Semantography (World Writing): inspiration: Strength of the Mother Tongue

To Charles the strength of the mother tongue made it impossible to develop a worldwide spoken language, such as Esperanto, of even a lingua franca. However, an auxilliary written language that could be read by anyone regardless of their spoken language was the answer.

In my youth I believed that Esperanto was the solution, I tried to learn it, but I soon gave up. I found the grammar too trying and complicated. In fact grammar and foreign languages were the torment of my boyhood. Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Geometry were mere child's play, but foreign languages brought me some times to the brink of disaster. I hated grammar and language learning as only a boy can hate. I believed that I am and shall always remain a total ignorant as far as foreign languages are concerned. ^{(SB 217)}

Then I came to Italy as a soldier in the First World War and learned Italian within 5 months. I simply had to speak. It was a sheer necessity. On business trips in France I learned more French than in years of study. ^{(SB 217)}

In that city of Shanghai, the most international town of the world, where more than 22 different nationalities existed side by side, I saw language at work. I saw Russian refugees of the 1917 revolution who lived in Shanghai for 25 years. Some of them, working constantly within their own community, could only speak Russian. The others had to go out to make a living and according to their work and environment, learned English or French, Chinese or Japanese. I witnessed the same process in the many thousands of refugees from Europe. I saw the intelligent Chinese “boy” in the various foreign households, picking up English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Japanese and other languages. But at home, amidst their own family, all those different people spoke only their mother tongue. ^{(SB 217)}

In Shanghai I realized the enormous strength of the mother tongue and the only force which could overcome it: self-preservation, the necessity to make a living or starve. There I realized too why foreign language learning in school, a few hours a week and amidst the environment of the mother tongue must be a failure. Now I understood why wise parents send their children away to a foreign country, to a foreign school, where a child is surrounded by foreign children is forced to learn the other language in order to overcome the unenduring loneliness, and make friends. ^{(SB 218)}

In Shanghai I realized that people would use Esperanto only if forced to do so and as such force would not be exerted, the proposals for an international language might prove to be a failure. ^{(SB 218)}

Possible Solution?

But there in China I realized that the only possibility to use the mother tongue and still bridge the language barrier is an ideographic writing such as the Chinese use, but it had to be a better one, a writing simple and clear and one which people should be able to type on a typewriter of ordinary size. ^{(SB 218)}

I realized my great handicap. I was totally ignorant of linguistic problems. I considered grammar an instrument of torture. I had never heard of “semantics” and was-completely ignorant of the problem of language planning, and of all the proposals for an international language, except a few bits of Esperanto. In short: I was a complete ignoramus in all matters pertaining to language. Only a fool could have attempted such a thing, and I know today that I would have never attempted it, if I had just glanced into a few books on linguistics, logic and semantics. The only thing I knew was that Ogden's Basic English consisted of only 850 words. That gave me some hope. And there was something else too. ^{(SB 218)}