Education: International Language

What keeps most "universal" languages from becoming universally popular is their tongue-twisting pronunciation. Almost anybody can learn to read or write them. Working on this principle, a 51-year-old Dutch journalist named Karel J. A. Janson has devised a simplified written language called Picto which can be mastered, he says, by even a slow student in four weeks. It looks like nothing so much as the tablecloth doodlings of a restive banquet audience.

Journalist Janson conceived Picto in 1938 but did not put it on public display until last fall, when it proved a hit...

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