7

Nor would Rud listen to any projects for a World Language. There he not only followed Norvel and Bodisham, but his own natural indisposition to tamper with the rhetorical instrument he had mastered.

They were all three inclined towards a simplified and phonetically spelt English as the common speech of the world, because they were English–speakers and because the English–speaking communities had been the backbone of the revolutionary movement. But they realised the element of bias in this disposition. They knew that language was bound to change with all the other changes in progress, that it needed not merely new words but new idioms, that the vocabulary of every tongue that remained in use must inevitably be enormously enlarged and refined, and that the speech of the future, whatever its basis, would necessarily be syncretic and greatly polished by attrition. They favoured English so far as to institute phonetic spelling, make it compulsory to print books in this reformed orthography and optional to print them also in the classical alphabet, and establish basic English the official lingua franca. But they suppressed no other language teaching. When there was a non–English–speaking population the local language was the primary one. They felt that in this way a mutable English speech might be imposed upon the patchwork of Babel, much as the white saltire unified the world's flags. Useful and expressive novelties could be incorporated from any other language and made world–wide by the cinema, the radio and the ever–multiplying schools. English has always been the Autolycus of languages, taking its own where it found it. Against this leisurely advance towards a naturally developing, synthetic, world language, the Idoists, the Esperantists and their like raged in vain.

"It is remarkable how patriotism still lingers in the blood," said Dreed. "I like to think that the coming world language will be English."

"It will be almost as much English," said Norvel, "as Middle Saxon is the English in use to–day. Less like. It will have dropped a thousand ambiguous and deflated terms. It will have received from every language under the sun. It will probably have new pronouns and new prepositions. We can no more foresee that than we can foresee the fashions of five hundred years from now.

"All we can do is to prepare for a universal language that will go on changing for ever. We don't know everything. We aren't final. I wish we could make that statement a part of the Fundamental Law."

"We could work something about that into the exordium," said Rud. "I think we could make it sound rather fine."