THE EDUCATION MINISTRY IN Ukraine wants to make Esperanto compulsory. “Esperanto can help to make Ukraine the centre of Europe,” YouthTruth.org.ua reported.

Bizarre optimism? English speakers underestimate the profound appeal that universal languages retain across Europe, where conflicts have often been blamed on the confusion of languages.

Byalistok, Poland, was cacophonous with Polish, Yiddish, Russian and German when L. L. Zamenhof, Dr Esperanto, was growing up in the 1860s. Realising that Artificial Languages (ALs) must be not only learnable and culturally neutral, but persuasive, he urged learners to declare: “I promise to learn Esperanto if 10 million people give the same promise.”

Yet Ukraine might find a newer AL, Europanto, more persuasive: “Que would happen if, wenn Du open your computero, finde esta message? Habe your computero eine virus catched? Habe Du BSE gedeveloped? No, esse la neue europese lingua: de Europanto!”

The irreverent Europanto tales of Diego Marani, the Italian translator and novelist, have inspired Esperantist rage and internet devotion. “Europanto is a joke,” Marani insisted, “not an international language.”

A smart linguist’s joke, though: why not enrich your English with any other words you happen to know? People have always dreamt that a universal language will end wars, underpin logic and atone for the Tower of Babel, since the 1860s and 1660s.

A new book by Rhodri Lewis, Language, Mind and Nature, illuminates that first wave of ALs. In the 17th century, with Latin dwindling and English a mere note in Europe’s margins, philosophers envisaged “a Magicall Language” to catalogue the world, capturing essences. John Wilkins’s occult scheme (1668), admired by Borges, assigns monosyllables to genuses, consonants to differences and vowels to species. De means an element. Deb: the first element, fire. Deba: flame.

Swift lampooned such systems in Gulliver’s visit to the Lagado Academy, where words are superseded by referring to things themselves. Though “understood in all civilised nations”, graduates become stooped under the weight of their things.

The 1860s brought new AL movements. “Ma senior! I sende evos un gramatik e un verbbibel de u nuov glot.” It sounds like Europanto, but it’s actually Universal Glot. The evangelical schisms of the AL movement are elegantly fictionalised in Andrew Drummond’s 2006 novel A Handbook of Volapük, about the German Catholic priest Johann Schleyer’s divinely inspired language. Volupük (1879) numbered 100,000 followers before being overtaken by Esperanto (1887) and countless alternatives.

As English dominated the 20th century, many suggested simplifying it for international purposes. The linguist Charles Kay Ogden claimed that English takes seven years to learn, Esperanto seven months, and his own Basic English (1930) seven weeks. His 850-word vocabulary removed irregulars and combined words for complex concepts. Orwell considered it an ungoodthinkful thoughtcrime, but Churchill was enthusiastic – until “blood, toil, tears and sweat” was translated as “blood, hard work, eyewash and body water”.

Nowadays I know Brazilians who chat easily enough with Japanese, Italians and Russians using limited English – although they can’t understand Americans. Could this Globish, spontaneous and ubiquitous in conferences and chat rooms, be formalised?

Madhukar Gogate’s attempt involves a rather impenetrable spelling system: “Pipal spiking dhis dialect cud bi andarstud bai Inglish spikarz bat der pranansiashan wud bi cansidard a litl auf.” More convincing is Jean-Paul Nerrière’s Parlez Globish (2004): a 1,500-word vocabulary from “able” to “zero”, plus the odd Sinatra song.

“Seven weeks?” the theatre guru Ken Campbell said. “We could have a world language by next Thursday.” He proposes the South Pacific pidgin, Wol Wantok (World One Talk). It’s appealing: the Prince of Wales becomes “namawan pikinini blong kwin” (No 1 child of queen).

Ukraine’s enthusiasm is not so crazy. As international English becomes hybridised and pidginised, people are anxious to resolve the cacophony before it disintegrates as Latin did. Schoolchildren used to protest: “It’s not bad grammar, sir. It’s Joycean.” Now Europeans can say: “It’s not nonsense. It’s Europanto.”

LANGUAGE, MIND AND NATURE by Rhodri Lewis

Cambridge, £50; 286pp

Buy the book here with free p&p

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