"Slow
down, my son. I'm losing the thread. We sent you
to the planet Earth to study planetary communication.
You come back rattling off a whole battery of moral
and psychological notions having no bearing on the
subject."
"I'm
sorry, Excellency. Stupidity is certainly the first
hypothesis that comes to mind when you look at how
the terrans organize their international communication.
Look at this map. All these patches with different
colors are countries, each one with its own government.
Here s the United States. This one is called India,
this one Angola, this one Italy there are many of
them. Now, since they all have reached a good level
of civilization, they obviously have to discuss
various matters that concern the whole planet. What
do you think they do?"
"Send
their representatives by the easiest means to a
place convenient for everyone, where they can get
together and discuss."
"Exactly.
That's what they do, physically. But mentally they
don't. A large number of them study languages at
school for years and years, but when they meet in
such settings as what they call the United Nations,
or an institution like, say, the International Civil
Aviation Organization, they have no language in
common. So they stare at one another, unable to
talk together. To communicate with one another they
need a whole costly and cumbersome set of machinery,
plus an important highly qualified staff."
"Gorogol
was right: they're stupid."
"No,
Excellency. If they were stupid, they wouldn't have
solved the problems of material communication. What
they are is masochists. Look at this small peninsula
here. That's what they call Europe. Well, there,
the lowliest cheesemaker must translate the labels
on his packages into half a dozen languages. It
costs a lot and is paid by the consumers. And they
have a wide spectrum of international organizations
which spend fortunes on translation and interpretation.
Governments take the money from the taxpayers' wallets
without the slightest remorse."
"That's
downright perverse!"
"But
the taxpayers gladly let their money be used for
such purposes! They are no less perverse, but the
other way around: while the governments are sadistic,
they are masochists."
"Is
that the only means they have to communicate across
language barriers?"
"No,
Excellency. This system is more and more restricted
to formal settings. In everyday life they usually
get along using a common language."
"Why
didn't you say so at first? If they use a common
language, they re not more stupid or masochistic
than we are."
"Yes,
they are. In our part of the galaxy, we use a common
language which is completely neutral and easy for
everybody. It is not the language of a given people,
or of a given planet, so that we communicate on
an equal footing and we don't need much effort to
master the means of communication. Ten minutes a
day for one year in elementary school and some practicing
afterwards is all it takes."
"Isn't
that what the terrans are doing?"
"No.
To communicate, they have selected a language that
stands out against all the others, because it has
particularly little in common with them. Look at
the map again. This is continental Europe, this
is Latin America, this is Africa, this is Indonesia.
Together, they represent many millions of people,
probably more than a billion. Well on this huge
territory, they have a letter which is written like
this: a or A. All those millions of
people pronounce it in the same way, even many who
have different alphabets, like the Greeks and the
Russians (and the latter's tongue is used in this
enormous territory in Asia, north of those mountains
here). But in the language they have adopted to
communicate - which they call English, because it
was born on this tiny island here, England - this
same letter is seldom used with its practically
universal value. It represents a whole range of
different sounds. Look at these words and listen
how I pronounce the a in them: bad, all,
father, courage, face."
"Amazing!
What a strange idea, to use the same letter for
sounds that different!"
"It
is all the more incomprehensible at the international
level. All the persons who have learned to read
and write in a Bantu language, like Swahili, or
a Latin one, like Spanish, or a Slavic one, like
Czech, or a Germanic one, like Dutch, pronounce
it in the same way. Even in China - this big patch
on the map - kids first learn to write in the Latin
alphabet (they learn their own writing system afterwards),
and they also pronounce this letter the same way,
as do their neighbors the Japanese when they write
their names for foreigners. The English speakers,
as they are called, are the only ones with this
strange way of pronouncing the letters of the alphabet
they use. This other letter, for instance: I,
i is pronounced the same way all over the planet,
including the transcription of Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese
and Japanese, but the English speakers give it different
values: compare bite with bit."
"So,
you tell me that there is practically unanimity
on the planet. But what they use to understand one
another is just the only language that functions
in another way, a more complicated, a more irrational
one? They've chosen the only exception as their
standard?"
"Yes,
Excellency. Isn't that a good example of masochism?
Since the system they've adopted is much more complicated
than is necessary in order to communicate, it prevents
smooth communication for most people. Moreover,
it isn't fair. As far as languages are concerned,
an English speaker has nothing to learn to communicate
by this system, whereas many people have to devote
many hours a week for many years to acquire the
common means of communication, and they never reach
the English speakers' level. I just mentioned to
you writing and pronunciation, but similar problems
pervade the language. For instance, most languages
have only one word for expressing such concepts
as freedom , read , unavoidable , buy , fraternal
. But you don t master English, or at least written
English, which is so important in any contract,
any scientific or commercial matter, if you have
not learned the parallel words liberty, peruse,
inevitable, purchase, brotherly. So people
who are not English speakers (or, maybe, who are
lower class English speakers) have to learn twice
the vocabulary that is needed to communicate in
other languages. Furthermore, practically all over
the world, words are derived from one another in
a way that facilitates memory, for instance dentist
is derived from tooth : French dent > dentiste,
Japanese ha > ha-isha, German Zahn
> Zahnarzt, Indonesian: gigi > doktor
gigi. As in many other respects, English stands
out as an exception. You have not only to learn
tooth and the fact that its plural is not
tooths but teeth, but you cannot use
that knowledge to remember how the man who deals
with your teeth is called. Dentist has a
completely different basis altogether."
"A
strange language, indeed!"
"That's
not all. There are incredibly many expressions made
up from a verb and a little word, and these have
many meanings that you cannot deduce from the component
parts. For instance, you may have learned what make
and up mean, but it doesn t help you to guess
the meaning of make up. All the more since
there are very many meanings, from compensate to
put together passing through many others, as exemplified
in this exchange by two characters in one of P.G.
Wodehouse's novels:
"He's
made up his mind to stay in"
"Well,
I've made up my face to go out." (1)
So,
it's a language that requires a lot of time to be
mastered. A Korean or a Chinese who wants to be
able to use English at a good intellectual level,
for instance to negotiate a contract or take part
in a discussion in a scientific or technical field,
has to devote at least 8000 hours to its acquisition.
At a rate of 40 hours a week, this means 200 weeks,
or almost four years, full time, without
any vacation. Parents the world over see their children
spend hundreds of hours at school studying the language
without reaching the competence level at which it
would be useful. No wonder that thousands of travelers
have to struggle with annoyances and misunderstandings
because most non-native English speakers cannot
use English properly. And how often contacts between
people are reduced to a kind of subhuman level!
But nobody ever complains. The terrans choose to
spend fortunes on this system, to live with annoyance
and injustice, although nothing forces them to.
Isn't that masochism?"
"Wait
a minute, my boy. Not so fast. First explain to
me why the planet Earth hasn't created a language
for inter-ethnic communication when the rest of
the galaxy has done so."
"But,
Excellency, things have developed with them exactly
as they have with us!"
"In
what way? You mean they have a genuine international
language too? Why don't they use it then?"
"Precisely.
The linguistic creativity of the terrans is just
as great as ours, and several authors have published
outlines for an inter-ethnic language. Most of them,
as with us, did not work and soon fell into oblivion.
But one day a very modest project appeared, called
International Language by its author, who
published it, for various reasons linked to the
social and political situation, under a pseudonym,
Dr. Esperanto. This project, though not much thought
of by the elite, was adopted by people of very different
language backgrounds as their means of international
communication. The language spread little by little
across the planet and reached all kinds of people.
It grew richer and more flexible as people used
it, and through the works of several major writers
"
"In
essence, then, things went very much as they did
with us?"
"Yes.
There was a kind of competition among rival candidates,
which manifested marked differences of capacity
and dynamism. One language clearly emerged from
this process of natural selection the one the public
called Esperanto. Life transformed it into a living
language, with its songs, its humor, its literature
"
"Son,
I don't understand. Why haven't the terrans availed
themselves of this language to solve their communication
problem?"
"Stupidity,
according to Gorogol; masochism, according to me.
As an average, ten months of Esperanto brings a
communication capability equivalent to the level
you reach after ten years of English, if you base
your reckoning on the same number of hours per week.
If this masochism factor didn't intervene, people
would force their governments to require instruction
in Esperanto for one year in all schools, after
which students could study this or that additional
language of their choice, for cultural reasons,
if they are interested. This system would eliminate
all the problems of linguistic communication without
bringing the least inconvenience."
"I'm
beginning to understand why you talk of masochism.
But didn't I hear you saying something about arrogance
a moment ago?"
"Yes,
indeed. This masochism can be maintained only as
long as everybody pretends that the international
language solution doesn't exist or doesn't work.
And this - this comes from people's exaggerated
idea of their own competence."
"Explain."
"In
the course of my researches, I questioned a large
number of terrans. In many cases, when I mentioned
the word Esperanto, I was met with irony
and superior smiles. Not always. Some people were
genuinely interested and ready to accept the idea:
these people did not allow themselves to be taken
in by arrogance. But with many people, especially
in Europe, the first reaction that you meet is scorn.
And this scorn comes from the certainty of knowing
all that there is to know - a kind of grand presumption
that comes from obstinately judging without studying
the facts."
"Are
you saying that they reject Esperanto without knowing
anything about it?"
"Precisely.
As soon as you start to question them on the matter,
it becomes evident that they haven't the foggiest
idea what Esperanto is. Most simply don't know that
there are people who use that language to communicate
with foreigners, that there are children who speak
it, that it has been adopted by poets of real merit,
that it is regularly used for radio broadcasts or
that many people correspond in it by electronic
mail. They attribute non-existent faults to it and
have no notion of its true limits. But it doesn't
occur to them that before they pass judgment they
should look at the facts."
"It's
hardly credible."
"But
it is a fact. Look at this. This is one of their
newspapers, USA Today. This article gives
some positive information on Esperanto, although
its emphasis on religious aspects may somewhat distort
the picture. But part of the article quotes a certain
Robert Trammel of the Department of Languages and
Linguistics at Florida Atlantic University in Boca
Raton as saying:
"The
reason it hasn't caught on is because it's always
something the speaker has to learn in addition to
his or her native language - it's something extra."
(2)
"Well,
if it's a common language for international communication,
how could it be used without first being learned
in addition to the mother tongue? This is sheer
stupidity!"
"Yes,
but the stupidity stems from arrogance. Because
this man teaches at a university department of languages
and linguistics, he believes he can say anything
on a language before gathering the facts. In this
case he misses the point completely. But only people
who understand what it's all about realize this.
Most will only remember that a language specialist
dismisses Esperanto, that it is not serious. Another
sentence by the same person, who is quoted as saying
that "it's essentially an Indo-European language",
shows that he allows himself to judge without first
proceeding to a linguistic analysis applying the
criteria usually used to classify a language. As
a matter of fact, Esperanto consists of invariable
elements (linguists call them morphemes)
that can be combined without restriction. The
fact that you derive my from I (mi > mia)
and first from one (unu > unua) is something
that you find in a language like Chinese, but in
no Indo-European one..."
"Please,
son, don't be that specific. I know nothing about
languages. But I think you're right. This man discusses
a subject he knows nothing about. It is wrong. If
he imagines that because he knows much about languages,
he can discuss any language without familiarizing
himself with it, he is indeed arrogant. But is this
case typical?"
"It
is, Excellency."
"If
it is typical, it appears that people over there
don't look at the question in a large enough context."
"True
enough. All kinds of factors are involved in international
linguistic communication - political, economic,
social, psychological, educational, cultural, linguistic,
phonetic. They demand detailed analysis and deep
reflection. But the lowliest terran believes he
can deal with the matter in a few seconds, and the
superior expression on his face is no illusion:
it's arrogance all right."
"You're
young, my son, and I wonder if there is not a certain
lack of tolerance in your judgment of the terrans.
Aren't you yourself perhaps a little arrogant? Are
you sure that you are not oversimplifying an extremely
complicated problem?"
"Well
- That's to say, Excellency - Well - I Uh "
"Instead
of stuttering, you would do well to remind me to
what you attributed this arrogance a moment ago."
"I
told you, Excellency, that the arrogance comes from
insecurity."
"Why
insecurity?"
"Many
terrans do not easily accept their weaknesses, their
smallness, their altogether too human condition.
They live in a constant atmosphere of insecurity,
conscious with some of them, repressed with others.
For many this has an immediate consequence: they
deny the existence of a problem. You feel much more
secure when a problem is solved than when you still
have to confront it, don't you? So, to reassure
themselves, the terrans seize on all kinds of myths."
"What
myths?"
"They
have lots of them. For example, that the system
of translation works well, or that you can get along
with English anywhere in the world, or that you
can learn an ethnic language in three months (that's
what they claim in advertisements) or in the course
of one's time in school. As soon as you take the
trouble to check the facts without preconceived
ideas, you see that these statements don't stand
up or need to be seriously qualified. There are
just as many myths about Esperanto. The first reflex
of many terrans when you mention it is to believe
that by definition it must be inferior to ethnic
languages, for example in its powers of emotional,
poetic or intellectual expression. But if you study
it, you find that it is not inferior to them in
these aspects. In many instances it is, if anything,
superior."
"My
son, I have the feeling that you like this international
language, this Esperanto, and I wonder whether you
are really being objective. Aren't you inclined,
like Gorogol, to look at the terrans from too superior
a vantage point? Perhaps Esperanto also has weaknesses
that you are not taking into consideration."
"Of
course, Excellency. Esperanto is not perfect, but,
among persons with various languages, it is far
better than English or than simultaneous interpretation.
No language can express everything. This or that
expression in French has its own special flavor
that can't be rendered in Esperanto, nor, for that
matter, in English or German. But the opposite is
equally true: this or that juicy or piquant turn
of phrase in Esperanto has no equivalent in any
ethnic language. Esperanto isn't a code. It s a
full-fledged language with a soul, a countenance,
a personality. But the terrans don't want to see
it. And yet - How can one pass serious judgment
on a reality one doesn't know, or be just to something
with which one has only superficial acquaintance?"
"If
the terrans are not dumb, as you claim they are
not, these are surely things that they understand
perfectly well."
"No,
Excellency, because they studiously avoid looking
at the facts, so that they can, like good masochists,
enjoy the difficulties. With us, when some large
business - let s call it business A - learns that
a little business (business B) has found a thoroughly
satisfactory and economical solution to some nagging
problem costing business A millions a year in inadequate
palliatives, business A wastes no time in going
to see how business B does it and in applying the
same formula."
"And
the terrans don't do that? I can't believe it."
"No.
They don't do it in the language field. On their
planet there are organizations called the United
Nations or the European Union which spend millions
a year trying to overcome language barriers with
systems whose cost-effectiveness is appallingly
low. There are also organizations like the Universal
Esperanto Association, where the people who take
part in activities, conferences, or administrative
work come from different language backgrounds but
communicate directly and on an equal basis without
allocating a single cent to the interpretation of
a single speech or the translation of a single paper."
"And
you claim that the organizations in question, the
United Nations, the European Union, and so on, have
never studied how linguistic communication takes
place in these associations? That's not possible!"
"Not
only have they never studied the facts, but it hasn't
even occurred to them that there are any facts to
study. It's an a priori, systematic refusal.
And they don't even have a guilty conscience. It's
curious, isn't it?"
"Yes
indeed. I'm having trouble enough acknowledging
the masochism, but it's even more difficult to understand
the lack of curiosity."
"But
what amazes me, Excellency, is the lack of a sense
of responsibility. The money spent so unconcernedly
comes from the mass of the population. They could
do so many useful things with the astronomical sums
they sacrifice to Babel."
"You're
right, I'm tempted to condemn them out of hand.
But you know that I am easily persuaded to mercy.
Tell me a few things to lessen my indignation and
to help me look on them with compassion."
"You
are kind, Excellency. I will say this: their excuse
is their unconsciousness. To them it is obvious
that Esperanto isn't something serious. Why go and
study it then? This reminds me of what they said
to another terran who sought to question their certainties:
It is evident that the Earth is flat. If you look
for the Indies in the West you will fall into the
abyss. "
"It's
strange, though. With us, as soon as anyone put
forth an idea like this, we would set about verifying
it."
"True,
but the terrans live in fear. When you're afraid,
you hang on to things. You hang on to your privileges,
your certainties, your crutches. To confront the
truth, you must renounce the idea that you already
know everything there is to know. Giving up this
idea involves abandoning the crutch of condescension
( I know that it s ridiculous ) to see yourself
in the nakedness of your ignorance (I just repeat
what I heard, or say what first comes to mind, but,
really, I know nothing on that subject). You run
the risk of discovering that reality is other than
you imagined it. And how can you risk abandoning
your crutches when deep inside you feel small and
weak, uncertain whether you can stand? There is
something very touching about this basic insecurity
of the human inhabitants of planet Earth."
"Poor
terrans! The problem of planetary communication
can't be easy to manage under such conditions."
"It
isn't. I'm sorry, but I don't see what we could
do. There, Excellency, I ve told you the essentials.
You will find all the details in my written report.
What you should remember is that psychological insecurity
leads the terrans into presumption, and presumption
blinds them to the obvious solution, so that they
are forced into all kinds of difficult, complicated
and expensive makeshifts, in short, into an absurd
system in which people accept injustice and discrimination
with resignation, all the while making efforts out
of all proportion to the results obtained. Have
I convinced you, Excellency? Do you agree with me
that Gorogol's thesis is indefensible, and that
the issue is not stupidity but a concatenation of
elements in which masochism predominates?"
"Without
a doubt, my son, without a doubt. But, frankly,
don't you agree that you have to be pretty stupid
to be that masochistic?"
____________
1. P.G.
Wodehouse, Doctor Sally (Harmondsworth: Penguin,
1960), p. 92.
2. Don
Sefton, "A Religious Belief In Esperanto",
USA Today, January 27, 2000.
