Delegation For The Adoption of An International Auxiliary Language - The Committee

The Committee

The Delegation Committee arranged to meet in Paris in October 1907. Supporters of Esperanto, including its author L. L. Zamenhof, warned Couturat that the committee had no authority to impose an international language, but they had received assurances from Couturat that Esperanto would be chosen anyway. The members of the Committee were:

• Manuel Barrios, President of the Peruvian Senate
• Jan Baudouin de Courtenay, Professor of Linguistics, University of St. Petersburg
• Émile Boirac, University of Dijon, author and Esperanto supporter known for the phrase déjà vu
• Charles Bouchard, Professor, Paris College of Medicine
• Loránd Eötvös, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Wilhelm Förster, President of the International Committee for Weights and Measures
• Col. George Harvey, Esperanto supporter and editor of the North American Review
• Otto Jespersen, philologist, University of Copenhagen
• S. Lambros, University of Athens
• C. Le Paige, University of Liege
• Wilhelm Ostwald, University of Leipzig, future Nobel Prize winner (chemistry)
• Hugo Schuchardt, University of Graz.

The committee heard from representatives of language projects, including Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano in support of his own Latino sine flexione. Esperanto was represented by Louis de Beaufront, an active supporter of the language. Other languages, such as Bolak, Spokil and Idiom Neutral received the attention of the committee.

Towards the end of the Committee's meeting, committee members received a proposal by an anonymous author identified as "Ido" (I.D. in Esperanto, possibly for Internacia Delegacio International Delegation, but also meaning "offspring" in Esperanto). The proposal reformed Esperanto in a number of ways, including removing circumflexed letters, dropping the mandatory accusative ending and reforming the plural. The reforms were endorsed by Esperanto's representative, de Beaufront.

The decision of the committee was to adopt Esperanto in principle, but with the reforms spelled out by Ido. A permanent commission was set up to see the implementation of the reforms. The anonymous "Ido", author of the reform project, was later revealed to be Louis de Beaufront, acting in concert with Louis Couturat.