one ignorant of German. Indeed, from the international point of view all specially German words ought to be excluded, or else reduced to the common Germanic form; thus _trink_ ought to be made into _drink_, the _t_ being a specially German modification of the _d_, preserved not only in English but in all the remaining Germanic languages. This incongruous mixture of languages is not only jarring and repulsive, but adds greatly to the difficulty of mastering the vocabulary for the polyglot as well as the monolingual learner. The inventor has taken great pains to reduce the number of his roots to a minimum; there are 2642 of them in his dictionary, the _Universala Vortaro_ (from Ger. _Wort_, "word"), which does not include such international words as _poezio_, _telefono_; these the learner is supposed to recognize and form without help. The most eccentric feature of the vocabulary, and the one to which it owes much of its brevity, is the extensive use of the prefix _mal-_ to reverse the meaning of a word, as in _malamiko_, "enemy," and even _malbona_, "bad." The phonology of the language is very simple. The vowels are only five in number, _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, used without any distinction of quantity, as in Russian. There are six diphthongs, expressed by an unnecessarily complicated notation. The consonant-system is simple enough in itself, but is greatly complicated in writing by the excessive and mostly unnecessary use made of diacritical letters not only for simple sounds but also for consonant-groups. _c_ is used for _ts_, as in Polish. The grammar is, like that of Volapuk, partly borrowed from existing languages, partly _a priori_ and arbitrary. The use of the final vowels belongs to the latter category. The use of _-a_ to indicate adjectives and of _-o_ to indicate nouns as in _kara amiko_, "dear (male) friend," is a source of confusion to those familiar with the Romance languages, and has proved a bar to the diffusion of Esperanto among the speakers of these languages. On the other hand, the following paradigm will show how faithfully Esperanto can reproduce the defects of conventional European grammar:-- Singular. Plural. Nominative _la bona patro_ _la bonaj patroj_ Accusative _la bonan patron_ _la bonajn patrojn._ It is difficult to see why the accusative should be kept when all the other cases are replaced by prepositions. The verb is better than the noun. Its inflections are _-as_ present, _-is_ preterite, _-os_ future, _-us_ conditional, _-u_ imperative and subjunctive, _-i_ infinitive, together with the following participles:-- Active. Passive. Present _-anta_ _-ata_ Preterite _-inta_ _-ita_ Future _-onta_ _-ota_