ABSTRACT
IT is customary to speak of such languages as English, French and German as natural, and such languages as Esperanto, Ido, Volapük, Occidental, Novial as artificial.
It will be my task in this paper to show that this distinction is not exact, as the difference is one of degree rather than of species; very much in the so-called natural languages is “artificial,” and very much in the so-called artificial languages is quite natural, at any rate in all those schemes that count; therefore it would be wise to choose more adequate terms. I shall consequently speak of the first class of languages as national languages, and of the second class as constructed or systematically planned languages. The latter may also be termed international languages, for the purpose of those constructed languages with which we are to deal here is to serve as international auxiliary languages, i.e. means of communication between persons belonging to different speech communities.
