AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
History
If I were writing the history of the Interlanguage movement,¹ I should
first deal with the great theorists, who have espoused and advocated this
idea as such - Descartes, Comenius, Leibniz, Schuchardt, Ostwald - and then
with those who have made contributions to the practical solution of the
question, among whom I should give prominence to Pirro, Schleyer, Zamenhof,
Couturat, Rosenberger and de Wahl. But here I am more concerned with the
future than with the past, and shall therefore content myself with the
briefest mention of those facts from which I think a conclusion can be
drawn that may assist us in paving the way for a future adoption of a
rational interlanguage.
¹ The standard work is L. Couturat et L. Leau, Histoire de la
langue universelle (Paris 1903) with its continuation, Les nouvelles
langues internationales (Paris 1907). The history since 1907 has not
yet been written; much is contained in the seven big volumes of
Progreso, the periodical of the Idists. See also A. L.
Guérard, A Short History of the International Language
Movement (London 1922) and the very short abstract in E. Sylvia
Pankhurst, Delphos, the Future of International Language (London
1927). The two latter works are not reliable in every minute particular,
but give on the whole a readable presentation of the chief facts.
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