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COSMAL
(©1975)
AN INTERLINGUAL CONSTRUCT |
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| INTRODUCTION HISTORICAL APPRAISAL DESIGN PRACTICE CONCLUSION REFERENCES |
Introduction Of Nature it has been said:3
Through the inexorable process of natural selection she has weeded out the not so fit - a process akin to linguistic evolution. Thus, the dim avenues of ages past are bestrewn with the deadwood of once robust and thriving branches of the parent trees of language. Yet, the basic stock of the majority has remained rugged and true to type ; in fact, but for their native resilience, they would not have survived the tyranny of the past and proliferated in the permissiveness of the present. Some have even broken their national or traditional boundaries to achieve the status and dignity of great languages others have been content to live at home, untouched - as it were- by the noise and bustle of the world's market-place. To my mind, an enumeration of the many controversial geopolitical and other factors, which have, helped or hindered linguistic growth, would not be germane to the subject of this talk. Far more important is for us to examine the following three questions, and determine whether or not a valid answer can be found to the seemingly insurmountable language problem which the world faces today:4
Let us sift the evidence sequentially in order to satisfy ourselves that it is not a wholly impossible task to create a degree of cosmos out of the prevailing chaos: Apologists of the status quo have been rife over the past 350 years, but except for mooting a shift in emphasis from one language to another while apportioning zonal influences, they have neither added nor subtracted from the sum total. In other words, they have codified the extant conditions in the expectation that a ready solution lies in the learning of such languages as are averred to be 'universal'. For example, English, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese, in that order, are preferred now-a-days as an utilitarian package-deal to those wishing to complete their linguistic education - as if the effort to acquire proficiency in even one foreign tongue were not enough! Except for Chinese, they all belong to the Indo-European group, but the choice within this all-powerful group may - and most probably will - hurt the susceptibilities of "minority" speakers such as the German, Portuguese and Italian on the one hand, and the Indian and Persian on the other. Outside the Indo-European group, what of the Arabic or Malay or Japanese speakers? They would also object to being relegated to secondary importance in the linguistic stakes. Next, advocates of a common tongue to be chosen from amongst the living languages of the world are worse placed than our apologists in arriving at a consensus of universal opinion. Anglophiles uphold the undeniable predominance of English in international affairs today, but in their enthusiasm overlook the astonishing progress of Russian, which is already replacing German in the study of scientific development and is fast becoming a formidable rival of English itself. Ask a Frenchman what the world tongue should be, and he will strongly advocate his own. The same goes for a Spaniard or a Chinese speaker or for that matter any national with a justifiable pride in the beauty and expressiveness of his or her mother tongue - and quite naturally so. Finally, it is in the context of this nationalistic predilection that one is forced to turn elsewhere for a possible solution to the problem of a world language, which is second only to that of world peace. An element of urgency has been injected into the proceedings by the revolutionary launching of communication satellites or Comsats, which according to scientists will increase agitation for a basic world language.5 It seems quite clear to me that the only valid answer lies in the creation of a practical and economical interlingual construct, which despite its inherent psychological drawbacks would not only neutralise national sentiment everywhere, but would offer many material advantages as well - especially to education and communication throughout the world. A critical appraisal of historical and recent developments to this end now follows.Historical Appraisal
The budding pioneer, who attempts to draw up a family tree of the vast number of recorded systems in existence, faces a laborious task indeed, unless he classifies his research material into three major categories, namely:6
Chronologically, the first batch belongs to the 17th and 18th centuries, the second to the early 19th century, and the third to the late 19th and 20th centuries. Of course, there is no clear-cut division between these respective periods, and even at the present time one occasionally hears of fresh essays in the field of linguistic carpentry based on older systems. Concerning the third category of hybrid languages, even a cursory glance at the morphology of its more illustrious members will reveal a curious family likeness which is far from coincidental. For the aspiring interlinguist has, in most cases, plundered the treasure-house of the two classical languages, Latin and Greek, for his radical raw-material. Inexplicably, the most successful synthetic languages have been Volapuk and Esperanto. The former is without doubt a supreme example of the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, the degree of mutilation being self-evident from its words for "world" and "speak". As for the latter, it is certainly happier in its choice of roots drawn mainly from Germanic, Romance, and Latin elements, and equally important its orthography is closer to that of the source-words. However, in both constructs the highly inflected mother-tongues of the inventors find an echo in peculiar and archaic grammatical devices, which a modern language like English shed generations ago; they must, therefore, be treated as anachronisms without a valid raison d'être in any present-day interlingual grammar. A significant departure from Zamenhof's concept of Esperanto was Peano's Interlingua or Latin without inflections: the principles enunciated by him could quite conceivably be applied to evolving, say, Sanskrit without inflections, for interstate use amongst the nations of Asia! The chief drawback of Interlingua - as in the case of Esperanto - is its sheer wealth of vocabulary, which denies easy access to it of all those who have no Western cultural background. Ideally, an artificial language must have:7
Bearing in mind these three objectives, one would have expected that Hogben's Interglossa would have received far more attention than it has in fact been accorded. As an ideal world language it is brilliant in conception, but in form and content it suffers from an excess of pedantry and obscurity, due partly to Hogben's preference for polysyllabic "common" words, and partly to the unfamiliar syntactical position of the elements of speech making up his isolating sentences. Recognising the need for an interlingual system, I had outlined over the past decade-several drafts of a planned auxiliary language, fully accepting the challenge that I was tackling a problem that appeared to offer no universal solution. More recently, I have become convinced that a single global auxiliary-a basic world language-would with the help of Comsats provide a remedy for the "multiplicity of man's native means of communication". Hopefully, my latest draft entitled Cosmal may provide the answer for the world of tomorrow. Cosmal which name is an abbreviation of Cosmo Adjuto Lingua or Universal Auxiliary Language consists of only 630 basic words. Another 370 simple supplementary words, of which 120 are optional, facilitate the eschewal of circumlocutory expressions and-because of their familiarity of form-the process of learning by the more advanced student of the language. I have, reason to believe, that it is possible for an educated adult to assimilate the full radical vocabulary within a month. Furthermore, the large number of high-frequency monosyllables (using an average of 3 to 4 letters only) make for case of pronunciation, and economy of space in writing and printing. Cyclostyled sheets in sets of three, listing all the basic and optional words with some additional features, are available to members of the audience for their perusal during this lecture.8 Design
The pattern of presentation is, thus, seen to be similar to Ogden's 850 Basic English words, but that is where the resemblance ends. Let me digress awhile: I might well argue that there is no particular merit in setting a strict limit to the number of vocables making up the interlingual word-list. For, the chief criterion should surely be that a linguistic element must have a single meaning, even though application of this principle might lead to a basic vocabulary in excess of Ogden's 850 or Dr. Zamenhof's 921 "root" elements. Hogben in his recent "Essential World English" is closer to the mark with 1300, but the point I am trying to make is that there is no sanctity in laying down a priori a definite target beyond which the interlingual construct runs the risk of being dubbed as unwieldy and difficult to learn! A far greater danger is surely the enforced reliance on either holophemistic constructions or metaphorical usage through lack of an adequate vocabulary of self-expression.10 Accordingly, the fact that two or more words of different origin, but signifying the same concept or thing, are preserved in Indo-European, has been used to the utmost in Cosmal, as a means of enriching its vocabulary. An example common to even unrelated language families is the 'pair' Tongue and Language, which in Cosmal is represented by the respective Greek and Latin roots glos and lingua. By and large, an examination of such 'pairs' in the interlingual construct will show that the Greek-derived word has the more 'concrete' meaning, the Latin-derived word the more 'abstract', i.e., the former has the more precise, explicit semantic content, the latter the more metaphorical, metonymic and implicit meaning. Some examples of common pairs in the basic list are:
Having stated all this, the total of the basic five groups is still only 630 words, i.e., 220 less than Basic English despite the inclusion of 15 numerals. How has this drastic word-economy been made possible? The secret lies in the isolating syntax of Cosmal, which exceeds that of English and matches Chinese in permitting many vocables to assume - chameleon-like - the semantic colour of the functional slot in which you choose to place them. Let me explain: if you will turn to the second sheet,11 you will see that I have drawn up a mini-catalogue of 100 simple and compound operations all belonging to Group I. Some of the concepts are frankly mathematical, e.g., the international PLUS (additional/extra) and MINUS (without/ lacking); and the back-formations IS (be something or somebody) and ZE ,(no/nor/not) from ISO (like) and ZERO (no/neither), respectively. Others are words filched whole or back-formed from the succeeding groups and given an operational slant, e.g., auto, eu, forto, hetero, holo, ma, mi, resto, si, sim and ve from Group IV; and ai, cron, deb, eur, hali, hyp, nes, pe, qe, ta, tem, tendo, and top from Group II. Tense is provided by three single-letter words: A (for the past), E (for the present), and I (for the future), which are derived from the three basic words HA (have), EQO (equal) and Y (go), respectively. Similarly, the particles GE and TE are shortened forms of GEN and TEN (get and hold), and function as the passive and the historic past in analytic constructions. The key-verbs culled from both the basic and supplementary lists of Group I are 18 in number, and in either their simple or combined forms, constitute the cornerstone of the Cosmal sentence. A beginner would be expected to stick to the analytic construction of sentences until he or she were thoroughly acquainted with the basic mechanics of the language. For example, the key-verb DA (give) is used causally in conjunction with a large number of quality words as well as things. At first, one may convey - for instance - the sense of "to ring" by DA O SON (lit. give or make a ringing sound), but later the suffixal form - which I may stress is optional - may be preferred by the more sophisticated speaker to give the encapsulated SONAD. A cross-section of common affixes, both verbal and others, is given on Sheet II.12 For example, -AD, from the verb 'to give' already quoted above, -AI from the verb 'to do', -IG or -IGE from the verb 'to get', -A from the verb 'to have' -I from the verb 'to go', and so on. Non-verbal examples are -S, the associative suffix from SYN (together with) -EN, the collective suffix from HEN (group); -AN the time suffix arbitrarily taken from ANNU (year); -AR, the space suffix from AREA, an international word -AL, the place suffix taken from ALOY (at the place of), etc., etc. MAJOR and MINOR provide the augmentative and diminutive suffixes, -AJ and -IN. It is problematic whether these two suffixes are an improvement on the straightforward MA (big) and MI (small) placed before the word to be qualified, but it seems to me that there is a gain in distinguishing, for instance, between URBAJ (city) and MA-URB (big town) on the one hand, and URBIN (village) and, MI-URB (small town) on the other. Amongst prefixes, the most important is AN-(or AM-before P and B), the contrary or opposite prefix, which saves so much time and labour in the learning of adjectival and other roots. Its verbal counterpart is DE-. Here again the beginner is welcome to use the isolated form NO, which in negating an attribute, for instance, subsumes that the opposite is inferred. Thus, NO FACILO (not easy) may mean 'difficult' as a close approximation in most situations. Nonetheless, the seasoned speaker may prefer the greater precision offered by the true opposite ANFACILO (difficult). In the limited time at my disposal, it is not possible for me to dwell too long on the' grammatical niceties - few as they are - and I now propose to give a brief account of the derivation of Cosmal nouns and adjectives appearing under Things and Qualities, respectively. The sources are predominantly Classical Greek and Latin followed by some of the prominent living languages of Europe and India, of the Middle East and the Far East. Broadly speaking, Graeco-Latin nouns are shorn of their endings to yield the basic root. For example,13
Familial terms - many of them optional - are made monosyllabic due to their frequency (a concept stressed again and again in this paper) on the pattern of modern Indo-European languages. For example, PAER (father), MAER (mother), BROER (brother), and by analogy - another important linguistic concept - SOER (sister) are, as it were, force-ripened products of organic change.14 Anatomical terms are similarly simplified: thus, OY (eye) from Lat. oculus where the hard C of the root OC has been softened to Y, as in a host of words such as PAY (peace), NUY (nut) and VOY (voice). Sometimes, the hard sound is completely eliminated as in BRA (arm) from Gr. brachion [cf. FA (make) from Latin facere]. These principles should suffice to form substantives from any roots available in the international vocabulary of technical terms. So far, we have dealt with the derivation of concrete words, and even though there cannot always be a clear-cut division between them and abstract words, I now propose to treat the latter as a class which:
It may be noted that there are a few exceptions of non-adjectives ending in -O, e.g., GEO (Earth) and REO (reality), BURO (office) and MARTO (hammer), KILO (thousand), and KINO (cinema). Equally, all adjectives in Group IV do not end in -O, the notable exceptions being the ubiquitous little EU (good) and its opposite MAL, MA (big) and MI (small), and the words for left and right, i.e., LAEV and DEX. Another point to be remembered in this context is that there is no compulsory adjectival form of such Group II substantives as ART (art) and SCI (science) and all Group III words. Their position in the sentence matrix makes their function and meaning clear, so that a phrase such as KITAB, LINGUA SYN SCI UNI would be translated as "Literary, linguistic and scientific assembly" - an apt, if terse description of this evening's august gathering! Any well-established root is grist to the Cosmal mill. Thus, AUTO, BIO, DYNO and EU are easily recognisable Greek roots used in countless technical words, and are taken over bodily into the language to signify qualities. Abstract words with the following terminals can be Cosmalised as indicated: ION words drop the -ON for the nominal form and -N for the adjectival, e.g., NATI (nation) and NATIO (national); EVOLUTI (evolution) and EVOLUTIO (evolutionary). -SM words remain unchanged, e.g., MATERIALISM, RADICALISM, etc. -GRAPH, -LOG words reduce to -OG and OL, e.g., GEOG (geography) and GEOL (geology), and -METR and -SCOP words reduce to -M and -SC, e.g., GEOM (geometry), and TELESC (telescopy). Occupational terms related to -SM words replace -SM by -STOR e.g., MATERIALISTOR, COMUNISTOR, etc. Those based on words other than the -SM ones may end in -ON or -OR, -ISTON or -ISTOR where an abstract noun is the root word, and -ANDR where a concrete noun is the substantive. Typical -OR words would be ERGOR (worker or workman), GRAPHOR (writer) and SYNOR (companion). The corresponding -ISTOR words denoting a more professional status are ERGISTOR, (operative or operator), GRAPHISTOR (novelist) and SYNISTOR accompanist). Representative -ANDR words are MARANDR (seaman), FLORANDR (flower-man) and EQUANDR (horseman), and the corresponding professional terms: MARISTOR (sailor, mariner), FLORISTOR (florist), and EQUISTOR (equestrian). It is not particularly important whether the ending -ON/-ISTON or -OR/ -ISTOR is used : -ON/-ISTON implies a person of either sex, and is, therefore, more generally applicable. However, in a man's world - and at the risk of offending supporters of women's 'lib' - I must confess to a sneaking preference for the masculine form --OR/-ISTOR! Clearly, the ending -ISTOR bespeaks of professionalism, as when one talks of a CANTISTOR - a singer (say) on the operatic stage - as distinct from the more ubiquitous species of the CANTOR - the bathroom or amateur singer! Some high-frequency words require to be considered separately in view, of the abbreviating principles employed being quite different from those normally governing the change of words. Furthermore, the accent on monosyllables in Cosmal - as in English and Chinese, and for that matter in Hindustani - favours the shortening of polysyllabic words on the one hand, and a widening of their meaning on the other. To the uninitiated, the outcome may be somewhat arbitrary, and an unnecessary mutilation of well-known words, but the gain in speed of communication and saving of space. far outweigh the disadvantage of the Cosmalist having to learn and recognise the perhaps unfamiliar abbreviated form of a handful of short words. For example, AF for affair, business, deal, transaction, negotiation, bargain or arrangement, OF for offer, bid or tender ; PE for petition, plea, request, appeal, entreaty, supplication or please ; QE for question, enquiry, quiz, interrogation or examination; CAP for captain, chief, director, governor, leader, manager, superintendent, supervisor, overseer, or simply HEAD; DIS for discourse, lecture, oration, talk, address, or conversing ; IMP for impact; blow or 'coup' ; and OP for operation. The Middle and Far-Eastern tang imparted to the basic Cosmal vocabulary has not been due to any conscious effort on my part. Lingua francas such as Swahili in East Africa and Malay in the East Indies have adopted and adapted a whole host of Arabic and Indian - calques or loan-words to their respective speech-patterns. The throaty KH of Arabic has yielded to the simple aspirate H in such words as HARAB (destruction) and HATAR (danger); others such as HABAR (news) and HASSO (special) appear, in the optional list of 120 words (vide Appendix IB). Also to be found there are the transliterated HADIS (tradition or history) and HAZAR (presence) on the one hand, and UZAN (weight) and ZAMAN (era or age) on the other. Indian words have remained recognisable in their Roman form in both East Africa and the East Indies: e.g., SEMPURNO (perfect) and TAYARO (ready) are two adjectival examples in Group IV of the basic list, and BASIO (stale) in the optional ; substantive examples are more in evidence, e.g., QAMIS (shirt) and CURTA (skirt), KITAB (book) and NARANG (orange) in Group III are of widely differing origin, but fully naturalised in India and elsewhere, and, therefore, fit to be considered as 'basic'. Optionally, there are CALAM (pencil), and MOHADA (pillow), JEB (pocket) and DUCAN (shop), all with echoes in far-flung lands such as Spain and Bulgaria, Turkey and Kenya - and, of course, India. In Group II, the basic examples are PEREXA (test) and PRY (love) among the optionals, there are BAZAR (market) and BUMI (district), BIBI (wife) and SUAMI (husband), DUNIA (world) and MANUSIA (mankind) - the lot being truly pan-Afro-Asian. Some criticism may be levelled at the choice of words for colours in Group IV: please remember that this is a draft vocabulary and open to constructive suggestions. As against the listed BLACO, BLANCO, BLATO, BLEU, BLONDO, BLUTO and BLYO the Greek equivalents MELANO (black), LEUCO (white), CLORO (green), CYANO (blue), XANTHO (yellow), ERYTHRO (red) and POLIO (grey) would have imposed quite a mnemonic load on the learner. Consider that there are some languages which are classificatory such as Abor and Gallong spoken in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) districts of India. Abor, for instance, which exhibits a disyllabic tendency, makes use of the first syllable for classifying, amongst others, parts of the body, animals and colour. The colour-words begin with YA-, hence YAKA (black), YALUN (white), YAYIN (green), YAING (blue), YASIN (pale/ yellow) and YALLI (red).15 I think you will agree with me that the principle has merit, and in arriving at the BL- formula I have relied on Franco-German words albeit with some poetic licence in the material field of leaves, lead and blood. A word about the numerals in Group V : I subscribe to Jespersen's views that it is desirable to have forms which are easy to perceive, and that "synthetic forms are here for once often preferable to analytic ones."16 For this reason I have designated two suffixal elements -ZE and -ANZE to represent the Ger. -zehn and -zig or the Eng. -teen and -ty. It does not need a great deal of imagination to discern that our old friend ZERO is at the root of both these elements. Practice Firstly, there are two Articles: O, which for reasons of euphony becomes L' before vowels, is the SINGULAR article ; and OS is the PLURAL article.17 For example,
Secondly, there are no characteristic flexions to various parts of speech in an isolating language such as Cosmal, where strictly speaking the usual grammatical terms are not applicable to any of its words. However, words denoting qualities do tend to end in O due to their derivation, and they are reduced to their corresponding abstracts by dropping the O. For example,
Non-O qualities and operations can take the prefix U- (or V- before vowels) to give the corresponding abstracts in the manner of Swahili:18 For example,
ICO is widely used as a suffix of qualities and IQ as the appropriate suffix of the corresponding abstracts. For example,
The comparative is made by the word MAJ ; the superlative by O MAX.19 With MAJ the conjunction is normally CU, but before a numeral it is better rendered by AB. E.g., MAJ CU TU (more than you), but MAJ AB DU (more than two). The same applies to MIN (less), the superlative of which is MINI (least). Thirdly, the fundamental Numerals, are: U (or UN before vowels), DU, TRI, TETRA, PENT, HEX, HEP, OT, NON, DEC, CENT, KILO, MILLION. Numbers from 11 to 19 are formed by adding -ZE to the numerals 1 to 9. Tens from 20 to 90 are formed by adding -ANZE to the numerals 2 to 9. To mark the ordinal, TO is added; for the multiple, PLO; for the fractional, DE; for the distributive, NO. Optionals are:
In Cosmal, "the year 1999" would be L'ANNU NONZE NONANZE NON. Fourthly, the Personal Pronouns are: ME (I, etc.), TU (you), IL (he, etc.), FE (she, etc.), ID (it), NI (we, etc.), OS (they, etc.), ON (one, people, he or she, i.e. indefinite), SE (third person reflexive). These pronouns are possessive by mere juxtaposition except in the case of the third person singular: e.g. 'fe fel' may be 'she-cat' and to render 'her cat', 'fel ab fe' would be less ambiguous! Emphasis can be given by employing the -DE form of all pronouns. For example,
*Plural article OS combines with personal pronouns Fifthly, Verbs are invariable with regard to person or number. Couple-formation, where one element is the thing or quality and the other is a key verb, is either analytic or combined. E.g., the verb 'love' may be TA O PRY or PRITA; to ring a bell is DA O SON or SONAD. Using PRITA as the verbal exemplar, one can ring the changes of its basic meaning by employing a battery of auxiliaries. For example,
If other 'time' words are present, the auxiliaries TE, A, E, I, etc. are rendered superfluous. So a translation of "Yesterday she loved me, now she loves you" would be simply: PREDIU FE PRITA ME, NU FE PRITA TU! The negative is formed by placing NO (or more emphatically ZE) before the verb: ME NO SAS or ME ZE SAS = I don't understand or I just don't understand. The interrogative is formed by prefixing the interrogative particle QE to the affirmative statement (no inversion of subject and verb, please - this is only done to short-circuit the suggestion beginning with the familiar "Let's...."). So, QE TU SAS? = Do you understand? Should another interrogative word appear, viz., QON? (who?), QAN? (when?), QAE? (why?), etc., QE is clearly superfluous. Sixthly, Adverb-equivalents are formed either by prefacing the quality-derived word or phrase with COM (with, having) or by suffixing -IDE: for example,
Comparisons are the same as for adjectival-equivalents : ME CANT EUDE. IL CANT MAJEUDE CU ME. FE CANT O MAXEUDE (or LO MAXEUDE). I sing well. He sings better than I (do). She sings the best. Seventhly, every word is pronounced as it is spelled. The orthography in regard to consonants is similar to English except for the treatment of C, CH, K, SK, SC and SH. Their distinct domains of usage are:
Thus, it follows that to get the hard sound of C before the soft vowels E, I and Y, K must always be used as in KER (horn), KINO (cinema), and KYM (juice). Again, to get the soft sound of C before the hard vowels A, O, and U, CH must always be used as in CHAP (stamp) and CHUTI (leave of absence). Similar remarks apply to SK and SH, respectively. For reasons of economy, the Latin QU is always rendered Q, the only apparent exception being EQU (horse). Vowels are pronounced as indicated below: A as in far, E as in fell, I as in field, O as in for, U as in full, Y as in Flynn, AE as in aerate, OE as in fool, AI/AY as in aisle, EI/EY as in feign, OI/OY as in foil, AU as in foul, EU as in eulogy. Eighthly, the tonic or principal accent in substantive constructions is on the penultimate syllable, where the last syllable is open, e.g. flo'-ra, cate'na, cre'-ta; otherwise, a 'closed' concluding syllable bears the accent, e.g. kitab', musiq', ophid', etc. In adjectival constructions ending in a vowel, the accent is always on the penultimate syllable, e.g. for'-to, pa'-ky, the-o'-re. In verbal constructions the accent invariably falls on the characteristic ending, e.g. bia' (not bi'-a), pedi', api', prita', vestig', surten', etc. Distinguish between : tor'-ta (cake) and tor-ta' (to be twisted) ; con'-ta (bill) and conta' (to be counted); no'-ta (note) and gno-ta' (know). Ninthly, the Compound Substantive Words are formed by simply combining independent words, one of them often being a generic term such as ID (thing), EC (building), FIL (filament), ORG (tool), MEC (machine) and ASC (vessel). The possibilities are almost endless!20 And, Tenthly, the so-called Foreign Words are absorbed unchanged when they correspond to local things, offices and institutions or place-names, e.g. København, not Copenhagen or Köpenhamn. Others which are technical terms fixed by international agreement may undergo minor changes so as to conform to the orthography of Cosmal. Listen now to two examples in Cosmal of the same text - a well-known little anecdote about teacher and pupil. The first uses a purely isolating syntax, and though a trifle long-winded this version has, in my opinion, the simplicity of a biblical parable. The second uses each and every element of the first, but where a combined form exists it is this rather than the analytic form which takes precedence, and the result is urbane and sophisticated. Judge for yourselves, and in order to help you, I have given a literal translation immediately after each of the two versions (PLAY TAPE).21 I think you will agree with me that the constructional flexibility built into Cosmal offers great scope to the creative and imaginative writer or speaker. Since the primary purpose of an interlingual construct is communication, plain and simple, I have chosen 21 test sentences and phrases, many of them in question form, which would be the normal stock-in-trade of most tourists wanting to make the best use of their sightseeing time. (PLAY TAPE).22 Conclusion Practising musicians of the Western kind depend a great deal on a basic knowledge of Italian, which over the centuries has become the lingua franca in the composition of scores. Great masters of the individual genius of Beethoven and Debussy introduced at one time or the other German and French, respectively, in some of their best-known works, but before and after them the majority opinion of musicians has weighed heavily in favour of Italian as the common language in musical interpretation-no rabid nationalism here, just plain pragmatism! Indeed, I would hazard a guess that if perchance Italian had never existed, musicians the world over would have invented it! Cosmal's homage to Italian is reflected in its wholesale acceptance of all important musical terms and names of instruments in that most euphonious of natural languages. In the world of science, this striving for a commonality of terms and nomenclature has found expression in the renaissance of the so-called dead languages of Latin and Greek. They have helped admirably to verbalise the thousands of new concepts born of, and things discovered in, the past two centuries. Take, for instance, ornithology or the science of birds. As Austin Rand puts it: 23 "A European bird which an American would think of as a chickadee is called the 'great tit' in England, the Kohlmeise in Germany, the Talgmees in Sweden, the mesange charbonniere in France, and the cinciallegra in Italy. No wonder the scientists of various countries use an international system of nomenclature in which the bird is known to all students, regardless of their nationality, as Parus major." Even where English has borrowed local names such as 'myna' from Hindi and 'cassowary' from Malay - which incidentally is latinised to Casuarina when applied to one genus of trees found in abundance on the Calcutta Maidan and said to resemble the bird's plumage! - all is not plain sailing: to continue the metaphor, the layman - nay, the ornithologist - is at sea when asked to differentiate between a parrot, a parakeet, a paroquet and a parrotlet. Linnaeus solved the cumbersome problem in 1758 with his simplified binomial system, which was generally accepted by learned societies everywhere, and improved upon later by a high-powered body of scientists which added a third name, or trinomial. Here is a sterling example of scientists in the face of disorder agreeing on an orderly procedure and then setting up an international commission to draw up the rules of the game - in this case governing the naming of birds. Would that linguists and philologists of international renown and eminence foregather in this building during the 190th year of the Asiatic Society's existence, and agree upon a final draft of a global auxiliary, which an Intergovernmental Communication Commission would project to those in authority as the basic language of Comsats and future world communication media. Let us aim for the "Telstars" of the new firmament, and usher in a revolutionary era in Humankind's linguistic development, for - as one would say in Cosmal - "O Zaman ab o Comsat is o Zaman ab o Cosmal" or The Age of the Communication Satellite is the Age of the Universal Auxiliary Language! References |