Claude Piron, Professor of Educational Psychology and Science at Geneva University, was formerly a translator and reporter with the United Nations, and the World Health Organization in Geneva, performing various missions for both organizations in Africa and Asia. Amongst other things, he has written five novels, using the nom de plume John Valano, and an essay on the formation of the personality, all in Esperanto.

The following is a summary of a 185-page essay recently written by M. Piron, but as yet unpublished.

ABSTRACT: Document on Esperanto prepared for the 36th Congress of the Radical Party (Rome, Hotel Ergife, 30 April - 3 may)

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Ours is a strange society! It could provide the world with an effective means of communicating, which is very easy to learn and costs nothing, but it appears to have no intention of doing this. Instead, society chooses to adopt language systems that cost a fortune and are unbearably complex, only to obtain the worst possible results. If, in order to resolve a problem, an individual chooses a laborious and costly method offering no advantages when he has a perfectly adequate and pleasant method at hand, which is completely gratis, one might deduce that he himself has a psychological problem, wouldn't you say? Nevertheless, this is precisely what happens in our society in the area of communication. Therefore, our society is both masochistic and neurotic. We can call this form of neurosis "The Babel Syndrome".

The malfunction manifests itself in at least six different ways:

1) the interested parties are not able to say what they would like to say to each other;

2) the message is passed on, but with difficulty, causing considerable frustration, and requiring tremendous effort and constant clarification;

3) ideas are put across with almost complete success, but the investment required from many of the partners is considerable (approximately 2,000 hours of study and practice of the language in question);

4) injustice holds sway: some people occupy a privileged position, while others are made to feel inferior or suffer a partial loss of dignity. For example, they don't understand the person who is talking to them, and their own means of expression is inadequate, devoid of nuance and often laughable (which frequently happens in exchanges between local authorities and foreigners);

5) the message received varies somewhat from that which is transmitted, so that it is, in fact, garbled and confusing;

6) the cost of communication is excessively high and multilingual situations occur so frequently that they eat up enormous sums which, if the world were organized in a more sane manner, could be spent on improving the well-being of various peoples.

Afraid to face reality

A typical symptom of neurosis is a fear of facing the truth, combined with a tendency to confuse fantasy with reality. This is also evident in "The Babel Syndrome". No one wants to admit that differences in language can create a problem: society illudes itself that it is possible to communicate in English the world over. In effect, "a survey carried out recently showed that the percentage of people capable of understanding English correctly (in Eastern Europe) is decidedly lower than our most pessimistic predictions. No more than 6% of the population, in fact. The number of people capable of speaking English fluently is even less" (1). No one wants to admit that peoples who speak one of the Germanic languages are privileged when learning English as it belongs to this group: the number of English-speaking people in Scandinavia, Holland and Germany is not at all typical of the world situation. No one wants to admit that one cannot really master a language at school. Having a language at one's fingert

ips means memorizing hundreds and thousands of isolated elements until their expression becomes a reflex action. These elements have no communicative or informative value per se, but we are obliged to respect them if we wish to express ourselves in the language in question. It is beyond the average person to transform these single elements into a reflex action, but who is going to point this out?

People suffering from a neurosis are so preoccupied with detail that they are unable to see the overall picture clearly. If business letters written in English provide a satisfactory means of communication and if, in certain circles, people of different nationalities are able to chat in English as if it were their mother tongue, these things must nevertheless be seen in the proper perspective. In fact, situations like this are more the exception than the rule: in the first case, we are dealing with a number of specific, and very limited, subjects according to the particular field of business; and, in the second case, with an lite whose members, for the most part, appertain to the business world and who have studied at length in an English-speaking country. The general outlook is less rosy: in the majority of cases, when people speaking different languages find themselves having to communicate, the intercomprehensibility is either nil, average, difficult, or practically impossible.

In 1989, the linguistic services provided by the European Community cost 1.4 billion Ecus (2.52 billion Swiss francs) (2); each word typed, and translated into nine languages, costs 36 cents or 0.50 Swiss francs (translation costs have increased to 500,000 US dollars per day) (3); communication is often costly and considerably below standard, at the same time: this happens particularly with simultaneous translations in which part of the message is sometimes lost, and other parts misinterpreted.

If we want to cast aside our neurotic beliefs, we are going to have to face reality. The fact is that people resort to all kinds of methods in order to overcome language barriers: gestures, the mumbling of a language they have just learned, simultaneous translation, written translation - sometimes with the help of a computer, the mixing of different languages, English, Esperanto, etc... If we compare these various methods, we see that only one of them guarantees the individual a means of communication that is gratis, fluent, and of a certain level (4). However, we cannot express an objective opinion concerning this without knowing more about the neuro-psychological aspect of language.

A natural tendency to revert to basic speech

In order to understand the cerebral processes involved in communication, we must study the language used by small children, the mistakes people make when they express themselves in a foreign language, and the effect that a loosening of the tongue caused by alcohol, drugs or strong emotion, has on the speaker. In all these situations, the individual reveals a strong and natural tendency to revert to basic linguistic elements and forms that have been previously learned. It is natural - and incorrect - to say ununderstandable rather than incomprehensible: one has learned the form un...able, and one tends to make it a general rule. A foreigner who uses profondezza instead of profondit in Italian, or vous disez as opposed to vous dites in French, is following the same natural tendency. Why are we unable to master a foreign language, even after 6 or 7 years of study? Because the different languages, with very few exceptions (Indonesian, for example), composed of hundreds and thousands of individual elements

, are not compatible with our natural way of expressing ourselves. We speak our native tongue correctly simply because we have been able to practise it at all times, for years and years, at the most favourable age and with a strong motivation (it is essential that we make ourselves understood to our parents, our brothers and sisters; it is necessary to pronounce words correctly in order not to appear ridiculous). We never cease to practise this language throughout our lives, and always have a correct example to follow. The only other similar situation that exists for learning another language is when a family is bilingual (for example, when the members of the family speak a language different to the local one).

The problem of communication is multifaceted. Language represents power; he who dominates imposes his own language, in all its arbitrariness. It is truly amazing how the majority of peoples submit to this, without making any kind of protest. When forming the plural of "foot", it is only natural to say "foots". But this is incorrect, one has to say "feet". Why should non-English-speaking people agree to stifle their spontaneity and bow down to what is a mere quirk, when "foots" would be perfectly comprehensible to both parties?

Just a moment! I'm not trying to butcher English! Attempting to tamper with a centuries-old language in order to adapt it to our deeply-rooted tendencies - even if they are universal - would be a crime against culture. But is this, then, sufficient reason to force us to suppress our spontaneity, to place us in an inferior position to our interlocutors, to make us submit to the whims of a tradition that is extraneous to us but which nevertheless dictates the type of language we must use.

There is an alternative solution: Esperanto. This language completely respects the natural tendency to adopt basic speech patterns. If you have learned the plural in Esperanto, you can be absolutely sure you will make no errors because there are no exceptions to the rule - and you know there are no exceptions! If you have learned the future tense, you can apply it to any verb. And so on. Psychologically speaking, this aspect of Esperanto makes it the most satisfying language for intercultural exchanges.

Besides, it is a language that has been formed by international usage, and has been adopted by people of all cultures and nations, and from all social backgrounds, for at least a century. Thus, usage has turned Zamenhof's project into a living language, it has produced literature that is both original and interesting, and it has even become the language spoken in a certain number of mixed marriages and, therefore, the mother tongue of a number of children.

Psychological and political resistance

If one carries out a practical study, in the field, as to the merits of Esperanto compared to other languages, it is revealed that the former is the only language that guarantees one hundred percent communication with a minimum investment (5). It takes the UN at least 6 days to communicate the contents of 25 pages (14,000 words) to all the member countries, and this costs about 20,000 US dollars (6). In a similar situation, the World Esperanto Association would be able to communicate information without any delay and without spending a cent. True, both systems necessitate a certain amount of previous training. But where the UN is concerned, an Ethiopian, Japanese or Iranian delegate will have had to study English for hours and hours over ten years to reach the required level, while his counterparts at the World Esperanto Association will have only had to study for one year.

When one comes up with the answer to a problem, one often conducts a "pilot experiment" before applying the solution generally. Well, Esperanto is like a pilot experiment that has been going on for a hundred years. The "experiment" has been a complete success. It would be both absurd and dishonest to deny this.

Nevertheless, people continue to do so,all too often. Why? For a series of political, social and psychological reasons. When the Secretariat of the League of Nations, after having studied the problem in depth, recommended in 1922 that all member countries teach Esperanto in schools (it takes a pupil just one academic year to master this language, and requires the same number of teaching hours as any other language) (7), the major powers - France, above all - did everything they could to eliminate this revolutionary proposal. From that moment on, Esperanto received even less publicity than it had at the beginning of the century.

This negative political factor is also combined with psychological factors. In the innermost part of our psyche, a language is linked with feelings that go back to early childhood. At this primitive and emotional level, we look on language as a sacred treasure. For this same reason, we see the idea of using a young language, that is not deeply-rooted in tradition but which was created by an individual, as something sacrilegious. The fear of committing a sacrilegious act creates a taboo, which prevents any verification of how Esperanto compares with other languages as regards richness and expressiveness. A language is also profoundly linked to a particularly vulnerable aspect of the human psyche: one's own identity (my language represents my country, my language represents me); whence stems the fear, which is unfounded if one goes by the facts, that a language without a country is a language without a soul. The reactions caused by these powerful psychological forces acting on our subconscious preven

t us from being able to consider Esperanto calmly and objectively. We, therefore, attribute it with all kinds of negative characteristics which it by no means has, but we will only see this if we take the trouble to examine Esperanto closely.

When it comes to language, all countries display the typical symptoms of neurosis. Instead of comparing the different languages available in order to choose the most suitable one, they permit their prejudices, deriving from infantile modes of thinking, to lead them to selecting a system that is difficult, extremely laborious, and which, for the most part, produces mediocre results; whereas they could adopt a system that is gratis, effective, easy to learn, and extremely rewarding both culturally and psychologically.

What is the real answer?

The world could be cured of "The Babel Syndrome" by applying the following "treatment": the UN, or the EEC, would officially declare that within "x" number of years (10 or 15, for example) Esperanto would be the only language used in their Institutions. A declaration of this kind would send most countries into shock. This would inevitably provoke a negative reaction which would, neverthless, be healthy: the various countries would be obliged to make a real comparison between the various communication systems used on our planet. Thus, we would see that a part of humanity - the Esperanto-speaking population - is able to communicate internationally without manifesting any symptoms of "The Babel Syndrome", by utilizing a means of communication that is richer and more flexible than other systems, and can be learned ten times more quickly. The news would spread, and this would be enough for many people to start learning Esperanto the world over. As Esperanto can be learned relatively quickly, a large part o

f the population in every country would soon be able to communicate in this language.

There is an Arabian proverb which says: "he who wants something finds a way to obtain it; he who doesn't finds an excuse". If countries really wished to eliminate language barriers they would adopt Esperanto, which is available right now. But do they really want to? The arguments they usually put forward are mere pretexts and are never a result of comparing actual alternatives. They embody one of the typical political vices: that of saying one thing and doing exactly the opposite. How many fine words are wasted on "cultural differences", "intelligent use of financial resources" and the "quality of life"! In practice, however, people are forced to acquire an English language culture; the taxpayer's money is squandered in a shameful and unethical manner, and a language is decided upon without considering for one moment whether people will be happy, and feel at ease, with this particular form of communication.

Verbal communication in society is similar to the communication between the nervous system and the body. The present society is like a body in which images transmitted by the eyes to the brain arrive after a long and complicated process of interpretation, and in which messages sent by the brain to the hand never arrive directly but are slowed down by bureaucratic red tape. Esperanto enables us to transmit information directly. Besides, it would allow us to treat our cultural treasures known as national languages with loving care. Everywhere. If Esperanto were to be adopted, schoolchildren would be able to master it after a year, and then have plenty of time to learn another language to enrich their minds. This would put the various cultures on an equal level, thus eliminating the imbalance created by 80-90% of young people "choosing" to learn English...with pitiful results, if we compare their efforts to those of the Esperantists.

The only way to "cure" a neurosis is to admit that it exists.

Everyone can help all the countries to do this in the following two ways: first, by bringing pressure to bear on the authorities to carry out a study of the real "Esperanto" situation (by analysing the various systems of verbal communication on a "cost/efficiency" basis, for example); and second, by learning Esperanto themselves, which would give it a stronger position in society, and make it increasingly more valid as a language.

NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY

1) Mark Fettes, "Europe's Babylon: Towards a Single European Language? History of European Ideas, 1991, pp. 13, 3, 201-202.

2) Mario von Baratta and Jan Ulrich Clauss, Internationale Organisationen (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1991), p. 146.

3) Roman Rollnick, "Word Mountains are Costing us a Fortune", The European, 20-22 December 1991, p. 6.

4) Claude Piron, "Esperanto - L'image et la ralit", Cours et Etudes de Linguistique contrastive et applique, No. 66, Paris: Universit de Paris VII, 1986, see pp. 3-7 in particular.

5) If we examine the drawbacks of the four principal systems currently used to communicate internationally, and assign to each a mark ranging from 0 (no drawbacks) to 10 (enormous drawbacks), with 5 as the average, we obtain the following table:

UN = United Nations

MN = Multinationals

EC = European Community

Es = Esperanto-speaking Organizations

UN MN EC Es

a) time required for study (for the

participants) 8 8 0 3

b) initial investment (Countries,

Government Bodies) 9 9 5 3

c) inequality or discrimination 6 5 0 0

d) interpreting costs 7 0 10 0

e) cost of producing documents 6 0 10 0

f) loss of information 5 4 6 0

g) nervous energy expended in

communicating 5 6 0 1

h) difficulty in reading 3 4 0 1

i) problems encountered during meetings 8 3 8 0 ------------------

Total drawbacks 57 39 39 5

The systems of communication are as follows:

- United Nations: six or seven different languages are used, with simultaneous translation, and translation of documents.

- Multinationals: everything is conducted in English.

- European Community: languages of all the member countries are used; simultaneous translation and translation of documents are assured in all possible combinations of language.

- Esperanto-speaking Organizations: everything is conducted in Esperanto.

The above figures are estimates. When two different situations exist within a particular section, the figure given is an average of the combined marks. For example, in section a): some people at the UN have not been obliged to learn another language, while others have had to study and perfect a language for four hours a week, over a period of ten years; in section g): once again at the UN, a Korean delegate who is obliged to use a language which is completely foreign to him will expend a considerable amount of nervous energy, while a Frenchman, who is able to communicate in his native tongue, will consume none at all. In section b), the cost of teaching languages at school is included in the initial investments made by the countries in question.

6) Joint Inspection Unit, Evaluation of the Translation Process in the United Nations System (Geneva: UN, 1980, document, JIU/REP/80/7), Table 7.

7) Pierre Bovet, L'esperanto ŕ l'école (Paris: Hatier, 1922), p. 5.