Sir, - The European Commission is pledged to open membership talks with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia. Talks! Talks require a language, spoken or written, in which all engaged feel confident. Treaties require clarity. Translation between such diverse languages is difficult and tends to fuzziness.
In 1996 the European Union approved a research project costing 170 million Italian Lire, supervised by the Nobel economist Reinhart Selten, to establish the "costs of European linguistic (non) communication".
Selten is a lifelong Esperanto speaker. In 1980 the European Parliament estimated that there were about 10 million Esperanto speakers in Europe. In 1995 the Italian Ministry sent 40-page documents to all primary schools, encouraging the study of that language. All the countries listed for new membership have strong or very strong Esperanto traditions. So have all the countries in the queue - in Romania it was compulsory throughout language studies in any university, until Cecescau decided to ban it. It organised itself again within a fortnight of his death.
Because of its clarity and economy it is possible to learn Esperanto in a fraction of the time it takes to learn, say Spanish - not to mention Estonian. Yours, etc., MAIRE MULLARNEY,
Whitechurch Road, Dublin 14.