French (or any other language that I could impart you) by that time, I
would say it was impossible for a number of busy men to acquire a new
language inside one year; that I could not guarantee useful results,
but that if you would take two months to start with for the learning of
Esperanto, then I might be able to teach you the other language in the
rest of the time, because Esperanto is the best foundation for learning
any language. And, as I say, an English-speaking student, be he young or
old, knowing 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