INTERLINGUA

This article describes the international auxiliary language created by the International Auxiliary Language Association. For the earlier Interlingua created by Giuseppe Peano, see Latino sine flexione. For other usages of the term interlingua, see Interlingua (disambiguation).

The constructed language Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It's the most successful conlang of the naturalistic type. In appearance, Interlingua combines a Romance vocabulary with a simplified Romance grammar, and can thus be seen as a modernized and simplified Latin (or Vulgar Latin to be more precise). It is sometimes called IALA Interlingua to distinguish it from the other uses of interlingua.

Rationale

The expansive movements of science, technology, trade, diplomacy, and the arts, combined with the historical dominance of the Greek and Latin languages have resulted in a large common vocabulary among Western languages. Interlingua uses a mostly rigid procedure to extract and standardize the most widespread word (or, occasionally, words) for a concept found in a set of control languages (English, French, Italian and Spanish/Portuguese, with German and Russian as secondary references). The resulting vocabulary corresponds closely with the Neolatin element in the International Scientific Vocabulary.

Interlingua combines this pre-existing vocabulary with a minimalist grammar based on the control languages. People with a good knowledge of a Romance language, or a smattering of a Romance language plus a good knowledge of the international scientific vocabulary can frequently read it at first sight. Because at-sight comprehensibility was a design criterion, Interlingua retains the traditional spelling and morphology of its Latinate source material. It is for this reason that Interlingua is frequently termed a naturalistic IAL (as opposed to schematic IALs such as Esperanto and Ido, which are less closely tied to their source languages).

History

International Auxiliary Language Association

Ultimate credit for Interlingua must go to the American heiress Alice Vanderbilt Morris (1874–1950), who became interested in linguistics and the international auxiliary language movement in the early 1920s. In 1923, Morris and her husband, David Hennen Morris, founded the non-profit International Auxiliary Language Association in New York. Their aim was to place the study of IALs on a scientific basis. IALA became a major supporter of mainstream American linguistics, funding, for example, Edward Sapir's cross-linguistic semantic studies of totality (1930) and grading phenomena (1944). Morris herself edited Sapir and Morris Swadesh's 1932 cross-linguistic study of ending-point phenomena, and William Edward Collinson's 1937 study of indication. Although the Morrises provided most of IALA's funding, it also received support from such prestigious groups as the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

In its early years, IALA concerned itself with three tasks: finding other organizations around the world with similar goals; building a library of books about languages and interlinguistics; and comparing extant IALs, including Esperanto, Esperanto II, Ido, Latino Sine Flexione, Novial, and Occidental. In pursuit of this last goal it arranged conferences with proponents of these IALs, debating features and goals of their representative language. However, with a "concession rule" that required participants to make a certain number of concessions, the debates were forestalled from changing from heated to explosive.

During the Second International Interlanguage Congress in Geneva in 1931, the IALA began to break new ground, as its conference was attended (and its efforts legitimized) by eminent linguists who were not members of the IALA.

1933 was a major year for the IALA. First, Professor Herbert H. Shenton of Syracuse University founded an intense study about the problems that had been encountered in interlanguages when used in international conferences. Later, Dr. Edward L. Thorndike published a paper about the relative learning speeds of "natural" and "modular" constructed languages. Although neither was a member of the IALA, both were major influences on its work from then on.

In 1937, the first steps towards the finalization of Interlingua were made, when a committee of 24 linguists from 19 universities around the world published Some Criteria for an International Language and Commentary (English title). However, the intended biannual meetings of the committee was cut short by the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

Development of a new language

Originally, the IALA had not set out to create its own language, but rather to identify which international language already extant would be the best suited to the task, and how best to promote it. However, after ten years of research, more and more members of the IALA came to the conclusion that none of the extant interlanguages were up to the task. By 1937, the decision to create a new language had been arrived at, a decision that surprised the world's interlanguage community.

Although much of the debate had been to that point evenly balanced over the decision to use naturalistic (e.g., Novial and Occidental) or systematic (e.g., Esperanto and Ido) words, during the war years, those supporting a naturalistic interlanguage won out. The first support was Dr. Thorndike's paper; the second was the concession by those supporting systematic languages that thousands of words were already extant in many (or even a majority) of the European languages. Their argument was that systematic derivation of words was a Procrustian bed, forcing the learner to unlearn and re-memorize a new derivation scheme when there was already a usable corpus of vocabulary. This finally convinced those who supported systematic languages, and the IALA from that point assumed the position that a naturalistic language would be best.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, IALA's research activities were moved from Liverpool to New York, where E. Clark Stillman established a new research staff. Stillman, with the assistance of Dr. Alexander Gode, developed a prototyping technique -- an objective methodology for selecting and standardizing vocabulary based on a comparison of control languages.

In 1943 Stillman left for war work and Gode became Acting Director of Research. In 1945, IALA published a General Report (largely Morris's work), which presented three models for IALA's language:

• Model P was a naturalistic model that made no attempt to regularize the prototyped vocabulary.
• Model E was lightly schematicized along the lines of Occidental.
• Model K was moderately schematicized along the lines of Ido (i.e., somewhat less schematicized than Esperanto).

From 1946–48, the French linguist André Martinet was Director of Research. During this period IALA continued to develop models and conducted polling to determine the optimal form of the final language. An initial survey gauged reactions to the three models of 1945. In 1946 an extensive survey was sent to more than 3000 language teachers and related professionals on three continents.

Four models were canvassed: Model P and K, plus two new models similar to Model E of 1945.

Model P was unchanged from 1945; Model K was slightly modified in the direction of Ido.

The survey results were surprising. The two more schematic models, C and K, were rejected (K overwhelmingly). Of the two naturalistic models, M attracted somewhat more support than P. Taking national biases into account (for example, the French who were polled disproportionately favored Model M), IALA decided on a compromise between models M and P, with certain elements of C.

Finalization

Upon Martinet's resignation in 1948 to take up a position at Columbia University, Gode took on the last phase of Interlingua's development. His task was to combine elements of Model M and Model P, while taking the flaws seen in both by the polled community and repairing them with elements of Model C as necessary, while simultaneously developing a vocabulary.

The vocabulary and verb conjugations of Interlingua were initially published in 1951. In 1951, the IALA published the finalized grammar, a 27,000-word dictionary (Interlingua to English only), and an introductory book entitled Interlingua a Prime Vista ("Interlingua at First Sight").

An early practical application of Interlingua was the scientific newsletter Spectroscopia Molecular (published 1952–1980). In 1954 Interlingua was employed at the Second World Cardiological Congress, in Washington DC, for both written summaries and oral interpretation. Within a few years it found similar use at nine further medical congresses. Between the mid-1950s and the late 1970s, some thirty scientific and especially medical journals provided article summaries in Interlingua. Science News Service, the publisher at the time of Science Newsletter, published a monthly column in Interlingua from the early nineteen-fifties until Gode's death in 1970.

Interlingua today

Today, Interlingua is promoted primarily by the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (president: Barbara Rubinstein, Sweden; secretary-general: Petyo Angelov, Bulgaria). Periodicals and books are produced by various national organizations, including the Societate American pro Interlingua (president: Dr. Stanley Mulaik) and the Svenska Sällskapet för Interlingua (secretary: Ingvar Stenström).

Currently, Panorama In Interlingua is the most prominent Interlingua periodical. It is a 28-page newsletter published bimonthly that covers news, science, and editorials. Interlingua has seen a resurgence over the last decade thanks to the Internet, with the number of speakers jumping tenfold by some estimates.

Vocabulary

The IALA set up a control group of five widely-known languages with much shared vocabulary, grouped into four units: French, Italian, Spanish/Portuguese (treated as one unit), and English. A word is eligible for Interlingua if it occurs with similar meanings in three of these four units. Secondary controls are originally German and Russian. Self-explanatory compounds can be included with support from at least one source language. Grammatical words, required to operate the language, are taken from Latin if this procedure fails.

The forms of Interlingua words are based on the historical or hypothetical forms from which the national forms evolved. Derivational series are also considered. Though French oeil, Italian occhio, Spanish ojo and Portuguese olho ("eye") are quite different, they descend from a historical form oculus. This, and international derivatives like ocular and oculista, determine the form oculo to be used in Interlingua.

New words can be created internally, through derivational affixes, or extracted from the control languages in the manner of the original vocabulary. Internal word-building, though freer than in the control languages, is more restricted than in schematic IALs such as Esperanto and Ido. Most Interlingua dictionaries include only words with support in the control languages.

Interlingua as now used tends to have less Classical Latin vocabulary than the IALA's original version, replaced in part by southern Romance vocabulary. For example emer ("to buy") has been mostly replaced by comprar; sed ("but") with mais; and nimis ("too") with troppo. However, other classical Latin words, such as "pro" ("for"), "contra" ("against"), "post" ("after") and "ergo" ("therefore") are retained because they are seen as more internationally understandable than their Romance counterparts.

Phonology and spelling

The following table illustrates Interlingua's consonants.

*Standard sounds that are often omitted or changed

**Unofficial variations in some prounciations

The pronunciation is similar to ecclesiastical Latin. For the most part, the consonants are like English, while the vowels are like Spanish or Italian, [ɑ~a, ɛ~e, i, ɔ~o, ʊ~u]. Four vowel pairs (AI, AU, EU, OI) are pronounced as falling diphthongs (/aj/, /aw/, /ew/, /oj/). Notable exceptions are as follows:

• C is "soft" (/ts/) before e, i, or y; otherwise "hard" /k/.
• CH is most often /k/ and is used before e, i, or y or in words of Greek origin. In many words, especially of French origin, it has the sound of English sh (choc, chenille, chef, chimpanze, chocolate, cheque). /ʃ/. In a few loanwords it takes the English or Spanish ch sound /tʃ/ (microchip).
• G is "hard" (/g/), except in the sequences -age and -agi- (preceding a vowel), where it has the sound of French j (/ʒ/).
• H is silent in the combinations rh and th (/r/ and (/t/).
• I is like English y /j/ before another vowel, unless stressed (union /u'njon/, via /'via/).
• J is French j /ʒ/.
• Q is /k/ and occurs almost exclusively in the combination qu /kw/.
• PH is /f/ in words of Greek origin.
• R is lightly rolled or trilled /ɾ/, /r/, as in Italian or Spanish.
• TI becomes /tsj/ before a vowel, except if the 'i is stressed or in the combination -sti- (nation /na'tsjon/; but politia /po.li'tia/, question /kwe'stjon/.
• U is /w/ before another vowel, unless stressed (continuar /kon.ti'nwar/, duo /'du.o/.
• Y has the same value as I.

Double consonants are pronounced as single (fila /'fi.la/, illa /'i.la/).

Alternative pronunciations

Alternative pronunciations are permitted for some letters and combinations:

• Some speakers pronounce "soft" C as /s/ or /tʃ/ rather than /ts/.
• Many speakers pronounce EU like English oy (/oj/).
• H is optionally silent in all positions.
• Many speakers pronounce J and "soft" G like English j /dʒ/.
• P is optionally silent in initial pn-, ps-, and pt-.
• QU is pronounced qu as /k/ before e or i by some speakers . Almost all speakers pronounce the particles que and qui as /ke, ki/.
• S may be voiced [z] between two vowels. SS is always /s/.
• Some speakers pronounce the "soft" TI as /sj/ rather than /tsj/. A few keep it "hard" (/tj/).
• X may be voiced [gz] between two vowels.

Stress

The stress falls on one of the last three syllables of a word. It most often falls on the vowel before the last consonant of a word (e.g., lingua, esser, requirimento). The following rules account for most of exceptions:

• Verbs in the future tense are stressed on the final -a (io scribera 'I shall write').
• Verbs in the conditional tense are stressed on the final -ea (e.g. il esserea sage 'it would be wise').
• Words (except verbs) ending in -le, -ne, or -re are stressed on the third-last syllable (fragile, margine, altere; but illa impone 'she imposes').
• Words ending in -ica/-ico, -ide/-ido and -ula/-ulo, are stressed on the third-last syllable (politica, scientifico, rapide, stupido, capitula, seculo).
• Words ending in -ic are stressed on the second-last syllable (cubic).

Users may depart from the preferred stress for a word, provided this does not interfere with communication. For example, kilometro and kilometro are both acceptable, although kilometro is preferred for etymological reasons.

Alternative spellings

The original specifications for Interlingua (1951) provided for an alternative, simplified orthography. This differed from the "classic" orthography primarily by

• dropping double consonants except ss(application → aplication), and
• simplifying the spelling of words derived from Greek:
  • CH ([k]) becomes C except before E and I (character → caracter; but oligarchic is unchanged)
  • PH becomes F (telephono → telefono)
  • RH becomes R (rhetorica → retorica)
  • TH becomes T (theatro → teatro)
  • Y (vowel) becomes I (mytho → mito).
  • The letter j replaces g and gi to represent the sound of 'z' in 'azure.' e.g. sajo (for sagio).
  • The suffix -age (also the sound group -age at the end of a word where it is not a suffix) is replaced by the form -aje; e.g. saje, coraje (for sage, corage).
  • The suffix -isar is replaced by the form -izar. Its derivatives are likewise spelled with z. e.g. civilizar, civilization (for civilisar, civilisation).
  • Final e is dropped after t preceded by a vowel except in words which have the stress on the third syllable from the end; e.g. animat, brevitat (for animate, brevitate) but composite. This rule applies likewise to final e after n, l, and r when these consonants are the collateral spelling for nn, ll, and rr; e.g. peren, bel, mel, il, bizar (for perenne, belle, melle, ille, bizarre). Note: Present-tense and imperative forms are not affected by this rule; pote, permite, etc. retain their final -e.

Some current users apply the simplified spelling of Greek-derived words, but almost all retain the double consonants.

Grammar

The grammar of Interlingua is based on that of the Romance languages, but simplified, primarily under the influence of English. Grammatical features absent from any of the primary control languages were dropped. For example, there is neither adjectival agreement (Spanish gatos negros 'black cats'), since this feature is absent in English, nor progressive verb tenses (English I am reading), since they are absent in French. The definite article le is invariable, as in English.

Nouns have no grammatical gender and are pluralised by adding -s (-es after a final consonant, -hes after a final -c). Pronouns take nominative, oblique, and genitive cases. Most adverbs are derived from adjectives by adding -(a)mente.

The verb system is a simplified version of the systems found in English and the Romance languages. Except (optionally) for esser 'to be', there are no personal inflections, and the indicative also covers the subjunctive and imperative moods. Three common verbs usually take short forms in the present tense. A few other irregular verb forms are available though little used.

There are four simple tenses/moods (the present, past, and future tenses and the conditional mood) and four compound tenses/moods/voices (the past and future tenses, the conditional mood, and the passive voice). These compound structures employ an auxiliary plus the infinitive or the past participle. Simple and compound tenses can be combined in various ways to express more complex tenses (e.g., Nos haberea morite 'We would have died').

Word order is essentially Subject–Verb–Object, except that pronouns often follow the Romance pattern Subject–Object–Verb (Io les vide 'I see them'). Adjectives may precede or follow the nouns they modify, but the latter is the norm. The position of adverbs is flexible, though constrained by common sense.

Community

It's not known how many people have an active knowledge of Interlingua (better than the average Romance speaker would have) or to what extent it is either written or spoken in the world today. Interlingua may well be the most widely spoken international auxiliary language (IAL) after Esperanto, although the estimated number of speakers overlaps with that of Ido.

Interlingua's claimed big advantage however is that it is the most widely understood IAL by virtue of its naturalistic (as opposed to schematic) grammar and vocabulary, allowing those familiar with one of the primary control languages (except English) to read and understand it with little study.

Interlingua has active supporters all over the whole world, but particularly in Scandinavia. There are Interlingua web pages (including editions of Wikipedia and Wiktionary) and several periodicals, including Panorama in Interlingua from the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI) and the magazines of the national societies allied with it. There are several active mailing lists, and Interlingua is also in use in certain Usenet newsgroups, particularly in the europa.* hierarchy. In recent years, samples of Interlingua have also been seen in music and animé.

Every two years, the UMI organizes an international conference in a different European country; the most recent conference (2005), in Sweden, was attended by slightly over 250 people. In the year between, the Scandinavian Interlingua societies co-organize a conference in Sweden.

Criticisms and controversies

Being the moderately successful constructed language as it is, Interlingua also has its shares of criticism, frequently from proponents of other auxiliary languages, which most often focus on unsavory properties it was never attuned to in the first place. This may have been partially due to both opponents as well as supporters seeing Interlingua as a candidate for being the universal second "neutral" language for the world to learn.

Being a European-based language, it would not be easy presenting Interlingua as a neutral language for the whole world instead of just Europe or the Western world, although one could argue that favoring some with the choice of vocabulary would be acceptable as long as it wouldn't make it harder for others to learn. Besides this, Interlingua would still fall behind schematic European languages when it comes to actively learning the language, as it's one of the most complex and irregular international auxiliary languages ever devised. Especially speakers of languages other than Indo-European have a major additional disadvantage.

Conversely, however, Interlingua has been put forward as a potential useful language for study as an introduction to Indo-European languages in general, and Romance languages in particular. In fact, Interlingua has been taught at Swedish high schools for this very purpose.

One point of criticism that Interlingua has had to endure that does take its design goals into account is that its credentials as being "Standard Average European" is too weak with non-Romance languages, like the Germanic languages and the Slavic languages being given little influence. Reasons for making Interlingua based primarily on the Romance languages are that they are spoken more than these other languages and that lots of Romance words (or rather the Latin words they derive from) have found their way into these languages by either being present directly, possibly coexisting with a native word as a formally sounding synonym, or indirectly, by being present in a derivative form or even as a loan translation. It was believed that if a European language were to be created by "averaging" a whole bunch of European languages, it would likely end up with the bulk of its words being of a Romance nature anyway, leading to the decision to choose a much simpler design procedure for Interlingua with little adverse effect on its internationality. The grammar of Interlingua is also still simpler than most Indo-European languages.

See also: irregularities and exceptions in Interlingua and Esperanto and Interlingua compared

Samples

Interlingua (standard spelling):
Scientistas varia justo como nos alteros. Il ha sapientes e fatuos, sobrios e dissipatos, solitarios e gregarios, corteses e inciviles, puritanos e licentiosos, industriosos e pigros, et cetera. Como genere illes exhibi certe tendentias. Per exemplo, illes es totos de alte intelligentia. Le scientista pote esser stupide re certe cosas, ma ille debe haber le basic potentia mental que es requirite pro devenir scientista; ille non pote esser moron in le stricte senso psychometric.

Interlingua (simplified spelling):
Scientistas varia justo como nos alteros. Il ha sapientes e fatuos, sobrios e dissipatos, solitarios e gregarios, corteses e inciviles, puritanos e licentiosos, industriosos e pigros, et cetera. Como genere iles exhibi certe tendentias. Per exemplo, iles es totos de alte inteligentia. Le scientista pote esser stupide re certe cosas, ma ile debe haber le basic potentia mental que es requirite pro devenir scientista; ile non pote esser moron in le stricte senso psicometric.

English:
Scientists vary just like the rest of us. There are the wise and the foolish, the sober and the dissipated, the solitary and the gregarious, the courteous and the rude, the puritanical and the licentious, the industrious and the lazy, and so on. As a type they exhibit certain tendencies. For example, they are all of high intelligence. The scientist may be stupid about certain things, but he must have the basic mental capacity that is required to become a scientist; he cannot be a moron in the strict psychometric sense.

Spanish (for comparison purposes):
Los científicos varían justo como el resto de nosotros. Los hay sabios y fatuos, sobrios y disipados, solitarios y gregarios, corteses e inciviles, puritanos y licenciosos, industriosos y pigres, etcétera. Como género ellos exhiben ciertas tendencias. Por ejemplo, ellos son todos de alta inteligencia. El científico puede ser estúpido sobre ciertas cosas, mas él debe tener la potencia mental básica que es requerida para devenir científico; no puede ser morón en el estricto sentido psicométrico.

The Lord's Prayer:

Nostre Patre, qui es in le celos,

que tu nomine sia sanctificate;

que tu regno veni;

que tu voluntate sia facite

super le terra como etiam in le celo.

Da nos hodie nostre pan quotidian,

e pardona a nos nostre debitas

como nos pardona a nostre debitores,

e non duce nos in tentation,

sed libera nos del mal.

References

• Falk, Julia S. Women, Language and Linguistics: Three American stories from the first half of the twentieth century. Routledge, London & New York: 1999.
• Gode, Alexander, et al. Interlingua-English: a dictionary of the international language. Storm Publishers, New York, 1951.
• Gode, Alexander, and Hugh E. Blair. Interlingua: a grammar of the international language. Storm Publishers, New York, 1951.
• Gopsill, F.P. Le historia antenatal de Interlingua.. (In Interlingua.) Accessed 28 May 2005.
• International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). General Report. IALA, New York: 1945.
• Pei, Mario. One Language for the World and How To Achieve It. Devin-Adair, New York; 1958.
• Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI). Interlingua 2001: communication sin frontieras durante 50 annos (in Interlingua). Accessed 17 August 2006.

External links

Interlingua edition of Wikipedia

Wikibooks has more about this subject:

Interlingua

• Union Mundial pro Interlingua, the official site of the UMI
• Search the Interlingua-English Dictionary online
• Concise English–Interlingua Dictionary
• Interlingua Institute (1970-2000)
• Text and sound samples of Interlingua
• Directory of websites in Interlingua at Open Directory Project
• Google in Interlingua
• The europa.* Usenet hierarchy, which uses Interlingua for the denomination of its newsgroups and as one of the documentation languages
• Internodio A website in Interlingua containing news items, of which some are also in audio (occasionally updated)
• Omniglot article on Interlingua
• Wikibooks Basic Interlingua-English dictionary
• Learn Interlingua—Site by the American Society for Interlingua
• English - Interlingua Dictionary at wiktionary