The International Terminological Key - universala esperanto

also leaving ugly scars, making the language in fact ever more irregular and
difficult to learn than before — at least at the level of essential vocabulary. In
a constructed language, being (at least in principle) completely “logical”, like
Esperanto, Mother Nature will thus never succeed in taming the immense
horde of loanwords, which form a party of their own, but only in disrupting
the “fundamental logic” of its grammar — that is to say of its morphology. If
one really wants to (re)create basic law and order, a deeply considered and
all-engulfing operation is necessary, entrusted either to an individual
planner or a limited commission of experts, but above all governed by
rigorously defined criteria.
That's what WÜSTER clearly recognized in his now famous dissertation 26
Internationale Sprachnormung in der Technik on the principles needed for
such an undertaking; already fully embedded in the framework of Esperanto:
“It is evident that the method of haphazard word formations and their
random selection assails the perfection of the language (coherence of its
system and lexical unity) as well as the efficiency of its evolution. The
initiative of this or that individual [to regulate] cannot be and must not
be entirely rejected. But then at least the [final] decision [about such
initiative] should be put in the hands of commissioned linguists. They
won't let themselves be so easily repulsed by [unusual] initiatives as
laymen would, because of their innate fear for everything uncommon.
Thanks to their experience, they will be able in advance to give a sound
estimate of how a hitherto unknown word will gain recognition in
practice. [...] The structural efficiency of a given expression depends not
only on the professional know-how of its coiner, but also on his
authority. [...] Know-how and authority can be combined most effectively
in a committee. But, there as well, an individual person must be the
fundamental initiator. The other committee members will later render a
judgment on the essential part of this project and on the material
selected. Moreover, it would be advisable, before final acceptance of the
whole, to let the thus prepared project be submitted to the general
public, with the right of proposing amend-ments up to a given deadline.”
This scientist of blessed memory thereby proposes a tactic precisely inverse
to that which is factually the custom in the “international second language”.
Indeed, we must repeat that what it does today is nothing else but imitate
ethnic languages in their irrational aspects, instead of demonstrating to
them, on this highly important terrain, what a language consciously and
wittingly planned is capable of...
INFOTERM, having taken over the work of WÜSTER, today is still struggling
with the inconsistencies between the normoglot ITK and the socioglot
languages (= English) or, rather, leaves them suddering in the back-ground
and occupies itself preferentially with bringing order in the general usage of
existing terms after the model shown earlier — a short-term instead of a
long-term policy. All the more so, since the “latinistic world” of theoretical
science is not the only one; there is also the “jargonized world” of technology
— which we will consider later and separately. This short-term policy also
26. Republished by Bouvier, Bonn 1970.
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