Complete Manual of the Auxiliary Language Ido

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It is a pleasure to add my good wishes for the success of this second edition of the excellent “Manual”. I seem to read increasingly often today (but only in England) that English is becoming the international language. I have travelled a good deal in Europe, and I deny that English is within any measurable distance of becoming an International Language. I have rarely met a foreigner who could converse reasonably in English on any serious subject unless he had lived for some years in England. Apart from the irritating irregularities of English grammar, English pronunciation is the great stumbling block, and seems to have been specially designed to confound the foreigner — perhaps as a defence for our island home! Some time back I listened to a broadcast in English by Mons. Jacques Rueff, the eminent French monetary expert. M. Rueff spoke fluently; but although monetary theory is a hobby of mine, and I am familiar with the accent of the Frenchman’s English, in every sentence that M. Rueff spoke, at least one word entirely baffled me. If M. Rueff had spent on Ido only a fiftieth of the time that he has evidently spent on learning English, he could have made himself more intelligible to me.

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