Prof.  Christen.  I think so.  As I said, there is no arbitrary rule about personal names or geographical names.  Now, let me proceed with this marvelous scheme and repeat that every part of speech is distinctive in itself; that is the reason a child, when it follows Esperanto, will not find English so hard and will understand English better than in any other way.  Such a child will understand English far better than if it did not understand Esperanto, and that is a statement I often make in my lectures.

Mr. Ripley.  We had a man here the other day who has a language which he claims is an improvement on Esperanto.

Prof.  Christen.  Yes?

Mr. Ripley.  He is from Ohio, I believe.

Prof.  Christen.  I know.  Since Esparanto began to move forward there have been at least 30 to 40 different schemes elaborated, and that is easily done.  You can do it overnight.  But there is no scheme that has ever touched and no scheme that can ever touch Esperanto, because it has hit the mark from the first. (8)

Mr. Towner.  What do you do with adverbs?  Do they have a definite form?

Prof.  Christen.  Every derived adverb ends in “e.”

Mr. Towner.  So you could not distinguish from the form between a verb and an adverb, could you?

Prof.  Christen.  Perfectly.  The adverb ends in “e” and the infinitive ends in “i.”

Mr. Ripley.  It is your contention that children will do better in English if they acquire a knowledge of Esperanto?

Prof.  Christen.  Undoubtedly; this is a statement I make in my lectures:  If you gentlemen will give me a number of children aged 4 or 5 years I will give them a quarter of an hour’s pleasant explanation about grammar, that is Esperanto grammar, and they will understand it after a quarter of an hour’s explanation; then I will jumble together a number of blocks, with various words on these blocks, and I will say to these children “pick out every noun,” and they will be able to do it—­that is, pick the nouns from the adjectives—­and so with every part of speech.

The chairman.  Because they will know to a certainty?

Prof.  Christen.  Yes; every word tells its own tale on account of its distinctive ending.  Now, that is a thing you can not do in English; that nobody can do in English, because we can not tell the parts of speech simply by the appearance of the words; we can only know from the context and that is not always easy!

The chairman.  How does that apply to other languages?

Prof.  Christen.  The same thing applies more or less to all, because they are all irregular; they were not formed; they have “growd” like Topsy.

Mr. Towner.  The Latin language is more regular?