“Esperanto. The Feeling of Disgust”: Wittgenstein on Planned Languages

Abstract

Wittgenstein’s radical aversion against planned languages like Esperanto and Basic
English has found little attention so far. But maybe the phenomenon deserves more
interest, since it may give a clue to another point of continuity between his early
and later philosophy. After some information on planned languages, I will put
together the directly relevant texts. An analysis shows that Wittgenstein’s
statements on planned languages were based on superficial knowledge only, and that
they were rather misguided from an interlinguistic point of view.