vocabulary; it is a primitive vocabulary?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Yes?

Mr. TOWNER. How are you going to increase it? For instance, how are you
going to make it a literary language? How are you going to write poems?

Prof. CHRISTEN. Personally I should not want an international language
for poetry, although Esperanto does in fact lend itself excellently
to the purposes of the muses. But to answer your question: First of
all, the Esperanto language does not contain any words at all; I think
there are only 138 full-fledged words, prepositions, adverbs, and
conjunctions, but the rest of the vocabulary is formed of roots only.
Let us take the words "to sew," "to stitch." The root is "kudr." It is
only a root, and that alone stands in the vocabulary. Now, if you want
to make this root into a noun "o" is added to it, "kudro": if you want
to make it an adjective, you add "a" to it, "kudra"; if you want to
make it an adverb you add "e," kudre, which would mean by or through
sewing, "sewingly," if it could be so expressed in English; and if you
want to make it a verb it would be "kudri," because every infinitive
ends in "i." You see, with that root to begin with you can form four
words, and you can express a great deal more in Esperanto than anybody
can possibly imagine; in fact Esperanto is, on account of its perfect
and absolutely complete flexibility, more precise and more comprehensive
than any language under the sun. As I said before, you can form four
words from every root at the start if sense allows it, and sense allows
you a great deal more leeway in Esperanto than anybody can possibly know
about, because in no language are you allowed to proceed by sense. The
English language does not allow it, nor does any other, not oven German
or Greek, but it is allowed in this most logical of all languages,