News and Notes.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8101, 30 May 1906, Page 3

News and Notes.

A Sumner resident has forwarded the members of the local Borough Council object to the Mayor because bo is a Iti'irt ag nt) with a feeding bottle each. CnriHr.oliurch Truth, commenting mi the incident, say& ''They are such a «:hiidish lot that we don't know any presentation that would be more suitable. Imagine seven full grown men objecting to a Mayor because he dealt in land. The seven probably deal in far .less dignified commodities than mother earth themselves. Anyhow a laud agent can claim that his goods are never shortweight or adulterated, and that his customers can always see what they are buying, which is moro than most other varieties of dealers can do. But these seven councillors are probably more fastidious about other people's callings than they are about their own—that is to say, if they have any—and the land agency business fills them with scorn In an address on Esperanto, the new international language, at Melbourne recently, Mr J. Booth, president of the Esperanto Club sari he preferred to speak of Esperanto as an international, rather than as a universal, language People said there was no use in endeavouring to make up a gibberish to displace English, French, German and other languages ; but it was not proposed to displace any of the Jiving languages. Such a thing was neither possible nor desirable. What was wanted was an international • language, the need for which has been growing in the world for a long time past. They could not adopt any of the present languages for universal purposes. They must make a new one, which must be modern and contain within itself means of expressing all those things which they were thinking of in these days. It must be simple and flexible. Volapuk, which has been proposed as a universal language, aimed at having roots which were perfectly neutral, and as a matter of of fact they did not belong to anybody. On the other hand, Esperanto took as far as possible roots that everybody already knew. Instead of inventing new words, they adopt those whose meaning was apparent, no matter from what language they were derived. Unlike English and French, there were no irregular forms in Esperanto. Directly they saw a word they knew what it implied. Nouns all ended in "o," adjectives in'a,'' adverbs in "e" the infinitive of every verb in "i," and the imperative " u." Every vowe) and every consonant had its own sound, which was invariable in all circumstances.