“ To the man in the street the only easy sounds are those of his own language. The question, which sounds are easiest in themselves, can only be settled by means of general practical phonetics, which often leads to conclusions directly contradicting popular prejudices. ”

“ No one likes to have his own language travestied. Thus Esperanto, which looks like bad Italian, is on that account less popular among the speakers of Romance languages (except in France) than elsewhere. It is a significant fact that none of the inventors of these languages base them on their native speech.
And then, these languages are not international after all. A really international language ought to be as acceptable to speakers of Arabic, Chinese or Japanese as to a European. Even from a European point of view they are not wholly international. ”

“ The dialects of Chinese are mutually unintelligible, but it takes a Chinaman only about six months to learn another dialect, which would occupy even a gifted European at least three years to learn to speak; and yet Chinese is, from a European point of view, far simpler in structure than Norwegian, or even English.
Natural languages are difficult because they are imperfect expressions of thought: because language is only partly rational. The greatest difficulty of a language is the vocabulary ”

“ And even that part of a language which can be brought more or less under general rules is full of irregularities and exceptions, ambiguities and redundancies of expression, and superfluous or irrational distinctions such as those of grammatical gender, so that when we have learnt one sentence we can never be sure that it will serve as a pattern for another. ”

“ It is on these principles that the well-known Volapük (q.v.) is constructed (1880) —the first artificial language that achieved a certain measure of success. But its roots are so disguised by arbitrary alterations that the English basis is not generally easy to recognize.
Volapük is mainly an adapted (borrowed) or a-posteriori language, as opposed to an original or a-priori one, although it belongs partly to the latter class as well. Its vocabulary is adapted, but its grammar is, to a great extent, original. ”

“ The result is that instead of the unpleasant mixture of Romance elements with words taken arbitrarily from English and German which makes a great part of the vocabulary of Esperanto unintelligible to learners who know only one language, Idiom Neutral offers a vocabulary which is practically Romance-Latin. Thus the Idiom Neutral ornit, “bird,” and diurn, “day,” are almost self-interpreting even apart from any context, while the Esperanto bird and tag are unintelligible except to those who know English and German ”

“ But all these attempts—beginning with Dalgarno's Ars signorum (1661) and Wilkins' well-known Real Character (1668) —have been failures. They were failures because the ground was not sufficiently prepared. A great part of Wilkins' folio is taken up with attempts to lay the necessary foundations. ”