エスペラント語の修正版として開発された人工言語、国際補助語です。

INTRODUCTION.
(原文)
An international auxiliary language is not meant to replace the natural languages, but to help everyone, including people possessing only an average elementary education, to speak and write to citizens of foreign countries.

The need of an international language, to be learnt in all countries, by all people interested in communicating their thoughts and needs to one another, is today universally recognized.

Opinions are, however, divided as to whether this role should devolve upon one of the existing natural languages, such as English or French, or whether a specially formed artificial language should be preferred. There are many obstacles that prevent any natural language being used for the international medium of expression. There are difficulties of grammar, idioms, exceptions and irregularities, and English ― whose grammar is the simplest of all, possesses an additional difficulty in its pronunciation which follows rather custom than spelling. Another obstacle is the national pride and national interest of the other nations who would fear to see the prestige and the influence of the favoured nation grow to proportions menacing to them.

The use of a neutral language, on the other hand, spares all susceptibilities and not only does each people discover in it something of the essence of its own speech, but it is a hundred times easier to learn than even the simplest natural language.

The idea of an international language is by no means recent. Already in 1629 Descartes had defined the two principal systems of international language. Firstly, the a priori system of the so-called philosophical languages, consisting of arbitrarily selected letters, syllables or words indicating an idea or a group of ideas in accordance with a determined classification and based in no way upon any natural language. Secondly, the a posteriori system based on roots already existing in the natural languages with a grammar reduced to its most simple expression and comprising neither irregularity nor exception.**1

Reason and experience have proved that a priori auxiliary languages are interesting only as curiosities evolved by the human intellect. To return to the a posteriori system, Descartes even foresaw the possibility of modifying the meaning of primitive roots by means of affixes and thus of unburdening the memory to a very great extent; for instance, 5,000 roots, modified in their meanings by five different affixes, represent 30,000 ideas, viz., 5,000 simple conceptions and 25,000 derived ideas.

From the time of Cromwell to our days dozens of projects for an international language of both the a priori and the a posteriori, as well as of mixed systems, have been produced. Worthy of mention are the a priori systems of Sir Thomas Urquhart (1653), George Dalgarno (1661), John Wilkins, Bishop of Chester (1668), Liebnitz (1679), Delormel (1795), Sudre (1817), Grosselier (1836), Letellier (1852), Dr. Nicolas (1900) ; the mixed systems of Monseigneur Schleyer (Volapük, 1879) and of Bollac (La langue bleue, 1899) ; also various a posteriori systems based upon Latin, German, Anglo-French, Italian and other languages.

None of the a priori languages had any vogue. Volapük was a mixed system, invented in 1879 by the Abbe Schleyer, who is supposed to have possessed a knowledge of more than fifty natural languages. It was welcomed and learnt in a number of countries. Within nine years it was spoken by one million people. Instruction books were printed in twenty-five languages, and there were nearly 300 Volapük Societies distributed throughout Europe, America and the British Colonies. This progress was achieved entirely without any governmental aid, and so sensational a success shows how widely felt is the need of an international language.

The printed appearance of Volapük is outlandish, and although the vocabulary is supposed to be based mainly upon the English language, the words are built in so arbitrary a fashion that they bear no resemblance whatever to the English ones which are supposed to have suggested them. The word Volapük, for instance, is stated to be based on the English words " world " and " speak "! The language and grammar are quite ingenious.

Volapük fell rapidly from favour because its disadvantages were so obvious that groups arose in different localities, each desirous of reforming the language. Bishop Schleyer would not consent to a reform, and sections of his "followers" proceeded to introduce changes. It was this schism, together with the difficulty of the language, which caused it to fall from favour. No one knew which to learn of the several different kinds of Volapük in existence.

After Volapük had quickened the interest in a universal language, numbers of other systems made their appearance, several of them almost practical, Esperanto, invented by Dr. Zamenhof, and published in 1887, presenting the maximum of internationality until 1907, when Ido appeared and offered to the world a simple and efficient means of international communication.

These are the circumstances in which Ido originated. At the time of the Paris Exhibition in 1900, when so many International Congresses met in the French capital, the necessity of adopting a language for international use seems more than ever to have been felt, because, as is customary, although authorities from all countries found themselves in the presence one of the other, they were practically tonguetied!

A number of these Congresses and learned Societies, therefore, appointed Delegates for the consideration of the international language question. These Delegates met in January, 1901, and founded " a Delegation for the Adoption of an Auxiliary International Language." They, furthermore, drew up the following Declaration, which was also approved by the Delegates they elected subsequently.

DECLARATION OF PROGRAMME OF DELEGATION.

1. To select and promote the use of an auxiliary international language destined not to replace the national languages in their everyday use, but to serve as a means of communication between people speaking different languages.

2. In order to fulfill usefully its intended purpose, an international auxiliary language ought to satisfy the following conditions :

(a) It must meet the requirements of ordinary social life, and also those of commerce, science, and philosophy.

(b) It must be easily acquired by people having an ordinary elementary education, and especially by the peoples of European civilization.

(c) It must not be one of the national languages.


From its foundation up to the year 1907 it had received the adherence of 310 Societies from all countries, and the approval of 1,250 members of Academies and Universities. It then elected an international committee composed of scientists and linguists having special competence in the matter.

Prominent Esperantists recognised the impartiality of the Delegation, as well as the scientific spirit in which it prepared to select the auxiliary language to be adopted and agreed to accept the decision of the Committee.

There seemed to be little doubt that Esperanto would be the artificial language selected by the Delegation from among the seventy odd projects that were to be considered. The Secretaries of the Committee of the Delegation were Messrs Couturat and Leau, two eminent French philologists and mathematicians, who are the authors of " L'Histoire de la Langue Universelle " and " Les Nouvelles Langues Internationales," the two standard works on the subject.

The Committee was composed of :

Prof. Louis Couturat (Dès lettres Paris), Philologist and Mathematician.
Prof. Dr. Leop. Leau (Univ. of Paris), Philologst.
Prof. Dr. Otto Jespersen (Univ. of Copenhagen), Philologist.
Prof. Dr. Baudouin de Courtenay (Univ. of Petrograd), Philologist.
Mr. P. D. Hugon (London), Linguist. (Representing Mr.W. T. Stead).
Dr. Boirac (Dijon), Linguist.
M. Gaston Moch (Dijon), Linguist.
Prof. Dr. Foerster (Univ. of Berlin), Philologist and Astronomer.
Prof. Dr. W. Ostwald (Emeritus Prof. of Leipzig Univ.). Philologist and Nobel Prize-Winner for Chemistry.
Prof. Dr. Peano (Univ. of Turin), Philologist and Mathematician.


These details are mentioned to indicate that this was no hole and corner Committee, but a Committee composed of men as eminent and competent as any that could be appointed by an interested Government.

It is evident, therefore, that the matter was properly investigated and that the decision of the Delegation may be accepted. If any Government committee were officially to consider the matter they would only have to go over the same ground again, and probably take as long to do so as the Delegation did.

After six years of preparatory studies the Committee deliberated in 1907, and finally decided that none of the languages submitted to its examination could be adopted as it stood. They decided to adopt Esperanto in principle, modified in accordance with the suggestion of the Marquis de Beaufront, whose revised Esperanto is termed Ido. The word Ido is an Esperanto suffix meaning " derived from," i.e., derived from Esperanto.

Ido has not the uncouth appearance of the original Esperanto, and is more euphonious in sound. It has about it something suggestive of Italian. It has suppressed all accented letters and may, therefore, be printed with the ordinary founts of type or written on any typewriter. Ido has, furthermore, suppressed all but a few grammatical rules which have neither exception nor irregularity. The correlative words of Esperanto, which are constantly recurring, though difficult to learn and ugly in sound and look, are abolished and replaced by simple words of Latin derivation.

All former language projects have tended constantly and surely towards the evolution of Ido. Although the Marquis de Beaufront established the natural principles upon which Ido should be artificially constructed, the language is far from being the invention of any one man. It has been formed by the united efforts of many distinguished philologists in many countries, and has involved over seven years' work. Couturat, Leau, de Beaufront, Casares, Jespersen, Mackensen (San Antonio, U.S.A.), Ostwald, Pfaundler, Lorenz, Chalon, Peus, Waltisbühl, Schneeberger (Switzerland), Ahlberg (Stockholm), Donnan (London University), Hugon, Dow, Koopman (Brown University, Providence, R.I., U.S.A.), and the late Dr. J. L. Moore, of Bristol University, are among the men who have collaborated in this great task and made it a labour of love. The vocabulary is scientific, being constructed upon the principle of the maximum of internationality. This means that the authors, when choosing a certain root, examined all the equivalents in European languages and selected a root which most resembles that understood by most people, in look, if possible, as well as sound.

This basis is simple and fundamentally sound, whereafter all that is left to arbitrary choice are the grammatical endings. These are very few and are established in a manner completely analogous to that of natural languages. For example, the ending o is natural for the singular, and i for the plural ; anta is natural for the active participle and ata for the passive participle. There then remains the question of affixes (prefixes and suffixes) used to modify the meanings of the primitive roots. Their selection is not difficult, and cannot be arbitrary, being likewise subject to the law of the maximum of internationality ; for instance, the suffix er must necessarily indicate the agent who performs the action expressed by the verb, because it is used in this sense by the majority of the great European languages ; eur in French, er in English and German, ero in Italian and Spanish, etc. These examples show that the evolution of the international language takes place in a well-determined and mathematically defined direction. That is the maximum of internationality of the root based upon the number of people who understand it, which is briefly the law of the least effort applied to the science of language.

M. Louis Couturat, the eminent French mathematician and linguist, who devoted his personal fortune and the last years of his life to the task of codifying the vocabulary of Ido, counted the 5,379 roots of the first Ido dictionaries, and found that of these the following numbers occur in the international languages :

French	4,880	i.e.	91 	per IOO
Italian	4,454	,, 	83	,,
Spanish	4,237	,, 	79	,,	
English	4,219	,,	79	,,
German	3,302	,,	61	,,
Russian	2,821	,,	52	,,

For all these languages the above percentages are relatively higher than in the case of any previously suggested auxiliary language.

Ido is thus truly a neutral language, of ideal simplicity and regularity, and because of these qualities it permits the easy and clear expression in a manner free from all ambiguity of the most concrete and the most abstract ideas with a minimum of brain work. Ido is the final international language, the result of long evolution and of the experience gained from former systems. Ido has been in practical use for some years past. It is read and spoken by men of the most diverse nationalities, and not one intrinsic difficulty has stood in the way of its spread. One thing alone is necessary to assure its success, and that is a desire on the part of mankind to shake off indifference and scepticism with regard to so pleasing an invention and thus to render possible the same progress in the communication of ideas as has been rendered possible in the material world by the invention of railways, telegraphy and the telephone.

The student should know that more than thirty years ago the Marquis de Beaufront invented an earlier auxiliary language which he, however, discarded when the first books on Esperanto reached France. He became the enthusiastic chief of the Esperanto movement in Western Europe, and not only has he been called the codifier of Esperanto, but it is generally recognised that had it not been for his personal efforts little more would have been heard of Esperanto. When M. de Beaufront submitted his suggestions for the new auxiliary language, he did so anonymously, in order that the Committee of the Delegation might judge the project on its intrinsic merits, and not on the linguistic prestige of its author.

The Ido project, as mentioned earlier, was unanimously approved, and at the end of its eighteen meetings in the College de France (October, 1go7), the Committee of the Delegation appointed a permanent Commission charged to settle the details of the language adopted. It is as a result of the labours of that Commission that the first manuals and dictionaries of the language Ido were compiled, in conformity with the official decisions of the Committee and the Commission. This is formally attested in a declaration of the said Commission signed by all its members, and notably by the professors Ostwald, Baudouin de Courtenay, and Jespersen, President and Vice-Presidents of the Committee of the Delegation, who were present and took part at all its meetings. The Delegation having thus achieved its object, was regularly dissolved on the 31st July, 1910, after having founded, in accordance with one of the articles of its programme, The Union for the International Language, whose mission was to develop and to propagate the " International Language of the Delegation." That Union, regularly constituted, with headquarters in Zurich, is directed by a Committee and an Academy, regularly elected and periodically re-elected.

F. H . B.

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