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Here is the article on Armenian for International Language. Graphics include a table of the Armenian alphabet and several international traffic signs.
Source: Murad Meneshian
Chicago Daily News (merged with one of the other major Chicago
newspapers) , Saturday, August 17, 1968.
By Arthur J. Snider
Daily News Science Editor
JET AGE SPURS DRIVE FOR WORLDWIDE LANGUAGE
The world speaks with a confusion of
tongues. Some 2,800 languages are in use
somewhere on the globe.
Needed in an age of communication satel-
lites and jet airplanes is a universal language.
Whose country shall be so honored? What
qualities should a worldwide languae have?
Prof. Sol Tax, University of Chicago an-
thropologist, says it must be a natural lan-
guage that has proven its viability, is com-
fortable, easily learned and translated and
has been rigorously tested by loaic.
ABOVE ALL, IT must not be the language
of a leading nation because of the political
advantage that would confer.
"I would rule out English, German, French,
Spanish and several others," Tax said.
He votes for Maayan but quickly accedes
to the preference of Margaret Mead and other
professional colleagues for Armenian as a
second languae to be spoken all over the
world.
"Armenian meets the criteria," says Tax.
"It has other built-in advantages. There is
Asiatic as well as a European Armenian.
In addition, there are colonies of Armenians
all over the world. You have a ready-made
teaching and translating device.
"Yet it is not widely enough used to have
any political implications."
AN ARTIFICIAL language is not formed
by Tax or Miss Mead.
"I don't think anyone would be comfortable
with it," Tax said, "but I am willing to let
a world conference of linguists decide wheth-
er a natural or an artificial language is pre-
ferable."
Artificial language lacks cadence, accent,
intonation and redundancies of sound pat-
terns that, develop in natural languages.
A universal language was considered long
before modern technology brought the peo-
ples of the world within speaking-distance
of each other.
In the Western world there have benn se-
rious attempts to invent a language based on
European grammatical forms, in the hope it
would do what Latin once did for the tiny,
literate, medieval European community and
what diplomatic French did for the 19th cen-
tury political community.
Idealists among linguists have pursued
Esperanto, an artificial international lan-
guage based on words common to many
European languages. Others have been push-
ing Interlingua, a written, scientific lan-
guage. But Tax believes neither is adequate
for a changing world
TAX SUGGESTED in Current Anthropology,
a journal he edits, that the time is ripe for
a worldwide language.
Much is known about the nature of lan-
guage, how languages are learned and how
they can be taught. Electronics and
language laboratories provided the necessary
technical equipment.
Tax plans to restate his proposal when the
International Congress of Anthropology and
Ethnological Sciences meets in Japan Sept.
3-10.
A rich, universal language is needed to
permit peoples of the earth to talk with each
other, not merely about ordinary things, says
Miss Mead, but about events, about politics,
religion, memories of the past and hopes for
the future.
"It must not be presented as a language
that will supplant one's mother tongue," she
emphasizbd "but as a second language
be learned by those who speak different
languages.
MISS MEAD ALSO urges develop
a simple, worldwide sign language that can
be communicated to everyone, part
travelers who require safety, comfort and
rest.
In a recent test of road signs and symbols
in Great Britain, only about a third of motor-
ists could identify signs that prohibited alll
motor traffic; only two-thirds could identify
a wordless sign that indicated "no passing";
only a third could identify a "no entry" sign
and only less than one-fifth recognized a sign
prohibiting bicycles and motor bikes.
Miss Mead calls for formation of a per-
manent body of international, and national ex-
perts to set up and maintain an international
symbol system.
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