nowing Esperanto would more easily distinguish the parts of speech
in English and possess a real and valuable "linguistic feeling" (which
he now entirely lacks) because of his Esperanto.

The CHAIRMAN. Is Esperanto made up of the derivatives of the various
languages?

Prof. CHRISTEN. I will explain that, if you like, in a very few words.
Esperanto is the work of a Polish scholar, Dr. Ludovico L. Zamenhof,
who started with an inspired mind. I should say he was a great genius.
He had studied a large number of languages, for, as a boy, nay, as a
child in the cradle, he spoke four languages, because so many different
languages were actually spoken in his home town. Then at school he
learned several more and it is due to this polyglotic experience and the
evils caused daily by Babel in his own circle that as a child, almost,
he conceived the idea of constructing a language that should at once and
for all time put an end to a foolish and intolerable situation. He must
have been inspired in what he did, because he at once hit upon the only
possible solution of the thing, and he hit upon it without knowing that
scores of others, older and more learned, had tried the same thing and
failed. His first stroke of genius was in the composing of his entire
vocabulary by borrowing all his words from well-known sources. With the
true insight of the genius he decided that the words of an artificial
international language must be taken from international sources, and so
he first of all hit upon the good idea to use first of all those words
which are already common to most languages, and there are a great many
more such words than we have dreamed of. He decided that that should be
the starting point of his world tongue, because everybody would know
those words to start with. Take the names of animals and produce that
come from certain parts of the world and carry their names with them,
such as elephant, tiger, lion, camel, and a great many more. Take the
rose: the rose is a rose in every language; so an orange, a lemon, a
nut, and tea, coffee, and tobacco, etc., are the same in most languages.
They may not be spelled the same or pronounced the same, but they are
international, and therefore they are Esperanto. That was the foundation
of the vocabulary in Zamenhof's new language--take words that everybody
would know and use them in Esperanto (6).

Mr. TOWNER. How do you determine those common names?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Well, he formed his v