Forgiveness and Self-respect 　　It isn’t always easy to forgive someone who has wrongfully harmed us. In fact, we are often very reluctant to forgive. Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Sunflower, presents an interesting case study that illustrates this point. A critically injured Nazi soldier recognizes the magnitude（数量；程度）of his own wrongdoing and seeks forgiveness from a Jewish person so that he can die in peace. He calls a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp（presumably Wiesenthal） into his hospital room, expresses his anguish（痛苦） and repentance（悔悟）, and begs for forgiveness. The Jewish man leaves the room without a word, and later struggles with the question of whether he should have forgiven the soldier. Likewise, we find some survivors of serious childhood abuse reluctant to forgive the perpetrators （犯罪；犯错）of their abuse, once they recognize what has happened to them and how profoundly it has affected their lives. Some therapists argue on their behalf that certain crimes may be unforgivable, and that survivors of this type of abuse need not forgive. 　　What accounts for our reluctance to forgive? Probably a number of factors, but here I want to focus on the factor of self-respect. Any person who wrongfully harms another fails to show sufficient respect for the person he has harmed. Implicit in the act of wrongdoing, then, is the claim that the victim does not deserve a full measure of respect. The Nazi soldier in The Sunflower helped to burn an entire village of Jews alive, and in doing so, he failed to respect the intrinsic worth of the Jewish people. He failed to recognize them as valuable human beings with a moral status equal to his own. And parents who abuse their children fail to respect them as valuable persons and as the bearers of basic human rights. They fail to respect their children’s feelings, and their profound need for a safe and supportive environment. I think many of us believe that if we forgive an offender who is guilty of serious crimes against us（especially an unrepentant offender）, we are essentially agreeing with the claim that we do not deserve a full measure of respect. In effect, we are saying “That’s OK –it doesn’t matter that you mistreated me. I’m not that important.” If this is the case, then our reluctance to forgive may be the result of a healthy desire to maintain our own self-respect. 　　Although the desire to maintain our self-respect is certainly important to honor, I believe that it need not lead to a refusal to forgive. In fact I believe that if we truly respect ourselves, we will work through a process of responding to the wrong, and this process will lead to genuine forgiveness of the offender. If we attempt to forgive the offender before we do this work, our forgiveness may well be incompatible with our self-respect. However, once this process is complete, it will be fully appropriate for the self-respecting individual to forgive the offender, regardless of whether the offender repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered. 　　Consider a person who has been seriously wronged. Let’s call this person Simon. After he has been harmed, if Simon respects himself, he will stop and establish for himself that the wrongdoer’s implicit claim about him is false. He will recognize that he is a valuable human being with a moral status equal to everyone else’s, and that he deserves a full measure of respect. At the same time, he will establish for himself that the act perpetrated against him was wrong. He will recognize that in virtue of his status as a person he has certain rights, and anyone who violates those rights wrongfully harms him. （If Simon attempts to forgive the offender before he recognizes these points, his forgiveness will be incompatible with his self-respect. It will also not be genuine forgiveness. It will amount to condoning （宽恕） the wrong rather than truly forgiving the offender for it.）Further, if Simon respects himself, he will acknowledge his grief and anger about the incident, and he will allow himself to experience them in full. He will not discount his own feelings or pretend they don’t exist in an attempt to forgive. Instead he will honor his feelings as important and legitimate. If Simon respects himself, he will also look realistically at the offender’s attitudes and behavior patterns. He will consider what steps he needs to take to protect himself from the offender and whether he wants to redefine his personal relationship with him （if such a relationship exists）. Simon’s self-respect will lead him to honor his own needs for protection and rewarding personal relationships. Finally, if Simon respects himself he will make a thoughtful decision about whether he wants to confront the offender, seek restitution, or press criminal charges. And he will do so with a full appreciation of his own status as a person. 　　Thus self-respect leads us to take certain steps to address the wrong that was perpetrated against us. And these steps pave the way for genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we work through the process described above, it is necessary to look at the incident from our own point of view. We must recognize that the wrongdoer was mistaken about our worth and status as a person, that we felt intense grief and anger about the incident, that we are owed restitution, etc. When we look at the incident from this point of view, we naturally feel resentment towards the wrongdoer. However, once this process is complete, we have done what we need to do for ourselves. Without compromising our self-respect, we can now let go of our egocentric（利己的）perspective on the incident and look at it from a more objective point of view. We can recognize that the offender is a valuable human being like ourselves, who struggles with the same needs, pressures, and confusions that we struggle with. We can think about his circumstances and come to understand why he did what he did. In doing so, we will recognize that the incident really may not have been about us in the first place. Instead it was about the wrongdoer’s misguided attempt to meet his own needs. As we regard the offender from this point of view （regardless of whether he repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered）, we will be in a position to forgive him. 　　By forgiving the offender at this point, are we agreeing with his implicit claim that we don’t deserve a full measure of respect? Clearly not. Consider Simon again. Having completed the process of responding to the wrong, he knows that he is valuable and deserves to be treated well. Further, if he respects himself he will trust his own judgment and be secure in his knowledge of these truths, regardless of what the wrongdoer says or does. He will not need to engage in a power struggle to get the offender to acknowledge his worth. As an individual who respects himself, he does not need this kind of external validation. Instead he will recognize the wrongdoer's confusion for what it is, put it in proper perspective, and go on to more worthwhile pursuits. Thus true self-respect leads to genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we act out of self-respect, our self-respect increases. Therefore every step we take towards forgiveness should increase our self-respect. Our self-respect also will increase after we reach a state of genuine forgiveness. Speaking from my own experience in forgiving my alcoholic father for serious childhood abuse, enormous benefits result from reaching a state of genuine forgiveness. By letting go of my grief and resentment, I opened up space for a whole range of positive emotions（joy, excitement, love, gratitude）, which I now experience on a regular basis. I also have a sense of peace concerning the incidents of abuse. They are truly over for me and no longer ride on my mind. This sense of peace is very valuable in itself, and it also allows me to focus on my own positive pursuits. Increased self-esteem is the inevitable consequence of feeling good and being able to devote all of my attention to the positive aspects of my life——my goals, interests, etc. Further, the process of forgiving has been very empowering. I have a deeper understanding of human nature and feel much less threatened by the wrongful attitudes and behaviors of others. I also have gained an ability to detach from other people' opinions and to trust my own judgment. Finally, forgiveness has brought me the great reward of feeling unadulterated love for my father. These kinds of benefits are available to all of us. They promote self-respect and they are surely worth seeking. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 3. Given self-respect, the imaginary Simon is likely to take his offender to court.

Forgiveness and Self-respect 　　It isn’t always easy to forgive someone who has wrongfully harmed us. In fact, we are often very reluctant to forgive. Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Sunflower, presents an interesting case study that illustrates this point. A critically injured Nazi soldier recognizes the magnitude（数量；程度）of his own wrongdoing and seeks forgiveness from a Jewish person so that he can die in peace. He calls a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp（presumably Wiesenthal） into his hospital room, expresses his anguish（痛苦） and repentance（悔悟）, and begs for forgiveness. The Jewish man leaves the room without a word, and later struggles with the question of whether he should have forgiven the soldier. Likewise, we find some survivors of serious childhood abuse reluctant to forgive the perpetrators （犯罪；犯错）of their abuse, once they recognize what has happened to them and how profoundly it has affected their lives. Some therapists argue on their behalf that certain crimes may be unforgivable, and that survivors of this type of abuse need not forgive. 　　What accounts for our reluctance to forgive? Probably a number of factors, but here I want to focus on the factor of self-respect. Any person who wrongfully harms another fails to show sufficient respect for the person he has harmed. Implicit in the act of wrongdoing, then, is the claim that the victim does not deserve a full measure of respect. The Nazi soldier in The Sunflower helped to burn an entire village of Jews alive, and in doing so, he failed to respect the intrinsic worth of the Jewish people. He failed to recognize them as valuable human beings with a moral status equal to his own. And parents who abuse their children fail to respect them as valuable persons and as the bearers of basic human rights. They fail to respect their children’s feelings, and their profound need for a safe and supportive environment. I think many of us believe that if we forgive an offender who is guilty of serious crimes against us（especially an unrepentant offender）, we are essentially agreeing with the claim that we do not deserve a full measure of respect. In effect, we are saying “That’s OK –it doesn’t matter that you mistreated me. I’m not that important.” If this is the case, then our reluctance to forgive may be the result of a healthy desire to maintain our own self-respect. 　　Although the desire to maintain our self-respect is certainly important to honor, I believe that it need not lead to a refusal to forgive. In fact I believe that if we truly respect ourselves, we will work through a process of responding to the wrong, and this process will lead to genuine forgiveness of the offender. If we attempt to forgive the offender before we do this work, our forgiveness may well be incompatible with our self-respect. However, once this process is complete, it will be fully appropriate for the self-respecting individual to forgive the offender, regardless of whether the offender repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered. 　　Consider a person who has been seriously wronged. Let’s call this person Simon. After he has been harmed, if Simon respects himself, he will stop and establish for himself that the wrongdoer’s implicit claim about him is false. He will recognize that he is a valuable human being with a moral status equal to everyone else’s, and that he deserves a full measure of respect. At the same time, he will establish for himself that the act perpetrated against him was wrong. He will recognize that in virtue of his status as a person he has certain rights, and anyone who violates those rights wrongfully harms him. （If Simon attempts to forgive the offender before he recognizes these points, his forgiveness will be incompatible with his self-respect. It will also not be genuine forgiveness. It will amount to condoning （宽恕） the wrong rather than truly forgiving the offender for it.）Further, if Simon respects himself, he will acknowledge his grief and anger about the incident, and he will allow himself to experience them in full. He will not discount his own feelings or pretend they don’t exist in an attempt to forgive. Instead he will honor his feelings as important and legitimate. If Simon respects himself, he will also look realistically at the offender’s attitudes and behavior patterns. He will consider what steps he needs to take to protect himself from the offender and whether he wants to redefine his personal relationship with him （if such a relationship exists）. Simon’s self-respect will lead him to honor his own needs for protection and rewarding personal relationships. Finally, if Simon respects himself he will make a thoughtful decision about whether he wants to confront the offender, seek restitution, or press criminal charges. And he will do so with a full appreciation of his own status as a person. 　　Thus self-respect leads us to take certain steps to address the wrong that was perpetrated against us. And these steps pave the way for genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we work through the process described above, it is necessary to look at the incident from our own point of view. We must recognize that the wrongdoer was mistaken about our worth and status as a person, that we felt intense grief and anger about the incident, that we are owed restitution, etc. When we look at the incident from this point of view, we naturally feel resentment towards the wrongdoer. However, once this process is complete, we have done what we need to do for ourselves. Without compromising our self-respect, we can now let go of our egocentric（利己的）perspective on the incident and look at it from a more objective point of view. We can recognize that the offender is a valuable human being like ourselves, who struggles with the same needs, pressures, and confusions that we struggle with. We can think about his circumstances and come to understand why he did what he did. In doing so, we will recognize that the incident really may not have been about us in the first place. Instead it was about the wrongdoer’s misguided attempt to meet his own needs. As we regard the offender from this point of view （regardless of whether he repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered）, we will be in a position to forgive him. 　　By forgiving the offender at this point, are we agreeing with his implicit claim that we don’t deserve a full measure of respect? Clearly not. Consider Simon again. Having completed the process of responding to the wrong, he knows that he is valuable and deserves to be treated well. Further, if he respects himself he will trust his own judgment and be secure in his knowledge of these truths, regardless of what the wrongdoer says or does. He will not need to engage in a power struggle to get the offender to acknowledge his worth. As an individual who respects himself, he does not need this kind of external validation. Instead he will recognize the wrongdoer's confusion for what it is, put it in proper perspective, and go on to more worthwhile pursuits. Thus true self-respect leads to genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we act out of self-respect, our self-respect increases. Therefore every step we take towards forgiveness should increase our self-respect. Our self-respect also will increase after we reach a state of genuine forgiveness. Speaking from my own experience in forgiving my alcoholic father for serious childhood abuse, enormous benefits result from reaching a state of genuine forgiveness. By letting go of my grief and resentment, I opened up space for a whole range of positive emotions（joy, excitement, love, gratitude）, which I now experience on a regular basis. I also have a sense of peace concerning the incidents of abuse. They are truly over for me and no longer ride on my mind. This sense of peace is very valuable in itself, and it also allows me to focus on my own positive pursuits. Increased self-esteem is the inevitable consequence of feeling good and being able to devote all of my attention to the positive aspects of my life——my goals, interests, etc. Further, the process of forgiving has been very empowering. I have a deeper understanding of human nature and feel much less threatened by the wrongful attitudes and behaviors of others. I also have gained an ability to detach from other people' opinions and to trust my own judgment. Finally, forgiveness has brought me the great reward of feeling unadulterated love for my father. These kinds of benefits are available to all of us. They promote self-respect and they are surely worth seeking. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 4. Self-respect in this essay implies the honor extended to the human nature of the wrongdoer as well as to that of the wronged.

Forgiveness and Self-respect 　　It isn’t always easy to forgive someone who has wrongfully harmed us. In fact, we are often very reluctant to forgive. Simon Wiesenthal’s book, The Sunflower, presents an interesting case study that illustrates this point. A critically injured Nazi soldier recognizes the magnitude（数量；程度）of his own wrongdoing and seeks forgiveness from a Jewish person so that he can die in peace. He calls a Jewish inmate of a concentration camp（presumably Wiesenthal） into his hospital room, expresses his anguish（痛苦） and repentance（悔悟）, and begs for forgiveness. The Jewish man leaves the room without a word, and later struggles with the question of whether he should have forgiven the soldier. Likewise, we find some survivors of serious childhood abuse reluctant to forgive the perpetrators （犯罪；犯错）of their abuse, once they recognize what has happened to them and how profoundly it has affected their lives. Some therapists argue on their behalf that certain crimes may be unforgivable, and that survivors of this type of abuse need not forgive. 　　What accounts for our reluctance to forgive? Probably a number of factors, but here I want to focus on the factor of self-respect. Any person who wrongfully harms another fails to show sufficient respect for the person he has harmed. Implicit in the act of wrongdoing, then, is the claim that the victim does not deserve a full measure of respect. The Nazi soldier in The Sunflower helped to burn an entire village of Jews alive, and in doing so, he failed to respect the intrinsic worth of the Jewish people. He failed to recognize them as valuable human beings with a moral status equal to his own. And parents who abuse their children fail to respect them as valuable persons and as the bearers of basic human rights. They fail to respect their children’s feelings, and their profound need for a safe and supportive environment. I think many of us believe that if we forgive an offender who is guilty of serious crimes against us（especially an unrepentant offender）, we are essentially agreeing with the claim that we do not deserve a full measure of respect. In effect, we are saying “That’s OK –it doesn’t matter that you mistreated me. I’m not that important.” If this is the case, then our reluctance to forgive may be the result of a healthy desire to maintain our own self-respect. 　　Although the desire to maintain our self-respect is certainly important to honor, I believe that it need not lead to a refusal to forgive. In fact I believe that if we truly respect ourselves, we will work through a process of responding to the wrong, and this process will lead to genuine forgiveness of the offender. If we attempt to forgive the offender before we do this work, our forgiveness may well be incompatible with our self-respect. However, once this process is complete, it will be fully appropriate for the self-respecting individual to forgive the offender, regardless of whether the offender repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered. 　　Consider a person who has been seriously wronged. Let’s call this person Simon. After he has been harmed, if Simon respects himself, he will stop and establish for himself that the wrongdoer’s implicit claim about him is false. He will recognize that he is a valuable human being with a moral status equal to everyone else’s, and that he deserves a full measure of respect. At the same time, he will establish for himself that the act perpetrated against him was wrong. He will recognize that in virtue of his status as a person he has certain rights, and anyone who violates those rights wrongfully harms him. （If Simon attempts to forgive the offender before he recognizes these points, his forgiveness will be incompatible with his self-respect. It will also not be genuine forgiveness. It will amount to condoning （宽恕） the wrong rather than truly forgiving the offender for it.）Further, if Simon respects himself, he will acknowledge his grief and anger about the incident, and he will allow himself to experience them in full. He will not discount his own feelings or pretend they don’t exist in an attempt to forgive. Instead he will honor his feelings as important and legitimate. If Simon respects himself, he will also look realistically at the offender’s attitudes and behavior patterns. He will consider what steps he needs to take to protect himself from the offender and whether he wants to redefine his personal relationship with him （if such a relationship exists）. Simon’s self-respect will lead him to honor his own needs for protection and rewarding personal relationships. Finally, if Simon respects himself he will make a thoughtful decision about whether he wants to confront the offender, seek restitution, or press criminal charges. And he will do so with a full appreciation of his own status as a person. 　　Thus self-respect leads us to take certain steps to address the wrong that was perpetrated against us. And these steps pave the way for genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we work through the process described above, it is necessary to look at the incident from our own point of view. We must recognize that the wrongdoer was mistaken about our worth and status as a person, that we felt intense grief and anger about the incident, that we are owed restitution, etc. When we look at the incident from this point of view, we naturally feel resentment towards the wrongdoer. However, once this process is complete, we have done what we need to do for ourselves. Without compromising our self-respect, we can now let go of our egocentric（利己的）perspective on the incident and look at it from a more objective point of view. We can recognize that the offender is a valuable human being like ourselves, who struggles with the same needs, pressures, and confusions that we struggle with. We can think about his circumstances and come to understand why he did what he did. In doing so, we will recognize that the incident really may not have been about us in the first place. Instead it was about the wrongdoer’s misguided attempt to meet his own needs. As we regard the offender from this point of view （regardless of whether he repents and regardless of what he has done or suffered）, we will be in a position to forgive him. 　　By forgiving the offender at this point, are we agreeing with his implicit claim that we don’t deserve a full measure of respect? Clearly not. Consider Simon again. Having completed the process of responding to the wrong, he knows that he is valuable and deserves to be treated well. Further, if he respects himself he will trust his own judgment and be secure in his knowledge of these truths, regardless of what the wrongdoer says or does. He will not need to engage in a power struggle to get the offender to acknowledge his worth. As an individual who respects himself, he does not need this kind of external validation. Instead he will recognize the wrongdoer's confusion for what it is, put it in proper perspective, and go on to more worthwhile pursuits. Thus true self-respect leads to genuine forgiveness of the offender. As we act out of self-respect, our self-respect increases. Therefore every step we take towards forgiveness should increase our self-respect. Our self-respect also will increase after we reach a state of genuine forgiveness. Speaking from my own experience in forgiving my alcoholic father for serious childhood abuse, enormous benefits result from reaching a state of genuine forgiveness. By letting go of my grief and resentment, I opened up space for a whole range of positive emotions（joy, excitement, love, gratitude）, which I now experience on a regular basis. I also have a sense of peace concerning the incidents of abuse. They are truly over for me and no longer ride on my mind. This sense of peace is very valuable in itself, and it also allows me to focus on my own positive pursuits. Increased self-esteem is the inevitable consequence of feeling good and being able to devote all of my attention to the positive aspects of my life——my goals, interests, etc. Further, the process of forgiving has been very empowering. I have a deeper understanding of human nature and feel much less threatened by the wrongful attitudes and behaviors of others. I also have gained an ability to detach from other people' opinions and to trust my own judgment. Finally, forgiveness has brought me the great reward of feeling unadulterated love for my father. These kinds of benefits are available to all of us. They promote self-respect and they are surely worth seeking. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 5. When we forgive the wrongdoer, we are in danger of putting our self-respect in doubt.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 1. Over centuries, almost a thousand international languages have been invented by linguists.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 2. In Europe, Latin remains to be the second language of priests and clergymen and other educated people.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 3. Since the sixteenth century, scientific work has been written in living languages instead of Latin.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 4. If Latin had not been so difficult, it might have been accepted as an international language.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 5. Ido and Interlingua have made some improvements on Esperanto by cutting out the part of Latin Grammar.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 6. Novial invented by Otto Jespersen could hardly be accepted by the people in places other than Europe.

Bricks from the Tower of the Babel According to the Bible story, there was a time when the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. But when it occurred to the people to build a tower that would reach unto Heaven itself, the Lord was angry and said, “Let us go down, and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech.” And the building was stopped and the people scattered because they could no longer understand one another. 　　Is it possible that the people of the world today could agree upon a single international language that everyone would be able to speak and understand? This has been the dream of many linguists over the centuries, and almost a thousand languages have been invented for this, not to replace the native languages but to provide a second language for worldwide communication. 　　For about a thousand years -- from about the fifth century through the fifteenth -- Latin was the second language of educated people all over Europe and all scholarly works were written in Latin. For, before the invention of the printing press, reading and writing were skills known only to scholars. Most of the scholars were priests and clergymen, and Latin was the language of the church. Latin was a subject required in schools and in colleges, and all educated people had some familiarity with it. 　　The number of people who study Latin has not grown smaller, but proportionately it has become very much smaller. As ordinary people all over the world began to be able to read and write their own languages, and as scientific work of the sixteenth and later centuries came more and more to be written in living languages, a knowledge of Latin was not so essential. Thus, although Latin might once have been claimed as the most suitable of possible international languages （at least for Europeans）, this time has definitely passed. 　　The earliest attempts to invent a simplified language for international use came in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that any sizable group of people did actually attempt to speak and write an artificial language. Esperanto, which was published in 1887, was the first language really to take hold. At one time or another as many as eight million people have learned Esperanto. It has been taught in a great many schools and colleges in Europe, and the study of Esperanto was even made compulsory in some high schools in Germany. 　　Five-sixths of Esperanto words have Latin roots; the remainder are Germanic. Verbs are still inflected for tense, and nouns have separate forms for use as subject and object in a sentence. 　　Ido and Interlingua followed Esperanto and improved it, by cutting out some of the cumbersome Latin grammar that still remained. 　　In 1928, Otto Jespersen, the famous Danish linguist who is known as the greatest authority on the English language, put forth a concoction of his own called Novial. It was an improvement on Esperanto but still had the same basic approach. Jespersen thought that the best type of international language was one that offered the greatest ease of learning to the greatest number of people. But when Jespersen thinks of the “greatest number of people” he is referring to Europeans or people of other continents whose language and culture derives from Europe. This completely excludes native populations of the continents of Asia and Africa and of the Pacific Islands, for whom Novial would be totally unfamiliar. 　　Still, if the language is a well-constructed one and not too complicated, perhaps it could nevertheless be adopted by those unfamiliar with its roots and structure. 　　Interglossa, the most recent of the proposed artificial languages, uses basically the Chinese structure, which is that of the isolating language where each word stands alone and there are no inflections at all. The rules of grammar in Interglossa are largely rules of word order, as in English and more strictly in Chinese. The roots are basically Latin and Greek because these have been the roots of most scientific words and are therefore--to some extent—familiar to scientists all over the world. 　　The use to Latin and Greek roots is a big help to readers of Indo-European languages. While this is of no help to the people who speak non-Indo-European languages, the use of Latin roots has at least the advantage of straightforward rules for spelling and pronunciation. The Latin, and all of the sounds of Latin are represented by its letters. 　　Why must an international language necessarily be a made-up language? Why can’t one of the existing languages be chosen as the best one to try to internationalize? 　　In the United Nations, for example, there are five official languages — English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish — and at all official meetings simultaneous translation is carried on, so that it is possible to listen to the speeches in any one of the five languages. If a delegate does not know at least one of these languages, he or she must learn one. How about making one of these into an international language? Of these, Chinese and Russian are not likely to gain many supporters because of the difficulties of these alphabets. The Russian alphabet stems from the Greek but is like that of very few other languages in the world today. The Chinese alphabet is not an alphabet at all. Its characters represent ideas, not sounds, and would therefore require someone to learn two separate languages -- the written and the spoken. The fact that Chinese characters are associated with idea, not sound, would make it a fine written international language, since each reader could apply the symbol to the appropriate word in his or her own language. 　　French was once the language of international diplomats, and a great many people involved in international relations had to learn French. But it has never been a language of science. Its spelling is difficult for foreigners and some of the sounds in French, being unlike those of other Latin-based Languages, are hard for non-French speakers to master. Spanish comes off well in both spelling and pronunciation, for its rules are simple and there are almost no exceptions to those rules, but it is highly inflected and even adds such complications as having two different forms for the verb “to be”, depending upon whether the state of being is permanent or temporary. In simplified form, it might do very well, but no one has tried to promote Spanish as the international language. 　　English, on the other hand, has been worked on for this purpose. C.K. Ogden and I. A. Richards set themselves the task of discovering what is the smallest number of words we need to have in order to be able to define all of the other words in English. They came up with the answer of eight hundred and fifty and made a basic word list of eight hundred and fifty English words, which they named Basic English. These are the only verbs in the entire list: “come, go, get, give, keep, let, do, put, make, say, be, seem, take, see, may, will, have, send.” 　　Writing in Basic English may require you to use a greater number of words -- as in having to say “it came to my ears” instead of “I heard” -- but you can still say anything you want to with just 850 different words and a few suffixes: “-ed, -ing, -ly” and the prefixes “in-, and un-” for “not”. This is a much smaller number of words to have to memorize than is ordinarily offered to the student of a foreign language. 　　Basic English and most of the other languages that have been proposed as international languages have one great disability for their acceptance as a world language: they all assume that the structure of Indo-European languages is　generally understood worldwide. （Interglossa is the only important exception, as it makes the attempt to use Chinese isolating structure instead.） As Benjamin Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages pointed out, "We say ‘a large black and white hunting dog' and assume that in Basic English one would do the same. How is the speaker of a radically different tongue supposed to know that one cannot say ‘hunting a white and black large dog'?” 　　Finally, in considering the merits of any proposed international language it's important to remember what it can and cannot be expected to do. If it is to be used for anything other than basic understanding between people of different nationalities in their daily lives, in international affairs, and in the exchange of scientific information, all proposals are likely to be rejected. If you think of it as a way of internationalizing literature -- especially poetry -- forget it. 　　Admittedly, translations of the “Gettysburg Address”, of “Treasure Island”, “Black Beauty”, and other books of fiction into Basic English came out remarkably well, but no one who could read the original would accept the Basic English version instead. 　　If language were for nothing but the communication of warnings and weather reports, an artificial international language would do nicely. But people have always had a need to do more than simply “tell it like it is”. Language is for reporting not merely one’s work. In our language we define ourselves. For this, a language needs idioms, needs all the oddities of grammar and style that reflect its history and development, all the poetic turns of phrases that have enriched it over the centuries. The language needs these? Well, perhaps not. Does a person need eyebrows? If you were to construct a human being, would you provide eyebrows? Is there some special reason why our lips should be a different color from the rest of our face? Perhaps not, but this is how people — real people — are. Artificial language is recommended highly for artificial people. The computers need it to simplify communication among themselves. For communication between people, languages in all their diversity will remain and grow as mirrors of the growth and soul of the societies that speak them. Decide whether the following statements are true （T） or false （F） according to the information given in the text. 7. Interglossa was the latest invention among all the international languages, and it was the only invented language which began to adopt the Chinese structure.