Bertrand Russell on International Languages

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Bertrand Russell told an interesting story from when he was at Cambridge. One of his teachers mentioned that he spoke an artificial international language called Volapük. Russell said he had not heard of it, but he did have one friend who spoke Esperanto. At this revelation, the teacher's face screwed up into a snarl. "An Esperanto speaker? Mr Russell, Esperanto speakers are SAVAGES. They are scum that should be wiped from the face of the earth..." and he carried on like that for half an hour or so. It made Russell think that World peace was a long way off.