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发帖数: 555 | 1 WHY IDO?
http://idolinguo.org.uk/whyido.htm
NOTE: Because of the difficulty of showing Esperanto's special accented
letters, where a letter which in Esperanto should carry a circumflex it is
shown here followed by a circumflex (^), and where the letter 'u' should
carry a breve it is followed by a tilde (~).
The idea of using a constructed language as a medium of international
communication - not replacing existing languages but supplementing them - is
far from new. The first such language to achieve widespread success was
Volapük - the name itself means 'world speech'. Volapük was devised in
1879 by Father J.M. Schleyer, who was said to know fifty languages. Text-
books for the new language were published in many countries, and societies
for it started in all continents. In 1889 a congress was held in Paris, at
which Volapük was the only language employed. But although simple in
comparison with French and German, Volapük was still unnecessarily
difficult. For various reasons the movement fell apart, and the first
widespread experiment in using an invented language ended. There are still a
few people who practise Volapük, mainly with the aim of conserving the
interesting history and records of this first artificial language.
Volapük was in its heyday when, in 1887, Dr Lazarus Zamenhof published his
project for a universal language which later became known by his pseudonym,
Esperanto, a word which (in this language) means 'person who is hoping'.
Esperanto was a great improvement on its predecessor, and Zamenhof evidently
thought that he was right to reject proven success in favour of future
promise. Esperanto spread very slowly at first, and at one stage nearly
disappeared, but within twenty years it had largely replaced Volapük.
Indeed Esperanto has survived to this day as the best known and most
widespread such language.
At the beginning of this century a number of people realised that while the
world needs just one international language (already dozens of projects had
been published), it was important for that language to be scientifically
developed so as to be really suited to its special function. In January 1901
the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was
founded. After six years of preparatory studies, a committee was elected and
it met for 18 long sessions in October 1907. This committee was composed of
ten people from six different countries - seven of them university
professors - and it included the president of the Esperanto Language
Committee.
Many of Esperanto's supporters confidently expected that their language
would be chosen from among the many different invented tongues examined.
However, the members of the Committee were particularly impressed by two
languages - Esperanto and Neutral - although they found faults in both of
them. Accordingly, the Committee's unanimous decision was that none of the
existing invented languages could be adopted in its entirety and without
changes. The Committee decided in principle to adopt Esperanto, but with
various changes which were to be carried out by a sub-committee, the
Permanent Commission. Despite this emphasis on Esperanto, the majority of
Esperantists were unhappy that their language had not been accepted without
qualification, and refused to recognise or accept this decision.
The Esperanto movement had built up a fervour which gave it a quasi-
religious quality. The basic grammar and vocabulary of the language were
treated as 'untouchable', and anybody who questioned their sanctity was
regarded as a heretic! Thus an unfortunate rift developed between those who
were devoted to the original Esperanto, and those who accepted the decision
of the international Committee and thus the reformed Esperanto. The improved
version of Esperanto became known as Ido. One group concentrated on
spreading Esperanto, while the other group concentrated their efforts on
developing Ido as a language more fit for the purpose for which it was
intended. Within a few years the first world war disrupted both movements.
Ido lost perhaps its greatest inspirer, Professor Louis Couturat, who died
in a car crash in 1914.
The Esperanto movement has done much to demonstrate to a disbelieving world
the possibility and to a degree even the practicality of a constructed
international language, and this is to its credit. However, Esperanto has
serious flaws and these are partly responsible for having turned many people
away from the idea which Esperanto is seen to represent. Zamenhof himself
rejected Volapük, despite its relatively widespread acceptance at the time,
because he thought that the world deserved and needed something better.
Zamenhof was right in this respect. An invented language for universal use
must be nothing less than the best available for the purpose. We cannot wait
for perfection, but neither should we accept evident faults. We should
adopt and promote that which best meets the need.
Ido has been developed by linguists and scientists including Dr Louis de
Beaufront (at one time the leading advocate of Esperanto in France),
Professor Louis Couturat (a philosopher and mathematician whose
correspondence with Bertrand Russell was discovered recently), Professor
Richard Lorenz, Professor Wilhelm Ostwald (Nobel prizewinner for chemistry),
Professor L. Pfaundler, and Professor Otto Jespersen (the famous Danish
linguist). Some of the improvements made to Esperanto in developing Ido were
, however, proposed at one time by Zamenhof himself in the light of
experience with using his language (but not accepted by his followers). To a
significant extent, therefore, Ido is directly or indirectly the work of Dr
Zamenhof.
It is ironic that, apparently partly due to a misunderstanding by Zamenhof
of the word 'primitive' - intended in the sense of 'original' but
interpreted by him as meaning 'crude' - in connection with his (original)
Esperanto, he took offence and refused to accept the Committee's unanimous
verdict.
Support for Esperanto has to a large extent been support for the idea of
which it is the best known representative, rather than an informed choice of
Esperanto in preference to Ido. Indeed, most people who have studied both
languages - the original and the improved Esperanto - are in no doubt that
Ido is superior, as indeed it should be, considering all the added work
which has gone into its development. If the Esperanto movement and the Ido
language (both of which, as we have seen, owe much to Dr Zamenhof) could
come together, better progress could be expected for both. Among the
advantages of Ido are those described briefly in the following paragraphs.
Adjectives in Ido do not 'agree' with the nouns they qualify but are
invariable, as in English. In Esperanto adjectives have to be varied
according to the number and the case of the noun. This adjectival agreement
is very rarely of any use. It is an unnecessary complication in a language
intended to be simple to learn and to use, and Zamenhof himself acknowledged
that it is superfluous.
Another feature of Esperanto is the obligatory use of the accusative ending
-n in the majority of cases where a verb has a direct object. There is more
justification for this, inasmuch as every language must use some method to
distinguish subject from object. However, many languages, such as Chinese,
Danish, English, French, Italian, Malayan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish
and Swedish, do not have separate endings for nominative and accusative
nouns (or adjectives). They use instead the order of the words to
distinguish subject and object. Even German, Latin and Russian do not have
separate accusative endings for many of their nouns.
Moreover, Esperanto exempts numerals and certain idiomatic expressions (such
as 'multe da sablo' and 'kiom da homoj') from carrying the supposedly
necessary accusative ending and, partly for this reason, has to depend at
times on a normal word order to clarify meaning. Ido allows optional use of
the accusative ending (-n) so as to permit flexibility of word order -
sometimes useful for emphasis or in poetry - while recognising that the
normal word order (subject - verb - direct object) does not need to be
reinforced by constant addition of the ending -n to every direct object.
Ido is also not encumbered by the peculiar idiomatic uses of the 'accusative
' ending which occur in Esperanto (for example: la duan fojon, tagon post
tago, unu matenon, iri Parizon) and which add unnecessary complication to
that language. In these cases the ending -n does not indicate an accusative!
In Ido, a preposition is used where appropriate (for example, 'ye la lasta
foyo').
Esperanto does not use the letters q, w, x and y, but does have the
inconvenience of six accented letters - c^, g^, h^, j^, s^ and u~ - which (
with the possible exception of the last) are not used in any other language.
Because they are peculiar to Esperanto they have to be specially provided
just for printing Esperanto. Although the problems this causes are not
insuperable, the accents remain a nuisance in various ways, and hinder
acceptance of Esperanto. Theoretically the circumflex can be replaced by the
letter h, but Esperantists themselves use this alternative very reluctantly
, as the result looks very 'heavy' and unattractive.
Ido sweeps away these problems by making full use of the basic letters which
are common to most countries using the Latin alphabet. There are, as in
many languages, two digraphs (ch and sh); g^ and j^ are replaced by j, and y
replaces j. Ido can therefore be typed, printed or used on a computer
without the slighest difficulty.
The pronunciation of Ido is simpler and easier than that of Esperanto which
has several sounds and combinations of consonants which cause unnecessary
difficulty for people whose languages do not have these sounds or clusters.
For example, h^oro, funkcio, punkto, konscienco, eksciti, ekzemplo, eksedzo.
The distinction between the sounds g^ and j^ is not known in many languages
so Ido replaces both with j.
The basic words for people and animals in Ido are almost all neutral as
regards sex (instead of masculine or vaguely unspecified as in Esperanto),
and words for the masculine and feminine are derived by use of the
appropriate suffix. Thus the basic Ido words for pilot, nurse, cousin, child
, spouse, bee, elephant, cat etc are general rather than specific, and it is
not necessary to imply male or female, although it is of course possible to
do so where required. This method is much better than that in Esperanto (
which only has a feminine suffix), as Zamenhof himself acknowledged.
The plural ending of nouns in Esperanto is -oj which is derived only from
some nouns in ancient Greek. Ido has -i, which is a plural ending in Italian
, Rumanian, and Russian as well as other Slav languages. Infinitives in
Esperanto end in -i, for no good reason, whereas in Ido they end in -ar
which is recognisable to speakers of Catalan, Italian, Portuguese and
Spanish.
Many words in Esperanto are either not international or have been
unnecessarily deformed. The following examples illustrate this.
Esperanto - Ido
bubalo - bufalo
c^elo - celulo
c^irkau~ - cirkum
dedic^i - dedikar
edzo - spozo
ekspozicii - expozar
elasta - elastika
estonteco - futuro
konversacii - konversar
lernejo - skolo
limo - limito
mac^i - mastikar
mencii - mencionar
nacio - naciono
penti - repentar
sperta - experta
tac^mento - detachmento
vipuro - vipero
The names of countries are also more internationally recognisable in Ido. As
proper names they do not have to end in -o like other nouns.
Esperanto - Ido
Anglujo or Anglio - Anglia
Britujo or Britio - Britania
Hindujo or Hindio - India
Germanujo or Germanio - Germania
Gvatemalo - Guatemala
Italujo or Italio - Italia
All pronouns in Esperanto end in -i, with the result that they can easily be
confused when heard against background noise or by telephone (particularly
mi and ni). In Ido the pronouns are less similar to one another, so that
they are less likely to be misheard. In addition Ido has a very useful extra
pronoun, lu, which is used (like hän in Finnish) whenever the sex of a
person is either irrelevant or perhaps unknown to the writer or speaker.
Many people have felt the need for such a pronoun in English ('s/he' is
sometimes used in writing). It is much more surprising if an invented
language cannot meet such a need!
The derivation of words from 'root' words is very confused in Esperanto, and
only superficially simple. For example, the suffix -ad- means one thing if
added to a verbal root, and another if added to a noun root (compare 'pafado
' and 'kronado'), although this was not originally intended but came about
because these details had not been adequately thought out. Again, whether a
verb can be derived from an adjective without using an affix, and if so what
it means, are difficulties about which Esperantists have disagreed.
The prefix mal- in Esperanto is particularly inopportune because in several
languages 'mal' means 'bad' or 'wrong' (as in English 'malformed', '
malodorous' etc). Ido has the international prefix des- (similar to English
dis- as in 'disappear'). Although such a prefix is very useful, Esperanto
uses it to excess, so making many very common words unnecessarily long.
Esperanto - Ido - English
malbona - mala - bad
malfermas - apertas - open(s)
malgranda - mikra - small
mallonga - kurta - short
malmultekosta - chipa - cheap
malrapida - lenta - slow
malsupreniras - decensas - descend(s)
maltrankviligas - trublas - trouble(s)
The use of the adverb in Esperanto in phrases such as 'danci estas facile' (
literally 'to dance is easily') is idiomatic and illogical but is probably
due to the influence of Slav languages. It ignores the substantival
character of the infinitive, with which Ido correctly uses the adjective.
The vocabulary of Esperanto contains a number of words which are ambiguous
and can cause misunderstanding and mistranslation. Here are some examples.
Esperanto - Ido (English)
antau~ - avan (in front of) or ante (earlier than)
atendas - expektas (expects) or vartas (waits for)
de - di (of) or da (by) or de (from)
eble - posible (possibly) or forsan (perhaps)
neebla - negebla (deniable) or neposibla (impossible)
nombras - kontas (counts) or numerizas (numbers)
povas - povas (can) or darfas (may)
senkulpigas - exkuzas (excuses) or absolvas (exonerates)
Many Esperantists have yet to discover Ido. We hope that they will consider
Ido, without prejudice, as seriously as they wish the world to consider
Esperanto. If this summary of the advantages of the improved Esperanto has
been of interest, the following publications will be found useful in
studying the benefits of Ido further.
The Problem of an International Auxiliary Language - L.H. Dyer.
A Planned Auxiliary Language - Henry Jacob.
Ido for All - Nik ap Glyn.
Complete Manual of the Auxiliary Language Ido - Louis de Beaufront.
Ido-English Dictionary; English-Ido Dictionary - L.H. Dyer.
Lexiko di Ido-Japoniana-Esperanto - Kuriyama Hitosi.
Esperanto-Ido Lexiko - Henry Jacob.
In Esperanto:
Internacia Lernolibro por Esperantistoj - Henry Jacob.
In Ido:
Dicionario di la linguo universala Ido - Marcel Pesch.
Historio di nia linguo / History of our language - Otto Jespersen.
Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di Ido - Louis de Beaufront. |
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