The Tribune editorial (“Paying for UN peacekeeping,” Sept. 7) mentioned that the U.S. is obligated to pay $287 million yearly for the support of the United Nations. It should be noted that more than $100 million of that is for the cost of translations.
This money is wasted because a single language could be used in common. It would, of course, have to be neutral for universal acceptability. English has not been given this status because it would give special privilege to native speakers of English, less than 10 percent of the world population.
Esperanto is the only suitable language for this purpose, because it is both neutral and learnable in one-fifth the time of any conventional language. When the UN delegates learn it, they can all talk to each other at will; no more earphones.
