Education: International Language

What keeps most “universal” languages from becoming universally popular is their tongue-twisting pronunciation. Almost anybody can learn to read or write them. Working on this principle, a 51-year-old Dutch journalist named Karel J. A. Janson has devised a simplified written language called Picto which can be mastered, he says, by even a slow student in four weeks. It looks like nothing so much as the tablecloth doodlings of a restive banquet audience.

Journalist Janson conceived Picto in 1938 but did not put it on public display until last fall, when it proved a hit at an inventors’ exposition in Amsterdam. Since then, he has published a complete Picto course in his native Dutch (he plans courses in other languages) and has put 100 students through a first Picto correspondence course. Last week the first Dutch-Picto dictionary (2,000 Dutch words) was at the printer’s in Amsterdam.

Picto’s vocabulary consists of some 300 signs or drawings and twelve symbols which in combination do the work of roughly 10,000 words in an ordinary language. Proper names and certain technical words which have no Picto equivalent are spelled out as in the original. In the interest of simplicity. Picto has no articles, makes no distinction between adjectives and adverbs. Its word order goes: subject, verb, direct object, indirect object. Janson started with the personal pronouns—I, you, he and she—which he designated I, II, III, and which retain the same form when they shift from subject to object. Plurals are indicated with the figure 2. Thus I² we or us; II² you (plural); III² they or them; Q1 trees; fl houses. Verbs, which keep the same form for all persons, are preceded by a single line when active, a double line when passive. Thus i <x> is to see, II <r> to be seen. A dot before the verb line indicates the past tense, a dot behind the line the future. Some other common Pictos: D-behind, A man, O woman, Hill red, |EEE| blue, LyJ coat, X an(^> I + to have, I ^^ to speak or to say, 4-about, i A to go or to walk, # good, #better, — best, beautiful. A simple Picto sentence: I ‘A. 9 Q-X I <— — 6 (She walks under the trees and speaks to a man). When it comes to more sophisticated Picto sentiments, th6 bracket is indispensable. £ J makes the substantive of a verb, i Qp to love ; [ (J J love. ^_ j means to symbolize. Thus it can be used in conjunction with p (flag) to mean nation, iPj , or in conjunction with d (the smallest element of a whole) to mean citizen, J «p I . Picto’s vocabulary is kept as small as it is by the adroit combination of ideas. Thus, a garage is rendered in Picto as a house for autos, a restaurant as a house for eating, a movie theater as a house for film. Thus equipped, Picto can indulge in compound and complex sentences: 0— —» O X | 2 Q A. ~ O (During the bloody impacts in A, yesterday many people were wounded and a dance hall was set on fire.)

What practical purpose will Picto serve? It might be of help, says sobersided Inventor Janson, to the unilingual businessman, who could sit down and address his foreign client thus: i~12 null 12″—0(Translation: Dear Sir, We thank you for your letter of the 2nd inst. and we shall be pleased to submit to you some samples of our stock. We are sending them to you by express mail. Yours faithfully, Joe Smith.)