BID FOR AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24775, 24 December 1943, Page 3

BID FOR AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE

"YY'HAT is "Basic English"? The question, says Jackdaw in John o'London's Weekly, has been on everyone's lips in Britain since Mr. Churchill put Basic on the map, and a Cabinet Committee was formed to go into the suggestion tliat its group of 850 words might be the substance of an international language. Most people have the idea that it is a watered-down form of English which has been only the plaything of experts. But it is important to keep in mind that it is not, first of all, English for the English. Tts words, its rules, and its general structure are such that its use is possible by those to whom English is a strange language. "Basic: British American Scientific International Commercial (English)"—there you have the name; and it is not right to make more of it than that. It is, in fact, a

language to be used, not for art or effect, but for the material end of giving separate peoples the power of exchanging thoughts in a common tongue. Mr. E. V. Knox, editor of Punch, hails Mr. Churchill's action with gleeful shouts. There can be 110 doubt that Mr. Knox looks forward to the dav when Hitler will bo able to read Punch and discover just what kind of an outsider he really is. Mr. Knox (Evoe to people who read over shoulders) takes just pride in reminding us that already The Story of Granny

•' A MEMBER told me a story which, with his permission, 1 will tell the House. It concerns a man who had permission from his firm to go to work at eight o'clock instead of seven, said Mr. Corquodale, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour, during a recent debate on manpower in the House of Commons. "A new foreman wished to take away this privilege, and lie asked the man ' why he could not come on at seven o'clock like the others. His answer was that he had to get the babv up and get it to its granny's. The' foreman asked why his wife could not do it, and the man replied that she got up at 5.30 to go to another factory nt 6 o'clock. Ihon tli© loioman inquired whether the grandmother could not get up a little earlier to receive the child, only to be told that the grandmother did _ not come back from her night shift until se\en o'clock."

From a London Correspondent

he has written several articles for Punch in Basic.

Mr. Knox goes on to say: But I must give to the Government a warning. The Esperantists are after them. They are hot on the trail. They ride early and late. Between the wilder elements in the Basic English party and the hot-heads in the Esperanto group there is battle royal. If you see two men enter a club in Pall Mall, and scowl darkly at one another, and go to opposite ends of the room, you may be very sure Jfchat one of them is a

Basictitian and the other an Esperantovite. I have a dream of Esperanto men With bayonet and bomb, with knives and fists. With pamphlet, notebook, circular and pen. Fighting infuriated Basicists. See what the Esperantotes have written to me in a little brochure of their own about Basic English. "Most names of animals, plants, foods, scientific terms, and of bygone or imaginary things (e.g. lion, duck, rose, pork, crystal, castle, fairy) have no place in the Basic list. The unhappy student wishing to order roast pigeon may perhaps ask for bird that Noah sent out to see if there was land cooked by open tire (in oven). The Esperanto rostita kolombo seems preferable." And it may possibly be true that in this one instance the Ksperantonians arc right. The victorious Allied armies marching through Italy might find on reaching (say) Venice that it was easier to obtain this particular meal from the smiling inhabitants, by roaring "Rostita Colombo," than by bellowing that bit about the Ark. But they do not convince mo, these Esperantincs, with their concern for the unhappy student and his needs. "To express' the idea of a syringe" they continue, "he may use a definition: pipe with nose-bit and push-pull apparatus into which liquid is got by using airpower, to be sent out in a thin line . . • or perhaps shorten this into waterforcing apparatus (with bulb)." But what is the Esperanto for this strange instrument? Stirruppompo, by any chance? They do not say.