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But the structure of such a synthetic language being altogether strange to the chief European nations, and consequently difficult for them to become accustomed to, I have adapted this principle of dismemberment to the spirit of the European languages, in such a manner that anyone learning my tongue from grammar alone, without having previously read this introduction—which is quite unnecessary for the learner—will never perceive that the structure of the language differs in any respect from that of his mother-tongue. So, for example, the derivation of frat'in'o, which is in reality a compound of frat "child of the same parents as one's self," in "female," o "an entity," "that which exists," i.e., "that which exists as a female child of the same parents as one's self"="a sister," is explained by the grammar thus: the root for "brother" is frat, the termination of substantives in the nominative case is o, hence frat'o is the equivalent of "brother"; the feminine gender is formed by the suffix in, hence frat'in'o = "sister." (The little strokes between certain letters are added in accordance with a rule of the grammar, which requires their insertion between each component part of every complete word). Thus the learner experiences no difficulty, and never even imagines that what he calls terminations, suffixes, etc., are complete and independent words, which always keep their own proper significations, whether placed at the beginning or end of a word, in the middle, or alone. The result of this construction of the language is that everything written in it can be immediately and perfectly understood by the help of the vocabulary—or even almost without it—by anyone who has not only not learnt the language before, but even has never heard of its very existence.
Let me illustrate this by an example:—I am amongst Englishmen, and have not the slightest
