The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 5, 1924, Page 7

|Our Language Problem - “Workers of t of the world unite.” Karl Marx. “In order to unite, understand each other.” Emancipanta Stelo. IL The Language Obstacle In Our Move- ment. ITHOUT doubt the language con- fusion is a great obstacle in the international correspondence between labor organizations, but in no country is this obstacle felt in such a degree in the daily work of the party as in America. Consequently the question how to satisfactorily solve this prob- lem is one of the most important con- fronting our party. We. here in America are so used to this language confusion, that we hard- ly realize what an enormous amount of energy is used every day for mere- ly going around the language diffi- culties, energy which, if released, could be employed in direct party work. A satisfactory solution of this problem, therefore, means saving of an unimaginable amount of. energy in form of time, money and better under- standing. We “realize easily this language obstacle -in the international corres- pondence between parties and other organizations; in the int. congresses, where now three or four languages are being used officially, translations to be made of all speeches, motions, resolu- tions and minutes; in the spreading of propaganda by books and pam- phiets to be translated into the lan- guages of all civilized peoples. Here in this country we feel this _ language obstacle in our daily life. Our conversations with the fellow workers in the shop are made dif- ficult; our organizations, for instance our party, must have a peculiar and clumsy form, consisting of language federations and language branches; the co-operation in our City Central Committees and District Committees is difficult and unsatisfactory, because in these bodies English must be used as an auxiliary language tho the majority of our membership consists of foreign comrades, of whom very few are com- petent in this language; we must spend a lot of money and time in sup- porting newspapers and publishing pamphlets in every language. In spite of all this energy that is spent a lot of misunderstandings oc- cur. Being myself a foreigner and be- sides a student of this problem I can give many an example of this, for in- stance how a D. O. must take the floor several times and with great trouble explain some party affairs to those delegates, who are not able to im- mediately grasp the meaning. This energy is lost energy, and the more of it that we can save, the more effective will our organization grow. The language obstacle was great enough in the S. P. and is still greater in our party. In the S. P. it could .be enough that one mem- ber of the branch was competent and could serve as delegate to the County Committee or as secre- tary, but in our party all or most of the officers and delegates must be able to take part in meetings where Eng- lish is used as an auxiliary language. The secretary who receives communi- cations, indorsed organizers who must attend organizers’ meetings, delegates to the F. S. R., defense councils, etc. At a time the party instructed the branches to order also their foreign literature thru the districts. This instruction was soon repealed, but if it had been kept in effect, also every branch literature agent must have been able to write English well enough to order books from the district. The tendency of the party is to more and more make the foreign language federations only propaganda and translation bureaus, not organiza- tional parts of the party. This is quite right, but it requires that each branch has a suflicient number of members who know the official soar aa of thelan party, English. 1. we only avoid, i. e. go around the language difficulties, or shall we abolish the cause Of the obstacle? We radicals condemn the idea of only patching up the captalist system and propose to abolish the cause of it, which of course is the revolutionary way of treating the subject. And yet we are still using the reformistic method by, Soguieny with our language problem @ are walking around the obstacle by means:of language fedef- ations, translator - secretaries, lan- guage newspapers“and pamphlets, and by using one national language as the: official language at our meetings. The lutely dominating. The Géhean: French and English delegates with de- legates from other foreign nationali- ties were placed downstairs in the large hall and every address in either language was interpreted into the two others, but also only into these. On the balcony sat the numerous repres- entatives of the Scandinavians, most of them unable to follow the debates and still less able to contribute their valuable experience to the discussion. (Black mine. A. R.) At the very clos- ing, however, it happened that among \the many expressions of thanks to the Danish hosts a few words were al- idea of abolishing the obstacle, i. e.|lowed also in a Scandinavian lan- the diversity of languages has never seriously occurred to us yet. In the technical field we easily see the advantage of using the revolution- ary method of abolishing an obstacle instead of wasting energy by walking around it. If a block of stone is bar- ring a pathway and forces thousands. of people to. walk around it, sooner or; later these people come together and | lift the block away. Where formerly guage, in this case Swedish. The |Seandinavians, who for the first time felt themselves at home, rose to their feet applauding continuously, violent- ly, mainly an as expression, it seemed, of an internal need of making their existence known. And for the first time a silence spread over the noisy ‘crowd downstairs. They looked aston- lighed and at the same time solemnly towards the thundering balcony. The a railroad ran around a mountain.caus-|upper class of the language families ing the loss of considerable time, ajhad discovered the lower class up- tunnel is constructed, thru the mount-|stairs, a new people.” (Black mine. ain saving a lot of time and expense.|A. R.) Does not the same apply to the lan- This episode shows vividly that the guage problem in our movement?nationalities that have a small lan- _THE PROLET. By Oskar Kanehl. Who the engine moves, Who the seed-corn sows, Who pokes in the pits, Who the hammer leads. Who bread and light makes, Who, with tormented wrinkled L face. Who in sweat and soil, Must toil. ~ Who stooping over writing books, & From whom the hunger looks. Whom the money-mob enslaves, Whom he all takes. Whom he pumps out. Whom he puts into arrest, Till his last breath. .Whom he shoots dead, Like mad. Prolet, he is called. His Bourgeois! For you they don’t work more. They hate you! children are prolets. Will you annihilate? Want n6 wages, no illusion, They are raising the arms. For revolution. They accomplish the hour. Give free the Earth. The Their reign is near. man is here! Trans. Paul Acel. Would it not pay to spend a little time, and money in abolishing the language confusion instead of continually try- ing to avoid it. It would be in- teresting to figure out the loss of time and money in our party alone that the language confusion is causing us. It is probably impossible to figure out the time, but perhaps the national office could figure out the cost in dol- lars of keeping up our federations and language publications. Perhaps the money and time spent during one or two years would enable us to forever abolish the obstacle. The main question is then, shall we keep on using the reformistic way of going around the language obstacle, or shall we apply the revolutionary: way of abolishing it? ; TIL Is There a Small Privileged Language Class in Our Movement. In the introduction to his motion for a world language in the Swedish par- liament in 1915, Carl Lindhagen, an able statesman, for many years social- democratic mayor of Stockholm, tells episode illustrating this question. rt take the liberty of translating and quoting the same: “An episode from Reformistic or Revolutionary Treating|the international socialist cameneas in of the Problem. Like other questions the language problem can be treated from either a reformistic or a revolutionary problem point of view. The question is: Shall Copenhagen in 1910 will stay in memory forever. More than a Pom sand delegates were gathering and the three great language families, Ger- man, French and English were abso- guage as mother tongue do not have the same opportunity as those that have one of the larger languages. This is in the international field. How is it in America, in our own party? Have all members and branches that have a foreign language as mother tongue the same opportun- ity to work and advance in our move- ment? It is evident that in each foreign language branch those few members who are most advanced in English have the privilege of being elected officers and delegates. Other members may be better qualified otherwise, but can be given only sec- ondary consideration. Then in the C. Cc. C. Has a delegate using broken English, poor vocabulary and bad grammer the same chance to present his arguments as one who speaks English fluently? At all elections of secretary and other officers who have to do more clerical work in English, the difficulties are evident. Even among those who have acquired a passable practice in speaking, it is hard to find many who can master the written language as well, due to the extremely irregular orthography of English. Naturally the foreign language fed- my |erations are not able to keep so many national speakers touring the coun- try as the National Office of the party can, This deprives the foreign com- rade of a great deal of education that By A. Rostrom A. Rostrom is available to the English speaking comrades. Smaller foreign language federations cannot even publish enough pamphlets to sufficiently edu- cate their members. ‘ All this shows that the American comrades and those foreign comrades, who are competent in English consti- tute a small privileged*class in our movement in America. In the: inter- national field those nationalities that have a large language as mother tongue, constitute the privileged class. IV. The Solution of the Problem. How, then, can the language dif- ficulties be abolished in the world? It would seem the easiest way simply to select one of the larger, national languages, English, French or German, adopt it officially as an international auxiliary language and introduce it into all schools all over the world. We soon understand, however, that this solution is out of question on account of two obstacles; first, the national egotism which makes it impossible to select a living, natural language. The main requirements of an auxiliary language must be: ist, it must be neutral, i. e. not be a national lan- guage; 2nd, it must be so easy that anyone can learn it himself without sacrifice of much time or money. That a living, natural tongue is not practicable as an auxiliary language we learn best from our own experi- ence here in our movement in Ameri- ca. Here we are using English an an auxiliary language at all our interna- tional Batherings, with well known dif- ficulties. Imagine this on an interna- tional scale! If any living, natural language, for instafice English, would be officially adopted, it should be learned in the public schools in every country. Considering the time it takes us foreigners to learn the lan- guage here, where we have all the opportunities to hear and practice it, we realize that thoro understanding of the language cannot be acquired thru learning from books only. Es- pecially not English with its peculiar orthography and pronounciation. We may consider the suggestion of adopting a so-called “dead language,” in which case only Latin could be con- sidered, which would be neutral, ‘but the seéond obstacle still remains, for Latin is no easier to learn than any living tongue, rather the opposite. The only imaginable solution left us, therefore, is to adopt one of the so-called “artificial languages” (Vola- puk, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Idiom Neutral), which are neutral and also much easier than any living tongue. The only problem is to select the system, that is most suitable as an international, auxiliary language. All modern, artificial language~sys- tems are very similar in construction and appearance, since they all are based upon the principles of “great- est internationality of words,” and “greatest simplicity of grammer.” The question to consider in selecting the system is, which one is the most log- ically constructed, most expressive, most exact, easiest to speak fluently and best fitted for scientific as well as every-day use. Communist International and Other International and National Organ- izations Recommend Ido. In January 1921 a “Study Commis- sion for the adoption of an interna- tional, auxiliary language in the Com- munist International” was established in the Comintern. The Commission consisted of comrades Pogany (Ex- President of the Senate of Soldiers in Soviet Hungary), Guilbeau (France), Wax (England), Krilenko (Russia), and Hans Itschner (Switzerland). This commission studied the prob- lem thoroughly and adopted the fol- lowing decision: “The Study Commission recognizes unanimously that the general adop- tion of an International language would very much facilitate the task of Communism, but it regrets to state that the time is not yet op- portune for its general and official in- troduction into the C, I. “The main task of the Communists, Esperantists and Idists is to unite their forces and form a common or- (Continued on page 7.)