A Digression and Progression
When Zamenhof discovered that Modern English didn't possess a grammar, that nouns didn't decline, weren't divided into three categories of masculine, feminine and neuter, that verbs didn't conjugate or group themselves into "strong and weak", or "regular and irregular," he was very excited. English had hardly any case endings and its verbs were simpler than those of any other language he had previously studied. All the very difficult grammatical complexities of Old English had just been completely abandoned. Not needed!
Could English be the international language he was looking for? How many times have I been asked this same, sensible question!
Many times! So, for a change, instead of giving a sensible answer, here is my utterly untruthful account of why Zamenhof found English unsuitable.
One evening, a tired young man put aside the textbook he had been studying (its title was English in 30 days) and plodded into the kitchen for a cool drink of water. Seeing a glass already full, he drank it greedily and made his way back to his work table, whereupon his overtired brain began to spin like a top! The glass had contained 100% proof vodka!
In a semi-drunken delirium, Zamenhof snatched up pen and paper, threw the textbook into a corner, and began to write at top speed.
IN ENGLISH YOU WRITE MANCHESTER AND PRONOUNCE IT LIVERPOOL!
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird;
And dead: it's said like bed not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt)
.
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and chose.
There's cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
You know, I've hardly made a start!
A difficult language? Man alive!
I could speak it when only five.
(But can I write it? I've really tried,
But still have problems - at fifty-five!)
Zamenhof stopped. He wasn't fifty-five, only fifteen, but with his head reeling he felt fifty-five. He dropped his pen, as questions rushed into his head faster than he could write them down. Later on he remembered some of them, recorded them for posterity, and here they are.
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