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Ido Improved Esperanto or Confidence Trick S R Dalton 2008 Page 1

Ido Improved Esperanto or Confidence Trick.

S.R.Dalton

Any enquirer searching for information about the international language Esperanto will often

find references to a language project called Ido, whose tiny band of supporters usually claim

that it is a revised or improved version of Esperanto.

To show that Ido is not an improvement on Esperanto is easy enough. The examples

produced by the Ido supporters (Idists) are superficial merely trying to show that the

vocabulary of Ido, at first sight, appears more familiar to a person acquainted with Romance

languages but further investigation shows Ido to be more difficult to learn and use; the result

being that few of those attracted to the system remain with it for long.

The Idists have another line of defence.

They will say that an authoritative and duly appointed body of scientists (sometimes they

even say linguists) researched into Esperanto and decided that it should be amended and that

Ido was the result of their efforts. Although this account has long been known to be untrue,the facts, unlike the well-circulated Idist fable, have rarely been presented in English. So let

us put the matter straight Ido is not an improvement on Esperanto but an out-of-date

plagiarism introduced by a fraud. Its decline was not due to interference by esperantists but

simply to its own inadequacy.

To understand the situation we must look at the background.

The history of the attempts to introduce an international auxiliary language goes back many

centuries but the first such project to gain anything like a substantial following was Volapk

which was invented by Bishop Schleyer and appeared in 1878. At first it seemed destined for

success and at the height of its popularity it was claimed to have over a million supporters

(although it is doubtful whether so many could actually speak it) and many of those

supporters felt that it was in need of substantial reform.

The reformers claimed that the aspect was barbaric and that, though most of its vocabulary

was derived from traditional languages, words adopted were distorted and barely

recognisable.

At that time the dominant European language was French whose position as a European

language of commerce was like that held in the world by English today and like that which

may be held by Chinese in the next century. Volapk certainly did not look like la romance

language and that seemed to many to be a good enough reason for criticism. Today our

linguistic horizons are wider and to the unbiased eye Volapk is no more strange thanHungarian or Finnish. The distortion undergone when the English word friend becomes

flen in Volapk was no greater than that undergone when the word television became

terebi when adopted into Japanese.

However, by the time of the third Volapk congress in 1889 (which was first at which

Volapk was actually used) there were numerous projects for reform.

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Schleyer refused to accept any of the reforms and insisted that as the author he had the sole

right to determine the form of the language. The Congress broke up in confusion and this was

the beginning of the end for Volapk.

By this time Esperanto was in the ascendant. Although Dr. Zamenhofs earliest writings in

Esperanto predated the publication of Volapk he did not publish until 1887 when he became

convinced that Volapk was not viable. At first he invited criticism and proposals for changeand in 1894 he published in the chief Esperanto publication a proposal for reform

incorporating the main suggestions he had received and asking readers whether they wished

(a) to accept these reforms, (b) to accept a modified version of them, (c) to consider other

reforms or (d) to maintain Esperanto as it was.

The result was an overwhelming majority vote in favour of stability.

In 1905 at the first World Congress of Esperanto further steps were taken to ensure that

Esperanto did not suffer the fate of Volapk.

Unlike Bishop Schleyer, Dr. Zamenhof was not concerned to assert ownership of the

language and stated that Esperanto was nobodys property. The Congress took a further stepand adopted as the basis for Esperanto a series of documents called the Fundamento. This

Fundamento was declared to be untouchable which was perhaps an unfortunate term, as the

preamble made it clear that it was the basis on which Esperanto could evolve even to the

point where it could end up by being changed out of all recognition. The idea was that

Esperanto could evolve normally to meet the needs of its users but should not be altered by

the arbitrary decree of any person or organisation. The method by which it could be changed

was declared as being the way of neologism and archaism, the method by which traditional

languages change. Anyone can use new forms which, if they come into general use will

become part of the language. Similarly, forms which fall into disuse will become archaic. In

order to safe guard the Fundamento, a group of 100 suitably qualified persons became the

Language Committee (later incorporated with and subsequently replaced by the Academy)

who could monitor, comment and advise on developments. This was intended as the way to

avoid the danger of Esperanto breaking up into competing dialects, which, as we have seen,

was the fate of Volapk.

Not all would-be reformers were prepared to accept this method. One who did not was the

mathematician Louis Couturat.

Couturat had a scheme for introducing into Esperanto a method of building compound words

which he called the principle of reversibility. Together with his friend Leopold Leau (with

whom he had co-authored Histoire de la Langue Universelle, a list of interlinguistic

projects which, although later overshadowed by more thorough works was the best study

then available) he set up the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Language.

The expressed intention was that this Delegation should approach the Association of

Academics to select an international language from among the projects then existing. In the

event of the Association refusing, the Delegation itself would create a committee which

would do so.

Unsurprisingly, Leau and Couturat were appointed secretary and treasurer respectively. This

raises a question. Who appointed them to these offices?

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The original title of the Delegation is significant. It was the Delegitaro por la Alpreno de

Internacia Lingvo. Delegitaro ( a collection of delegates) is based on thepassive past

participle of a word meaning to delegate. It therefore presupposes the existence of one or

more delegintoj , person or persons doing the delegating. The identity of such person or

persons has never been disclosed.

At this stage there was no mention of names of the members of the Delegation (it seems tohave consisted only of Couturat and Leau) nor was there any mention of the identity of the

persons who had delegated authority to them. However some Esperantists, convinced that, as

Esperanto was the only international language project with a body of speakers and a young

but growing literature, it was the only candidate with any prospect of success, worked to get

support for the activity and eventually the delegation announced that they had the support of

over 300 learned societies and 1251 individuals. Today the remnant of the Ido movement still

boasts of this support.

It should be noted that these supporters were not the delegation, but merely people and

institutions expressing support for the idea of the delegation so far as this idea was expressed

at that time. In any event, 300 is not a large number considering the number of learned

societies in the world particularly when the definition of a learned society is a broad one. Nolist is ever produced and it has been said that a local librarian or teacher or the Chairman of a

local Chamber of Commerce, for instance, was regarded a learned society within the

delegations definition. The number of 1251 individual supporters is even less impressive

considering the number of Esperantists active even then and it compares even more

unfavourably with the seventeen million supporters of the Esperanto petition to the United

Nations many years later. It should be noted in any event that the supporters claimed by the

Idists were not the Delegation; merely people and perhaps institutions who supported the

concept of a delegation as it was put to them. Many of them subsequently complained of the

activities of the Delegation Committee.

While the search for support was taking place Couturat was carrying on private

correspondence with co-conspirators who know what was going on and with Zamenhof and

others who might be more suspicious of his activity. This correspondence was mainly kept

secret at the time but much of it has now been published but not by the Idists. Original letters

are now in the city library of Saint-Omer. To Zamenhof, he wrote saying that it was

unthinkable that the committee which he intended to form should select any other language

than Esperanto, although it might propose some modifications and even admitting that they

were to be selected to give this result. Zamenhof felt that the endorsement of Esperanto by a

pretentious body having no authority in the eyes of the world would be of no use but he was

prepared to present the case for Esperanto.

Couturat replied that a rule of the Delegation did not permit the author of a language system

to present its case. He did not say who had made this rule or why, nor did he tell Zamenhofthat the rule would apply only to Zamenhof and that other authors would be welcome to take

part.

The next step was to make a token attempt to approach the Association of Academics. When

on the 29th of May 1907 the Association declared itself incompetent to deal with the matter,

Couturat proceeded to arrange for the election of the Delegation Committee and on the 25th

of June he announced the names of the elected members.

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As Zamenhof was forbidden to take part, he fell into the trap of sending as his representative

one Louis Chevreux who had granted himself the title of the Marquis de Beaufront.

Chevreux/Beaufront would have seemed to Zamenhof the obvious choice to represent him.

An early convert to Esperanto he had worked hard to establish Esperanto in France at the

crucial time when the movement was suffering from a ban on its chief publication by the

Russian government. Given to making flamboyant speeches he embarrassed the modestZamenhof by addressing him always as dear Maestro and even at the World Esperanto

congress in London making a public display of kissing him (causing one French Esperantist

to call out prophetically Judas) while deriding him behind his back as the Jew prophet.

According to Chevreux he had, before hearing of Esperanto, invented an international

language call, strangely, Adjuvanto but had nobly suppressed it so as not to compete.

Unfortunately he was unable to produce copies of his project as he had deposited it with his

lawyer who had locked it in a safe from which it was then stolen! Some Idists may even have

believed this but cynical Esperantists have pointed out that the few scraps of Adjuvanto

which have been published bear so close a resemblance to Esperanto as to preclude

coincidence.

At the end of the 19th century there were a few Esperantists who felt that the language could

do with revision. In particular there were those who, echoing the critics of Volapk, felt that

the language should more closely resemble French or Latin. Chevreux (O.K. lets call him

Beaufront from now) would have none of this. In several articles he attacked these critics.

He pointed out that the old idea (later revived from time to time) of a language which could

be understood at sight was a snare and delusion. While a francophone or polyglot might find

it easy to decipher simple passages in such language, it would be unnecessarily difficult for

anyone to learn to write or speak it. Even if the idea achieved its stated purpose, there was

little point in a language which many people could read but which few could write or speak.

He was a particularly strong opponent on anyone who wanted to reform the alphabet by

abandoning the supersigned letters which did not appear in the French version of the Latin

alphabet. He worked hard for Esperanto and became the President of the French Esperanto

Society and editor of the magazine LEsperantiste.

He was not universally popular among his fellow French Esperantists. His arrogant pseudo-

aristocratic manner annoyed many, as did his attempts to monopolise all Esperanto

publishing by means of a series of contracts between himself, Zamenhof and the publishers

Hachette. Nevertheless, Zamenhof trusted him and regarded him as a friend and it was

natural, when Couturat refused to allow Zamenhof to attend sittings of the Delegation

Committee, to appoint Beaufront as his representative.

Letters, mostly kept secret at the time but later published and contemporary articles andreports tell the story, which may be approached chronologically.

30th April 1906 Beaufront wrote to Belgian Esperantist Charles Lemaire saying that, because

of Kinship of race, Zamenhof was influenced by a Jewish Esperantist Dr. Javal.

1st November 1906 Couturat wrote to Michaux asking him to keep his letter confidential.

While saying that Zamenhofs alphabet was the best possible, he enclosed an outline of a

then unnamed project which was a sketch of what was to become known as Ido.

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20th November 1906 Couturat wrote again to Michaux saying that he wanted to arrive at a

definite result in 1907. He would for the sake of form approach the Association of

Academics. Its almost certain refusal would not be disclosed and would not hinder his efforts

and he would then proceed to elect his committee who would give the result he had already

decided on. (N.B. Couturat in this letter refers to himself as we and it is just possible he is

speaking for Leaux as well.)

January 1907 While apparently continuing his vociferous campaign against reform,

Beaufront prepared an escape route for use in case Couturats scheme failed and his part in it

came to light. In the second issue of LEsperantiste, he wrote, I would present even a few

systems which the majority of people and in particular intellectuals would proclaim to be

better than Esperanto, then I would show them that I had really set a trap for them.

4th January 1907 Couturat informed Michaux that he has been discreetly sounding out

Beaufront and has recruited him. He felt that this would make Zamenhof and others give in

through fear (see 27th January 1907) but asked Michaux to keep the letter secret or, better

still, destroy it.

18th January 1907 Couturat announced what the decision of the Delegation was to be and the

form of wording of that decision. He stated that the Committee would be selected so as to

consist of people who would give that result.

27 January 1907 Couturat wrote to Michaux suggesting that they should frighten Zamenhof

with the threat of a schism.

29th May 1907 As anticipated the Association of Academics declared itself incompetent to

declined to act. Having got that out of the way, and his project being ready, Couturat needed

the charade of an election to pick the committee to announce the pre-arranged verdict. He

also needed somebody to front for him so as to hide the fact that the so-called Delegation was

a one man band.

May 1907 Lemaire wrote to Couturat offering to be a man of straw (today we might say a

front man) to put Couturats project before Couturats Delegation. (However Couturat had

a better stooge.)

29th May 1907 Letter from Beaufront to Michaux asking that the name Beaufront should not

be used. He said that he would come out from behind the scenes in good time but that until

then as agreed with Couturat he would use the name Ido.

June 1907 On receipt of the Associations decision, Couturat inaugurated a ballot for

Delegation Committee members, and two days later purported to have received the results.

25th June 1907 the results were announced. The Committee had been elected by 253 votes

out of 331. No mention was made of the names of the unsuccessful candidates. Presumably

Idists expect us to believe that in 1907it was possible to get the decision of the Association

from Vienna to Paris, to ask at over 300 people in different parts of the world for

nominations, to send out ballot papers or letters to these people, then, in two days obtain their

votes and count them in a little under one month. Contrary to the suggestion that the

successful candidates were experienced linguists, there were only two professional linguists

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among them, Professor Badouin de Courtenay and Professor Otto Jespersen. Even this

magically elected group was evidently not though to be certain of ensuring the result that

Couturat had announced, so further names were added.

Everything was now in place. The results of the Committees deliberations having been

decided, all that was necessary was to go through the farce of having some meetings before

publicly announcing those results. The names of the Committee members made animpressive list ... but they never met. Only a small number of individuals were present at any

meeting and some of the members attended none.

The proceedings of the Committee were ridiculous.

The proceedings consisted of meetings over the course of nine days commencing on the 15th

October 1907. Obviously a proper study of even one language project in that period of time

would have been impossible. To take one minor point of discussion; like some other

languages (including English) Esperanto possesses an interrelated group of words called

correlatives. These do not closely resemble their French cognates and so were replaced in Ido

by words which looked more like their French equivalents. Many years after the Delegation

episode, these correlative words were subjected to a critical examination at ColumbiaUniversity. The researchers, who admitted that they started with a bias in favour of the Ido

forms, found that the Esperanto equivalents were learned faster and more easily than the Ido

words and were more easily and more rapidly retained and recalled. The point that interests

us here is that objective research on this relatively minor point took a team of university

researchers three weeks but the Idists claim that the Delegation Committee was able to make

a comparative study and critical comparison of the whole of a substantial number of

linguistic projects in just nine days. How far can credulity be stretched?

Further one member of the Committee later reported that there were two different types of

meeting; the open ones at which even the Esperanto supporters were permitted to attend and

closed sessions attended only by the conspirators.

During the open sessions, several projects were presented by their authors in spite of

Couturat having arbitrarily barred Zamenhof, saying that no originator of a project could

present his own case. Jespersen who later became the first Idist historian glosses over this by

saying that, even if Zamenhof had been allowed to be present, the result would have been the

same. Of course it would! As we now know the result had been fixed beforehand.

Two members of the Committee (Boirac and Moch) questioned the pretensions of the

Committee to be an authoritative body only to be told that the Committee was the sole judge

of its own competence. No vote on this point was permitted. In short, the committee was an

authoritative body because the committee said so!

Shortly before what turned out to be the last session, at a time when it would appear that

Esperanto was the only one of the languages presented which had a life of its own, a new

project was found on the table(!). This was, or purported to be, not a project for a new

language but a series of proposals for the reform of Esperanto. From then on the Committee

concerned itself only with these proposals which were said to be authored by a

pseudonymous Monsieur Ido, who the members were told was not one of them.

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Almost immediately the official representative of Esperanto Beaufront who had been the

most vociferous opponent of all reforms was converted to the new system. Repeated he

declared as points of the document were read out That was in my Adjuvanto. According to

Jespersen, the Committee was informed (he does not say by whom) that the reforms were

acceptable to the Esperanto Language Committee. Later when confessing or claiming that he

was Ido, Beaufront stated that he only let his proposals to be used because of the certainty

that Esperanto would otherwise be rejected. We are supposed to imagine him, towards theend of the delegation proceedings burning the midnight oil to produce a scheme (and get it

printed) to save Esperanto from the terrible fate of rejection by Couturat and company. (After

all, the White Queen in Through the Looking Glass was in the habit of believing three

impossible things before breakfast.) The Ido proposals were also in line with criticisms

presented by Couturat himself at the start of the Committees sessions.

24th October 1907. Suddenly a vote was taken resulting in the decision that Couturat had

announced nine months previously, namely that Esperanto was the best language project but

that the Delegation Committee was to be requested to consider reform proposals. A

Commission, consisting of Messrs. Ostwald (who resigned almost immediately), Couturat,

Leaus and Beaufront, was appointed to consider the proposals further and the work of the

Committee was declared to be at an end.

It is noteworthy that only three of the elected members of the Committee were present at that

meeting and other members later protested that they had not known that it was to be the final

meeting. Obviously Couturat had seized an opportunity.

After the meeting Couturat then wrote the minutes which declared that the Committee had

unanimously declared that Esperanto had been selected because of its relative perfection

(sic) but on condition that it be reformed on the line of the Ido proposals. Boirac immediately

protested that he for one had not voted for such a resolution and that the decision as

published in no way co-incided with the opinion of almost the unanimity of the Committee

members but Couturat, while noting the objection, continued to speak of a unanimous

resolution.

26th October 1907 Couturat changed the result again. Writing to Zamenhof he did not say

that the Committee had made a conditional selection of Esperanto but that it had selected a

language whose name had not been decided. He offered to call the language Esperanto

Without Supersigns but said that it Zamenhof did not concede he would call it Auxilario

or something similar.

2nd November 1907 He made his decision perfectly clear by writing to Boirac that the

Committee had accepted in principle the project Ido and changes which the Permanent

Commission would make were unimportant. At the same time he gave the Language

Committee an ultimatum. They had until the 5th December to submit to his demands!

Obviously he must have known that the Language Committee of 100 members spread around

the world could not really discuss the matter and come to a conclusion in such a short time.

They did not have access the magic method by which he had purported to hold the election

of his committee in two days. In any event they were not supposed to consider the contents of

Ido proposals. Couturat supplied only 25 copies for one hundred scattered individuals who

were supposed to accept the project without analysis or discussion purely on the so-called

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authority of the Delegation Committee. The language committee were refused an extension

of the deadline and the Permanent Commission then broke off relations.

In the meantime strange suspicions were circulating about Beaufront. Although details of his

sudden conversion at the Committee were not then generally available, it was then known

that while carrying on his criticisms of reformers, he had been telling Esperanto clubs that

they would have to accept any modifications imposed on them by the Delegation.Nevertheless he kept on his presidency of the French Esperanto Society and editorship of its

journal. In that journal he repeatedly denied that he or any project of his had been candidates

before the Committee and advised his readers to carry on as if nothing had happened and

await the decision of the Language Committee.

Then a comical mistake seems to have occurred. A letter to Beaufront from Couturat was

received by Jespersen having apparently been put in the wrong envelope. This letter showed

some underhand collusion between Beaufront and Couturat. Jespersen may have been nave

but he was honest and said that unless the facts were published he would resign. Badouin de

Courtenay had already broken with the Permanent Commission of the Delegation and had

even travelled to Warsaw to meet Zamenhof and assure him of this. Couturat could not afford

to lose the one remaining linguist who supported him, so Beaufront had to take the next stepand , in spite of his earlier denials, announced that he was Ido. A recent speculation has been

that the mistake had been no accident and that the Machiavellian Couturat had felt that

Beaufront had repeatedly denied putting his project before the Committee. Now he said

that he had allowed his work, or study on reforms, to be presented.

In 1937 one Ric Berger a fanatical disciple of Beaufront, who had gone over to a system

called Occidental (which he later renamed Interlingue) to pursue his fanatical

esperantophobia more thoroughly let the cat out of the bag. While searching his late masters

documents after the latters death he found proof that the Ido project was mainly Couturats

and the Delegation farce had, from the beginning been a put-up job, to produce a pre-

determined result.

The ultimatum to the Language Committee was, in fact a declaration of war. From then the

breach could not be healed. The new project no longer pretended to be merely suggestions

for improvements to the relatively perfect Esperanto. It was a competing project officially

called Ido. Beaufront left the Esperanto movement and assumed the title of Chief Author of

Ido. At first the prestige which they had helped to build up for the Delegation influenced

some leading Esperantists and some 25 per cent of leading officials were recruited for Ido but

the majority were unimpressed and preferred to find out more about the new language. In

face no more than 2 or 3 per cent of the Esperanto movement went over to Ido.

The Ido reforms were themselves nothing new.

The complex system of forming compound words, while consistent with the thinking of a

mathematician like Couturat, made Ido harder to use that Esperanto.

The new conjugations intended to replace the simplicity of the Esperanto verb almost rivalled

Volapk in complexity.

As the active indicative tenses in Esperanto had the forms -as (present) -is (past) and -

os (future) it seemed that desirable to Couturat that the infinitive should also have to have

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three tenses (-ar, -ir and or). Logical, perhaps, to a mathematician but Jespersen should have

known better; just as he should have known that to have all three endings in the consonant

r would cause difficulty for many language communities. Even Bishop Schleyer would

have known better.

For the rest, the reforms appeared to have been intended to make the language look more like

French, the Idists boast being that 61% of the vocabulary was recognisably French-based. AsFrench was in the 19th century the dominant language for commerce and diplomacy, the

Idists called this naturalism but it was of dubious value even to the Francophone. A

speaker of French (or for that matter, in this case, of English) might recognise the word

hospitalo as being similar to the equivalent in his own language without learning it but the

process does not help the French or English speaker to use the word without learning it,

whereas the Esperantist quite automatically recognises the word malsanulejo from its

constituent parts (mal-san-ul-ej-o) as being place for the sick without having to learn

anything at all, even if he has never seen the word before.

Of course, the resemblance to French does not help in any way if your native word is byoin

or krankenhaus (sick person place). This example typical of those given by the Ido

apologist is merely one of many which is why the student seeking to learn Ido would have somuch more vocabulary to learn than the commencing esperantist.

The prefix mal- denoting the opposite was particularly disliked by the Couturat and

Beaufront as it clashed with a different French word! The result was another increase in the

vocabulary. Not that Ido abolished the Esperanto use of affixes. On the contrary, Couturats

word-formation theory means that anyone trying to use Ido must pick his way through a

complex set of numerous nearly, but no quite, synonymous affixes and manipulate them in

accordance with Couturats mathematical logic.

In the early days some Esperantist who had tried Ido pointed out its fallacies. Professor W.E.

Colinson devoted a short paper to the subject. Professor Boris Kotzin wrote The History and

Theory of Ido in which he demonstrated the ambiguities and difficulties created by

attempting to express even relatively simple concepts in Ido. Professor Rene de Saussure,

writing, at first, under the name Antido, expounded the theory behind Esperanto word-

formation and showed how it was more consistent with the normal use of language than was

the pseudo-mathematical exactitude of Couturat.

These criticisms were not really necessary. Ido contained the seeds of its own destruction.

The majority of those attracted to it soon found out its deficiencies. Some moved over (or

back) to Esperanto. Others attempted to revise the revised Esperanto or to revise Esperanto

in a different way leading to various still-born or short lived projects such as Dutalingue,

Arulo, Adjuvilo, Kompleto, Konkordia, Idido, Ilo, Edilo and many, many others. Very fewIdists seemed to have remained satisfied for long. After all, if they were attracted to an

improved Esperanto, why not go on to an improved Ido? Many of the organisations which

had supported the idea of a delegation declared their support withdrawn. By 1910 the number

had dwindled to 14 but this has never prevented Idists from basing their claim to legitimacy

on the having the support of over 300 bodies.

Some individuals attempted to make peace by producing compromise schemes. In particular

Professor Rene de Saussure after disproving the validity of Couturats word formation

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principle attempted to bridge the gap between Esperanto and Ido by the provision of various

new dialects, the first under his pen name of Antido and them, presumably because this

may have seemed provocative, using (inter alia) the names Lingwe Cosmopolita, Esperantido

and finally Esperanto II. None of these found favour with either side and Saussure remained

an Esperantist for the rest of his life while continuing to experiment.

Almost immediately after the launch of Ido as a separate system, it became apparent that inspite of the adoption of a name claimed by Beaufront, the Ido movement had as its leader

Couturat.

Couturat had clearly expected that he could, because of the fake prestige of the Delegation,

persuade the Esperanto movement to accept his Permanent Commission as a body superior to

the Language Committee (who would, in any event, have had to get the authority of an

Esperanto Congress before they could submit to the Idists demands). His failure turned him

from being merely a critic to being a bitter enemy of Esperanto and the Esperantists.

As Bertrand Russell said:- According to his conversation, no human beings in the whole

previous history of the human race had ever been quite so depraved as the Esperantists.

In the Ido organ Progreso, Couturat and others commenced to produce various

amendments and additions to the original Ido until, in an attempt to fend off chaos, Couturat

declared a period of stability during which the system was supposed to admin no further

changes.

Like Schleyer before him, Couturat had felt that he was the sole arbiter of what changes

should be permitted and he flung excommunications broadside, on conservative who

refused to follow him, on progressives who went one step ahead of him (A.L. Guerard: A

Short History of the International Language Movement). It may even be thought that Ido

only survived this dictatorial regime because of the death of Couturat in 1914.

However, he had set a pattern. Prior to 1907 discussions about the merits of rival

interlanguage projects were carried on as scientific discussions. With the appearance of Ido,

we have had situation more resembling the in-fighting of warring political or religious sects

directing their campaigns against the more successful Esperanto.

In 1928 Ido lost its remaining linguist when Jespersen returned to the propagation of his own

system and later expressed regret at his earlier involvement. This did not deter the Idists after

his death from reprinting and translating his History of the Delegation without mentioning

his change of mind.

The war between Ido and Esperanto soon became a one sided one. After the first few years of

arguments, the Esperantists simply decided to go their own way not bothering to mention Idoexcept in historical studies or in works on comparative interlinguistics. (Some Idists even call

this a conspiracy of silence and blame the refusal of the Esperantists to advertise them for

the decline of Ido.)

The Idists on the other hand have never ignored Esperanto. It is very rare to see an article

promoting Ido which does not consist of an attack on Esperanto.

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After the First World Was, the Idist tried to build their movement up again. Thanks to the

generosity of the chemist Ostwald (who later left Ido to promote his own Weltdeutsch) the

movement was not without money and had text books and some fine dictionaries and

attempts were made to hold congresses in imitation of those of the Esperantists. However the

many schisms caused by those who found that Ido did not work so well in practice and

wanted to revise it made Ido non-viable. It did not work as a language in its own right and

could only survive by claiming to be an improved Esperanto. Legally, it may not have [been]a plagiarism as Zamenhof had renounced his rights as an author, but morally many people

were repulsed that the Idists should take advantage of his generosity. Zamenhof had given up

his rights so that anybody could use Esperanto but not so that anybody could use it as a basis

for his own scheme.

However, all attempts to breathe life into Ido having failed, the heirs of Couturat spent their

time in trying to sabotage the work of Esperantists. Any journal publishing an article in

favour of Esperanto would receive letters attacking it from Idists. The British Esperanto

Association had to cease publishing the names and addresses of new members in its official

journal because of a letter campaign by Idists. Intervention by Idists helped to prevent the full

adoption of Esperanto by the League of Nations. Even as late as 1960 a lone Idist was seen

handing out duplicate leaflets in the streets of a town where an Esperanto World Congresswas being held. From time to time Idists have attempted to rally a united movement against

Esperanto on the part of the two or three other international language projects which still

have supporters.

The advent of the world wide web has led to an apparent renewal of interest in Ido but it still

exists only as a parasite drawing life only from its attacks on Esperanto and still telling the

well-worn tale of having been adopted by an authoritative body of scientists or linguists.

-- END --

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