In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [47]
Basic English also might have had a better chance if Ogden had been a little less eccentric. But it almost didn't matter what his personality was like, for by the time he came along, the whole endeavor of inventing or even manipulating a language had been so thoroughly tainted with the eau de quackery that even the most sober, sensible language inventor had little hope of being taken seriously.
Language schemes had always been viewed a little skeptically. John Locke, a contemporary of Wilkins's, said he didn't think that anyone could “pretend to attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world, no not so much as of his own country, without rendering himself ridiculous.” But in the seventeenth century, highly prestigious people were working on the development of philosophical languages, and their work was circulated and discussed among the biggest names of the day.
And although at the beginning of the era of international languages, plenty of jokes were made at the expense of Volapük and Esperanto and other languages that came to public attention, they did get attention, and sometimes from quite esteemed sources. Respected institutions like the American Philosophical Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science got involved in the international language question, and major papers reported on the different projects as they came out. Esperanto got a lot of press. In 1910, when the sixth universal Esperanto congress was held in Washington, D.C., the Washington Evening Star carried the headline “Zamenhof Alvenas” (Zamenhof Arrives), and the Washington Post ran daily stories on the program of events.
Public recognition of invented languages manifested itself in other ways, too. A Scottish company produced an Esperanto cigarette (“The international smoke”), and Cadbury manufactured an Esperanto chocolate. When the universal congress was held in Barcelona, the king of Spain sent a horse-drawn carriage to pick Zamenhof up on his arrival. Later, as Zamenhof traveled south to Valencia, groups of people came out to greet his train at different stations, waving and cheering him on.
As time went on and the crackpot element of Esperanto society became more pronounced, people concerned about their public image became less willing to be associated with it. And as the number of invented languages increased to the point where the language inventors were (in the words of one newspaper editorial) fixing to “out-Babel Babel,” the newspapers and the scientific academies stopped paying attention.
Hundreds of language projects were published at the beginning of the twentieth century, and many of them were second or third attempts by people who weren't quite satisfied with their own original “optimal” solutions. Language inventors are, after all, motivated by the urge to reform and improve, and many of them, once they got going, found it hard to stop. They grew dissatisfied with their own projects and continued to tinker and adjust, publishing revised versions of their languages. Ernst Beermann, not satisfied with his Novilatiin (1895), later created Novilatin (1907). Woldemar Rosenberger (onetime director of the Volapük Academy) created Idiom Neutral (1902), followed by Idiom Neutral Reformed (1907), followed by Reform-Neutral (1912). Some of the most prolific producers were former Volapükists, such as Julius Lott, who gave us Verkehrssprache (1888), Compromiss-Sprache (1889), Lingua Internazional (1890), Mundolingue