GODE..,.

LAPENNA DEBATE: LAST ROUND

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'. ,: The Challenger Sums u_p

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: ' , ., ..': . .1 '- .J .::-._ .... . By-- 'Dr:
1 Alexander Gode
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Old Faithful is a geyser iri Yellowstone National Park which owes its
name to .:the myth that. i t erupts regularly every 07 minut1.S. There is a
guide- there :who says
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he has spent the better part of a lifetime explain-
ing to visitors that t -he myth about the 67 ininutes a myth. What is not
a myth bti'b a' fact, says the guide, is that every batch of visi tors in-
cludes with amazing consistency at least elderly lady who, after lis-
tening. ba:ted breath, and enthusiastically assenting nods to the
,, guide
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S, Il!_yt.ho.c.lastic presentatiqn of facts, steps up to him, warmly shak-
.. "_ing his h_and, thanking and ,exclaiming, "Is i t not wonderful that Old
':Faitp::ul comes back regularly eve_ry sixty-seven minutes?
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As I look back over the development of the Lapenna-Gode de-
bate: (the famous debate that wash't, isn't, and won
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t be), I note with
surprise that I am disappointed. I should not I should have foreseen
what was going to happen. Many of my friends told me.
I challenged Dr. Lapenna to a debate for the explicitly stated rea-
sori. that I wanted .to join forces with_ him in an effort to expose the non-
$ensically prejudiced nature of many of the arguments used in print and
public speech (1) again$t Esperanto aild (2) against Interlingua. The im-
mediate occasion of my decision to challenge Dr. Lapenna in this manner
+etter of his in the columns of the International Language Review
he stated point [l] (above) more forcefully and knowledgeably
. could and exemplified point [2] as strikingly as anybody ever has.
t ' When I am asked why I am not an Esperantist, I do not argue that
Esperanto is ugly, has too many accusatives or final jays or participles,
: or cannot livi.tigly express creative thought. That sort of objection strie
' str.tkes ine as meaningless or secondary or minor and mendable. I simply
I belong to what seems to be an overwhelmingly vast majori-
, ty ' of 'people who do not ( deep down in their hearts) believe that there is
any need or any hope for a linguistic service project of the kind of Es-
peranto which depends for its ultimate success on revolutionary planning
or, in any event, on the inspiration of a "reform movement" and plenty
of missionry<work and Messianism. Basically I am not at all inclined to
.- fight Esperanto, . the EspeTanto movement; and individual Esperantists. I
, say about the:ni in my nat:j:ve German: "Es muss auch solche Kuze gebe_n
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And I find them funny. Fe>r, that overwhelmingly vast majority of. people
to which I belong prefers to muddle through, with a little steering and
pushing a:nd engineering here and there, but on the whole by acceptance
and modulation of what is.
Wheri I am asked why I spend a goodly portion my time and energy
trying to be of service through Interlingua, I do ndt argue that Inter-
lingua is destined to save the world from linguistic '' chaos. I merely note
as a statisti.cal f act .. power of the Latinid. tradition in the converg-
ing trend among ' the .w.o.rld
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major lciguages of our day and state my ex-
perience that t'his fact crui bE? -, exploited in the inte'rest of international
.communication, in partial compensation for the likewise real (though op-
: posi te) centripetal trend of in language.
. ....
vmen I am asked why ,I . think is better tb,an Esperanto, I
tend to explode. I never said it wa$ better. I never shall say so. I may
be dense but not dense enough to insist that snow shoes are better than
frogman
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s flippers. Just as snow shoes and flippers have ili t.tle in common
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