammars which employ affixes rather than fixed word order, i.e. they are synthetic rather than analytic. Synthetic grammar is more complex, and can be impenetrable, but it does have the ability to reduce speech and text-length - since affixed words effectively contain a phrase or clause within themselves.

The decline of these great languages as IALs is related to the spread of universal education and literacy. In days when education was highly selective, an ability to cope with classical languages and synthetic grammar was par for the course. The organised movement to reform English spelling accompanied the advent of mass education for much the same reason (LANGO Chapter 9).

Compactness is a benefit of synthetic grammar, but also a potential drawback; the abbreviation of a word into an affix - e.g. "I did jump ~ I jump did ~ I jumpdid ~ I jumped" - makes the grammar harder to analyse, and less accessible to non-linguists. Synthetic grammar is further complicated by clumsy attempts at spelling reform, which paint over the verbal origin of affixes. Orthographic revision can also obscure the etymology of stand-alone words, but it normally maintains their integrity as grammatical markers.

In other words, the principles of synthetic grammar and orthographic regularity can conflict. We demonstrated this in Chapter 18 of LANGO: "For example, "talked, edited, banned" are grammatically regular on the page, but in speech they tend to be "taukt or tokt, editid, band", likewise "banks, cats, dogs, foxes" usually become "banks, kats, dogz, foksiz"." English inflections being the irregular factor in this case, we proposed that they might be replaced, either by less phonetically mutable inflections or by the kind of rigid-word-order inflectionless constructions typical of pidgins and creoles.

Analytic grammar facilitates the laboriously learnt second-language, painfully acquired in isolation or small groups, much more than the mother-tongue absorbed amid the varied life of a speech community; the analytic sentence parses itself for the benefit of the busy or discouraged student. Another important consideration is that those with a synthetic mother-tongue can easily understand analytic grammar, but not vice-versa. For such reasons alone, analytic grammar would probably be best for LangX, at least in its initial stages. Also, it would be difficult to inaugurate a consonantal script using synthetic grammar, and quite impossible if vowel inflections were used. However, the kind of consonantal script proposed on the Lang53 Orthography page - using shorthand or conventional forms - could doubtless be made to work with analytic grammar.

Analytic grammar is synthetic grammar at an earlier stage of development. It is more verbose, of course, but the parts of speech which constitute grammar are clearly shown. The analysis may then be synthesised, simply by turning auxiliary verbs, cases, prepositions, articles etc. into inflections. The reverse process - converting synthetic grammar into analytic - is more difficult because many affixes are no longer recognisable as words; even so, it has evidently happened in the past - in the 12th Century, for instance, English changed from Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) to Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) syntax and lost most of its inflections.

The subsequent success of the English language is not unconnected from the fact that SVO syntax far outstrips SOV in global population terms, though each is used by about 40% of all languages. Of the remaining languages, about 15% use VSO, and the remainder VOS, OVS and OSV. This evidence might suggest that LangX should employ SVO syntax.

In English, the millennial dominance of word-order based analytic grammar has rendered superfluous all noun inflections except the possessive, as well as adjectival agreement etc.. In Chapter 14 of LANGO we showed how English-based Caribbean creoles have pushed the word order principle harder in order to achieve further economies.

Moreover, there is another factor at work, complementary to the word-order principle. This is the grammar of context itself: where a thing is immediately obvious there is no need to define the subject (article, noun etc.) in terms of relationship or action (verb, adverb) with or towards the object (preposition, adjective, noun etc.). In other words, there is no need for parts of speech, never mind grammar - whether analytic or synthetic.

This phenomenon is not exclusive to the creoles, of course. In the work-places, streets and homes of more or less any language community many people - particularly those who know one another and each one's circumstances well enough - tend to speak in ellipsis. The sentence - the complete statement or question - is there, but it is conveyed in one or two words or phrases; the rest of the words are understood.

The abbreviation also extends to the word classes themselves in some languages. Some do not have a noun, as such; instead of "tree" they might say "it trees"; and word order alone may determine whether the adjectival or adverbial sense is meant, e.g in creole:

(Obviously, the position of the adjective and adverb in the sentence would have to be strictly defined. Typical creole usage has the adjective before the noun and the adverb after the verb. This also seems to be the predominant order among languages worldwide.)

One of the main defects of Esperanto was that it formalised words into classes or parts of speech. Even in English there are hundreds of words which may be used without variance in two or more classes: "under, head, right, love, dog etc.".

As for noun case suffixes, we English-speakers may pride ourselves that word-order has rendered most of them unnecessary, and jib at the accusative ending and adjectival agreement in Esperanto - perhaps oblivious to the fact that creole users might regard our genitive or possessive inflection in a similar way. Thus a creole speaker might say:

It might sound strange to us, but the context determines whether the meaning is possessive or descriptive. Is the genitive inflection essential? If not, we should consider losing it in the initial stages of LangX. In any case, analytic grammar would demand a preposition - if absolutely necessary - (as in French etc., but used only as required) rather than an inflection. Other languages also omit the genitive, e.g. Welsh:

So does Chinese; also English - for items regarded as game rather than as individuals, e.g. "sheep, deer, cod, grouse, Portuguese, Swiss etc." However, most languages employ a plural inflection (often [-s]). It's not difficult to see why. The plural is a useful device. For example, 10 kg of stone, wood or oil is very different from 10 kg of stones, woods or oils. The numeral quantifies; the plural diversifies.

The analytic approach would employ auxiliary markers, such as Chinese "xie" ["some"] and the French singular and plural definite articles "le" or "la", and "les" (gender in the linguistic sense being banned in LangX, of course).

Some languages are more advanced than others in terms of economical expression or succinct syntax. Chinese grammar is exemplary in this regard, not least in its approach to word formation.

Old English used the same construction, with the prefix "ne-" for "no", exactly as in Scottish English, Russian and other languages. English uses "never" in a similar way.

This too is common - e.g. Russian "he engineer" - and might be adopted at least in the initial stages of LangX.

The infinitive is understood. English often does the same, e.g. "Let my people go!; I heard you call; I watched her paint a picture; he felt a hand touch him" - cf. Shakespeare's old-fashioned "Tranio! I saw her coral lips to move." Another one for Lang29?

As for recursion, creoles tend to use discrete one-clause sentences and anaphora, rather than embedded clauses headed by correlatives. We used the following example in LANGO:

The complex construction can, of course, be used outside the immediate context. It could be commentary on a video. However the simplest form of recursion is perfectly functional, and might well be the better alternative for Lang29.

Creoles use few tenses or verb inflections. Chinese is the same. As always, context is the key. In Lang29, at least, there would certainly be a case for keeping all verb stems invariant, i.e. without inflections, and relying upon auxiliaries to change the tense.

Prosody is rather a non-issue in creoles. They are fast-growing IALs largely because they are easy. Naturally, the prevailing prosody of a culture may be syllable-timed, or stress-timed in a particular fashion, and speakers moderate their intonation accordingly in order to be better understood, but they do not seek to place an extra burden on the listener.

The interrogative might also be mentioned in this preliminary sketch. One extra word added at the start of the sentence - such as Esperanto's [tSu:] - is probably quite sufficient to turn a statement into a question.

Finally, from all these considerations we might arrive at a conclusion re the relationship between the different levels or degrees of grammar. It might be expressed as follows:

As we have seen, synthetic grammar is the most technically advanced, but isn't compatible with a minimal grammar which doesn't require parts of speech to be defined.

In any case, LangX will be be an auxiliary language for a very long time, i.e. generations or centuries. There will be no need, in the forseeable future, for it to compete with the advanced grammar of certain mother-tongues. Analytic grammar will be quite sufficient.

These provisional (and still very incomplete) conclusions re the right grammar for Lang29 might be summarised:

First published 29 February 2000; 9th Edition 18 February 2001; 10th Edition 31 August 2001. Your comments and criticisms are welcomed - please email Antony Alexander, who would like to acknowledge the assistance of Robert Craig (my co-author on "LANGO" - qv here) in the early stages of this new project.

The following "thread" resulted from a message posted on 21/1/01 at the Deja newsgroup "alt.language.artificial" under the title "Some General Observations regarding the IAL":

The IAL will begin as an auxiliary, an international pidgin, the only language children in every country will be required to learn at school in addition to the mother-tongue. However, even as pidgins sooner or later become creolised or fade away, the IAL - not permitted the latter option - will eventually take on a life of its own as authors, advertisers, film-makers etc. use it directly to address the global market-place. The end result of this process will be a single global tongue.

The IAL will develop in two phases. It will begin as no more than a universal second-language; its grammar will be simple and entirely regular (and probably analytic, with SVO syntax and rigid word-order); its vocabulary will be chosen from existing languages according to the most popular phonology (probably no more than about 20 consonants and 10 vowels); and in all likelihood it will have neither consonant clusters, nor diacritics, nor rules regarding prosody.

The IAL will be formed by an internationally representative congress. Anyone who doubts this - except from conviction that English will become the de facto IAL - has underestimated the politicisation surrounding this issue. We should be certain that the initial composition of the IAL will be very much determined by the need for universal acceptance. For instance, English-speakers will be unwilling to accept Esperanto's level of grammar, as will many Asian peoples. In fact a European-based IAL is now out of the question. The rise of Middle-Eastern and East Asians countries towards economic parity with the West is not without consequence. The Chinese rate of development, if projected onward from the past quarter-century, would enable that nation to surpass all others within a few decades. If a compromise IAL is not implemented soon, schoolchildren two generations hence might be required to spend months learning Chinese characters, rather than a far more logical and assimilable alphabetic script (the inferiority of Chinese script is compensated by superior aspects in Chinese grammar, vocabulary and word-formation).

The same applies to phonology (and hence vocabulary). The international committee formulating the IAL will have to take into account both the speech preferences of various nations and the need to promote a unified and coherent system. They will have to steer a middle way between the lowest common denominator tendency, which would jettison all but the few phonemes that all nations can accept unreservedly, and the highest common factor tendency which would argue that children possess the inherent capacity to master unfamiliar phonemes, and might easily do so but for nationalist education and class acculturation.

Briefly, neither too simple nor too complex an IAL would be countenanced, whatever reason be given. A compromise will have to be found between the extremes. But this won't mean an absolutely equitable outcome. Inevitably, the IAL will be easier for some than for others. There is no way around this. No compromise could possibly suit everyone, and in some things compromise is impossible. Take script, for instance. Script normally reads from left to right, or from right to left. One or other of these directions must be chosen - both at once would be disastrous! Similarly, alphabetic script does not mix with certain kinds of logographic, ideographic and pictographic script.

It's not unlikely that the IAL will start with English script, without diacritics. Peoples whose script goes from right to left, isn't Roman, or isn't even alphabetic, will find this a challenge. They will have to be compensated, in all fairness, probably by getting an extra dose of familiar vocabulary and/or grammar. Nations with a relatively large phonology will have few problems with the initial IAL vocabulary, but those with a narrower - though probably more allophonic - range of speech sounds will find many common words difficult to pronounce correctly, in spite of the best efforts of the international committee. SVO syntax - probably the front-runner at present - is hard for those habituated to one of the other five basic syntactic structures, and so on.

Peoples differ widely in their political, social and linguisitic advancement. Anyone who doesn't believe this should travel more. The consequence of this essential fact is that the IAL will have to remain fixed, subject to the repair of any obvious defects, until the more linguistically backward sections of global society get up to speed with it.

And this will take a long time - decades or centuries at least. Meanwhile it is inevitable that many people will begin to use the IAL in a more complex manner, informally, though upon the same fixed basis. They might do this by increasing the scope of the grammar and introducing transliterated words from outside of the minimum phonetic range - at the very least there is likely to be a feeling that the correct pronunciation of names should be reflected by the orthography.

There is no reason why these accretions should be discouraged. However, those who wish to be understood everywhere and to reach the widest possible audience, should limit themselves to the official IAL. Additionally, there should be no grounds for any suspicion that the mother-tongues were being suppressed or extirpated. Finally, it will come to pass that all nations use the IAL with confidence, at which time the second phase should come into operation.

All the words and grammatical expressions validated and perfected by informal usage over a long period of time should then be incorporated. In practice this will mean the best features of the mother-tongues, which everyone will have already willingly abandoned, finding in the IAL a better means of communication. In effect the remaining mother-tongues will have died a natural death, though they continue to subsist in recorded form, and only one language will exist.

Gees! If those are the "general observations" I hate to think what the particularities will look like!

We all have our own reasons for getting involved in language creation. For some it is the wish to see an international auxiliary language, for others, the simple satisfaction of creation and intellectual stimulation.

For those of us who have a particular interest in an IAL, it is necessary to lift our gaze from our navels sometimes and look around the world and also to look into the future. By thinking about the practical realities of the worldwide adoption of an IAL, Antony has drawn our attention to aspects of language development that we are going to have to take into account, whether we like it or not.

The basic theme of the IAL, starting as a second language and eventually becoming a first language, makes a lot of sense. Hence the importance of building in right from the start sufficient flexibility to absorb particular national language characteristics. As an example, Antony mentions the need for an ability in the orthography to include the correct pronuniciation of names. This is an important point that we need to take into account right at the beginning if we hope that our particular IAL will be attractive to all foreign language speakers.

There is also no doubt that the matter will eventually become highly political, since national governments would need to agree what IAL would eventually be taught in their schools.

With regard to the role of an international committee, I see this as the only politically acceptable way that an IAL can be agreed. However I do not see such a committee playing a part in the initial development of the IAL itself. Committees study, modify, refine and finally agree, they do not create. There is a saying that a camel is just a horse designed by a committee!

There is still a role for the individual or small team of language inventors to create the IAL.

Thanks a lot, Alan. I think you're right that the coming international language congress or committee will have a mainly passive role. It's most unlikely that they will be called upon to create an entirely new language and script out of thin air; most probably they will ratify a previously agreed scheme, though with certain modifications, so as to assert their authority as a united body.

The EU currently spends over £2 billion ($3 billion) p.a. on translation (often mistranslation); the UN and other international agencies even more. The EU consists of 15 members going on 27. For pressing social and economic reasons an IAL is going to be instituted in the not too distant future. Left to themselves, the politicians will choose the IAL promoted by the best-funded lobby group. This won't necessarily be the best choice.

A scientific approach is necessary. I hope LANG53 will be judged by that criterion and that at least some of it will pass muster. Certainly not all of it: creating an IAL is far too big an enterprise for one person. Moreover, it's high time to face reality, so far as the IAL issue is concerned. Lest a version of Newspeak be foisted upon us we should be looking at existing IAL attempts with a view to synthesis. Why don't we start with Alan Giles' GILO at http://www.gilo.org - a very well laid out site and an exemplary grammar, don't we agree?

It may seem that creating an IAL is too big an enterprise for one person, but the only reason for this is that none of the existing languages have found it that easy to become accepted and actually learned for the sake of international cooperation and understanding. In fact, the whole concept of an IAL is so new to history that it is diametrically the opposite of what politicians would want to use it for (their own concerns). Concerning this I've said elsewhere:

Historically there has not been so far a widespread Christian government of the world, even though some may refer to the Catholic theocracy of earlier times as an example of it. The truth is that not ever within Islam, where it is known that major aspects of public life like the judicial system and education are controlled by the religious authorities, has the true religious character of humanity received an adequate representation. Since the ineptitude of communication of peoples' true thoughts and intentions always favors those in power, and these have so far refused to really take religion seriously, therefore the long outdated and already useless concepts and irregularities of ancient languages are perpetuated, leaving most of us unable to improve our communication skills, which would increase our awareness of realities, and enable us to meditate profoundly on the significance of God's Word.

It is one of our misfortunes that language in general, and "modern" ones in particular, prove to be such a poor medium for the expression of human thought. For this reason, I've begun a project to spread a little known but highly effective IAL, Dutton Speedwords. Download a free glossary at http://info.babylon.com/cgi-bin/temp.cgi?id=6679&layout=gloss.html

Dutton Speedwords an IAL? I thought it was a shorthand system. Since I included a small part of Dutton's system in the Orthography section of LANG53 some months ago, shorthand text messaging on mobile phones seems to have become the latest thing. "WAN2TLK - ltle bk of txt msgs" is a best-seller (in the UK, anyway). Could be that shorthand is here to stay. Comments, please, about my suggestion for combining a Dutton-type system with a consonantal script analogous to that in the Semitic languages (further details at http://www.alexander.iofm.net)

"The significant proportion of speakers who habitually employ a relatively extensive phonology and grammar will ultimately reject an IAL which lacks the potential capacity to incorporate the mother-tongues (LANGO Chapter Six)."

This would be true if everyone spoke each other's language and had some particular reason or need for favoring their own phonology and grammar. But since these don't even have any semantic value of themselves, the language that quite self-evidently has the simplest phonology and grammar will be the easiest for any person to incorporate, regardless of his own previous language.

"The need to reduce homography in its consonantal script is one reason why LANG53's vocabulary should be incorporated from the entire range of the world's languages. Even then, many potential consonant sequences would probably remain unused - simply because they do not occur in the vocabulary of any existing language. Moreover, artificial neologisms containing unprecedented sequences might prove unpopular. A shorthand convention might circumvent this difficulty by employing "spare" consonant sequences. Shorthand systems using English letters are not unknown. For instance, PitmanScript has: "of ~ v, to ~ t, be ~ b, you ~ u, not ~ n, we ~ w, me ~ m, do ~ d"."

Again, if everybody spoke everybody else's language, the inclusion of the precise words of each language might be an issue that demands solution, but the truth is that even if this were the case, we would realize that each of the languages does not have some particular contribution to make to the IAL, but that each of them has their own way of saying the same things. A shorthand is useful not only for economy's sake, it allows a more precise systematic arrangement of the words (morphemes) for a more comprehensive understanding of the languages' expressive potential, which provides for a more intelligent and effective use of it. Such is the case with Dutton Speedwords. I have yet to read the section of your site on the grammar, but it may be useful to point out that Speedwords utilizes letters to signify semantic qualities of words that make up their definition, so that the grammar (the construction of the actual sentences) will be determined by self-evident considerations which follow from the meaning of the words. Rather than having grammatical features as an aid to understanding, Speedwords relies on the effectiveness of its word formation, that guarantees a one meaning per word system which covers all words without any synonyms and even provides words to substitute a word whose meaning is ambiguous. The grammar is thus the simplest that can be imagined, even simpler than English.

>"The significant proportion of speakers who habitually employ a relatively extensive phonology and >grammar will ultimately reject an IAL which lacks the potential capacity to incorporate the mother->tongues (LANGO Chapter Six)."

Unless a hacker has got to the online edition you are looking at, you won't find this sentence in LANGO Chapter Six. However it does look familiar, as though I did actually write it, so I'll assume you found it elsewhere in my site.

In that case, the context from which you excised it would have emphasised that by "ultimately" I meant a time in the distant future - as in the following passage at the end of the "Minimal Grammar" section of "LANG53 Grammar":

".....LANG53 will be an auxiliary language for a very long time, i.e. generations or centuries. There will be no need, in the forseeable future, for it to combine with the advanced grammar of certain mother-tongues. Analytic grammar will be quite sufficient."

Whether through my fault or not, you don't seem to have fully understood the fundamental thesis of LANGO and LANG53.

For argument's sake, let's divide all IALers into two camps. On the one hand, those who believe that, after the IAL is officially instituted, everyone will always and for all time speak at least two languages - the various mother-tongues for domestic consumption and the IAL for international communication. On the other hand, there are those who agree with the underlying theme of LANGO and LANG53: that all languages will eventually merge into a single language, by way of an official IAL, and that this process is merely a conscious continuation of what is already occurring.

It seems to me that the first of these two groups believes neither in the feasibility of a single universal language and associated voluntary global culture of free peoples, nor in the other extreme, where culture is exclusively defined as national or ethnic. In this latter restricted sense, each culture is perceived as a unique combination of historical, national, racial, political and religious elements, to which only one particular language can do justice. Supporters of this position don't like the concept of an official IAL, and some would go further by denouncing internationalism itself for mixing together what should be kept separate, and for introducing national and racial conflict into the world.

Hence the "two languages forever" brigade disbelieve in the possibility of a single universal language and culture (of free peoples), and yet endorse the idea of an IAL. They hold that the primary focus of culture is national or ethnic, but that international agencies are necessary in order to support the requisite level of material civilisation, through trade, tourism, transport, communications, science, peace-keeping and the like.

Thus the international agencies deal in mundanities, whereas the more spiritual side of life - found through historic denominations, modern sects and media, secular philosophies, national treasuries of literature, and all the arts to which language is peripheral rather than central - is not "global" or "international" in any real sense, since it is always linked to a particular culture or tradition.

The fact that international agencies restrict their sphere of operation to material necessities allows for a rudimentary IAL employed solely as an auxiliary or second language. The use of a pidgin between trading nations is a microcosmic analogy. A true (uncreolised) pidgin does not develop its own internal structure, and cannot survive independently, precisely because nobody is using it as a primary language or mother-tongue.

I think Glosa is one of the best IALs of this type. It has no inflections and only four tenses (in fact three would be enough, as the original author pointed out). Words can be used interchangeably as noun, adjective and verb, and twenty auxiliaries constitute the grammar around the SVO syntax (incl. SVO subordinate clauses).

Notice, however, that the fewness of moods and tenses limits Glosa's ability to discuss moral questions and report events from different perspectives, that the inability to distinguish parts of speech except in context invites confusion at second-hand, that the paucity of phonemes restricts vocal expression, that the Greek / Latin basis of the vocabulary hardly favours international acceptability, and so on.

>and had some particular reason or need for favoring their own phonology and grammar. But since >these don't even have any semantic value of themselves,

Everyone has "some particular reason or need for favoring their own phonology and grammar", which is that they see it as superior to others. It might have no semantic value internationally, in some cases, but it certainly does for that people. Wouldn't you value English if the New World Order suddenly announced that all languages were henceforth forbidden except for "Newspeak"?

>the language that quite self-evidently has the simplest phonology and grammar will be the easiest >for any person to incorporate, regardless of his own previous language.

Essentially, I believe that "unofficial creolisation" will take place whilst "the official IAL", whether it is called LANG53 or anything else, remains at a very simple and basic level until all the people of the world (some of whom have an even simpler and more basic language) have caught up with it. Later on - in the distant future - the "unofficial IAL" will become the de facto language of the world, since the best qualities of all languages will be expressed within it.

I don't personally believe that an official IAL could long survive without this process happening. Everywhere two languages are constantly and habitually used there is transfer of vocabulary and import of grammatical structure: vide "Spanglish" in the USA and "mix" in Singapore. An official IAL artificially constrained from all fundamental development would simply be rejected after a while. Look what's happening to Esperanto.

The secret of success, so I believe, is to incorporate scope for expandability and expansibility into the orthography and grammar of the very basic "official IAL". For instance, the alphabet might have the capacity to represent 53 phonemes without the use of digraphs, even though the initial core vocabulary would employ no more than about 30 phonemes. The essential point is that the "official" and "advanced unofficial" versions of the IAL, and all stages in between, should always be exactly the same language: thus the "official" IAL should result from an "advanced unofficial" version of the IAL being used in a simple way.

What you write about Dutton Speedwords seems valid enough. I can only repeat that the best parts of all languages, "national" or "constructed" (the difference is only one of degree), will eventually be found in the single global tongue.

(From 12/2/01 Deja.com Newsgroups were operated by Google.com, under a different format.)

You seem to believe that the formation of the IAL will come about as the beginnings of language itself in human evolution. In other words, everybody is just learning language skills and prone to form creolizations, or mixes of idioms, as if we were still in the age in which, thru lack of contact between peoples, they were still forming their languages as significant aspects of their cultural identity. But even though recent examples of creolization exist, these are evidently dying out, or at best examples of where the civilising process that distinguishes our age has gone amuck. They occur in those areas where we are learning how not to civilize peoples.

On the other hand, you would not be involved in the IAL movement if you hadn't realized the drawbacks of language as we now use it to further human progress. These are subtle drawbacks, because with the spread of science and education, the immense separation that keeps peoples apart from the simple fact of not understanding each others speech is hidden by the no less dramatic changes that everyone has experienced because of the advances of science. Everybody seems too busy to simply look over their shoulder, so to say, and behold the vast vistas that could unfold for their future progress if only they could reach out to their fellows, who are day to day coming ever closer to them by means of the marvellous advances in communication and scientific and cultural exchanges.

Besides these observations, your logic is flawed in that if the international agencies are and will continue to affect mainly our material development, as opposed to the spiritual side, an official IAL would by that token alone be impeded from realizing the internal developments you forsee. Whenever an official IAL has been linked with "official government business" that pretty much spelled its doom as far as any development is concerned (Latin). If, as you say creolizations naturally devolve into unified languages, why are there dead languages? Under these circumstaces, can anyone claim to have the proper standard for creating the IAL? Since international endeavours are still in their infancy, what can be said that defines international acceptability? I think that the misunderstandings of the moral significance of language and communication has taught us the hard way, by trial and error, that an effort is required this time to get our moral priorities in order and invest the time and effort necessary to learn the language that can demonstrate that it has been specifically designed for this purpose. The present and future errors in the political arena will make people fed up with the vagaries of rhetoric, and unwilling to accept anything but that which will most effeciently communicate their hopes and aspirations.

L angue	L anguage	L engua
A uxiliaire	A uxiliary	A uxiliar
N eutre	N eutral	N eutral
G lobale	G lobal	G lobal
O rganique	O rganic	O rganica

For this 1998 Internet edition we have taken the opportunity to correct a handful of factual and typographical errors and to remedy a few infelicities of style and/or punctuation. Apart from these minor changes, and rewrites at the end of Chapter 8 and in the middle of Chapter 20, the text and layout are as in the first edition.

In the process of posting LANGO on to this new site an opportunity was taken to bring the text up to date and effect a few other minor changes. There are no plans for a second edition of LANGO.

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.

For example, [sc] = /sh/ (4th para. of Chapter 1) means that the digraph "sc" (in Old English) is pronounced "sh" as in "she"; likewise /dh/ and /th/ (6th para. of Chapter 2) represent sounds - the initial consonant phonemes in "that" and "thin".

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 above 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.

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 21 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 Chapter 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.

Original English was a Germanic language closely related to Friese. The Germanic group of languages came into being as a result of trade between speakers of the expanding Indo-European languages and the native peoples of the Baltic. Slightly more than 2,000 years ago Germanic-speaking tribes began to expand from their homeland, moving southwards towards the Rhine. As a result, the Celtic speech of these areas was replaced by Germanic dialects. Germanic was already a mixed language containing elements which were not Indo-European.

By the 4th Century, the Roman Army in the West was largely recruited from these German tribes, so Britain was full of various German soldiers: Bavarians, Allemanns, Franks, Swabians, Frisians, and, most commonly, Saxons. As these soldiers were pensioned off they settled down in Roman colonies, and married local British women. Lowland Britain was, therefore, trilingual, with a Latin-speaking administration, a Germanic-speaking army, and a Brittonic-speaking populace.

After the withdrawal of the Roman administration in the 5th Century, Britain was left with a considerable population which was Celtic in race but Germanic in language. Brittonic-speaking Picts from what is now called Scotland were starting to raid south along the east coast and Goidelic-speaking Scots from Ireland (Scotia) were invading and occupying Argyll and also Dyfed, Gwynedd and Cornwall.

It was not long before an even wilder tribe was settling uninvited along the north-east coast. These were the Angles ("Engle" in Old English) from the area of Schleswig near Flensburg still known as Angeln. Whether or not the Angles dominated a larger area than the nominally Saxon bands which had established sovereignty further south, their dialect "englisc" ([sc] = /sh/ in O.E.) which was closely related to the Germanic lingua franca of the old Roman army of occupation, became the name of the popular language which was emerging from the coalescence of all these influences. The Angles also gave their name to the country which came to be identified with this common tongue.

By the Middle Ages, English had displaced Brittonic from most of England - apart from Yorkshire (Elmet), Hereford and Shropshire, the Chilterns, Kent, Gloucestershire, Dorset and Somerset, Lancashire and Cumberland. Pockets of Brittonic speech persisted here for shorter or longer periods, while English incorporated Scandinavian dialects, and a large amount of Norman and Central French from 1066 A.D. onwards.

As a result of these influences English emerged in the 12th Century as a new hybrid language bridging northern and southern Europe. Later, neologists referring directly back to Latin further modified English, so that it has ended up closer to Italian than to French. Moreover, English might now be better identified as a Romance rather than as a Germanic language, although the adjective precedes the noun - as in four out of the world's five leading languages: Chinese (Putonghua), Hindi, English and Russian. The exception is Spanish - which is a Romance language.

Meanwhile Ireland had been annexed by Henry II - since when Irish idioms have played a part in shaping the increasingly heterogenous English language. Brittonic continued to be spoken for a long time in Cumbria, and until the 18th Century in Cornwall, but was long ago replaced by Irish in Pictland (most of modern Scotland) and the Isle of Man.

By reason of long association, the senior or intrinsic tongue intimately linked with Great Britain might be said to be Brittonic rather than English. The descendant of this original language of the Britons (including the "English") is, of course, still found in Wales - with a Gaulish-influenced variant in Brittany. The remarkable endurance of these two Brittonic-derived tongues can largely be ascribed to the diverse and mainly alien origins of both English and French which, although formed within the British Isles and France, have never really been national tongues, in the sense of being identified with the whole or a part of a country, or with any single country.

Thus English and French have both been, to some extent, international languages from the start: a role which they have continued to perform in different areas, though English has obviously replaced French as the leading world language. As English has spread throughout the world it has drawn in elements from numerous languages, including Latin, Greek, Hindi, Malay, the Amerindian tongues, Maori, Chinese, Zulu etc.. The map of "World English" embraces varieties in Africa, North America, the Caribbean, Australasia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Polynesia and Melanesia.

Most estimates put the number of idiomatic English-speakers, mostly from mother-tongue countries, at around 370 million. Second or auxiliary language speakers, i.e. those for whom English is not the primary language or mother-tongue, may be divided between fluent speakers, reckoned at about 100 million, and less than fluent speakers - but with some knowledge of the language - who are counted between 300 and 700 million, depending upon where the line is drawn between what is "English" and what is not. Another commonly quoted statistic is that a quarter of the world's population (of around 6 billion) speaks some English. It is also reported that about 80% of the world's electronically-stored verbal information is in English. Such estimates are necessarily rough and somewhat speculative, but they indicate the approximate size of the numbers involved.

The great common languages of humankind arose, not by planning, but rather by accompanying civilisations of historic significance. Thus Greek became the language of learning for centuries as a direct result of the outstanding pre-Roman civilisation of Greece which produced scientists and philosophers like Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Socrates and Plato; and writers like Homer and Euripides. Following the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, Latin became the lingua franca of the Christian church in Europe; and then, after Muhammad, Arabic was the common tongue of the Islamic civilisation which stretched at its height from Spain to China - and gave the rest of the world so many branches of knowledge. French was later the language of the international culture which, coeval with and in reaction to the turbulence of the Reformation, identified itself with French style and humanist philosophy.

Similarly, the rise of the English language mirrored the fortune of the English-speaking world as it diversified through a variety of commercial enterprises, military campaigns, cultural activities and missionary endeavours into the largest political combination the world has ever seen. Moreover, an overall reputation for administrative justice, and for upholding the right to life and faith, held English in good stead, long after the end of Empire, a tradition maintained to a great extent through various international agencies with close links to the best aspects of Anglophone civilisation. However, there are now signs that the relative influence of the English-speaking peoples is waning, whether in the commercial or cultural spheres. The inexorable lesson of history is that the decline of the English language should follow.

But a world awakening to consciousness of itself need not be determined by historical precedent. Even supposing two centuries of Anglo-American hegemony were bought out by Chinese economic success, English might still surpass Chinese as a basis for the international auxiliary language: not only due to its spread and status, but also by virtue of its inherent qualities. Hence one point of view that merits consideration is that an internationally determined, but orthographically unreformed, version of the English language would adequately fill this role. Could a modern version of English be formally adopted by the U.N., taught to children in schools all over the world, and used for all international purposes?

This certainly remains a possibility: for English retains a high profile as an international auxiliary. The large number of schools and institutes continuing to teach English to foreign students; its use in information technology, air and maritime telecommunications, publishing, international scientific and medical terminology, global conferences and, of course, popular music; the co-status of English and French as the two "working languages" among the six used at the United Nations - all these things attest to the continued health and vibrancy of English as an international auxiliary language.

The relative neutrality of English, compared with other ethnic and national tongues, also allows it a greater role as an international auxiliary. For example, books by Palestinians are currently being translated into English, and then from English into Hebrew (i.e. not directly from Arabic to Hebrew). Likewise, in Belgium many nationals choose to address one another in English rather than use the language of the other community; and there are even calls for a Flemish capital city because of the dominance of French in Brussels. A similar situation exists in South Africa, where languages such as Afrikaans and Xhosa are identified with national groups, but English is seen as neutral. This feeling about English is also a factor in its success in India and many African countries.

However, in spite of these recommendations, we find not only chauvinism from within other language communities, and historical resentment from within ex-colonies, but also thoughtful lines of argument which question the fundamental suitability of any national or otherwise partial language for the demanding role of international auxiliary. One criticism is that such languages always have features which are linguistically difficult for people from different speech areas: for example, the common English phonemes /dh/ and /th/ would be included in this category; another would remind us that native speakers have an advantage when using their mother-tongue with those for whom it is an imperfectly absorbed second or auxiliary language: since the latter have to struggle with the language as well as with the ideas under discussion. It is thus claimed with no little justification that diplomatic, commercial and ideological advantages would accrue to those countries where the chosen international language was spoken as a mother-tongue.

Only a minority of people are perfectly bilingual, so this is a real problem, and one for which translation is an inadequate solution. Proper translation is inconvenient and expensive because it requires an excellent knowledge of two or more languages. (Fluent speakers of second languages may appear to be competent, but can cause misunderstandings by missing idiomatic meanings or misusing words, e.g. "demand" for "ask for".) Most of us have a far from perfect command of even one language. Some idioms can be difficult for the average translator to understand, much less correctly translate, and many words, e.g. "fun, pet, get; demi-tasse, éclat (Fr.); Gemütlichkeit, Weltanschauung (Ger.)", often have no exact equivalents in other languages. Numerous are the gaffes and misunderstandings, with occasional disasters, which have resulted from mistranslation.

A common source of amusement has been trade names which have unintended meanings in other languages: such as the "Nova" car that "doesn't go" in Spanish. Diplomatic gaffes like President Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner!" are from the same vein of humour. (The two expressions are now equivalent in German - perhaps too many foreigners were calling themselves frankfurters and hamburgers - but in the early 1960s inclusion of the little word "ein" - in direct translation from the English - changed the meaning from "I am a Berliner!" to "I am a jam doughnut!")

The absence of an international language can also have tragic consequences. It is widely reported that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at least partly because of a mistranslated reply from the Japanese. At another time many died in Spain when bread was made from imported grain. Nobody could read the labels which identified it as mercury-treated seed-corn. More recently a World Health Organisation report warned about the dangers of countries donating drugs and medicines. For example, some pregnant women in Latvia were given cattle worming medicine which caused them to go temporarily blind. Doctors had guessed at what the medicine was by comparing labels. Mediators in international crises regard lack of a common language as a major complication. For instance, this view was expressed on BBC Radio after the recent (August 1996) hijacking of a plane containing 199 passengers from Khartum to Stansted (London) via Cyprus.

The failure, in 1919, of the Conference of Paris and Treaty of Versailles has been partly attributed to the inherent deficiencies of translation. It has been suggested that the fact that Clemenceau spoke both French and English, but that Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson spoke only English, gave an undue advantage to the French on their home ground. Thus, whereas Anglo-American intentions were transparent to the French, the heads of the British and American delegations had to understand the French position through the medium of translators and Francophone (almost certainly Francophile) officials. This tended to ensure that the French and Belgian demands for excessive reparations against Germany prevailed.

Such objections to translation and the international use of national tongues were the motivation behind the idea of an international auxiliary language: which every child would learn at school in addition to the mother tongue. Esperanto has been the most successful attempt to create such a "neutral" language. It continues to set the standard in various ways, even while remaining an essentially European concept with certain unrevised defects which now limit its international viability.

Moreover, the same objections continue to militate against English: which cannot but be classed as a national language to some extent, in spite of its present international roles. Indeed, such is the level of feeling about the issue, that not only is English unlikely to be adopted as the international auxiliary language in its present form, but a reformed version would have to consciously move from the English-speaking world to the whole world: whether in orthography, phonology, vocabulary or grammatical structure.

A name change would also be necessary, as pointed out by Hans Lunder of Oslo, Norway, in letters to the "European" (30/5 & 4/7/96): "...Seventy per cent of those Europeans earning double or more the average income are able to read English newspapers or watch TV news in English.

I propose that we make English the main European language for communication, conferences and international events. The world is getting smaller but has too many languages. These mean unnecessary expense and time in translation, wasted time learning other languages, poor communication, cultural polarisation and conflict.

Nationalism is the main problem. The French, for example, fiercely guard all aspects of their language. "English" is both the name of a country and a language. This problem can be solved by calling the international English "Globish" the global or world language. Then everybody could talk and write Globish without thinking about nationalism..."

"...I propose Globish - "the global language based on English" - because it is simple to grasp and express. I do not propose that Globish should take the place of national languages but that everyone could use it as a supplementary or auxiliary language."

We would endorse Mr Lunder's concept of "the global language based on English" with a new name (which might be "Globish" or something else - the name doesn't really matter) because the present status of English as an auxiliary language is equivocal: businessmen, politicians, scientists and even language researchers from the English-speaking countries have evidently greatly overestimated its penetration as a second language. In 1989 a study conducted in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain concluded: "The real correct understanding of English in all the countries studied is notably inferior to the most pessimistic existing evaluations and our own guesstimates" Van de Sandt, Report in "Initiative Media News Bulletin" (London: Lintas Worldwide, January 1989).

In 1990 Sir (now Lord) Randolph Quirk, Professor of English at University College in London, put it thus: "Despite the persistent and glib assumptions in Britain and America, we are witnessing a significant relative decline (perhaps even an absolute decline) in the currency of English worldwide. This may come as a surprise to those who think of English as the medium of high-tech skills, international conferences, and professional journals: here indeed continued growth is doubtless the order of the day. But these are relatively slim and specialized lines of communication."

In 1991 Richard Bailey, Professor of English Language and Literature at the the University of Michigan and Associate Editor of the "Oxford Companion to the English Language" was even more specific: "The proportion of the world's population who regularly use English is 15% - and falling". It appears that, although mass travel, media and communications within the English-speaking world have continued to iron out extremes of accent and dialect, preventing mutual unintelligibility between indigenised varieties, the burgeoning of these very connections has also exposed the comparative economic decline and moral uncertainty at the heart of the English-speaking world. Thus the appurtenances of modern civilisation may well have had the reverse effect of lowering the prestige of English and turning the masses in various ex-colonies towards other cultures and languages.

Moreover, English can be difficult; many who are not natural linguists have failed to master it, in spite of intensive study. Stress and intonation present particular problems. Idiomatic expressions can be confusing or misleading. Uncertain syllabification, irregular verbs, compound nouns and the vast range of tenses are among the features of English that cause headaches for its students. Even the so-called simple grammar itself, based on prepositions and word order rather than inflections, is very vulnerable to the bad writing which stems from muddled or disordered thinking. In such a case the efficient but rather fragile syntax breaks down and the meaning becomes ambiguous or impenetrable even to native speakers. Worst of all is the notorious dissonance between spelling and pronunciation.

The official use of English in aircraft telecommunications, to which most countries and airlines have signed up, is contentious for the same reason. A number of horrific air crashes have been directly related to the difficulties of English when used for this purpose. For example, in 1977 two 747s collided at Tenerife, with a death toll of 582. The Dutch pilot had apparently misunderstood the English of the Spanish air traffic controller. Similarly, the Russian pilot's poor understanding of English (far from untypical according to Indian officials) was blamed as a significant factor in the recent (12/11/96) mid-air plane crash over Northern India, which killed 351. Moreover, the British Airline Pilots' Association reports that, contrary to the official agreement, French and Spanish aircrews use their own languages in the air; also, local languages are used to gain advantages over English-speaking crews, e.g. precedence in landing. A rational, consciously internationalist language, that crews would take pride in speaking correctly, would go a long way towards eliminating such infringements.

Finally, since language is an organic phenomenon, English has sometimes been characterised as reaching that proverbial "middle-aged" condition where, in contrast to the lean and questioning period of youth, the mind tends to narrow whilst the body enlarges. During a century and a half from the beginning of the 16th Century, between 10,000 and 12,000 words were introduced into English, of which half still exist. Shakespeare coined about 1,700. Also, a measure of orthographic and grammatical reform accompanied the new words. But since that time, although the English language has been distended by the addition of thousands of new words, they have been mainly in narrow or specialised areas, especially those concerned with science, technology and commerce. The fact that English has developed in this narrow-minded way (as has every other "national" tongue after its own fashion) seriously limits its capability as an international auxiliary.

In particular, the historical connection between the English language and Judaeo-Christian civilisation has allowed a cultural gap to develop between English and Eastern tongues with very different political and religious traditions. As a result, English is not the ideal medium for use as an international language in these societies, and holds the status largely for lack of an alternative. One problem is that English has few words for many concepts that exist in Eastern tongues. For example, the words "knowledge" and "love" are used in English to cover different categories of meaning that are separately defined even in Ancient Greek; much more so in Arabic, Farsi and other modern languages. Such deficiencies make English an inadequate vehicle for both speech and translation in the eyes of some cultures.

National languages tend towards exclusivity. The purist movement in Iceland, supreme for about 200 years, has kept Icelandic notably free of foreign vocabulary and grammar. When Norway achieved independence it began to develop a Norwegian language purged of "Danishisms"; and similarly when Romania became a nation it set about replacing Slavic elements. Purifying the national language is something that nations try to do. International languages on the other hand tend to be inclusive. Spanish has been very influenced by Arabic, and by the languages of South America; and Persian also absorbed huge quantities of Arabic when it became an international language. Russian has likewise been ready to admit foreign elements, receiving words from all quarters, in contrast to the majority of Slavic languages (e.g. Czech and Slovak which are rooting out words of German origin).

It would be almost impossible to "purify" English in this way. Most of the vocabulary is from other languages and the grammar has drawn in elements from around world for centuries. The attempts in Scotland to establish Scottish English suffer from the same problem since Scottish English is shot through with foreign influences from the same sources. Whereas languages obviously limited to a national role, like Welsh and Irish, are amenable to "purification", it would make no sense for varieties of English, all of which have departed from the "national" type. English has apparently been abandoned to internationalism: no language, including Latin, has been so separated from its roots. This means that an offspring from English might be consciously developed as a basis for an orthographically-regular international auxiliary language, while the rest of the English language continued in its present national and international roles.

Although English has gone well beyond the boundaries of national exclusivity, it is far from culturally neutral. Its pre-eminence as an auxiliary is very much a result of the former political and commercial dominance of the English-speaking peoples. But it is also seen to be the best, or the least bad, existing language for international purposes from the linguistic point of view: a state which it has achieved by incorporating a greater variety of words from diverse languages, by disposing of genders and other superfluous or non-essential parts of speech, and by avoiding the kind of "national" linguistic reform which would have made English less appealing at the international level - the consequent incongruity of T.O. with any known speech has given English the benefit of a measure of cultural neutrality.

These relative advantages, compared with other languages, have allowed English to function as a second language for necessary communications, but the heart of the language is still fixed in the English-speaking world, which limits its creative usefulness for speakers and writers from other cultures. Such internationally-acclaimed authors as Professors Chinua Achebe and Wole Solinka still value English as an auxiliary language, but for essentially this reason do not write in it as much as before. They now have serious reservations about English as a literary medium for African expression. Other writers resent the pervasive implication in Anglo-American culture, often explicit in the mass-media, that the typical African lifestyle is inferior. Consequently they refuse to use English, and propose Hausa or kiSwahili as the pan-African language. A similar attitude is widespread in various ex-colonies of the U.K. and U.S.A.

The difficult question is how English might become a distinctly idiomatic language without, as Achebe put it, losing its "value as a medium of international exchange". Unfortunately, what tends to happen at present is the worst of both worlds, for whatever the historical assimilative capacity of English, the scleroticising combination of businesspeak culture and spellchecker orthography is now stifling its capacity to adapt to, or represent, varieties of ethnicity. Moreover, much if not most of the English in many of these countries is more or less suffused with the characteristic stress-patterns, rhythms and intonations of indigenous languages, and is infused with elements of their grammars and vocabularies. For example, in India, the West Indies and West Africa, the English spoken tends to be timed by individual syllables rather than by stressed syllables, as in British and American English. The result is that, although these indigenised varieties of English may function efficiently as lingua francas between or within these countries, they may be sometimes difficult to comprehend when used in international circumstances.

The tendency of the English-speaking world to overestimate the global use of the language is largely due to colonial legacies, such as the third-world élites at American and British universities and military colleges who subsequently maintain the profile of English through commercial contacts and domination of the local media. This English-speaking leadership may have come into existence partly because the colonial administration was ambivalent about native peoples en masse learning English since, as a common tongue, opposition to Empire spread through it; but, for whatever reason, such prominent figures are wholly unrepresentative of the penetration of English into the general population of these countries. The international usage of English is actually quite precarious; but by the same token it is well positioned for a thorough revision.

English is the sole or joint official language in about forty-five nations; but in most of these countries, and especially in Africa and Asia, it is the native tongue of no more than a small minority. Moreover, the desire to affirm national cultural identities is beginning to promote indigenous languages in the education system and elsewhere at the expense of English, not least through television. Thus English is gradually losing even more of its limited influence on the masses; and is becoming almost exclusively the auxiliary language for international communication.

But that is not necessarily a great honour either, for an exclusively auxiliary status might threaten the long-term survival of English in these countries, since it would no longer be used as a primary language. Moreover, the international focus in these parts is moving away from the English-speaking world, and more towards regional economic communities which favour other languages.

On the other hand it must be admitted that, although the English-speakers in these nations are numerically small, some of them exert an influence far beyond their numbers by reason of international relationships or links - whether in administration, commerce, literature, the arts, science or religion. This is the point of view from which the prospect for English looks hopeful. For were its orthography to be entirely reformed and its name changed, so that it became politically and linguistically acceptable to many more progressive thinkers within these nations, primary status as the living world language - the growing conduit for global culture - might well be realised.

Languages are continually in a process of transformation. A primary language or mother-tongue might become extinct, or turn into an auxiliary elsewhere. Equally, a second language might become a primary tongue through relexification. Thus Cornish borrowed so much vocabulary from English that it became thoroughly "Englished". This continued until the majority of speakers decided that they might as well be speaking English: so they abandoned Cornish.

In America the first wave of immigrant tongues, e.g. German, Italian and Japanese, disappeared in this way. The same is already happening to mostly second-wave languages such as Russian, Korean and Vietnamese, though the process may take longer given the greater dissimilarity between most of these languages and English. Even indigenous Amerindian tongues, before which English is an immigrant language, are gradually fading for the same reason. Decreolisation has occurred in a similar manner, as in Hawai'i, where the original indentured labourers from Japan, the Philippines, China etc. used Pidgin English, their children developed Hawaiian Creole, the next generation used Hawaiian English, and many of their descendants are now speaking General American English.

Most minority tongues, having found themselves isolated in the midst of a major language area, have eventually vanished likewise. The process has appeared to be impervious to both herculean effort and generous funding. The classic example within the British Isles is the Irish language. In spite of, or perhaps partly because of, seventy-five years of Irish Government endorsement, the primary language community of mother-tongue users of Irish has continued a long historical shrinkage to its present level of about 10,000 speakers. The obvious reason for this process has not changed over time: a knowledge of English gives access to an incomparably greater range of literature, television, radio programmes, domestic employment opportunities in an increasingly international market, foreign travel, and so on. Conversely, Irish is a difficult language for those outside of a mother-tongue family to learn to speak properly: largely due to a marked discrepancy between the spoken tongue with its 60 phonemes and the historic Irish spelling system.

Those who are concerned with the future of Irish recognise that the size of the primary language community is crucial because any tongue will only develop organically, or in a genuine rather than a prescribed manner, when it is used creatively as a primary language. From this point of view the large number of people who speak Irish even quite fluently, but as a second language, do not really count because the predominance of their thought, and hence of their linguistic innovation, tends to take place in English. Similarly, the fact that the number of native Welsh speakers may currently be increasing should not necessarily be seen as significant, so far as the future of this language is concerned. For Welsh is much easier to learn than Irish, and is also more important symbolically, in the absence of other tokens of statehood. The salient fact from the linguistic or long-term political viewpoint is that the increase is of those who continue to value and speak English for the access it gives to a wider international culture.

But English-speakers should not be complacent. The status of their language largely rests upon a past greatness, and currently favourable political conditions; whilst these minority tongues are being revived (or resurrected in the case of Manx and Cornish) more thoroughly and systematically than in the past, with Government assistance, and particular concentration upon pre-school children. The tide of opinion could turn, to leave English high and dry, if it was felt that these tongues were easier to learn than English, and offered more in the form of creative expression.

The use of English as a media language, including in recorded items such as audio and video tapes and discs, has been a central part of its success during this century. So much so that some promoters of minority tongues see media saturation, even to the extent of suppressing all other languages on local radio and T.V., as the only route to survival. The plethora of broadcasts in English across the expanses of the U.S.A. earlier this century was arguably one of the main factors in the decline of other languages. More generally, the electronic media have provided an incentive to learn one of the major languages - in order to be able to follow the maximum number of broadcasts.

At any rate, the past few decades have witnessed a remarkable switch in primary allegiance from many minor tongues to fewer and fewer major languages, just five of which - Putonghua (the official language of China), Spanish, Hindi, English or Russian - are now spoken by over half of the people in the world. Nine tenths of the rest of humanity use no more than 95 languages, and only 77 of the thousands of remaining tongues have speech communities of more than 1 million people. From a logical standpoint the ultimate conclusion of this process would be a single language. The largest number of languages, and the highest concentration of those that are especially precise and hence "media unfriendly", is notably in areas only recently penetrated by the electronic media. An example is the Caucasus region, which is very mountainous, with consequent poor reception for land-based signals.

In America, and much of the rest of the world, the dominant media language is of course English. But one language which English will not necessarily be able to displace from the U.S.A. by this means is Spanish: which is very widely used as a media language in its own right. In the U.S.A. as a whole there are over 200 radio and 300 television stations broadcasting in Spanish, as well as 200 Spanish-language newspapers. Moreover, English might lose an audiovisual war with Spanish because the orthographic relationship between the spoken and written language is much closer in Spanish. Consequently, since the acquisition of literacy in Spanish does not depend so much upon the visual impression of the written word, the electronic media are more profitably used for educational purposes in Spanish than in English.

Another modern development of linguistic significance is the growing power of the Spanish-speaking bloc beyond the U.S. southern border. The North American Free Trade Agreement, inexorably leading to the formation of a political union throughout the Americas, will not necessarily operate to the immediate economic advantage of the North. Not only has a great deal of U.S. industry been copied or transferred to low-wage parts of Central or South America (or elsewhere in the world) but a lot of once exclusive knowledge and expertise has gone with it.

At present, linguistic integration is following the standard pattern: most second-generation Spanish-speaking immigrants speak English, and about half speak only English. However, the situation could change: in Los Angeles, Miami, and many towns near the Mexican border more than half the population speaks Spanish and there are large areas where community facilities and essential services operate in that language. Moreover, illegal immigration continues apace, and there seems to be a new mood of militancy: commentators have observed that, compared with a generation ago, immigrant New York taxi-drivers are often reluctant to speak English. English is still the nominal language of American education, but practice very often dictates otherwise. (The fact that English is now the "official language" in a number of states is hardly significant, considering the number of countries where English is the official language but relatively few people actually speak it.)

In a similar way, Quebec has been buttressed by considerable moral support from France over the centuries, but for which French would have disappeared from this part of Canada in the same manner as other minority tongues in North America. Moreover, the relatively high birthrate both here and in the Spanish-speaking countries has helped to move the linguistic balance away from English. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Not so many years ago the global native English-speaking community was second only to that of Putonghua in size; but now, by some estimates, it is overtaken by native populations speaking Spanish and Hindi. These demographic changes obviously concern mother-tongue speakers only, so they affect the primary rather than the auxiliary status of English. However, since creative renewal mostly proceeds through first rather than second languages, an actual or potential reduction in the strength of English as a primary tongue eventually weakens its role as an auxiliary language too. A predominantly second language role is eventually fatal to a language, because the incorporation of "ethnic" words and expressions effectively ceases; rather is the second language plundered to strengthen the "mother tongue".

This process is the norm because the latter remains the primary vehicle of thought and feeling: the language most people hear within their own heads. Conversely the second language tends to be used for second-hand thoughts, the stuff of business transactions and formal conversation, rather than for the creative imagination that gives the impetus to transliteration and neologism. Any second language gives more to the primary tongue than it receives back. Here is an obvious danger to a second language which is not being recreated as a primary tongue elsewhere. Hence, the continuing pre-eminence of English as a second language should be regarded as a temporary reform opportunity towards the international auxiliary language, rather than as a reason for optimism.

The relationship between first and second languages is crucially dependent upon the relative prestige of the associated communities as economic entities. Often it is difficult to tell whether a language is first or second, and even speakers themselves may be unsure, until they have decided which language is going to bring most practical benefit. Statistics showing the worldwide distribution of English reflect this confusion with widely varying estimates of mother-tongue speakers - e.g. two recent reference books, "The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language" (second edition, 1997) and "The Encyclopaedia Britannica Yearbook for 1997", give very different figures, 70,600 and 8,000 respectively, for the number of mother-tongue English speakers in Malta out of a total population of about 373,000.

Ultimately there is only one solution to the dilemma of first and second languages: a single universal auxiliary language which can act as both. It might be asserted that this language already exists embryonically: a still rather nebulous and obscure entity which is growing and forming through the internationalisation of vocabulary, phonology and script. One tremendous impetus in this direction is the transliteration of supranational scientific and religious neologisms into different languages - mainly through the pervasive media culture which is replicating famous names and replaying slogans and soundbites around the planet.

Over the centuries at least 200 attempts have been made to construct a language which consciously reflected this universalising tendency: endeavours which have successively marked the expansion of linguistic theory and political understanding. The movement reached its zenith before the First World War, but has since declined due to certain inherent limitations. Nevertheless, it has greatly advanced the cause by empirically demonstrating the theoretical possibility of consistent grammar, regular orthography and cultural neutrality within a single language - though the combination has not yet been fully realised in practice.

The languages which have been devised for this purpose may be divided into two types: "a priori" and "a posteriori". The former attempted to classify ideas and were unrelated to actual languages. These were pioneered by Wilkins in his "Universal Character" (1668), and by Leibnitz with his projected "characteristica universalis". A later example was "Ro": which had some success a century ago. However it is now generally accepted that any practical solution must be "a posteriori" i.e. drawing on existing tongues. Proponents of the latter prefer the adjective "constructed", since they argue that these languages are made from "organic" elements such as common word-roots.

The first truly successful "a posteriori" language was Volapük ("World Speech"), published by Schleyer, a polyglot German priest. Although 40% based on English, it was complicated by an array of grammatical rules, and an expanded range of vowels. A few years later, in 1887, Dr Ludwik Zamenhof, alias "Dr Esperanto", introduced a language which used fewer vowels and had a much simpler grammar than Volapük. (On the other hand it employed a greater number of consonants identified by diacritics.)

Zamenhof was born and brought up in Poland near the Russian border: a place of diverse ethnic groups divided by language. At home he spoke Russian and studied Latin, Greek, German and French. Hebrew was spoken at the synagogue. Somewhat later he encountered English at school. This may be significant because his "attempt towards an international language" contained several grammatical structures which English manages without: e.g. distinct transitive and intransitive verb forms, a reflexive, plural adjectives and an accusative case inflection (a transitive/intransitive distinction does exist in English - e.g. kill/die - but is exceptional; "-self" and "own" can be reflexive but are more usually emphatic).

Despite these, and other especial difficulties for certain nationalities, Esperanto entirely supplanted Volapük and went on to a far greater influence. In particular the humanitarian ("homaranismo") movement which Zamenhof explicitly associated with the language exactly caught the spirit of the times. Realising that a consciously internationalist language required an ethic to sustain its ideal, Zamenhof created a humanitarian morality, or set of principles, subsequently put it into practice in various ways, including through a culture of hospitable exchange. Although such schemes have probably benefited international relations, an unintended side-effect may have been to reinforce the cult of Zamenhof as linguistic genius - which has hindered a rational approach to the reform of Esperanto.

It wasn't long before Zamenhof began to receive extensive correspondence about his language. Amid the general praise he was also offered a number of suggestions as to how the language might be improved. Zamenhof wasn't opposed to revision in principle - indeed, he had deliberately waived copyright on his first edition - and a number of reform projects, including a complete rewrite of the language in 1894, duly followed. However, it seems that most respondents to these initiatives were content with the existing version of Esperanto - which Zamenhof himself clearly preferred, if only for temporary strategic reasons.

In spite of this endorsement of his original scheme, a few prominent supporters continued to be dissatisfied: so at the first Esperanto conference, at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1905, certain items were voted upon, and the status quo was once again approved by a majority, if not unanimously. One of these items was an agreement that nobody, including Zamenhof himself, henceforth had the right to alter the basic grammar ("fundamento") of Esperanto until after it had been officially adopted as the international auxiliary language.

Since the near realisation of the latter was expected by many in those idealistic times, before the world was sundered by national, racial, class and religious conflict, Zamenhof had raised a hope ("Esperanto" = "one who hopes") which allowed the movement to progress rapidly for two or three decades. By the late 1920s Esperanto was a household name, 44 radio stations were putting out broadcasts in the language, and it was being taught in the commercial schools of London and Paris. It also had the support of the League of Nations.

The perception that the influence of Esperanto has declined since those days is not confined to the English-speaking world - where Esperanto never really took hold for obvious reasons. Esperanto was very much a product of its time: it displays a 19th Century belief in an objective "mechanistic" approach which runs counter to modern convictions about the organic process of language development. This is epitomised by the exclusive "auxiliary" role Zamenhof ascribed to his language. Although such a status may have made Esperanto more politically acceptable heretofore, it now prevents it from developing organically as a primary language.

Moreover, a letter from a member of "...the "Akademio de Esperanto" the organisation which indeed is responsible for the language itself" explains why the particular linguistic difficulties for some language groups remain unrevised: "...no one, repeat no one, now can possibly propose changes in Esperanto which would have the slightest effect on the use of the language all over the world." "We are constantly receiving proposals from old and new Esperantists for "improvements" to the language, any of which would have as much chance of success as trying to improve the English language - of which there have been many projects, all of which have been, and will always be, ineffective."

Thus the Esperanto Academy, while claiming responsibility for the language, declares itself unable to exert any influence - as though it could not use its authority to initiate steps towards fundamental revision. Orwell, who grimly satirised Esperanto as "Newspeak" in "1984", would have identified this as "doublethink". It is perhaps fitting that Esperanto has latterly found its greatest support in totalitarian states - last refuge of the personality cult.

By mortgaging the future of Esperanto in this way, though with the best of intentions, Zamenhof created a double-bind which prevented the fundamental revisions that might have brought the popular success that would have ensured official endorsement - and subsequent adoption as the world auxiliary language. Another unfortunate effect was to provoke the formation of rivals, the first of which was the openly-derivative Ido ("Birthling"), published in 1907.

Other new constructed languages sought to build on Latin or Greek rather than the European tongues used by Esperanto. For example, Interlingua was based on Latin, and Interglossa on both Latin and Greek. It is noteworthy that some such artificial languages have an even simpler grammar than English - with no verb inflections and very few tenses.

That Esperanto remains pre-eminent among constructed languages, in spite of the many imitators that have set themselves up as rivals, is a tribute to Zamenhof's genius. There is no doubt that the best features of Esperanto, including the concepts of cultural neutrality, rationalised orthography, regularised grammar and global organisation, will live on; though not necessarily under that banner.

The aims of the Esperanto movement were recently endorsed by 183 British MPs in the "Esperanto Parliamentary Group". However, very few of the listed MPs actually speak much Esperanto, and neither do their constituents. Many have made an attempt but have found it too difficult (considering the relatively insignificant size of the world speech-community after a century). It is rather the idea of Esperanto which accounts for its appeal to these MPs: the notion of a "politically correct" international auxiliary language with a simplified and easy-to-learn grammar and orthography. Such is the importance of these populist political aspects that no international language which fails to heed them is likely to succeed.

The constructed languages have provided a paradigm, if not a realisation, as the strengthening bonds and links between the whole of humanity - whether forged through religion, science, commerce, tourism, sport, the media or in any other way - have increasingly exposed the expense and inefficiency of speaking about common purposes with a multitude of tongues.

But strong opposition to the concept of an international auxiliary language remains, in spite of this powerful testimony. Militant nationalists naturally anathematise the idea - and would proscribe any viable language in the same way that the Nazis banned the teaching of Esperanto in 1935. Such may well have had their day, but opposition is still likely from moderate nationalists who may well be concerned that the international auxiliary will imperceptibly suppress and eventually extinguish their treasured national tongues.

However, unless the constructors of the international auxiliary choose to learn nothing from history, they will refrain from repeating the mistakes of the past. For every tongue forced into silence later shouts out twice as loudly. Basque is but one prominent example. Every minority language has reacted in the same way to the extent that attempts have been made to extirpate it. But within other minority ethnic groups, which have not been linguistically oppressed, there is an even stronger appreciation of the educational, economic and political advantages of belonging to a wider speech-community. This is the dynamic, two-way but unequal, which is allowing many of the minority ethnic tongues to be absorbed by creoles; or by the great "national" languages.

But although there has been a willing abandonment of minority tongues predominately regarded as of very limited use in the modern world, on the understanding that these historic repositories of culture have been and are being carefully preserved and recorded, the alternative viewpoint, which insists that neither the creoles nor the national languages can adequately represent the phonology or vocabulary of the speech that is lost, is still a force to be reckoned with. Emboldened by the long-term political trend towards global subsidiarity, which is encouraging former regions to express an historic "national" identity, this ideological position argues that, since minority languages were formerly obscured by foreign rulers hostile to any tongues which might rival their own, the original tongues should therefore be reinstated and restored as symbols and vehicles of cultural independence.

This interpretation appears to be becoming the fashionable orthodoxy. For example, a report in the "Times" (1/5/96) which mentioned the revival of the Manx language and culture in passing, began with the apocryphal sentence: "A hundred years ago, any child who dared to speak Manx Gaelic in the school playgrounds of the Isle of Man would have a noose tied round their neck." No attempt was made to disabuse the uninformed reader of the implication that it was through political and linguistic oppression, rather than with parental approval, that the Manx language was killed off.

The phenomenon of minority ethnic languages is extremely complex because two separate issues are involved. One is the essentially political view that a major national language such as English, French or Russian, cannot express sentimental attachment to a distinct geographical area with a unique history; or, at least, it cannot when compared with a minority ethnic tongue which has evolved in the place for centuries and supports a personal sense of identity.

The other is a subtler argument, which is essentially linguistic, but also cultural in the patriotic sense of diversity within the body of nations. This asserts that, since any national language, however large the area it may represent, is by definition less than universal in scope, it cannot do full justice to the speech and thought of an area with a different outlook, sense of history, and cultural and religious experience, as expressed through language.

The minority language phenomenon has become one of those issues, like atmospheric pollution or disputed borders, which require a solution beyond the national level: for since the decline of religion as a metacultural bond, the connection between language and politics has been emphasised to the extent that it has become very difficult to hold together a modern nation formed out of old language groups - as Belgium, Canada, and many recent ex-colonies have found. These countries have also demonstrated that bilingualism (or multilingualism), however necessary in practice, is highly unsatisfactory and expensive - and is not a proper solution anyway since everyone always prefers one tongue to another.

The concept of an international auxiliary language addresses the minority language (or multilingual) problem from both the political and the linguistic standpoints. Those nations choosing to be an integral part of the civilised world could retain their mother-tongues for domestic purposes while employing the designated "neutral" international language for all communications outside of the indigenous culture. Every child would learn this specified auxiliary language at school as well as the mother-tongue. Thus it would no longer be necessary for everyone dealing with the wider world to waste time and resources learning several languages; nobody would need to learn more than two.

But this is not the end of the story: such an arrangement would have inexorable linguistic repercussions. The nations of the world are becoming more and more interdependent every day; the notion of self-sufficient or autonomous entities communicating indefinitely on a second-hand basis is no longer credible. Everyone may learn two languages at school for decades or centuries to come, but it is inconceivable that the auxiliary will not take on a life of its own - as a result of authors, advertisers, film-makers etc. writing in it directly to access the global market.

Assuming this came to pass, the relationship between the international auxiliary language and every national tongue would be comparable to that which presently exists, or has existed, between the minority ethnic tongues and the great national languages which entirely surround them. Thus, even as islands of minority ethnic tongues have been surrounded by a sea of English, every language would eventually find itself within the matrix of the international auxiliary language. And correspondingly, even as English has diluted and absorbed minority ethnic tongues in its midst, it would itself be absorbed, along with all other languages, into one universal tongue of enormous capacity and subtlety.

If language were a purely objective phenomenon, it would be judged according to strictly dispassionate criteria, and endorsement by social groups would be irrelevant. But language is partly subjective and a matter of opinion: it is notable for not always behaving according to the latest scientific hypothesis. It is qualitative as much as quantitative: the fact that the majority of languages, or most speakers, use a certain construction is no guarantee that linguistic development is moving in that direction. It is an art as much as a science: which is why a democratic mandate would never be enough in itself, and why it would be ultimately futile to proceed with a scheme, however popular, however apparently coherent and complete, which did not accord with the fundamental views and meet with the basic approval of society as a whole.

This is why the final choice of international auxiliary language is much too important a subject to be determined except through the widest possible consultation. In practice this means that all interested parties must have the chance to be represented or involved, and that any exclusively private or public enterprise, no matter how popular, far-reaching or well-funded, would ultimately fail to thrive without universal endorsement and confirmation. For the international auxiliary language will have to satisfy a variety of political imperatives, financial targets, cultural requirements and philosophical and religious ends.

However, all these interests will need to find a common active focus, lest they be dissipated, and the best instrument would appear to be an international language committee with close links to government, to the scientific realm, and to all parts of society. But by the same token, it would be the common responsibility to ensure that this committee were not co-opted by any national or ideological group, who might wish to swing the development of the international auxiliary language in its direction.

Although the responsible international committee would be eminently qualified, the inherently subjective aspect of language would always introduce an element of fallibility into its decision-making. It would therefore be wise to consult widely with concerned groups and knowledgeable individuals, lest expensive mistakes be made. Conferences are proliferating between a growing number of language groups - as in the European Union - so exorbitant commercial translation costs, currently estimated at a minimum of 25p (38¢) per word, will eventually force the adoption of a common language. A hasty or putative choice, driven by political expediency, would inevitably do more harm than good: merely inflaming those national, racial or religious suspicions that act as figleaves to sectional interests.

The responsible international committee convened to form the language would no doubt be aware of these dangers. No longer might an autodidact, or body of linguists, pluck a language out of the air, or develop one from scratch, when so much has happened already to indicate the limitations of the theoretical approach. So many prescribed rule systems and defined lexicons have failed already that the committee would be flying in the face of all experience were they to create yet another artificial vocabulary and grammar.

Esperanto itself has served to demonstrate that even an excellent linguistic phenomenon is not necessarily a fully viable language. Zamenhof apparently failed to recognise that a language also springs from the people using it. New linguistic modes are constantly coming into being, but in a very disparate fashion, due to the enormous diversity of national and regional speech communities worldwide. This produces the never-ending state of flux which distinguishes a living language from a constructed language, the rules and character of which are fixed.

In any case, there is now such a vast process of interactive research that it would be hard for the said committee to impose a language without due consultation - through which means alone the considerable fund of linguistic knowledge accumulated over the centuries in every culture would become available, to guide and inform their deliberations, and ensure that the chosen tongue be as free as possible from cultural bias - whether in script, vocabulary, grammar, or phonology. The same criterion of practical experience also demands that the selected precursor to the international auxiliary language be already spoken by a large community: in order to prove that all its various aspects work in everyday speech.

Thus the international committee is most likely to form a new language out of an existing language which already possess the necessary attributes of speech-community, cultural neutrality, rationalised orthography or transformability to a requisite degree. From these various diverse premises proceeds the logic of a language proposal that would meet the eventual arbiters of the international auxiliary language halfway - or even three quarters or nine tenths of the way. Zamenhof had much the same in mind when he made the revision of Esperanto's "Fundamento" conditional upon official endorsement, although he went only a quarter or a third of the distance before putting a freeze on further development. Had Zamenhof known about 20th Century linguistic insights like Zipf's Law he might have hesitated to take this decision, but he was primarily concerned about preserving the unity of the Esperanto movement, in view of the parlous situation prevailing at the time. Nowadays the better understanding of consultation and the democratic process will make it possible for the heirs of Zamenhof's valued linguistic endeavours to unitedly take the difficult and potentially divisive decisions involved in language formation - towards a successful and unified conclusion.

Although the constructed languages, and Esperanto in particular, have been spoken by idealistic internationalists from all over the world, nothing like a genuine, organic, linguistically-developing speech community has yet emerged within the constructed language movement - in spite of every advantage from a regularised orthography and grammar. An explanation was offered by Edward Sapir in 1933: "Any consciously constructed international language has to deal with the great difficulty of not being felt to represent a distinct people or culture. Hence the learning of it is of very little symbolic significance for the average person, who remains blind to the fact that such a language, easy and regular as it inevitably must be, would solve many of his educational and practical difficulties at a single blow. The future alone will tell whether the logical advantages and theoretical necessity of an international language can overcome the largely symbolic opposition which it has to meet. In any event it is at least conceivable that one of the great languages of modern times, such as English, or Spanish, or Russian, may in due course find itself in the position of the de facto international language without any conscious effort having been made to put it there."

Sapir's prediction has come to pass for the very reason he gave. All languages, whether constructed or organic, rise and fall according to the popularity of the culture they represent. For instance, when Sapir mentioned Russian as a possible international language it was associated not only with a huge transnational state, but also with a successful political system with ambitions to take over the world.

After the Second World War Soviet influence spread even further, but the realities of communism were reaching a climacteric, and in the 1980s the whole system collapsed. All of a sudden Russian ceased to be the common language of the Soviet Union and its satellites. To some extent English entered the resultant auxiliary language vacuum; but across Central Asia Turkish and other languages reasserted themselves; in Europe, Hungarian and various Slavic tongues re-emerged to reclaim their areas of influence; and in the West of the former U.S.S.R. Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian were re-established.

Now that Russia has lost its former superpower status, certain notorious linguistic difficulties in the Russian language, such as the numerous irregular verbs, are no longer overlooked for political and economic reasons, but correspondingly are open to further reform. It may happen that revision of a second or auxiliary language is only considered when the dominance of the associated culture begins to falter. For example, part of the resistance to the orthographic reform of English has been a complacent assumption within the English-speaking world that the language will triumph anyway due to the innate excellence, or even superiority, of the associated pattern of civilisation enjoyed by the English-speaking peoples.

Anyway it looks most unlikely, at this juncture in world history, that an international language will prevail through the extension of national sovereignty across the planet. However enlightened certain empires of the past, or even imperialist powers of the 19th Century, might have been; the unfettered state - whether communist, racist, nationalist or nominally theocratic - evidently turned malignant during the 20th Century, causing so much grief that nations have been effectively forced into confederation for the sake of collective security. Regional economic communities and various political associations under the aegis of the U.N., though not yet formalised on a global scale, have already begun to impede or frustrate the languages through which these national or otherwise partial aspirations or ambitions are inherently expressed. For example, the European Union has rejected English as its official working language; legitimate orthographic reasons are given, but additional factors such as that the political capitals of the E.U. - Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg - are predominately Francophone, should not be considered irrelevant.

Briefly, a world order may have already arrived in which no language will be accepted for international auxiliary purposes simply because its associated nation, class or ideology happens to be more powerful or influential than others at the time. Moreover, the same scrutiny must be given to the constructed languages, which are not without political or ideological baggage - even if it is wholly unconscious and inherent. But nevertheless, in the more equitable cultural and linguistic ethos which is fast approaching, the valuable work put into the constructed languages promises to be realised, not least in view of certain practical considerations; one being that, although the great multinational tongues - with millions of native speakers - have revised their spelling, none have approached anywhere near the standard of orthographic regularity set by Esperanto and the constructed languages. Orthographic consistency is also of increasing importance due to the rapidly expanding role of I.T. machinery including voice-recognition software.

However, for equally pragmatic reasons the logistics of the situation will continue to favour a language which has developed organically in preference to an artificial language, even one which is much better from a theoretical linguistic standpoint. The former will have hundreds of millions of speakers and millions of teachers; but the latter, perhaps Esperanto or a similar language, will have, at the most, millions or hundreds of thousands of speakers and thousands of teachers. It is obvious which language would be simpler to graft on to the world for mass usage - even in a substantially revised form.

It follows that the optimum language which might now be prepared, in anticipation of the future formation of the international language committee, would probably be an organic tongue combined with the ideal qualities of the constructed languages. All the indications are that language is gradually moving in this direction anyway: for instance, the major organic tongues are being greatly influenced by universalism and regularity, those signal features of the constructed languages. One facet of this universalism is that vocabularies are converging: many modern expressions including personal, place and brand names, scientific and religious terms and "buzz-words", are the same or similar in different tongues. An international language is thus forming obliquely through global neologism.

The regularising and print-saving tendency associated with the constructed languages also seems to be occurring spontaneously, particularly in commercial areas of English-speaking culture which the sharp eye of the literary-educational vulture has disdained to regard, e.g. spellings such as "Kall-Kwik, Def Leppard, Sun-Lite, Lo Kost, All-Nite, U Haul, Spud U Like, Toys R Us" - and the abbreviated headlines characteristic of tabloid newspapers. Moreover, as we show in the next chapter, infants naturally use rational forms until they are "corrected". We also investigate why older students, increasingly living in the aural world of the electronic media, have more difficulty than ever with an irregular orthography which requires the constant impression of the written word. Can orthography resist the trend towards global standardisation which has informed more and more aspects of life, including the electronic media themselves?

All organic languages, having developed in a more or less haphazard manner, contain shibboleths and irregularities despite the operation of this tendency towards rationalisation. The constructed languages on the other hand, while limited by the size and somewhat artificial nature of their speech communities, have been able to keep sight of the fact that language and script should be rational phenomena. The international committee which forms the revised language will be well aware of this dual imperative for it to be theoretically consistent while being accepted, nay welcomed, by the wider speech-community.

Great power accrued, in preliterate societies, to those who could read and write. Everyone else may have been spared reading nonsense in books, and lies in newspapers, but the consequent limited opportunity for objective investigation, and reporting of events, gave succour to the plots and shady dealings of princes and kings, to extraordinary theological claims, and to numerous wild exaggerations and inaccuracies - which all too often led to strife and armed conflict.

The introduction of the printing press to London, by Caxton in 1476, opened the book on a scientific age in the English-speaking world. Whereas previously the interest of both rulers and scribes had ensured that the connection between language and script remained mysterious and obscure, the market for printed books demanded a more rational orthographic link. In particular there was a pent-up demand for an accessible translation of the Bible. Consequently Caxton and other London-based printers, using the "East Midlands" dialect typified by Court circles and educated speakers in London, Oxford, Cambridge and central England, rationalised both language and script to some extent.

In retrospect it might be asked why the process did not continue until a common orthographic standard was reached. One answer is that there was simply a lack of demand. The classroom situation of children learning to read provides a useful analogy. Those children who benefit from an intensive education, and/or parental diligence, become literate largely through the habituation of constant exposure to the written word: an osmotic process of memorisation which effectively offsets the partial operation of the orthographic principle in English. Likewise, centuries ago, a tiny educated class, mainly selected from wealthy families which could provide books, and generally having the additional advantage of a knowledge of Greek, Latin and French, had little problem with English spelling.

In fact it is notable that the first concerted attempts at spelling reform did not start until after the middle of the 19th Century - when universal primary education was beginning to become a reality in both the U.S.A. and the British Isles. For the first time, schools were being attended by a significant proportion of pupils for whom the osmotic methods of acquiring literacy were inappropriate, since they had little or no opportunity to read at home. Thus, for want of an alternative, these children had to rely on the phonic or orthoepic method, which incidentally served to highlight the inconsistency of traditional orthography. Spelling reformers, invariably promoters of education for all, were reluctant to see a large section of the population cowed into functional illiteracy by this incongruity.

These facts have taken a long time to permeate the political consciousness for various reasons essentially connected with the particular experiences and prejudices of those who have been setting the educational agenda. However, the evidence is conclusive that whole-word methods are inappropriate for those pupils not encouraged to read at home. An orthographic reform of English would enormously facilitate literacy by building upon the inherent advantages of the phonic method.

The greatly superior reading skills of Italian compared with English children prove the point. With the benefit of a mostly predictable orthography, young Italians can normally read words whose English translations would often leave equivalent English children guessing. In languages which are even more orthographically regular than Italian, such as Hungarian or Finnish, a small child might read out a page of difficult text, hardly comprehending a word, while being understood by an adult audience.

Children respond to a logical orthography because of an inborn sense that language has laws. Both experience and experiment have long shown that the concept of regular and rational language is innate in young minds. For instance, deaf children may spontaneously develop sign language between themselves, even when they have not been taught it; and many English-speaking children naturally use rule-based words. For example, they tend to regularise plurals into words like "mouses, deers, dices", and turn strong verbs into weak forms, such as "rised, teached, bringed, swimmed, eated". Scientific studies have confirmed that children prefer to use regular and consistent grammatical forms, even at the expense of brevity and simplicity: a consistent conclusion if the primary purpose of language is to communicate knowledge accurately. A full realisation of its many other powers, mainly associated with brevity, exclusion or wit (including metaphor, metonymy, ellipsis, synecdoche, jargon, in-words and code-words, acronyms, puns, euphemisms, argot and foreign expressions) normally comes later.

The main problem with regard to children is not illiteracy so much as sub-literacy: a condition which can be associated with some negative aspects of our civilisation. The difficulty of English spelling should not take more than part of the blame: another share should go to motivational and social factors. The success of high-profile intensive reading courses, using the phonic method, attests to this. For example "The Independent" on 16/9/96 included a report about a government-funded reading scheme in Bradford, West Yorkshire, which had brought childrens' reading-age on by 6 months in 10 weeks. According to researchers, the childrens' school-work had improved, they were much less likely to play truant, the burglary rate had dropped to less than half of its 1992 level on the housing estates where the scheme was held, and those who had taken part were still well ahead of their classmates three months later.

Such results are impressive enough, but allowance must be made for extraneous factors before conclusions are drawn, not least the quality and motivation of both teachers and students in a showcase scheme. Moreover, some families are very amenable to education as a means of social mobility, particularly immigrants, middle-class incomers and/or those who by reason of religious belief are not bound into local class-systems and attitudes; the corollary being that a similar success would not necessarily be achieved elsewhere.

Indeed, experience has shown that significant sections of the population are resistant to both education and literacy. Successive governments are partly responsible for this. By orienting the state education system towards "white-collar" employment, they have alienated those whose vocation is manual rather than cerebral, and for whom an academic curriculum is mostly irrelevant. (The over-mechanisation of work which has led to the decline of craftsmanship, mass unemployment, global warming, soil erosion, the marginalising of the animal kingdom and various other ills is part of the same mindset.) All these things will take time to change, but meanwhile a reformed orthography would make literacy more accessible.

Another important factor is that modern media devices, such as the telephone, gramophone, radio, television, and tape and video recorder, have compounded the difficulties of current English spelling by seducing many people, whether literate or not, into an audio-visual environment where they barely read. Since proficiency in English spelling is hard to maintain without the constant visual impression of the written word, especially since the irreversible abandonment of Latin and Greek in the majority of schools, it isn't surprising that the standard of literacy has deteriorated over recent decades, even as these new media have contrived to replace print with images. As an example, a British survey in 1996 showed that 65% of 16-24 year olds misspelled "occasionally" and over half of all graduates misspelled "accommodation".

A vicious circle has developed, with children spending more and more time watching television, partly because they find reading difficult. It isn't coincidental that the English-speaking countries lag behind others, both in literacy and educational achievement generally. Moreover, inability to read and write appears to be a factor in a range of social problems which particularly affect the English-speaking countries. For example, it was estimated in 1996 that about half of the relatively high U.K. prison population of 54,000 was functionally illiterate.

Recorded programmes, whether sent out through radio, tape, T.V. or video, are an excellent source of learning; but the relative absence of script creates a particular problem in English, since education must depend to a large extent upon written examination. The solution is not to restrict the use of these appliances, but rather to establish congruence between language and script, so that learning aids work with rather than against the examination system.

Computer technology poses a challenge to the English language from the other direction - by providing script without language. There is no sound to give a guide to the meaning of unfamiliar words and idioms - and "netiquette" forbids the correction of spelling mistakes! Since English is the established lingua franca of the Internet, surfers can hardly avoid having to use it, to the irritation of many speakers of other languages. Nana Mouskouri, the European Union Commissioner for Culture, has been charged with combating the spread of English through the Internet. This is one of many circumstances crying out for the establishment of a simple and orthographically-rational official international auxiliary language; another is international drivers' documents - which Spain has turned into an issue by insisting upon Spanish translation.

The Internet is certain to become an important phenomenon in the future, although less than 5% of the world's population presently has access. English predominates in the medium for reasons connected with its pre-eminent international status; but the outdated and biased orthography of English is wholly inadequate for the Internet's exacting demands. The right linguistic vehicle has yet to be found: meanwhile English is the least bad language in terms of global comprehensibility.

The demand for an Internet language with a predictable orthography will grow because, in a silent medium, those with limited command of English can only discern the sound of words orthoepically from the script. But if they cannot do this to the extent of reading words with confidence, due to English orthographic irregularity, they will start looking for a language which is written as it is spoken and spoken as it is written. Moreover, as increasing numbers of people get "wired", there will be more and more who can read and write some English, but cannot speak it well enough to hold an extempore conversation. But the desire to do just this is demonstrated by the growing demand for "netphones": simply computers with an integral telephone, which is used ordinarily as a telephone, or as an adjunct to script on the Internet (the addition of a video camera permits videoconferencing). If English does not rise to the challenge of these modern inventions, with reforms leading to orthoepic predictability, another language is likely to replace it.

The Internet has encouraged abbreviations like "imo" = "in my opinion" and "re-hi" = "hullo again" (it may not be long before such words creep into speech). Orthographic reform would likewise tend to reduce the size of words by omitting silent letters and replacing common digraphs. For example, replacing "th" (/dh/) in English by a single letter would mean an approximate 3% print saving. Thus orthographic reform would reduce the space required by words on the page - which would consequently reduce the relative cost of literature, and hence encourage literacy.

Only within the last 1% of recorded history has the majority of people become literate. Most people, for most of the time, have used language without script. Moreover, when languages with scripts are compared to those without, there is no essential difference as regards structure, pronunciation and complexity of vocabulary. Languages with scripts naturally have a more extensive vocabulary, but not necessarily a more useful and subtle one. No wonder it is called "language" rather than "script".

Likewise, in the life of the individual, language always precedes script - and has greater influence. Language encompasses the euphony of speech, the levels of meaning within words, and the power and mystery of names; whereas script, however attractive on the page, has no function except to represent language. This dominance of language over script means that the primacy of the orthographic ("correct writing") principle over the recessive, but still operational, orthoepic ("correct speaking") principle is the consequence of the natural order of priorities.

Obviously there are advantages in having a script to accompany language; but a script, by itself, does nothing to mitigate, and may even multiply, the "Chinese whisper" effect inherent in speech. The legend of the dragon's teeth which, when buried in the soil spring up later into soldiers, was reputedly a comment on the invention of script - with its ability to rend apart languages, and hence cultures and nations, when interred in books - separate from the continuous development of language. Likewise, the story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) tells of a disintegration into a multiplicity of tongues. One might speculate whether a disinclination among the hierarchy for face-to-face meetings concerning the building of the tower led to the introduction of a chain of command through hieroglyphics on papyri or clay tablets - which worked well until there was a breakdown in the correspondence between speech and script.

In less colourful terminology it might be said that problems are created when someone who recognises a script attempts to read it without fully understanding the significance of the symbol-system to the person who wrote it. This is because (alphabetic) script has an innate orthoepic ("correct speaking") function which evokes speech-sounds corresponding to the ascribed symbolism of individual letters. A doubling of confusion tends to occur because a spoken word takes different forms when written down on the page according to different orthographic ("correct writing") systems (whether they use the same alphabet or not), while a single word on the page is read in different ways when different education systems ascribe different orthoepic values to the letters.

In this way the orthographies or spelling systems based on local dialects which were devised in Scotland and the Isle of Man had the effect of breaking up the Common Irish language. Religious differences were also undoubtedly a provoking factor in this area. The Roman Catholic Church had seen Ireland as a springboard for the conversion of England, but considered the native language of Ireland an irrelevance, or even a hindrance. However the Protestant churches historically associated the Irish language with Catholicism and, when evangelising in Scotland, modified Common Irish according to the Protestant translation of the Bible published in 1801. (The Latinate neologism "Gaelic", often pronounced "Gahlic", is proper to a Scottish form of the language which in earlier times would have been known in Scotland as "Erse" i.e. Irish.)

This attitude was most radically displayed in the Isle of Man where a peculiar spelling system, using mainly English conventions, originates from Bishop Philips' translation, completed in around 1610, of the 1604 edition of the Book of Common Prayer. The first printed book in Manx, dated 1707, was a tract on Christian duties; and the entire Bible, published 1771-3 and since taken as the literary standard, confirmed the separation between Manx spelling and the Common Irish spelling employed at that time in Scotland and Ireland. Essentially the Common Irish orthography is still used in Ireland, apart from a few reforms introduced by the Oireachtas in 1948, and the substitution of modern script for the old half-uncials.

In Scandinavia, Norwegians, Swedes and Danes still speak much the same language; but less so than before, partly due to the introduction of differing orthographies. Norway had been ruled by Denmark for centuries, and then by Sweden for decades, when in 1853 Ivar Aasen constructed a Norwegian language, with its own orthography, from the rural western dialects of the country. After Norwegian independence in 1905 this language "Nynorsk" became the focus of cultural self-determination; but was resisted by the urban majority in Norway who regarded Nynorsk as rustic and preferred a dialect closer to the Danish of the old ruling élite. Although Norwegian is west Scandinavian, and Danish and Swedish are east Scandinavian, the resulting compromise between Nynorsk and Dano-Norwegian has produced a language which slots in between Danish and Swedish, which themselves have drifted apart over time.

Orthoepic divergence tends to be even greater where a single language is orthographically written down in two scripts. Before the recent conflict in former Yugoslavia, Serbo-Croat was much the same language everywhere it was spoken, despite being transcribed into Cyrillic and Roman script in Serbia and Croatia respectively. However the religious and national polarisation accompanying the war has separated the spoken language to a greater extent by introducing partisan religious terminology, and also by fracturing the integrity of the former Serbo-Croat speech commmunity, thus giving more scope to foreign orthoepic interpretations of the language. Reportedly, the Croats are bringing in words from other languages and coining neologisms, in a deliberate attempt to create a distinct Croat language.

A similar division has taken place between Urdu and Hindi. These two literary languages were derived from colloquial Hindustani and published by the British in Calcutta at the beginning of the 19th Century. Devised for predominately Moslem and Hindu readerships respectively, they were written in Arabic/Persian script with a Persianised vocabulary and Devanagari script with Sanskrit/Prakrit loan words. Hindustani continued as the lingua franca of India, and was promoted as a simplified Hindi-Urdu by Mahatma Gandhi. However, since partition in 1947, the termination of the common national culture has allowed this common spoken tongue to be defined ever more by Moslem and Hindu terminology in Pakistan and India respectively. The situation of an integral speech area being gradually sundered apart as a consequence of the introduction of the same script with different orthographies, or different scripts with the same orthography (or a combination of the two), is one that has occurred many times. The divided parts normally merge themselves into other language groups, unless they themselves become dominant. The ideal compromise of a new shared standard orthography does not seem to have happened much - if at all. However, valuable though such regional affiliations would undoubtedly be, the wider question of integration of all the world's languages is incomparably more important, since the advantage of the part is best served through the advantage of the whole.

An alternative situation also exists, where instead of a single speech community being divided by two scripts, a single script area contains a number of speech communities. The former pertains to smaller countries and nations; whereas the latter is found in empires, or former empires, where the necessity of keeping together peoples with wholly different patterns of speech has been paramount.

For example, an entirely ideogrammatic script has enabled China to remain a united country despite the difference in language between provinces: the Chinese script does not relate at all closely to any of the language varieties in China, so it serves them all. This means in practice that, when people from different parts of China meet, their speech is often mutually unintelligible - though they can of course understand one another's ideograms. The Chinese Government has been attempting to remedy this state of affairs by promoting Putonghua: the "national language" based on the Beijing pronunciation of the northern dialect. This official language was first introduced in 1955 along with the Pinyin system of transliteration into Roman script - which is now used for proper nouns. Putonghua has since been given a simplified script and is taught in every school in China.

This promotion through the national education system has ensured that the Chinese are already well on the way towards creating a unified language and script. Other factors are conducive to the same end: the large number of workers on the move since economic liberalisation, the compulsory use of Putonghua at international conferences within China, and centralised radio and television broadcasts - to which the geography of China is well adapted. However, the problem is entirely different for English and French, the only "empire" languages which, by geographical spread, are seriously regarded as international languages; they are now the property of so many diverse nations and interests that reform in the Chinese manner is practically impossible.

Under the circumstances it may be considered surprising that English and French have survived at all as reasonably homogenous international entities. The former recognisably "international" pronunciation of both tongues has lost the respect of the political establishment within both homelands, to the extent of being deliberately subverted by the domestic broadcasting services, and the opposition in ex-colonies continues. However, the nationalism motivating these trends is not necessarily a bad thing, provided it is kept with reasonable limits. Protest that local phonologies do not relate to the orthographies of former imperial languages is by no means illegitimate. The worldwide spread of the great national languages has always had as much to do with political sovereignty as with any intrinsic linguistic merit, though the two are of course intimately connected.

In spite of all these drawbacks; the one advantage these two languages enjoy - an international status - is at least equal to all the benefits accruing to Putonghua as a great national tongue. Whether as the two "working languages" of the United Nations, or as the literary recipients of some of the world's brightest talents, they are the palpable beneficiaries of the need for an international auxiliary language. The honour accruing to a principal focus of this need, the BBC World Service, explains the extraordinary dedication of its staff, including many "stringers" or foreign correspondents who are prepared to work for it for nothing or next to nothing, and why its English is still of a high broadcast quality (though not nearly as high as it was), in contrast to much of the B.B.C. domestic output.

Nevertheless, it is evident that the U.K. alone is no longer prepared to bear the cost of such an institution, and that the World Service will have to come under the aegis, or at least share facilities, with the national service: with all the potential for a parochial British attitude that entails. Many commentators have expressed misgivings at the prospect. This is yet another evidence that the writing may be on the wall for present-day English as an international language. American world service broadcasts are likewise excellent; but the limited output suggests a similar lack of funding.

The experience of these major colonial tongues is directly relevant to the coming international auxiliary language. It too will be the lingua franca of a kind of empire: the coming world federal system, even now being constructed behind the scenes, largely in response to new kinds of economic inequity produced by the instant operation of market forces among peoples at such different stages of social and political development that more than half the world's population has never even used a telephone; while small sections elsewhere, who often but not always lack the moral counterpart to their material civilisation, live in a state of affluence which is largely dependent upon access to the latest technology. This is an old problem, but the simplistic solution of redistribution by force has arguably made the situation worse. A change of attitude by all parties is the fundamental requirement: a vast educative process in which the international language will be central.

In all these ruminations it is essential to maintain a proper perspective. Although the common international tongue will be instrumental in promoting understanding and fellow feeling between all the nations presently separated by their languages, its influence will be severely limited without collective action to confront and resolve those spiritual exclusions, moral prejudices, legal inequities and practical difficulties, too numerous to mention, which tend to keep the peoples of the world apart, and hinder the free and voluntary association which is a precondition of dialogue.

In any case a unity of sorts has been created through information technology. Computerisation has given wings to Marx's dictum that "capital breaks down all Chinese walls". The multinationals now largely exist within a global cyberspace that transcends every nation state: rapidly moving resources to where they can obtain the best financial return. The global superstate is coming into being on the same level in order to counter the social and ecological disruption produced by this economic activity. It will also have the task of maintaining peace and establishing global equity through an agreed and enforced code of laws: inevitably placing some limitations on national sovereignty in favour of world unity. However, although the necessity for such a planetary federation has often been advanced, nobody would be so bold as to assert that it would always operate perfectly - even though it might be an improvement on some the empires of old.

Similarly, the international auxiliary language is unlikely to be used in the right way, and in due measure, everywhere it is introduced. In such circumstances, all the tendencies that bedevil present tongues, such as towards orthographic irregularity and fossilisation, will no doubt threaten its integrity. However, moderation in matters of vocabulary, phonology and script will minimise these dangers. Another safeguard would be the creation of an international speech standard upon which to base a unified orthography.

Anyone who has found themselves off the tourist trail in a foreign country, with whose inhabitants they share no common tongue, may have witnessed the first stage of a contact language in action. Although basic requirements in such a situation may be communicated via sign language, a few words representing relatively complex ideas, not quite so easily gestured, are already so ubiquitous that those who have the means to travel abroad may gain a helpful response by uttering them even in provincial areas of almost any nation: these magic words include: "'otel, taksi, telefon, banko".

This contact language is the beginnings of an international auxiliary language, which is emerging unofficially through the commercial world well ahead of any official endorsement. Such contact languages appear through necessity. Grammar is superfluous, given the immediacy of the context, and so is linguistic purity. Moreover, whether or not the affix pertains to a particular language is irrelevant, so long as the word-root conveys meaning: e.g. "bank, banque, banco, banko" - any such word will suffice.

Today the contact language phenomenon, like everything else, takes place on a world stage - such is the power of the mass media. But these most rudimentary of tongues are not a new invention; they have appeared throughout history wherever international communication has been essential: thus war zones, e.g. Vietnam, have provided a number of examples. Likewise "Russonorsk", a primitive Russian/Norwegian hybrid tongue, developed between whalers from these countries based on the inhospitable Svalbard archipelago and Kola peninsula in pre-Soviet times.

Such auxiliary languages have naturally come to an end with the circumstances which produced them. However, another kind of situation exists where contact is long-term, but neither party wishes to learn the other language. Typically this has been because both sides are more interested in trade than fraternisation. Thus the contact language has remained an auxiliary, but used and elaborated so much over time that it has developed structure and grammatical rules.

This type of auxiliary language is called a pidgin for a reason which is no longer obvious. The most popular explanation points to Chinese Pidgin English where "pidgin" means "business"; but about six other possible derivations for the word have been advanced. One theory suggests encounters with the Pidian Indians in Venezuela as the source; another harks back to the merchant adventurers who set sail from Southern European ports such as Genoa and Lisbon in the 14th and 15th Centuries, initially in an attempt to secure the spice trade by sea routes, since the land route had been cut by the westward thrust of the Turks.

A prominent member of the crew in these sailing ships was the translator. Who would such a figure have been? As often as not, he came from that race of scholars - the Jews. He would have spoken Ladino - the Mediterranean Yiddish. Thus it might be supposed that the word pidgin comes, via Ladino, from the Hebrew word for barter - "pidjom".

Some details concerning the origins of pidgins are still disputed, but the central facts correspond in broad outline with the general development of language in communities and individuals. This topic might be approached by considering the following example in the development of an international vocabulary: although underground railways began in London, the word "underground" has not travelled in this connection, nor has the New York word "subway" - which in Britain rather means an underground tunnel for pedestrians. The word for "underground railway" which has prevailed internationally, even within the English-speaking world, is "metro", and it is not difficult to see why: the word is short (Zipf's Law), its phonemes are both common and easy, and it has the right associations in various ways - e.g. with "metropolis".

Briefly, the word "metro" has the right resonance in many cultures. Similarly it seems that indigenous peoples, approached by seafarers bearing goods which they wished to barter, but speaking a language quite unlike their own, seized upon certain of the words being enunciated in connection with these goods, and signified affirmation of a proposed exchange by repeating these words, perhaps in a modified form, with appropriate expressions and gestures.

Had the merchantmen been linguists they would have found that the words thus emerging with cross-cultural resonance were nearly all short and simple, with perhaps only four or five vowels, and no phonemic difficulties like consonant clusters. In any case, when they discovered which words were acceptable and could be readily understood, they proceeded to teach and use them as a business or barter contact language wherever they went. After a number of such trading encounters, this contact language of appropriate words began to arrange itself according to the bare minimum of syntax and grammar required by a strictly commercial language, i.e. it became what would now be defined as a pidgin.

Once a pidgin was successfully formed in one place, it was apparently considered expedient to try it elsewhere; there is evidence that the Portuguese-based pidgin spoken in West Africa around 1500 AD was actually taught by the Portuguese. Moreover, the fact that many pidgins around the world contain words of Portuguese origin such as "savvy, save" etc. from Portuguese "saber" ("know") and "pikin, pikinini, pickaninny, piccanin" etc. ("child") from "pequenino", the diminutive of Portuguese "pequeno" ("little"), is a further indication that pidgins were taught by these pioneers of global exploration and trade.

The many pidgins based upon reductions of French, Spanish, English and other languages, e.g. Sango - an African tongue, seem to have appeared in a similar way. The first pidginised English arose between American Indians and settlers at the beginning of the 17th Century. The activities of British seafarers gave rise later the same century to Pidgin English on the Chinese coast and also to the West African English-based pidgins. By the end of the 19th Century, English-based pidgins had come into existence in various parts of the world, but principally in West Africa, the Caribbean area, S.E. Asia and the South Seas.

Some pidgins share some words or word-roots, but the lexical differences between these tongues are still great, mostly as a result of originating from different base languages. However, the pidgins also share a universal characteristic called "transparency", which is simply a receptiveness to linguistic innovation. This can be difficult to see, due to the obtrusion of base languages, but the same concern for the mundane efficiencies of life which has mostly eliminated from the pidgins grammatical categories such as number, gender, case, person, tense, mood and voice, is always on the lookout for new economies of expression.

The signal result of this transparency is that, even if a useful linguistic feature is rare in the world's literary languages, it is likely to appear sooner rather than later in the pidgins. For example, subject-verb-object syntax along with the associated jettisoning of inflections, first appeared in the Indo-European language group around 1000 AD. This innovation has been slow or unsuccessful in penetrating literary languages, but entered the pidgins immediately. The coming international auxiliary language has a lot to learn from the pidgins: for to begin with it too will be mostly concerned with the groundwork of international communication - rights, laws, rules and agreements. Much of the linguistic superstructure will probably have to come later.

A creole is a pidgin which children have learned as a mother-tongue, while elaborating it according to inherent linguistic rules, and adding words from different sources. In practice the distinction between creoles and pidgins is not clear-cut; a pidgin may become a mother-tongue for some and yet remain an auxiliary for others. Hence "pidgins" may be partially or almost wholly creolised. Another factor which should be mentioned is that some pidgins and creoles are closer to the base language than are others. For example some West Indian creoles are, depending on the speaker and the circumstances, more or less accessible to English speakers from elsewhere; whereas other English-based creoles will always be completely incomprehensible to outsiders.

In many countries of the world creoles are growing at the expense of indigenous tongues and borrowing freely from the major languages; in this way, English and French are being effectively marginalised in former colonies where they are still the official languages. A not atypical example is Mauritius, where English is the official language, but hardly anyone speaks it, and very few speak French. Nearly everyone speaks creole. Like an egg sucked dry by a weasel, English may appear to be unaffected by the burgeoning of these creoles; but the very fact that primary creative activity is going into other languages is depriving English of vitality and impetus: starving it of development except in narrow and specialised areas such as are found within commerce and science. That languages like Tagalog, Malay and even Korean are becoming anglicised is not necessarily indicative of the triumph of English; it could rather be a sign of it being devoured.

The simple grammar and phonology of the creoles, and the transcultural resonance of their vocabulary, allows them to become common languages for the speakers of diverse minority ethnic tongues: a feat which linguistic remoteness prevents great European languages from fully achieving. For example, although Cameroon was divided (in an approximate 4:1 ratio) between French and British colonial administrations in 1919, under 20% of the population speaks French or English (the two official languages) in contrast to the 50% who now speak creole - which has become a vital lingua franca between Cameroon's 24 major African languages and more than 220 minority tongues. Likewise the exclusive or auxiliary use of creole is expanding in both Nigeria and Papua New Guinea which have over 400 and 860 minority tongues respectively.

However, the role of pidgins and creoles should not be overemphasised. Popular they might be; but they are still phonetically restricted, lexically utilitarian and grammatically reduced languages which have to struggle to express complicated or abstract concepts by using unwieldy circumlocutions or inelegant grammatical bolt-ons. Whether in words, speech or grammar, the pidgins and creoles dominate the mass-market - as it were; but the major languages are ahead of them in range and flexibility.

The quality of creoles is as tongues which have developed entirely orally, and specifically as trading languages, primarily concerned with sounding good, and being as comprehensible as possible to a wide variety of peoples. Thus any "threat" which the pidgins and creoles present to the great national languages is only because the dead hand of literary orthodoxy has stopped the orthographic revision which would allow the popular sounds, words, speech-patterns and grammatical short-cuts developed by the creoles to be incorporated or transliterated. Such beneficial linguistic innovations will no doubt figure strongly in the forefront of the minds of those who construct the international auxiliary language, whether or not they are heeded by the guardians of the great national languages.

In theory the international auxiliary might begin from any language: its appearance centuries hence after incorporating the best features from every tongue, living or dead, would be much the same whatever the starting-point. However, the right inaugural language would greatly speed and facilitate the process; and we are proposing that a reformed version of English would be ideal for the role. For example, those who learned it would be using their time profitably, even should the projected purpose fail to be realised; the mastery of one of the world's major spoken languages would guarantee a return on their investment. They would be able to go to any English-speaking country and be perfectly well understood, since the reforms would affect the script rather than the language - at least for a considerable time to come.

There would also be a distinct advantage in beginning with a language whose particular irregularity lies in the script rather than in speech, for language is normally more spoken than written. The spoken word always precedes and usually outweighs the written, whether in the life of the individual or of society, and consequently is more ingrained and less amenable to change. Script revision is not easy, but changing a spoken tongue is so hard that it is probably best accomplished through the orthoepic effect of script reform.

The relatively simple grammar of English came into existence precisely because popular speech threw off superfluous grammatical constructions while aristocratic and learned circles were using French and Latin. Moreover, English is part of the Indo-European family of languages, which is twice as large as any other, and where the dominant trend for 1000 years has been towards subject-verb-object rather than subject-object-verb syntax, and the use of word order rather than inflections.

Languages tend to fall into three grammatical types: synthetic - case endings and inflections - as in Russian; agglutinative - compound words with prefixes, suffixes and infixes - as in Turkish; and isolating - bare word roots without inflections or affixes - as in Chinese. English grammar developed into a form that does not fit exclusively into any of these camps but, partaking of all three, allows at the one extreme for elementary prosaic communication, using just the present tense and simple nouns with short sentences and, at the other, for complex expressions employing the full range of a grammar which contains these three characteristics: a wealth of inflected pronouns, verb tenses and moods; a variety of compounds - such as constitute many nouns, verbs, participles, adjectives and even adverbs; and isolates - typically the prepositions and conjunctions which hold English together with the aid of pronouns, punctuation and word order. This gear-changing capacity of the language may be seen by comparing typical tabloid journalism with the finest philosophical exegesis.

A measure of flexibility in grammatical style is necessary if linguistic unity is to be maintained in the face of a wide variety of cultures. The previous chapter showed how pidgins happened upon the minimal grammatical, lexical and phonological requirements of speech. However, although these tongues are relatively accessible by virtue of their simple grammar and basic phonology, they are severely limited, for the same reason, when it comes to prosaic discussion of complex and abstract subjects. Conversely, the great literary languages have preserved an advanced grammatical and lexical capacity, though at the expense of penetration throughout society and across cultural boundaries.

The essential feature of pidgins is their mundane genesis as contact languages: hence minimal grammar, with juxtaposed one-clause sentences, suffices for straightforward subject-matter: e.g. "Man plough. He my brother." English typically embeds the second clause into a complex sentence: "The man [who is] ploughing is my brother." The strength of the English construction, with its relative pronoun, is that it contains an element of transcendence or ambiguity (ploughing what?); but this is also its weakness. Comparing a religious saying in these two styles might show this: "All men are equal before God. He is no respecter of persons." "All men are equal before God, Who is no respecter of persons." The former is the original or authentic version.

Potentially, there is a gulf between these two kinds of language. The pidgin or tabloid type needs less grammar, because the meaning lies less in the sentence than in the word, whether it describes an entity or a situation. This kind of speech, which is essentially focused upon a material object, runs through picture story-books and propaganda posters into its modern home: the television set. Among the constructed languages it is exemplified by Glosa - which has only four tenses (as in "mi sedi [I sit], mi nu sedi [I am sitting], mi pa sedi [I sat], mi fu sedi [I will sit]") and no inflections, i.e. practically all its words can be used interchangeably as noun, adjective or verb. Glosa is a slightly modified update of Interglossa, the international language invented by Lancelot Hogben, humanist and polymath.

The basic unit of pidgin-grammar is the clause, but complex language also derives meaning to a great extent from the tension between clauses embedded in a sentence, and from the dynamic between adjacent sentences, and the contrast between paragraphs; its grammar, whether expressed through pronoun, inflection or tense, is the fulcrum for the shaft of understanding thus formed. This kind of language is still found in newspapers, but more usually in journals and books.

The constructed language Volapük exemplified this literary type of grammar. By the time of the third congress, in Paris in 1889, Volapük had 200,000 adherents in 300 societies and about two dozen publications; but the attempt to conduct the congress entirely in Volapük proved that a language which worked on the page could nevertheless be unsuited to general conversation. Volapük subsequently faded away after author Schleyer, priest and polyglot, refused to simplify it.

Any discussion of this subject would be incomplete without mention of the Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (1911-80 - he appears in Woody Allen's multi-media comedy film "Annie Hall"). By his aphorism "the medium is the message" McLuhan was essentially describing the qualitative difference between a human conversation, in which there is the possibility of dialogue (in spite of the prevalence of boring monologues!), and interaction between human and machine, where dialogue is once-removed, if it exists at all. By their very nature, the voices of the media talk at us rather than to us, and do not particularly want a reply: a tendency that has become ever more so as these organs have consolidated into centralised ownership, and have moved from print into more expensive and elaborate electronic imagery.

McLuhan compared the relationship between the providers and consumers of electronic media to that between the oligarchy - tribal chief, witch-doctor etc. - and the mass of the people in indigenous cultures. He pointed out that whereas traditional tribal societies are enthralled by magical artefacts and ceremonies, the tribes inhabiting today's consumerist culture are spellbound by totems from lifestyle features and advertisements in tabloid newspapers, magazines, cinema, radio, television etc.: new packaging for old products and ideas, now sold by advertising shamans and political spin-doctors - revenant Portuguese sailors bearing glittering wares to modern tribes who must weigh their values, for the adventurers also bring valuable stuff amid the dross (McLuhan would have been the first to admit this), and their globalising pidgin carries new scientific and religious concepts amidst the slogans and brand names.

The language of course is very often the predominant world auxiliary, namely English - or is it? Typical mediaspeak is not noted for its similarity to the language of Shakespeare, Emerson and Tennyson, and closely matches the voice of no writer from the pre-electronic age. Moreover, the new speech has accompanied a profound cultural shift from imagination to imagery: it is hardly surprising that sheltered modern children adjusted to the televisual realisation of fantasy should prefer Roald Dahl to the literary classics. A great part of the population generally is in thrall to television, when as much topical information can be gained from a decent daily newspaper in a fraction of the time. How many now read the great poets, philosophers and novelists, or the world's seminal religious works - such as the Bhagavad-gita, the Bible, the Qur'an or the Baha'i Writings? McLuhan, in a letter to a fellow Catholic (20/2/70), put it thus: "I have spent a good many years in studying the cultural effects of print and in proclaiming the alphabet in its printed form as the sole basis of civilisation. The electro-technical forms do not foster civilisation but tribal culture."

From a linguistic viewpoint, at least, these questions are very relevant because an equilibrium between different grammatical styles is impossible to retain in the long run; every partial language - not excepting English - follows the trend of one cultural tendency or another. For instance, many traditional languages have preserved a "correct" literary usage, whereas the creoles cater for a mass market which requires no more than a minimal grammar. The standing of English as an international language has largely been due to its capacity to contain these two grammatical styles.

But this potential may have weakened as the pidginised style has gained the ascendant. It might be asked whether this represents a degeneration of the language, or why a meagre fare should be preferred when the linguistic heritage is so rich. The answer to such questions again derives from the pre-eminent international role of English. The advertising and propaganda industries which cohabit the mass-media and its offshoots, with their remit to maximise the market at all costs, have encouraged a certain style in imagery and language which, by aiming for the universally familiar, effectively crosses many cultural and linguistic barriers. Moreover, the pictures of war, poverty and environmental degradation, and expositions of ecology and macroeconomics, emanating from the same media, have encouraged the formation of a number international charities, causes and movements, much of whose discussion has perforce taken place through a simplified or pidginised version of English - both because English is the leading international language, and because proper simultaneous translation is extremely expensive.

In such ways, through the dynamics of the mass-market and of global accessibility, the focus of English use has gradually shifted from a literary to a pidginised form. The frontier of this kind of language is found above all where access to less-educated or second-language speakers is the priority, whether the products on offer be jejune ephemera or matters of great import. In some respects, the English so produced approaches the distinctive qualities required by the coming world auxiliary language. Will it now take the next step?

Since the international auxiliary language will be taught to children in every school of the world, the difficulties of grammatical redundancy and irregularity will have to be addressed. This is because, as researchers have discovered (and experience shows), children prefer a certain level of grammar to a minimal grammar; and they tend to spontaneously regularise grammar where it is is irregular. Thus creoles are essentially created by children who, learning pidgins as mother-tongues, gradually elaborate them by the addition of grammar and vocabulary.

The reason for this tendency is evident. Pidgins developed to facilitate transactions exclusively between adults. In a context where the ground rules of social interaction are mostly understood, and the purpose is mundane rather than transcendent, no more than a minimal grammar is necessary. But children are primarily concerned to orient themselves in an unfamiliar world, and to establish the precise meaning of a situation - as indicated by the syntax, tense, mood, voice and inflections of speech.

The corollary of this finding is that children are deterred less by complex grammar than by redundancy and irregularity. For example, the Turkish inflectional system is fairly intricate, but Turkish children normally master it well before the age of two because it is completely regular and straightforward . An oft-quoted illustration combines the noun "el" ("hand") with the inflections "-im" (first person possessive), "-ler" (plural) and "-de" (locative):

Similarly, relative clauses (i.e. those beginning "who, which or that" in English) are so straightforward in Serbo-Croat that most Serbian and Croatian children have likewise mastered them by the age of two. Other languages also have grammatical features of exemplary regularity which children learn to use without difficulty. The international language committee will no doubt look at all such instances in order to assemble the best grammar from all sources.

An interesting fact about the above two examples is that their converse shows some of the worst grammatical practice. Both Turkish relative clauses and Serbo-Croat inflections are incoherent and excessively complicated. The children of these nations struggle to make sense of them, and do not normally use them competently until about the age of five. This conjunction between the regular and straightforward and the confusing and opaque is typical of national languages. For instance, in English we see a relatively simple grammar conjoined with a relatively difficult orthography, and in Finnish and Hungarian the reverse. There appears to be an inherent shibboleth function in national tongues, seemingly designed to identify foreigners and/or those who have not mastered the language properly.

The same psychological constraints will inevitably apply within the international auxiliary language, so any reforms will have to take cognizance of conflicting considerations: firstly, that the international pre-eminence of English is related to its current level of grammar, and secondly that English-speakers who use a rather different grammar should be represented or catered for as far as possible (according to the wisdom of Webster's dictum "Grammar should derive from language, rather than language from grammar").

The present controversy about black American English or "Ebonics" illustrates this tension. Defining Ebonics as a separate language solves nothing, but neither does the non-accommodating status quo. Sensible grammatical reform would align itself with such dialects as far as mainstream opinion and historical continuity allowed. Moreover, grammatical irregularities which presently cause children problems might be rationalised by adopting the best practice elsewhere.

The English-based creoles provide some ideas in these simplifying and rationalising directions. The operation of the word-order principle in English has rendered superfluous all noun cases except the genitive, as well as adjectival agreement etc.. However, the creoles have pushed the principle harder in order to achieve further economies, including the abolition of the genitive. Some of the more promising creole constructions, with reference to their possible use in the revision of English, include the following (in order to illustrate the grammatical point they are artificially written in Standard English - in practice an orthographic rendering of creole speech should be spelt very differently [e.g. "the" would normally be "de" etc.]):

(1) The third person singular does not alter verb declension in the present tense: e.g. "he run, she sing". (It is difficult to find grounds for objecting to this one.)

(2) Possession may be denoted by juxtaposing nouns rather than using the genitive with the apostrophe: e.g. "this woman child, that man field". (The context normally distinguishes the genitive from the adjective; the more rigorous use of hyphens and compound words would help to distinguish them on the page. Other languages dispense with the genitive, e.g. Welsh: "llyfr John, llyfr coch" "John's book, red book".)

(3) A plural is often not marked by an [s]: e.g. "two house, them rabbit". (Determining whether "sheep, deer, fish, cod, grouse, Portuguese, Swiss, Maori" etc. are single or plural is hardly a problem in English. Chinese usually does without plurals. Eliminating the plural would abolish irregular forms like man/men, child/children, mouse/mice etc.. Plurals can often be identified by numerals or pronouns; a plural definite article like the French "les" [the plural "the"], or the Chinese plural marker "xie" ["some"], might help.

(4) Verbs are negated by the word "no": e.g. "he no work today". (Old English used the same construction with the prefix "ne-" for "no", exactly as in Scottish English, Russian, and other languages. Also "ne-" might replace "un-"/"in-". English already uses "never" in a similar way.)

(5) Adjectives are used as adverbs: e.g. "he walk silent, she sing soft". (Word order allows this. Words are entities which may often be used interchangeably as noun, verb, adjective or adverb: e.g. arm, foot, back, up, right, top, shine, love, dog, plant, air, etc., etc..)

(6) Auxiliary verbs like "be" or "do" are often omitted: e.g. "the sun hot, he old man, them hungry, why you bring this?". (There seems to be little problem with this one if the omitted auxiliary or copula is understood to be in the present tense. Russian also does without the copula in the present tense e.g. "he engineer".)

(7) Serial verbs are commonly used in creoles: e.g. "she go try find it, he start run escape". (This would be a most useful reform if it could be done without introducing ambiguity between the infinitive ("to" escape) and the noun. In English the "to" is sometimes omitted from the infinitive as being understood. The infinitive is essentially a self-directed imperative.)

As previously emphasised, no more than an offspring or copy of English would be reformed, though the main body of the language might be influenced indirectly. Moreover, it is likely that the pidginising influence of the global media would be transferred on to this grammatically-simplified and orthographically regular language. For the dynamics of the market economy, and the high capital cost of launching any new media product, whether an advertisement, film, TV show, pop record, computer game or other fashion item, are such that the multinationals are concerned above all to maximise global access. A pidginised international language might well be irresistible for this very reason. Thus English, and the other mother tongues, might be freed from the trivialising influence of these things.

It is probable, then, that the international auxiliary language, towards which LANGO is proposed as an initial stage, will have a grammar of the utmost simplicity so that it might permeate everywhere with the aid of the mass-media. But what will happen to the mother-tongues meantime? It is certain that they will continue, for a very long time, as custodians of speech and grammar. For instance, the English-speaking peoples, with their tradition of individual purposefulness, have a grammar replete with tenses, moods and voices (though poor in inflected nouns and adjectives). Conversely the Finns, that poised and musical race, have a language which is very emotionally expressive in its wealth of noun cases denoting different states of being. (Finnish also possesses a useful personal pronoun which denotes either sex.) Briefly, the grammar and vocabulary of every tongue reflect the characteristics of its native speakers.

A complex grammar has as many advantages, for philosophical or literary purposes, as has a simple and straightforward grammar for universal access. An increased grammatical range would give every national tongue greater logical capacity, and better receptiveness to translation and transliteration. For example, a third-person reflexive pronoun for English, as in Esperanto and many other languages, would prevent the ambiguity in sentences like "Eric told Mark about his wife". However, it is unlikely that there will be any more direct transfer of grammar between developed national tongues than there has been in the past. Creoles and languages at early stages of development can do this, but every partial tongue reaches a point at which it resists change.

However, it is certain that the grammatical level of the international pidgin would be gradually raised, once it had an established status world-wide. This would have to be done with the greatest care: the timing of any change closely related to the general level of literacy, and nothing that had not been exhaustively tested in one language or another. Thus, in the distant future, having developed an unsurpassed grammatical, lexical and phonological capacity, there is no reason why the international auxiliary language should not absorb all other languages.

The advantage of a complex grammar for elucidating abstruse subjects on the intellectual level is essentially that of economy: not the simplicity of the pidgins, but the brief representation of a phrase or a clause in the same way that the right word might encapsulate a circumlocution. For example, the use of the gerund in English often obviates a pronoun and predicate, or noun and preposition. In view of the proliferation of knowledge currently taking place in the world, brevity and concision are vital.

However it can be argued that a still more advanced grammar is that of poetry, where understanding exists "between the lines" in the ratiocination of images and thoughts, as well as from words themselves and the tension between grammatical structures. Moreover, the alienation between simple and complex grammar is inherent to prose: at the level of poetry it disappears along with the innate distinction between words and their groupings. For this reason poetry will expand greatly in influence, reciprocally with the global tongue. This is yet another matter which, although of great import to the international language, is mostly dependent upon factors outside its sphere of influence.

The constructed languages have proved the futility of attempting to mint vocabulary on the grand scale from familiar word-roots, not only because of the failure of these languages as independent entities, but also because the ethnic tongues have rejected the new words. The demise of many English neologisms of perfectly rational provenance confirms the point. Euphonic considerations must prevail alongside the rational: the neologism must sound right as well as look right. Just because a word is constructed from an impeccable Latin or Greek root, or from the most common root extant in European languages, does not mean that the ear will accept it. Word-coiners like Shakespeare always paid as much attention to euphony as to etymology, but even then their neologisms did not always stick.

But although a group of experts, however well-qualified for the task, may not necessarily succeed in creating a popularly-acceptable lexicon; it is incontrovertible that words with the right pedigree are more likely to prevail. Thus the English language like the great common tongues of history has addressed the vocabulary problem by incorporating those words which have stood the test of time in former and current languages. In this way inspired wordsmiths, such as Shakespeare and his near-contemporary John Bullokar, successfully introduced many thousands of words into English from Greek, Latin and the Romance languages, and thus helped English to emerge from the shadow of Latin and French during the 16th and 17th Centuries when the printing presses were busy churning out translations of the Ancients.

This might be confirmed by choosing one word at random from every page of a standard dictionary. The percentages of words from different origins might be: Romance languages 54%, Teutonic languages (mostly pre-1066) 31%, Greek 11%. English has acquired these words whole, or by direct transliteration, or through careful modification when necessary; but never after the manner of the constructed languages with their instant vocabularies. The apparent failure of the artificial tongues as vital, rather than theoretical or philosophical, entities would seem to indicate that language, like any other organic process, can only assimilate the new in measured proportion.

Moreover, a defined lexicon may not give an adequate choice of synonyms. A single word might be sufficient to convey meaning, and quite adequate for many; but language is more than logic for those who wish it to be so. Any speaker or writer who seeks to create poetic speech may require stress, rhyme, alliteration, metre, cadence, resonance, contrast, variety or emphasis within a single word. This is why synonyms may be preferred - even though they all mean practically the same thing. In addition, English is full of near-synonyms from different languages e.g. "rear / raise" and "weak / frail / fragile", which not only give it subtlety, but lower the "vocabulary barrier" for many nationalities. No other tongue, least of all among the constructed languages, displays this degree of flexibility. It is difficult to imagine that any constructed language could be designed with such a feature - which means that, when people from diverse linguistic backgrounds use English, they can employ the synonym nearest to the word in their first language. It might not be quite right; but they will be understood.

A degree of freedom in grammar and choice in vocabulary is as essential as standardisation in script elements and spelling. As we have seen, English has drawn heavily from both Germanic and Romance sources in its choice of vocabulary. Hence a greater proportion of its words are readily accessible to Europeans, North and South, than are those of more specifically national languages such as French and German. English also compares favourably with other tongues in the absorption of words from the widest international sources. Since the learning of vocabulary is the most demanding part of acquiring proficiency in any language, English begins with a great advantage in terms of the international acceptability of its vocabulary.

However, it is also true that some nations and peoples find many English words difficult due to unfamiliar phonology, consonant clusters and the like. At this point the pidgins and creoles might be as great an assistance to lexical reform as to grammatical revision. For instance, they have largely eliminated the consonant clusters that many language groups find difficult: e.g. "want, must" are "wan', mus'". Any vocabulary problem caused to an English-based international auxiliary language by these omissions would soon be rectified. It is not as though there is a shortage of alternative words in other languages!

Selecting words from different languages will also solve the question of homonyms. Traditional English orthography contains a vast number of homophones and homographs; and a consistent orthographic reform, based on the international standard pronunciation described in Chapter 20, would produce very many more. An idea of the current situation in English might be had by glancing at a standard dictionary. A few common English words, taken at random, are defined in the following approximate numbers of different ways, whether as substantives, verbs, or adjectives, on about the following number of pages of the Oxford English Dictionary:

Not all of these separate definitions are distinct homonyms, but a large number of them are. Hence an orthographic reform would not only produce more definitions in the O.E.D., but more homonyms too. For example, "plain" has approximately 40 definitions on 4 pages of the O.E.D., and "plane" about 16 on 2 pages. Thus a reformed spelling might produce "plän" with 56 definitions. The sensible policy of replacing most of these homonyms with words from other languages would not only greatly increase the scope and precision of the language, but would also make it incomparably more acceptable as an international auxiliary language.

An additional factor, relating to the international currency of word-roots, would make it desirable to substitute some English words by those from other languages - even where there are no homonyms. For example, the English words "soldier, editor" are not typical; the French equivalents "soldat, rédacteur" have a wider international currency. Zamenhof recognised the essential importance of this principle. Here he used the words "soldato, redaktisto", and likewise tended to base his vocabulary upon predominant word-roots, (though he sometimes flouted the principle as in "lernejo" for "school").

The question of vocabulary is one of the most challenging that the constructors of the international auxiliary language will have to face. They will have to be concerned, not only to reflect popular usage, but also to refrain from bias towards any part of the world. However, although it will be necessary to make compromises, there are mitigating factors. Firstly, it will often be possible to list several words from different languages as near-synonyms, since they are not exact equivalents. And secondly, there is the advantage that different cultures and their languages have tended to specialise in diverse areas of experience. For this reason, a lot of metaphysical words might be introduced from Arabic and Farsi, philosophical words from Indian languages, political ones from Chinese and Russian, and so on. The trend of these things is already extant in English.

Moreover, mathematical words might be introduced from East Asian languages. Irene Miura and Yukari Okamoto have established that number values in Chinese, Japanese and Korean are better understood, because the counting system relates directly to the meaning of numbers: hence, eleven in Japanese is "ten-one", twenty is "two-ten", thirty-one is "three-ten-one". The language is also better at explaining fractions: e.g. in Japanese one third is "san bun no iti" meaning "of three parts one". It is well known that East Asian students consistently surpass their British and American counterparts at maths. The difference is so great that it cannot solely be the result of superior discipline, motivation or teaching; it must also reflect the nature of their languages. The vocabulary of the international language will no doubt be influenced by such findings.

A revised version of English would capitalise on both the global dominance of the left to right horizontal Roman script, and also on the present position of English as the leading international language: for whereas English has fewer speakers than Putonghua, and perhaps two or three other tongues, both its primary and secondary users are more widely distributed around the world - and with fewer political and cultural ties than other more strictly "national" tongues. Moreover, English has a relatively simple and flexible grammar, an extremely mixed vocabulary, and allows for a wide range of accent and intonation to shade meaning. It is also, of course, the leading language of commerce and diplomacy, and the lingua franca of information technology and international telecommunications.

But, in the case of the latter, we have seen how the poor orthography and extensive phonology of English can combine disadvantageously. Every nationality tends to experience difficulties with speech sounds - perhaps with consonants like /dh, th, z/, or /dzh, tsh, zh/, or /p, f/, or /r, l/, or with certain vowels, depending upon whether they occur in their own language: for instance, the Japanese substitute /r/ for /l/, whereas the Irish have ten variants of these liquids in their tongue, but struggle to pronounce the /dh, th, z/ sounds of English.

In the same way, English-speakers are likely to have difficulty with some of the sounds in Russian. And non-standard dialect speakers in Great Britain and the U.S.A. may employ only a proportion of the vowel sounds in Standard English, which itself uses just two of them - the schwa as in "the" and the short [i] as in "it" - nearly half the time but most of the others infrequently or rarely: e.g. the four vowel sounds as in "bird, care, deer, boy", added together, only about 3% of the time. Hence a reasonable objection to an international auxiliary language based on English might be that the standard phonology is dauntingly extensive.

One response might be that, since the international auxiliary language would presumably be introduced into schools around the world more or less simultaneously, it would be entirely feasible to start with an orthographically reformed English - together with its present vocabulary and phonological range, and that this approach is possible because children have a natural capacity for language learning; whereas adults generally find it very difficult if not impossible to master a new range of speech sounds.

Moreover, it might be asserted that, since the international auxiliary would be the only language children anywhere in the world would need to learn in addition to their mother-tongue, enough time might be devoted to it to master difficulties like unfamiliar phonemes, which should not present too much of a problem if introduced to children at a young enough age. An extended range of phonemes might thus be inducted into every population by means of child education. Another argument which might well be advanced is that, if the auxiliary is to be truly international with words from different languages, there is ultimately no alternative to a comprehensive range of phonemes.

However, present social conditions would present a fatal drawback to this idea. For although most children may well develop an inherent capacity to differentiate and articulate phonemes, so that by a certain age they have the theoretical ability to speak any language with an extensive range of difficult speech sounds, the capability is gradually lost through childhood as the process of ethnic acculturation reinforces some phonemes but entirely neglects others. New speech sounds are not normally heard, i.e. distinguished from familiar phonemes, except by those who have learned to say them; but when the speech sounds corresponding to the "missing" phonemes are seldom if ever heard, the child's confidence and ability to say them tends to atrophy, as does eventually the capacity to even hear them.

This shows that using education alone to transform the phonology of a society would be as useless as similarly attempting to promote morality or religious revival. The willingness of children to learn, and to actually use, unfamiliar phonemes in everyday speech must also depend upon the confirmation of a global society that still does not exist for the great majority. It is for this reason that confident expansion of the global auxiliary language requires the reinforcement of a world civilisation: final consummation of the same process whereby an increasing majority have chosen to live and express themselves in "national" rather than "minority ethnic" cultures.

This global civilisation, prophesied by the great religions of the world and projected by communists and materialists, should not be regarded as chimerical. However it is clearly not here yet, unless in an embryonic stage, so the communal endorsement necessary for the introduction of an extended range of phonemes is still more or less absent.

Consequently an international auxiliary language based on reformed English might have to change its core vocabulary by replacing some common words, which have relatively difficult phonemes, with easier words from other languages. Many tongues have fewer phonemes than English. Spanish has only five vowels; some languages have only three (one is said to have only two). Likewise there are tongues with nine consonants or less. Some have /l, m, n, r/ and then /b, d, v, g, z/ or /p, t, f, k, s/; depending on the cultural preference for voiced or voiceless speech sounds.

Modern research in the University of California Phonological Segment Database shows that the most commonly used consonant segments are:

As well as having fewer consonants, many languages also use them more sparingly than English, usually one per syllable. Consonant clusters, especially those like "twelfths, strengths", are another feature of English which is not typical of other languages; though there are notable exceptions, including among minority ethnic tongues (mostly in the Caucasus), some of which have strong and complex consonant sounds with few vowels. However, on balance, a number of common and essential words in a reformed version of English for international usage, such as prepositions and conjunctions, might have to be replaced by alternative words from other languages - so as to avoid those phonemes and consonant clusters that are particularly difficult for the majority of nationalities. By making its phonology as palatable and digestible as possible for the greatest number of language groups the international auxiliary language might be enabled to get off to a flying start.

Present-day English forms would continue for those who wished to carry on using them. Moreover, as the phonological capacity of the culture associated with the international auxiliary increased, it would be possible for it to gradually "take back" from English and other mother tongues the full range of former phonemes and other desirable linguistic features.

Orthographic reform is especially difficult because it deals with letters, the building blocks of words, as well as with words themselves. Neologisms and grammatical innovations are continually introduced, sometimes successfully, by writers and editors; but a change to the orthography of a language is much too important and fundamental to take place informally. Moreover, an organised orthographic reform of the English language, for the direct benefit of the whole English-speaking world, is unlikely to happen, for reasons which are explored in the next chapter. The most that could now be expected, realistically, is the revision of an offspring of English towards a rational foundation for the coming international auxiliary language.

Although this common tongue might start from a point close to contemporary English, at least in sound, it would necessarily lose all but traces of this origin as it evolved into a medium with the capacity to express or reflect a global culture. Its linguistic and euphonic centre of gravity would likewise move from the English-speaking world to the whole world, even as it has already shifted from the British Isles. The task of entirely constructing a new language would be beyond any individual or group - however well qualified. It would have to be carried out, via a comprehensive process of consultation, by an internationally representative panel of expert linguists. A democratically determined global standard accent, as explained in Chapter 20, would act both as reinforcement and failsafe mechanism.

Such a reform would bring into focus linguistic problems which T.O. deals with in an essentially negative way; the conventionalised spelling of T.O. avoids giving precedence to any of the accents in the English-speaking world and distinguishes homophones like "peak, peek, pique" on the page by the same means. As an alternative to T.O. we propose an international standard pronunciation and the introduction of many words from other languages. But a third negative argument for T.O. is more difficult to answer. This claims that fundamental spelling reform is practically impossible in English due to the limitations of an alphabet with only 26 letters - which must be retained for practical reasons.

It is a relevant point because the letters of the English alphabet must represent over 40 speech sounds or phonemes. In particular, the 5 vowels and 4 semi-vowels signify 18 or more sounds between them. These are, at a minimum, the 12 monophthongs in "sat bet bit fog the car bee low soon saw fir put", and the 6 diphthongs in "care deer lie day boy how". (It might be claimed that English needs at least 20 vowels: that the [u]s in "sun" and "put" are both categorically different from the schwa in "the": that the vowel in "poor" is a diphthong distinct from the monophthong in "paw", and that the vowel in "low, go" is a diphthong.) The 21 consonants must likewise signify a greater number of sounds; 24 consonant phonemes are normally listed as "English", approximately /b, tsh "chin, church", d, dh "the, that", f, g "go, get", dzh "gem, jar", h, k, l, m, n, ng "young, singer", p, r, s, sh "she", t, th "theatre, thin", v, w, y, z, zh "measure, beige"/. Others like /ts "mezzo, pizza, pretzel", kh "loch, Bach" and ny "Enya, manana, union, canyon"/ are endemic through transliteration.

The result of this imbalance is that three quarters of the vowel sounds must be represented by digraphs like "ie, ea, ou" etc., rather than by single letters, and the consonants are likewise too few for a useful one-to-one correspondence. However, changing the English alphabet (e.g. to introduce extra diacritics and/or characters from the Russian, Greek or Hebrew alphabets) is not such a straightforward step as might be supposed: billions of pounds worth of hardware - not just manual typewriters but also a great deal of computerised equipment - would become redundant overnight: moreover, millions of touch-typists are psychologically imprinted on the QWERTY layout and would find it hard to readjust. More advanced I.T. machinery can easily switch to another alphabet, or to a layout such as Dvorak - which permits over a third less finger travel when typing English. However, the difficulty of mental adjustment probably explains why the ergonomic Dvorak keyboard has not prevailed even after 60 years. New letters and diacritics would no doubt be resisted for the same reason.

Every would-be reformer agrees that the present alphabet contains duplicated and redundant letters: [c] represents different phonemes, as in "cut cell once ocean luscious scene", only one of which, /ts/, as in some pronunciations of "once, dance, wince", is not duplicated by another letter; [g] and [j] are also duplicated, as in "judge", [q] and [x] are more or less redundant, and other letters are often used inappropriately, e.g. [f] for [v], and [s] for [z]. Consonant digraphs in English are even more irregular than individual letters: /sh/, for instance, is spelt no less than 15 different ways, including [ce] "ocean", [ci] "facial", [ti] "nation", [si] "mansion", [s] "sure" and [sci] "conscience". Moreover, the following table of the (approximate) relative frequency of letters in the Cambridge Encyclopaedia, computer-counted, and based on q = 1, shows that several consonants are used so rarely in English as to be practically redundant:

However, there would be enormous difficulties in recasting the alphabet on a rational basis for an orthographic reform of English even within the English-speaking world, much more so towards a basis for the international language.

The principle of orthographic regularity is important, but should not be taken to excess. In any case it will have to be approached gradually and carefully. The letters of the English alphabet represent phonemes, or narrow ranges of speech sounds, which are often different from those which are most common in other parts of the world. Moreover, users of ideogrammatic and syllabic scripts have coped for aeons without an alphabetic orthography: there is no reason why they should adopt one unless it were clearly beneficial.

A number of scientific studies have proved that, all other things being equal, children learn to read more easily and quickly when the spelling system of a language is regular and logical. They have also shown that the incidence of dyslexia is correspondingly reduced. Needless to say, the English language has long come out badly in these comparisons, as it has wherever orthographic regularity is an issue. People have been complaining about English spelling for centuries - why has nothing been done? A cursory look at history might help to answer this question.

Idiosyncratic English spellings arose in the 12th Century from the difficulty of trying to reconcile the very different orthographic conventions of England and France. The introduction of printing from the Netherlands in the 15th Century promoted new orthographic practices; but spelling became even more according to the fancy of authors, influenced by the phenomenon of "line justification", which encouraged compositors to vary the length of words, or adopt alternative spellings, so as to fill out the text to the right-hand margin. Another theory is that printers often preferred to use longer words, e.g. "delight" for "delite", because they were paid for linage. During the "English Civil War" from 1642-9 the propaganda machines on both sides turned out broadsheets at an enormous rate. There was no time for line justification; but this mass-production effectively standardised many irrational spellings which had been perpetuated by its requirements, or for other arbitrary reasons, just at a time when English pronunciation underwent considerable changes, especially in its vowels (the "Great Vowel Shift"). Dictionaries from Dr Johnson's onwards have perpetuated or even compounded these errors.

Most other major languages have undergone official revisions to remedy this problem of irrational spellings becoming immortalised in print. Thus, spellings like "ch" in "chasm", "ph" in "phantom" and "ps" as in "psalm" are notorious in English, but were replaced by "c", "f" and "s" in Spanish and Italian centuries ago. However, from the international point of view, the absence of a thoroughgoing reform of English at an earlier stage of its history should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing because, although such rationalisations tend to iron out extreme discrepancies, the employment of national norms can militate against international acceptability.

Spanish and Italian are also among that group of languages, headed by Finnish and including Hungarian and Malay, which are relatively straightforward to spell from speech, or vice versa. This is because a simple phonology, especially in the case of vowel sounds, allows phonemic spelling, i.e. close correspondence between phonemes and letters of the alphabet. English, on the other hand, has the problem of attempting to cram over 40 phonemes into 26 letters - a few of which, like [q], [x] and [j], are greatly underused. This undercapacity has partly arisen because, unlike most other tongues using Roman script, English does not employ diacritics to increase phonemic representation. English has also suffered from the tendency of neologists to incorporate etymology into words, influenced by a French Academy which has vacillated between etymology - laying claim to the glories of Rome - and logic. For example, a [b] was restored in "debt" and "doubt" to show the derivation from the Latin "debitum" and "dubitare".

In the absence of official action to remove such redundant features, there have been numerous private attempts since the 16th Century to set in motion a process of English reform. A representative early figure was James Elphinston (1721-1809), who drew attention to the link between the international dominance of French, and reforms previously instituted by the French Academy. To the scorn of critics, and amused tolerance of friends like Dr Johnson, he sought to advance English by the same means: publishing a number of books in his phonetic spelling system including eight volumes of correspondence "between Geniuses ov boath Sexes and James Elphinston".

Noah Webster (1758-1843), the patriotic publisher of the "American Dictionary", is widely regarded as the most effective of the early reformers; but most of the spellings associated with him were current in Britain at the time. However, because of Webster's success in establishing them as "American", many logical spellings ceased to be extant in Britain. In this way, Webster's dictionary established the original Latin "-or" ending in words like "colour, labour, authour and mirrour", the reversal of the last two letters in words like "centre" and "metre" (as in "enter"), the elimination of the final [k] from words like "musick and logick", and the substitution of [k] in "risque" and all but one kind of "cheque". Dr Johnson expressed his "horrour" at such barbarities as "author and music".

Organisations for the improvement of English spelling have existed for at least four hundred years. In the 16th Century the Royal Society investigated the need for orthographic reform, and eventually formed a committee which included the poet John Dryden. In 1869 the Philological Society endorsed the cause; and the British Spelling Reform Association, which included famous writers like Tennyson and Darwin as well as philologists, was founded in 1879. The Simplified Spelling Society, which had links with an American counterpart, was inaugurated in 1908. In its earlier days the S.S.S. attempted to unite behind a single scheme of reform; but in recent years it has turned more to providing an educative forum for various viewpoints. These range from corrections of only the most extreme inconsistencies in English orthography, to radical reforms which attempt to phonemically rationalise the alphabet.

In 1984 the S.S.S. published the following moderate list of suggested reform proposals, which had some qualified support within the society:

However, as anyone concerned with the problem may discover for themselves, at least four fundamental difficulties arise with any reform of English. The first is that almost any disturbance of traditional orthography immediately throws other discrepancies into relief. Even the five proposed revisions listed above, however reasonable they might appear at first glance, raise as many questions as they answer:

Likewise, substituting other short vowels where appropriate may seem like a positive step; but if "plait, women" becomes "plat, wimmin", then "plaited" must become "platted", and we are immediately up against not only homographs but also the modernising tendency to use single rather than double consonants as in "enrol, skilful, fulfil" (British) and "traveled, marvelous, woolen, worshiper, carbureted" (U.S.). Similarly, the question arises whether short [u] should signify the vowel as in "put, foot", or that as in "putt, flood, bud, run". (Standard English differentiates these from the schwa as in "random, element, infant": a tripartite distinction which is not recognised by Welsh and other languages.) Numerous other examples might be given: all demonstrating that English has developed into a precarious edifice which it would now be practically impossible to repair without destabilising the entire structure.

A second difficulty concerns homonyms. Most reformers would see the eventual deletion of extra or silent letters to be desirable; but although the initial letter might simply be dropped from "knife", "knock" or "gnat", omitting it from "know", "knit" or "write" would produce homographs: and to delete the one but not the other would be widely regarded as inconsistent. Any thorough programme of orthographic reform would turn numerous homophones e.g. "ate, eight" or "rain, reign, rein" into homographs. It would be difficult to solve this problem of homonyms without introducing a large number of substitute words from other languages: in which case it would cease to be a recognisably "English" reform.

A third major problem with English reform has simply been a shortage of symbols to represent all the phonemes. For eminently sensible reasons the S.S.S. has mostly been against extending the alphabet or using diacritics; but the result has been a lot of words that are longer or less elegant than the originals. Thus, in "New Spelling 90", "almost, paper, motion, accumulation" become "aulmoest, paeper, moeshen, akuemuelaeshen". Moreover, none of the S.S.S. schemes are entirely orthographic: "New Spelling" (1948) often refrained from distinguishing the schwa, and "New Spelling 90" usually employs [e]: both use short common words like "the, to, so, be, he" and the affixes "re-, -ful" conventionally, i.e. without regular orthographic spellings.

Attempts have been made to reduce the length of these regularised spellings by employing under-used letters, e.g. [x] for /sh/, /th/ or /kh/, as in other languages; but there are not really enough spare letters to go round. Another response has been "Cut Spelling": which is presented by the S.S.S. as an alternative to "New Spelling 90". Cut Spelling is more regularised than T.O., but is still conventional rather than orthographically consistent, as the following sentence shows: "As yet, th question of english spelng reform, tho ocasionly atractng public atention, has not convinced th relevnt authoritis that it requires serius, informd considration." Cut Spelling represents a 10% print saving, but its conventionalised forms necessarily appeal more to the present than to the future users who are, by definition, the greater constituency of any major language. For instance, one problem with Cut Spelling is that children learning to read must place the missing schwas correctly.

However, the fundamental problem for spelling reformers has never been wholly dependent upon QWERTY keyboard limitations which might be entirely removed by extensive computerisation anyway; public attitude has always been equally fundamental. There is probably just as much chance of the present arbiters of the English language adopting Kingsley Read's radical new alphabet (which won G B Shaw's competition in 1958) as any modest reforms. Even piecemeal alterations are always going to be impossible so long as there is an unwritten contract by the already-literate to maintain traditional orthography at the expense of future generations and foreign learners. In such a climate the most unambiguously useful revisions, e.g. of = ov, off = of, are pounced on as "spelling mistakes", and the most arcane usages, which have long ceased to relate to any known orthography, are perversely valued since they reinforce the cultural shibboleth. It would be difficult to change this attitude except in a new internationalist context.

A fourth difficulty is that the principles of orthographic and grammatical regularity are often in conflict. For example, "talked, edited, banned, landed" are grammatically regular on the page, but in speech they tend to be "torkt, editid, band, landed"; likewise "banks, cats, dogs, foxes" usually become "banks, kats, dogz, foksiz". Inevitably, the sound of an inflection is changed by the nature of the adjacent phoneme: a tendency which even the recorder of the international standard accent might not be able to resist, without making the word sound artificial and unreal.

Since inflections are at the root of this conflict, one response would be to reduce them to a minimum. As we have seen, the creoles have shown the way here, by greater use of the word-order principle; but beyond a certain point there is an inevitable loss of semantic capacity. An artificial language like Glosa may be potentially 100% orthographically regular, which is an advantage, but one which must be traded against the value of inflections. Another possible solution would be to change either the vocabulary or the nature of the inflections. For example, inflections like short [a] or [i], or long [o], tend to sound the same, whichever word they are attached to. No doubt they are found in Esperanto and a number of major languages for this reason.

A fifth reason why English reform has not proceeded since Webster is the variety of pronunciations worldwide. There are numerous words, like "vase, clerk, potato, tomato, harass, genuine, fertile, schedule, simultaneous", which are normally pronounced differently across the Atlantic. Millions of English speakers do not differentiate between /w/ and /wh/ in words like "which, when, what"; but many others use the aspirated pronunciation /wh/ or /hw/. Likewise, the English-speaking world divides between those who pronounce the /r/ in words like "word, bird" (generally the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland and the Philippines), and those who do not (usually the rest of the English-speaking world). For every word the question might be asked: upon which variety of pronunciation should an orthographic spelling be based?

Merely substituting words from other languages would not solve this problem because accent differences affect vowel sounds, and to a lesser degree consonant sounds, in so many words that "culturally impervious" alternatives would not readily be found. This is the very situation which the notional pronunciation and standard accent described in Chapter 20 are designed to address. The creation of a single international standard accent, unified but not uniform, is absolutely vital because English orthographic reform depends upon the close definition of vowel sounds. This would allow the reallocation of symbols or redefinition of the semi-vowels (l, r, w, y), the substitution of single for double consonants, and the removal of many superfluous letters.

It becomes apparent that a proper reform of English could not take place without a comprehensive overhaul of the alphabet, which would in turn necessitate an international standard pronunciation, as an orthographic benchmark, and also the incorporation of numerous words from other languages to replace all the consequent homonyms. The language undergoing such a process would soon pass a point at which it was no longer "English" according to any objective standard, so it might as well change its name to one signifying "international auxiliary language".

Endeavours to reform English on less than a global scale failed earlier this century when a "national" outlook was still the norm, and would be even less likely to succeed now. In 1949, and again in 1953, an attempt to get a scheme for English reform through the British House of Commons was defeated: extraordinary luck having twice permitted a Member of Parliament to present a Private Member's Bill on the subject. The second bill actually passed its second reading; but further progress was halted by the implacable opposition of the Ministry of Education.

This was a historic missed opportunity because, at the time, British Received Pronunciation was still more or less the accepted standard accent throughout the English-speaking world. It was the front-of-house accent favoured by large corporations in America, diplomatic circles in various countries, and educational institutions everywhere. Such a bill would not even pass its first reading today. The notion of reforming British English apart from the other "national" varieties of the language would now be totally unacceptable.

An enormous amount of money has been thrown at the cause of English reform; but with very little result. Andrew Carnegie donated nearly $300,000; and there have been other substantial donations and legacies. Another sign of enthusiasm, shortly after WW1, was a petition to set up a Royal Commission, which attracted around 15,000 signatures, including those of many prominent academics. Why has it all come to nothing apart from a few minor revisions in America?

Firstly, English reform is unlikely as long as the language still largely centres upon a country whose social order is greatly influenced by class, as well as wealth, religion etc.. Thus the divergence between spelling and pronunciation functions as an educational and cultural shibboleth, to the despair of students from societies where such a device is irrelevant, and the difficulty of children learning to read. This observation is equally valid if the upper-middle class accent is deprecated and proletarian ones are fashionable.

Secondly, the social forces which have been transforming the English-speaking world since the 1960s, shaking many ancient institutions, customs, mores and beliefs to the foundations, dispossessing much of the old aristocracy and middle-class, and raising up previously disadvantaged sections of society along with new media interests and extensions to state sovereignty, have not operated primarily through the traditional rational arguments of literary culture. Rather have they fashioned their emotional appeals into images, focused via the new electronic media directly into the heart, using the spoken form of language about which rational orthography has very little to say.

Thirdly, the majority of people are simply not interested in spelling reform, because there is nothing in it for them. Since the advent of mass electronic entertainment most people seldom read anything much other than magazines and tabloid newspapers anyway. They had difficulty learning to read at school; but it never did them any harm - so their children might as well experience the same! In fact, within the English-speaking world, the idea of language reform is inconvenient or irrelevant to nearly everyone except primary schoolteachers and the organised English Language Teaching (E L T) industry, with its T E F L (Teaching of English as a Foreign Language) and T E S O L (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) qualifications.

However, the same people who are totally unmoved by the idea of the reform of English for use within the English-speaking world, may be enthused by the prospect of an international auxiliary language - because it stands to benefit them personally. Their children would only have to learn one "foreign" language at school: and it is one they would be likely to actually use afterwards! All free peoples would have access to a world-wide literature and media. When "abroad", a concept that would cease to have much meaning, since the world would become as one country through the common language, everyone would be able to talk to the locals, read the press, and listen to the news.

And last, but not least, we would all spend less in taxes through an international language. In a world which is becoming more and more united every day, whether by desire or necessity, the consequently increasing number and scale of international conferences, simultaneously translated into several languages, is not taking place without exorbitantly rising costs. The European Parliament and other agencies now spend most of their budgets on translation. For example, in 1994 (even before Austria, Sweden and Finland joined), the European Union spent £1,200,000,000 on 72 translations.

Spelling reformers, including the S.S.S., have hitherto been constrained by the premise that the current English alphabet should be retained. It may be that computerisation will advance at such a rate, throughout the English-speaking world, that such a limitation becomes irrelevant; but that stage is still a long way off. The manual typewriter is far from extinct; and demand for cheap word-processors and other kinds of low-level I.T. equipment with no choice of typefaces etc. may well continue into the distant future. This point has been repeatedly emphasised because it is the very crux of English spelling reform. Its relaxation to the extent of using even one diacritic, like the circumflex (as on â), would remove the phonemic barrier to a rational orthography at a stroke.

For example, although the Esperanto alphabet has only 22 letters, lacking the symbols [q, w, x & y] (the English /w/ and /y/ are represented by other letters), the optional accentation of [c, g, h, j, s & u] effectively increases its alphabet to 28 letters. Using diacritics likewise in the English alphabet would certainly solve all the problems of representing its range of phonemes, though it would make a great deal of QWERTY hardware redundant in the process.

We have examined the consequences of this limitation in some detail, showing that phonetic spellings using the existing alphabet are prolix, but that there are not enough underused letters such as [q] and [x] to represent even consonant digraphs economically - much less vowels. The fundamentals of the problem are twofold. Firstly, an alphabet which could exist within the existing QWERTY machinery; and secondly, an alphabet which could orthographically represent at least 27 consonant phonemes and 18 vowel phonemes.

In order to accommodate these constraints, we suggest that the capacity of the alphabet might be doubled by severing the correspondence between upper and lower case letters. Operation of the shift-key would then allow no less than 52 phonemes to be independently symbolised (53 with the addition of the apostrophe). One variation on this idea would use the upper-case letters to represent vowels and the lower-case to symbolise consonants. Initial capitals on names and sentences would then have to be denoted differently: we suggest the use of an initial stop instead, e.g. "David Lovel in yon abbey." = "..david .lovel in yon abbey.".

This scheme would eventually permit the operation of a consonantal script analogous to those found in Hebrew, Arabic, Farsi and other Semitic languages. For instance, the Nikud system in Modern Hebrew essentially uses two scripts: one with diacritics or "vowel points" - used to signify vowels; and one without - for those who are so familiar with the appearance of words that the diacritics may be omitted. The first script is printed in school primers and textbooks for language students, and also wherever an exact orthographic rendition is required - as in certain religious passages. The second script, which is mainly consonants, is printed in books and newspapers - where the mass of the population, which has mastered the first script to the extent of being able to recognise words without diacritics, can read it without difficulty.

The objection will soon be raised that such a dual system is wholly unsuitable for English words, which are often short and full of vowels, including diphthongs and triphthongs. (There is an approximate 2:1 ratio between consonant and vowel sounds in English.) The objection is valid. If used in present-day English, or practically any of the world's languages for that matter, there would be an immoderate number of consonantal homographs in the second script. For example: "rat, writ, rot, rut, rate, rete, rote, root, rite, rout and wrought" would all become "rt"! Moreover, words like "a, I, eye, owe, ewe" would disappear entirely.

However, this second abbreviated script might be introduced decades or centuries hence, when a very different vocabulary from a wide range of international sources allowed it to work. (The phonemes would perhaps need to be redefined at the same time as they moved from an "English" towards a more international currency.) When this happened every child would learn the first script, and soon afterwards begin to practise recognising words without their vowels, to the extent of being able to miss off the capital letters. (Considering the ability of East Asian children to recognise and memorise thousands of ideograms or logograms by appearance alone, this proposal should not necessarily be regarded as far-fetched.) That would leave the second script - which could be none other than the present alphabet as found on the QWERTY keyboard.

Bearing the above possibility in mind, the suggested orthographic scheme set out below would have lower-case letters to represent consonants and upper-case letters for vowels. Starting with the consonants, which are more straightforward: seventeen of them might as well remain the same as in English. Some rationale might be given for the ten alterations: [c] = /ts/ as in German and several other languages, also some pronunciations of words like "once, mince, city" give this sound; [c] = /tsh/ would also make sense, given imports like "cello, ciao", but morphically the stroke on [e] might signify the /ts/ modification; [g] = /dzh/ in many English words already, e.g. "gel, gender, gesture, giant, gist"; [i] = /ng/ might be appropriate in view of the very common suffix "-ing"; [j] = /zh/ as in French, this phoneme is heard increasingly in English through imports, e.g. "beige, bijou, azure, Zhivago, Siobhan"; [o] = /th/ as in Greek "theta"; [q] = [g] (plosive or "hard"), unprecendented but fits morphologically, [q] is easily substituted by [kw] or [k] ("queen, queue"); [x] = /sh/ as in Portuguese, Basque, Maltese and Catalan, [x] is also readily replaced, by [gz], [ks] or [gzh/ksh] ("examine, exit, luxury").

Moreover, the apostrophe might be used to represent a 27th consonant: the glottal stop or alif, which is found in Hebrew, other Middle-Eastern languages, Amerindian tongues, and elsewhere. As the world contracts, the glottal stop is being increasingly required for accurate transliteration into English. De facto, it is the 27th letter of the English alphabet already - used for transcribing names, and also dialect or argot expressions, e.g. "bu'er" or "go'a lo'a bo'le". In addition, the apostrophe is used to denote missing letters, e.g. "fo'c'se, haven't, Scarboro'", and also the genitive case, e.g. "Susan's". Orthographic reform would make the former unnecessary - since words would be spelt as they sounded - and the genitive could be abolished if the simple creole usage became current. Alternatively, a convention could be established that all plurals ended in [z], and all genitives in [s], e.g. "Londons taksiz, artists artistz" - which is more or less the standard orthographic spelling anyway.

These consonants may be tabulated thus (those not signified retain their current English usage):

As for vowels, their number and specification varies between languages, and between dialects within languages, much more than in the case of consonants. With that proviso, the table below lists 18 vowels with a wide currency in English, and also the irregularity of traditional orthography when it comes to representing them. An attempt has been made to match 18 capital letters to these vowels - an allocation which is even more arbitrary than in the case of consonants! Six capitals [C, O, S, V, W & Z] are not used because the upper-case and lower-case symbols are normally similar. This could cause confusion when using computerised equipment with the ability to reduce the font size when touching the shift-key. [Q] and [P], the top-corner letters on the keyboard, might be added if 20 vowels were employed.

The Lord's Prayer, transcribed from a non-rhotic speech into this orthography, demonstrates both regularity and print-saving. Improvements to this spelling system might include the conventionalising of some common words and inflections.

Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

.BU .fMaU, wIe Mt In hEvUn, hAlGd bN .aY .nKm. .aY .kIidUm kUm, .aY .wIl bI dUn, In Fo Az It Iz In hEvUn. .qIv Us aIs dK BU dKlI brEd, And fLqIv Us BU trEspAsIz, Az wN fLqIv aEm aAt trEspMs UqKnst Us. .And lNd Us nDt IntX tEmptKxUn, bUt dNlIvU Us frDm NvIl. .MmEn.

.* .fa, we t n hvn, hld b .a .nm. .a .kidm km, .a .wl b dn, n o z t z n hvn. .qv s as d * dl brd, nd fqv s * trspsz, z w fqv am at trsps qnst s. .nd ld s nt nt tmptxn, bt dlv s frm vl. .mn.

Another variation on the same idea (using a mixture of upper and lower case letters) would be statistically based. According to this system, sounds which occur most frequently in current English, i.e. in more than 1.5% of text, would be allocated to lower case letters and the remaining sounds, i.e. those occurring in less than 1.5% of current English text, would be signified by upper case letters, irrespective of whether they were vowels or consonants.

Although this system does not admit the possibility of a consonantal script, as illustrated above, and is moreover really only suitable for English - since the large-scale incorporation of words from other languages would soon subvert the point of the 1.5% threshhold (owing to the different phonetic composition of foreign words) - it does have an advantage in the short and medium term: which is that, since the upper case letters symbolise the less frequent sounds, the use of the shift-key on the usual QWERTY keyboard would be minimised. A suggested scheme is as follows (the proposed use of letters is illustrated where appropriate by the word before the slash):

Sounds occurring in over 1.5% of current English text (all the consonants except those signified would retain their present usage):

Sounds occurring in less than 1.5% of current English text (a rhotic pronunciation would be represented by this scheme in order to maintain a visual link with T.O.):

.Qr .fAcar, FiK Art in hevan, hxlod bj .cy nqm. .cy kiNdam kum, .cy .wil bj dun, in ErT xz it iz in hevan. .giv us cis dq Qr dqli bred, xnd fRrgiv us Qr trespAsiz, xz wj fRrgiv cem cxt trespAs agenst us. .xnd ljd us nDt intY temptqMan, but dilivar us frDm jvil. .Amen.

The disintegration of empires, the movement of nation-states towards confederation, the rise of transnational corporations and global institutions, and the proliferation of electronic media, have also brought the unifying process to bear upon language. Firstly, half a millennium of printing has harmonised different dialects within primary language areas until there are now few verbal expressions, apart from regional or national token-words or phrases, which are not the common currency of all. Moreover, in this age of the electronic media the speech coming from all parts of the world is challenging the value of former standard pronunciations and accents. For example, the images of wealth and status crowding the T.V. screen from America and Australia have undoubtedly had an effect on British English, if only by diluting its affective value.

Indeed, the very accessibility of radio and T.V. as passive entertainment is altering the perception of modern peoples to language itself, compared to earlier print-oriented generations. Thus, even as the printing-press, through the circulation of books of international interest, such as the Bible, scientific works, great novels etc., embraced most dialect variations within the English-speaking world, the electronic media have contributed to the harmonisation or internationalisation of pronunciation: in other words, to an utterance that is globally acceptable as a result of its clarity, euphony and general comprehensibility. One evidence of this trend may be heard by comparing old films with modern ones of an equivalent quality. The clipped British accents of yesteryear have obviously absorbed international tonal elements. It has also been observed that young people in Britain are now more inclined to end sentences with the interrogative intonation characteristic of Australians.

But demonstrating that the best "national" pronunciation is clearly internationally comprehensible is quite different from claiming that it also represents a suitable standard pronunciation upon which to base a unified global spelling. Distinct national variations in pronunciation obviously remain, even within speech of the highest broadcast quality. It is evident that another means for determining a standard pronunciation for the orthography will have to be found.

The traditional method employed by nations which have decided to reform the orthography of their language has been to appoint a panel of experts, who have used statistics to obtain a closer match between spelling and an established national norm. This is the way in which language planning has progressed in Ireland, Norway, Russia, China, and other countries during the past hundred years. Even in the case of national languages, where publishers and lexicographers are closely associated with media / literary / educational establishments, the method is difficult enough; any attempt to repeat it on the global scale would of course be considerably more so.

Within a national language area it is usually fairly evident what the normalised or "notional" pronunciation should be; but a more scientific, statistically-based procedure would have to be used internationally for the same purpose. Thus the representative panel of linguists officially selected to construct the language, having access to all the statistics concerning the global distribution of preferred diaphones for the standard phonemes, would be able to derive and ascribe a "notional pronunciation" for the international standard, based upon a precise allocation of phonemes to letters of the alphabet. This phonemic representation would be abstract, rather than exemplified by a given speaker, though a voice actor might be found to portray it.

Attempts have already been made to define this standard speech. The late Professor A C Gimson suggested a decreolised but rhotic Caribbean speech for this role within the English-speaking world. South African speech, in which the [r] has a rolled or trilled pronunciation, has also been advocated. To mention a few verbal examples, a suitable pronunciation according to international norms might have "vee-uh" rather than "vie-uh" for "via"; likewise "fin-ance" rather than "fie-nance"; "dee-alect" rather than "die-alect"; "anti-bee-otic" rather than "anti-bie-otic"; "Iran-ian" rather than "Eye-rayn-ian" etc.. Words with "long vowels" might have two pronunciations - current English, and a normalised "continental type" associated with the international dialect e.g. "make" might be pronounced as "maak": closer to the spelling (and an older pronunciation). Consonants [c, g, j] might be "hard", i.e. "okean, gem (not /dzhem/), yoint". These sounds might be brought about by the orthoepic effect of the written form.

Suitably qualified linguistic experts for the international language committee would really need an actual mastery of the entire global phonology, an equal regard for different national vocabularies, an understanding of the logic behind every grammar, and an aesthetic appreciation of the various kinds of script. No single individual could be expected to possess this degree of knowledge, or to be entirely free of linguistic presuppositions, but a properly-constituted and well-chosen committee, acting in consultation with all interested parties, would command the necessary expertise.

Many linguists around the world are already studying and codifying morphemes and phonemes, the building-blocks of language, with the idea of an international auxiliary very much in mind. Computer-linked, and with huge databases of information, they are more or less abreast of language development - and are keenly aware of the linguistic imperative of a global tongue: the need to harmonise vast differences in both phonology and script. The inauguration of the international language committee would inevitably catalyse a vigorous interaction between ideas for orthographic reform and a mass of research data.

But there is a drawback inherent in the essentially reactive nature of the scientific method. This could easily be seen in the past when the manual collection and collation of data could scarcely keep up with linguistic change. However, although modern recording and I.T. equipment may reduce the time-lag, e.g. by using phoneme-recognition programs on a population pro rata basis, the result will always be a step behind events. The safety-first objective approach avoids being bound by the dubious prognostications of experts, but also loses the inspired predictions. A related problem is that of data selectivity: in this case concerning the types of "national" speech chosen to go into the computer.

Another problem with theoretical speech, formed by computer modelling, is that it might resemble no known pronunciation. In view of this, one suggested programme of English reform would be both orthoepic and minimalist, with spellings kept much the same as T.O. while international pronunciations according to this spelling became established. Listening to radio or television interviews from around the world, it is obvious that interviewees often pronounce words as they are written according to international norms, rather than like Britons or Americans: e.g. "the house in Austria" might well be said as "tea hoce in Owstria". Likewise, it is evident that Russians, Germans and Japanese speak Russian, German and Japanese English, respectively. These Englishes have their own national characteristics, but they also share features of syntax, pronunciation and vocabulary which do not derive from the English of Britain and America. Such varieties of linguistic preference would have to be accommodated in the fabric of the coming common language.

One advantage of the latter approach is that it would allow the notional pronunciation to gradually take concrete shape. But the world would wait a long time for a consensus to establish itself through this process. The accents in the media might well be converging, as might be discovered by comparing sound recordings from different decades and places, but it is happening so slowly that the demand for a common orthographic standard might not wait for it. Hence an alternative would be to anticipate the convergence of accent in some way. For instance, most people are quite capable of differentiating a "national" accent from a "regional" one; indeed, this is generally regarded as much easier than distinguishing a regional accent from a local one within that region. But this capability has only arisen due to the emergence and partial realisation of the national or racial idea, expressed through national politics and broadcasting institutions, and consolidated in reaction to other states.

In the same way, significant developments in international co-operation during recent decades (such as the publication of "Agenda 21" in 1992), by demonstrating the possibility of global initiatives supported by the great majority of nations, have testified to the dawning awareness of humanity as a single society which is accountable for the interests of all its peoples. As with the development of the national idea, there is every reason to suppose that this global consciousness will be expressed by a corresponding fusion of speech elements, if such is not happening already. Thus, an attempt to determine the most internationally-acceptable accent, as embodied by an individual on hand to record it, might become increasingly feasible. Such an enterprise might well reinforce the notional pronunciation - which itself could never be more than an approximation due to the inherent limitations of the scientific method.

The standard accent might be determined by the official auxiliary language committee drawing up a sizeable shortlist of internationally-known public personalities and media figures from different parts of the world - any one of whom would be a suitable exponent of it - Sir Peter Ustinov is a contemporary example. The standard speaker would then be elected from this shortlist, perhaps by a world-wide telephone poll, or an extra ballot at elections.

By personalising the issue, this kind of election would be excellent publicity for the international auxiliary language, and would also be a realistic prospect since media broadcasts are beginning to span the globe. International satellite T.V. is well-established and trans-continental optical-fibre connections are gradually being laid, which also mean that the vagaries of short-wave radio reception can be replaced by crystal-clear sound coming from the other side of the world by satellite or cable. The practical facilities are thus being set in place for what could become a periodic election of the best, clearest, and most internationally-comprehensible English-speaker.

Briefly, the chosen speaker would read a list of words or a text containing the full range of phonemes, and would be carefully recorded doing so. The script would then exactly describe the accent portrayed by the selected speaker. This would be the global standard accent upon which, when beneficially combined with the international notional pronunciation, the comprehensive orthography / orthoepy would be based: a standard that would be referred to for a designated number of years - until change in the linguistic centre of gravity demanded a new election.

This exercise should produce a result very close if not identical to the notional pronunciation formulated by the language committee; and if not, the enquiry into the discrepancy might well perform the service of revealing a procedural inadequacy on either side, if not both. Taken together, these two approaches should powerfully reinforce and complement one another. In fact they should permit a speech / script relationship for orthographic purposes to be established with such exactitude that almost any kind of speech - such as authentic dialogue in plays or novels - might be precisely signified on the page. For most practical purposes it would obviate the need for the International Phonetic Alphabet. An author writing dialogue would simply need to check an aural copy of the global standard accent against its transcript, and vary his own script accordingly.

Such a thing would be impossible in Chinese, and hardly less so in English, as G B Shaw and other playwrights and writers of dialogue have testified; an orthographic link scarcely exists between the script and even one of the varieties of Standard English (such as British Received Pronunciation). Ironically, it couldn't even happen in Esperanto because, as a consciously international auxiliary language, there are no non-standard accents and dialects by definition - since they would betray a sub-international mentality!

It must be firmly emphasised that the international standard would exist solely for the purpose of allowing various accents, dialects, and even foreign languages, to be represented orthographically on the page; in other words, to permit the operation of both the orthographic and orthoepic principles on a unified global scale around a single script. It should not be regarded as an "elocution standard", or as any indication as to how people should speak.

The approach of an international language committee towards questions of orthography and script should be modified where names are concerned because words and names are different entities. Words are inclusive, but names are exclusive - as in the distinction between common and proper nouns. Words are common currency; but names always contain an element of privacy - including the subjective definition of correct pronunciation. It is up to the owners of names to define both the international standard version of their name and its exact pronunciation.

This is certainly an issue with place names, which can vary not only in different languages but also within a language according to political allegiance. Lancelot Hogben in "Essential World English" (1963) suggested that local forms of place names should replace "English" versions. Most publishers in the English-speaking world have adopted this line: thus Ceylon, Leghorn, Moldavia, Andalusia have become Sri Lanka, Livorno, Moldova, Andalucia. The same process will certainly continue, but will necessarily be gradual, with resistance around the more familiar names for obvious reasons - for instance, the city the Italians call "Roma" has been "Rome" in English for hundreds of years and "(An) Róimh" in Irish for over a thousand. Sometimes a name cannot be universally adopted due to the script, or the presence of diacritics, yet an old transliteration is inexact: e.g. "Cologne, Copenhagen" for "Köln, Køberhavn". Another potential difficulty is where two variants of a name exist according to ethnic or religious preference, e.g. Bombay / Mumbai, Londonderry / Derry; and yet another the many instances where the local pronunciation of a place name is nothing like the spelling - raising the question of the use of dissonance as a kind of shibboleth. These are all problems which will be solved in due course, given the long time-scale over which the international auxiliary language will evolve.

The 1967 decision by the United Nations Organisation to standardise geographical names worldwide in Roman script may be seen as yet another indicator that the coming international auxiliary language will also be written in that script. The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN), which meet biennially, is concerned not only to promote particular names but also to discourage the production of additional variant names. This disapproval of so-called "exonyms" challenges the desires of nations whose peoples are strongly conscious of the value of language as an aid to independent poitical existence.

The question of a name for an initially English-based international auxiliary language would have to be determined democratically: our provisional choice is LANGO - which would have far-flung linguistic resonance, yet without a current meaning as in the case of LINGO or LINGUA. Moreover, LANGO is an anagram of ANGLO to denote English origin, and a handy acronym in English, French and Spanish (as shown under the title, with "LANGuage Organisation"). LANGO also happens to be the name of an important African tribe divided linguistically by three dialects and politically by the Uganda / Sudan border (one of the dialects is also called LANGO). Other names for the language that have occurred to us include:

BETIC "Better International Communication" or "Basic English Tongue for International Communication"

One undoubted factor in the success of language reform projects outside of the English-speaking world has been the power of the centralised state, which has been able to marshal its propagandist, educational, publishing and lexicographic agencies in order to make a spelling reform work. We have already shown how this would be very difficult to achieve in the case of English, given the spread of the language across diverse political systems. Moreover, our democratic ideals persuade us that voluntary co-operation is better in all ways than compulsion, which raises the question of why one of the great publishers does not lead the way on this issue and persuade all to follow. After all, they would seem to be the ideal agents of change - conscious as they must be of the benefits of print-saving, of the needs of second-language speakers, and of the value to the bottom line of reaching the widest possible readership for their products.

The experience of the "Chicago Tribune" highlights the major pitfalls in this approach. Towards the end of the 19th Century Joseph Medill, owner and editor of this leading American newspaper and member of the Council of the Spelling Reform Association, introduced a number of orthographic spellings. Unfortunately there was such resistance that most were gradually abandoned. However, the enterprise was revived in 1934 by Medill's grandson, with the support of readers, who voted 3 to 1 in favour of "short spelling". Thus the "Tribune" once again started using words such as "bazar, burocrat, catalog, crum, glamor, harth, herse, iland, jaz, rime, sherif, staf, subpena, tarif and trafic".

Other spellings, including "tho, altho, thru, thoro, frate, photograf, philosofy" were subsequently added, though some of the 1934 originals were already being discontinued. During the 50s and 60s no new words appeared, and most of the remaining orthographic spellings were dropped, including "tarif" and "frate". By the 70s only "thru", "tho" and "catalog etc." survived, and even these were soon to disappear from the "Tribune's" columns.

Likewise, "The Times" abandoned orthographic spellings such as "Jugoslavia, baptize, colonize" after its last change of ownership. From this evidence one might speculate that the maintenance of orthographic unity within the peculiarly decentralised English-speaking world depends upon an agreement which is no less powerful for being informal, and that although publishing and media interests may be merging and consolidating there is still sufficient diversity of ownership that no publisher or lexicographer is likely to introduce substantial reforms for fear of being left out on a limb. It might be rational to introduce a number of revised spellings, but still more rational not to break the unwritten consensus.

So it looks as if an orthographic reform will only occur collectively in an organised manner, and that the gradualist approach, hitherto endorsed by many workers in the field, has manifestly failed. In view of this fact, which has become apparent over a long period of time, enthusiasts for spelling reform have had to content themselves by inventing a variety of orthographies and writing numerous articles about the subject. But these theoretical considerations have done very little to advance the cause; praxis is an essential ingredient of language development. In Esperanto and other constructed languages we already have enough negative examples of the purely academic approach. It is now time for a coherent and co-ordinated initiative in which reforms might be assessed pragmatically.

As is well known, the democratic process demands that, after a due period of consultation and reflection, a single united programme be adopted, and then continued for a set period of time; the central principle being, not so much that the popularly chosen manifesto should be correct in all its aspects, as that everyone should endorse and uphold it for a trial period until the next election. In this way an incorrect policy or decision might be modified as a result of experience; without a run out in practice, there is no way of telling whether or not a theory is workable.

The international stage is now set for the redevelopment of a language which has redefined itself at roughly 200 year intervals since the 10th Century. In King Alfred's time there was a somewhat artificial standard national language based on the Wessex dialect. In the 12th Century the Chancery made the English of London standard and determined the orthography. Many neologists, grammarians, orthoepists and lexicographers later made important contributions. The language today known as English was quite different in the past, even as recently as the 18th Century, and it has been pointed out how much it has changed in our own lifetimes.

It is a myth that English, like Topsy, "just growed". There has been a good deal of planning in the development of English, but it has taken place in an atmosphere of goodwill and consultation that would now be difficult to replicate, either in or between the diverse political systems of the English-speaking world. The forces of creativity have moved on to the international arena, as all the great movements of the late 20th Century testify, and it is within that matrix of modern idealism, the international auxiliary language, that the transformation of English must take place.

Accent The mode of utterance or pronunciation peculiar to an individual or locality, including stress, tone and pitch.

Accusative The grammatical case which expresses the destination of the action signified by a verb.

Angles A Northern European people from the Jutland peninsula speaking a West Germanic dialect of the proto-English type; known to themselves as "Engle". They gave their name to the English language.

Argot The jargon, slang or peculiar phraseology of a class; originally that of thieves and vagabonds.

Aspirated The manner of articulation of a consonant whereby an audible rush of air accompanies the production of the consonant.

Auxiliary language A third language used as a means of communication by speakers from two different language groups (see Lingua Franca).

Brittonic The earlier language of lowland Britain: its descendents being Welsh, Breton, Cornish and Cumbric. Often referred to less correctly as Brythonic.

Celt or Kelt The generic name of a people, the bulk of whom lived in the central and western part of Europe. Ancient writers applied the term Celt to folk of great stature, with fair hair and blue or grey eyes. Queen Boadicea, strictly "Boudicca", said to have been a red-headed six footer, is representative. In Britain the most Celtic type is to be found in the South of England.

Celtic The languages and cultures of the continental Celts and related peoples in Britain and Ireland.

Conventional Spelling One established by the need for grammatical consistency rather than by orthography.

Common-Irish The shared literary language used by educated people in Scotland and Ireland prior to the evangelising of the Highlands at the end of the 18th Century.

Creole A pidgin which has been adopted as a mother tongue. New Guinea pidgin English is the best known example.

Diacritic A mark added to a letter or symbol indicating a change in its usual pronunciation, e.g. è, é, ê, ë.

Diaphone All the different forms of a phoneme that collectively occur in all the dialects of a language.

Dvorak Keyboard layout designed in 1936 by August Dvorak and William Dealey.

Ellipsis The omission of a word, or part of a sentence, as being understood by the reader.

Euphony Phonetic tendency towards ease of pronunciation and a pleasing acoustic effect.

Friese A language of about 300,000 speakers in Northern Holland, Schleswig, Jutland and over 20 islands in the North Sea. Mutually intelligible with English until the 15th Century. Gives some indication of what a pure form of English would have been like.

Genitive Noun case expressing origin or possession, e.g. "Rome's citizens, John's book".

Glosa An update of "Interglossa" - the elementary Greek and Latin based constructed language invented by Hogben.

Goidelic The earlier language of Ireland: its descendants being Modern Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Manx.

Homographs Words with different meanings written the same but pronounced differently.

Homophones Words with different meanings written differently but pronounced the same.

Ideogram, Ideograph A symbol signifying meaning directly and visually, e.g. a Chinese character.

Ideogrammatic, Ideographic Conveying meaning rather than sound. English spelling is perhaps more ideogrammatic than phonemic - making minimal reference to the parallel phonetic system of speech.

Idiom The language of a particular nation or region; or a mode of expression peculiar to a nation or region. An expression characteristic of a particular language which is not logically or grammatically explicable.

Idiomatic Mother-tongue competence, whether or not it is the speaker's first language.

Indo-European A family of languages characteristic of Europe and India. English and Hindi belong to it. Finnish and Tamil do not. Latin, Greek and Persian were descended from it.

Inflection The modification of the form of a word including the declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, and the conjugation of verbs.

International Phonetic Alphabet (I P A) A set of phonetic symbols for international use introduced in the late 19th Century, constructed on the basis of the Roman and Greek alphabets with the addition of special symbols and diacritics to indicate fine distinctions in sounds, e.g. nasalisation of vowels, lengths, stress and tones.

Lexicon A word-book or dictionary. A vocabulary of terms used in connection with a particular subject.

Lingua franca A language used as a means of communication by speakers who do not have a native language in common (see Auxiliary Language).

Mood A variable verb function expressing predication (indicative), command (imperative), potential or volition (subjunctive) or will (infinitive).

Notional Pronunciation A pronunciation conceived as a compromise to reconcile a range of diverse accents in order to act as a model for spellings which would find the widest degree of acceptance.

Old-English (englisc) A West Germanic language almost identical to Old-Friese. Probably the lingua franca of the Roman Army in Britain. Named after the Engle.

Orthoepy The part of grammar that treats of the way a given language is spoken.

Orthography The part of grammar that treats of the way a given language is written.

Phoneme A notional phonological unit of language, which conveys meaning, and which cannot be analysed into smaller meaningful units.

Phonic Concerning speech sounds, esp. the orthoepic interpretation of words when reading aloud.

Picts An earlier name of the inhabitants of Scotland. They disappeared from history when they united with the Irish-speaking Scots in the 9th Century.

Pidgin A linguistically simplified, mixed and restricted language used in limited contact situations between peoples who have no common language.

Prakrit One of the "natural" languages of later schismatic Hindu scripts. Three have been used by the Jains.

Received Pronunciation (R.P.) The pronunciation of that variety of British English widely considered to be the least regional, being originally that used by educated speakers in Southern England.

Received Standard The spoken language of a linguistic area in its traditionally most correct and acceptable form.

Relexification Direct substitution of vocabulary: the process of replacing a word or group of words in one language with a corresponding word or group of words from another language but without adjusting the grammar.

Rhotic A dialect or accent in which [r] is pronounced when it occurs before a consonant or a pause.

Romance A general name for the vernaculars which developed out of popular Latin - French, Provencal, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansch, with their various dialects.

Sanskrit The "perfected/purified" language of the ancient Hindu religious scripts.

Saxons A Northern European people from Northern Germany speaking a West Germanic dialect. The name was generalised to include all Northern Germans. In Britain, used for the Romano-British majority which had adopted Saxon language and ways.

Schwa A short indeterminate vowel, like that at the end of "sofa". By far the commonest vowel sound in English.

Scot The usual name for the Irish in the early Middle Ages. Scots from Dalriada in Northern Ireland took the Irish language to Northern Britain in the 6th Century. Scotland takes its name from them.

Script A kind of writing, or a system of alphabetical or other written characters.

Shibboleth A word or pronunciation used to distinguish outsiders: originally used in Judges 12: 4-6 (see also Zephaniah 3: 8-9).

Stress Relative loudness or force of vocal utterance through a syllable in a word or a word in a sentence.

Synecdoche A figure of speech putting part for the whole, or the whole for part.

Syntax The orderly or systematic arrangement of the parts of speech in a sentence.

T.O. "Traditional Orthography": the present spelling of the English language, which is not really orthographic at all, by any current standard.

Tone The quality of sound, usually with reference to pitch: high, low, rising, falling, level etc..

Transliteration The action of rendering the letters or characters of one alphabet into those of another.

Voice One of two verb forms: active (the object acts) or passive (the object is acted upon).

Voiced A sound whose production involves vibration of the vocal chords, as in [b, d, g, v, z].

Voiceless A sound whose production does not involve vibration of the vocal chords, as in [p, t, k, f, s].

Volapük An artificial language, chiefly composed of materials from European tongues, invented in 1879 by a German priest, Johann M Schleyer, as a means of international communication.

Welsh A name derived from the continental Volcae, which came to be applied indiscriminately to all Western European inhabitants of the Roman Empire. In Britain the word Welsh was probably first applied to speakers of Latin; on the Continent, variants such as Walloon, Wallon, Waalsch, Welsch, Velsk, and Vlach are still applied to the French, the Italians and the Romanians.

Zipf's Law The length of a word tends to decrease as its relative frequency of use increases: i.e. one can generally determine the relative age of a word or phrase by how short it has become.

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Lango:

Language Organization

Antony Alexander
and Robert Craig

Isle of Man: n.p., 1996

All chapters

Lango:

Language Organization

Antony Alexanderand Robert Craig

Isle of Man: n.p., 1996

All chapters

Antony Alexander
and Robert Craig