Esperanto

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31521, 8 November 1967, Page 20

Esperanto

Sir, —Esperanto will not remove New Zealand’s lingual

handicaps in the geographical zones which influence her. The Chinese, trying to simplify Chinese dialects, will never learn Esperanto, and the Japanese, with ingrained efficiency, are concentrating on the American language. A profitable way of rudimentary conversation might be by teaching an Asian-Australas-ian skilled sign language, similar to the Trappist monk method and charades with hand signals only. Experimental samples should be simple, such as variants of the word “America.” However, New Zealand boys could learn Japanese by the English public school method of language laboratories, where pupils work on their own with individual tape recorders. The master listens-dn to any one of them to make sure he Is doing well and they can get into individual communication with him. There is, of course, the universal language of love, but this has become garbled by the hippies and their fellow-travellers to nowhere.—Yours, etc., ■ A. B. CEDARIAN. November 7, 1967.