"*First*, a vocabulary having a maximum of internationality in its root-words for at least the Indo-European races, living or bordering on the confines of the old Roman Empire, whose vocabularies are already saturated with Greek and Latin roots, absorbed during the long centuries of contact with Greek and Roman civilization. As the centre of gravity of the world's civilization now stands, this seems the most rational beginning. Such a language shall then have: "*Second*, a grammatical structure stripped of all the irregularities found in every existing tongue, and that shall be simpler than any of them. It shall have: "*Third*, a single, unalterable sound for each letter, no silent letters, no difficult, complex, shaded sounds, but simple primary sounds, capable of being combined into harmonious words, which latter shall have but a single stress accent that never shifts. "*Fourth*, mobility of structure, aptness for the expression of complex ideas, but in ways that are grammatically simple, and by means of words that can easily be analysed without a dictionary. "*Fifth*, it must be capable of being, not merely a literary language, 10 but a spoken tongue, having a pronunciation that can be perfectly mastered by adults through the use of manuals, and in the absence of oral teachers. "*Finally*, and as a necessary corollary and complement to all of the above, this international auxiliary language must, to be of general utility, be exceedingly easy of acquisition by persons of but moderate education, and hitherto conversant with no language but their own."
Thus the way was prepared for the favourable reception of a new artificial language, which had in