Interlingua

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Interlingua
Pronunciation:	IPA: /inteɾˈliŋgwa/
Created by:	International Auxiliary Language Association	1951
Setting and usage:	Scientific registration of international vocabulary; international auxiliary language
Total speakers:	unknown
Category (purpose):	constructed language  international auxiliary language   Interlingua
Writing system:	Latin alphabet
Category (sources):	English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian and Latin
Regulated by:	no regulating body
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	ia
ISO 639-2:	ina
ISO 639-3:	ina
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is the most widely used naturalistic auxiliary language.^[1]

Interlingua's underlying design philosophy is completely a posteriori; its features, most notably its vocabulary, are intended to be seen not so much as a creation, but rather as an extraction of that which is common to the widest possible range of languages.^[2][3] The largest number of Interlingua words are of Latin origin and have entered Interlingua through the Romance languages. The second and third largest number are words of Greek and Germanic origin. Still other words originate in Slavic and non-Western languages.^[2] The grammar of Interlingua is simple when compared to its source languages (but not so when compared to other, schematic constructed languages).^[4][5]

Interlingua is unusual for being immediately understandable to populations numbering in the hundreds of millions. Conversely, it can be – and is – used as an introduction to resembling natural languages.^[1]

Contents 1 Rationale 2 History 2.1 International Auxiliary Language Association 2.2 Development of a new language 2.3 Success, decline, and resurgence 2.4 Behind the Iron Curtain 2.5 Interlingua Today 3 Community 4 Phonology and orthography 4.1 Phonology 4.2 Orthography and pronunciation 4.2.1 Stress 4.2.2 Exceptions 4.3 Phonotactics 5 Vocabulary 5.1 Eligibility 5.2 Form 5.3 Evolution of Interlingua vocabulary 6 Grammar 7 Criticisms and controversies 8 Samples 9 Notes 10 References 11 External links 11.1 Interlingua organizations 11.2 Dictionaries, grammars, and language study 11.3 News and information in Interlingua 11.4 Computers and Internet 11.5 Entertainment 11.6 Government and public service sites 11.7 Religion and Philosophy in Interlingua 11.8 Documents and literature

[edit] Rationale

The expansive movements of science, technology, trade, diplomacy, and the arts, combined with the historical dominance of the Greek and Latin languages has resulted in a large common vocabulary among Western languages. With Interlingua a systematic procedure was (and is) used to extract and standardize the most widespread word or words for a concept found in a set of control languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, with German and Russian as secondary references. Words from any language are eligible for inclusion, so long as their internationality is shown by their presence in these control languages. Hence, Interlingua includes such diverse word forms as Japanese geisha and samurai, Arabic califa, Aboriginal kanguru, and Finnish sauna.^[2][6]

Interlingua combines this pre-existing vocabulary with a minimal 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 understand it immediately on reading or hearing it. Educated speakers of English also enjoy this easy comprehension.^[7] The immediate comprehension of Interlingua, in turn, makes it unusually easy to learn. Speakers of other languages can also learn to speak and write Interlingua in a short time, thanks to its simple grammar and regular word formation using a small number of roots and affixes. ^{(Neutrality disputed — See talk page)}

Once learned, Interlingua can be used to learn other related languages quickly and easily, and in some studies, even to understand them immediately. Research with Swedish students has shown that, after learning Interlingua, they can translate elementary texts from Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. In one study in 1974, an Interlingua class translated a Spanish text that students who had taken 150 hours of Spanish found too difficult to understand. Gopsill has suggested that Interlingua's freedom from irregularities allowed the students to grasp quickly the mechanisms of language.^{[1][dubious — see talk page]}

Words in Interlingua retain their natural form; they are never distorted to fit a pre-existing grammar or set of rules. Each word retains its normal spelling, pronunciation, and meanings. For this reason, Interlingua is frequently termed a naturalistic IAL.

[edit] History

Main article: History of Interlingua

[edit] 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 1924, Morris and her husband, Dave Hennen Morris, established the non-profit International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) in New York City. Their aim was to place the study of IALs on a scientific basis. Morris developed the research program of IALA in consultation with Edward Sapir, William Edward Collinson, and Otto Jespersen.^[8]

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 the last goal, it conducted parallel studies of these languages, with comparative studies of national languages, under the direction of scholars at American and European universities.^[9] It also arranged conferences with proponents of these IALs, debating features and goals of their representative languages. With a "concession rule" that required participants to make a certain number of concessions, early debates at IALA sometimes grew from heated to explosive.^[1]

Also in 1933, Professor Herbert N. Shenton of Syracuse University organized an intensive study of the problems encountered with interlanguages when used in international conferences. Later that same year, Dr. Edward L. Thorndike published a paper about the relative learning speeds of "natural" and "modular" constructed languages. Both Shenton and Thorndike were major influences on IALA's work from then on.^[9]

In 1937, the first steps towards the finalization of Interlingua were taken when a committee of 24 eminent linguists from 19 universities published Some Criteria for an International Language and Commentary. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 cut short the intended biannual meetings of the committee.^[1]

[edit] Development of a new language

Originally, the association had not set out to create its own language. Its goal was to identify which auxiliary language already available was best suited for international communication, and how to promote it most effectively. However, after ten years of research, more and more members of IALA concluded that none of the existing interlanguages were up to the task. By 1937, the members had made the decision to create a new language, to the surprise of the world's interlanguage community.

To that point, much of the debate had been equivocal on the decision to use naturalistic (e.g., Novial and Occidental) or systematic (e.g., Esperanto and Ido) words. During the war years, proponents of a naturalistic interlanguage won out. The first support was Dr. Thorndike's paper; the second was a concession by proponents of the systematic languages that thousands of words were already present 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 a usable vocabulary was already available. This finally convinced supporters of the systematic languages, and IALA from that point assumed the position that a naturalistic language would be best.

At the outbreak of World War II, 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 to 1948, the renowned 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, IALA sent an extensive survey to more than 3,000 language teachers and related professionals on three continents.

The vocabulary and verb conjugations of Interlingua were first presented in 1951, when IALA published the finalized Interlingua Grammar and the 27,000-word Interlingua-English Dictionary (IED). In 1954, IALA published an introductory manual entitled Interlingua a Prime Vista ("Interlingua at First Sight").

[edit] Success, decline, and resurgence

An early practical application of Interlingua was the scientific newsletter Spectroscopia Molecular, published from 1952 to 1980.^[10] In 1954 Interlingua was used 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 Service, the publisher of Science Newsletter at the time, published a monthly column in Interlingua from the early 1950s until Gode's death in 1970. In 1967, the powerful International Organization for Standardization, which normalizes terminology, voted almost unanimously to adopt Interlingua as the basis for its dictionaries.^[1]

The IALA closed its doors in 1953 but was not formally dissolved until 1956 or later.^[11] Its role in promoting Interlingua was largely taken on by Science Service,^[12] which hired Gode as head of its newly formed Interlingua Division.^[13] Hugh E. Blair, Gode's close friend and colleague, became his assistant.^[14] A successor organization, the Interlingua Institute,^[15] was founded in 1970 to promote Interlingua in the US and Canada. The new institute supported the work of other linguistic organizations, made considerable scholarly contributions and produced Interlingua precis for scholarly and medical publications. One of its largest achievements was two immense volumes on phytopathology produced by the American Phytopathological Society in 1976 and 1977.^[11]

Interlingua had attracted many former adherents of other international-language projects, notably Occidental and Ido. The former Occidentalist Ric Berger founded The Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI) in 1955,^[16] and by the late 1950s, interest in Interlingua in Europe had already begun to overtake that in North America.

Beginning in the 1980s UMI has held international conferences every two years (typical attendance at the earlier meetings was 50 to 100) and launched a publishing programme that eventually produced over 100 volumes. Other Interlingua-language works were published by university presses in Sweden and Italy, and in the 1990s, Brazil and Switzerland.^[17][18] Several Scandinavian schools undertook projects that used Interlingua as a means of teaching the international scientific and intellectual vocabulary.

In 2000, the Interlingua Institute was dissolved amid funding disputes with the UMI; the American Interlingua Society, established the following year, succeeded the institute and responded to new interest emerging in Mexico.^[19]

[edit] Behind the Iron Curtain

Interlingua was spoken and promoted in the Soviet empire, in spite of persecution and efforts to suppress information about the language. In East Germany, government officials confiscated the letters and magazines that the UMI sent to Walter Raédler, the Interlingua representative there.^[20] In Czechoslovakia, Július Tomin received threatening letters after his first article on Interlingua was published.^[21]

[edit] Interlingua Today

See also: Community

Today, interest in Interlingua has expanded from the scientific community to the general public. Individuals, governments, and private companies use Interlingua for learning and instruction, travel, online publishing, and communication across language barriers. Interlingua is promoted internationally by the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (president: Barbara Rubinstein, Sweden; secretary-general: Petyo Angelov, Bulgaria). Periodicals and books are produced by many national organizations, such as the Societate American pro Interlingua (president: Dr. Stanley Mulaik), the Svenska Sällskapet för Interlingua (secretary: Ingvar Stenström), and the Brazilian Union for Interlingua (president: Gilson Passos).

[edit] Community

It's not certain how many people have an active knowledge of Interlingua, but their numbers have grown consistently over most of the past half-century. As noted above, Interlingua is the most widely spoken naturalistic auxiliary language.

Interlingua's greatest advantage is that it is the most widely understood International Auxiliary Language (IAL) by virtue of its naturalistic (as opposed to schematic) grammar and vocabulary, allowing those familiar with a Romance language, and educated speakers of English, to read and understand it without prior study.

Interlingua has active speakers on all continents, especially in South America and in Eastern and Northern Europe, most notably Scandinavia; also in Russia and Ukraine. In Africa, Interlingua has official representation in the Republic of the Congo. There are copious Interlingua web pages, including editions of Wikipedia and Wiktionary, and a number of periodicals, including Panorama in Interlingua from the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI) and 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. Interlingua is presented on CDs, radio, and television.^[22] Interlingua was the "secret language" in the television series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which aired from 1964 to 1968.^[23] In recent years, samples of Interlingua have also been seen in music and anime.

Interlingua is taught in many high schools and universities, sometimes as a means of teaching other languages quickly, presenting interlinguistics, or introducing the international vocabulary. The prestigious University of Granada in Spain, for example, offers an Interlingua course in collaboration with the Centro de Formación Continue.^[24]

Every two years, the UMI organizes an international conference in a different 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. National organizations such as the Union Brazilian pro Interlingua also organize regular conferences.

[edit] Phonology and orthography

[edit] Phonology

The following tables illustrate Interlingua's consonants and vowels respectively:

Bilabial

Labio- dental

Alveolar

Post- alveolar

Palatal

Labial- velar

Velar

Glottal

Plosive

p

b

t

d

k

g

Nasal

m

n

Tap

ɾ

Fricative

f

v

s

z

ʃ

ʒ

h

Affricate

t​͡s

Approximant

j

w

Lateral approximant

l

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Close-mid	e	o
Open	a

[edit] Orthography and pronunciation

Interlingua uses the standard Latin alphabet with all its 26 letters and in general no diacritics. Keeping with its naturalistic design philosophy, Interlingua does not have a particularly phonemic orthography by international auxiliary language standards even if one were to consider digraphs as separate graphemes.

For the most part, consonants are pronounced as in English, while the vowels are like Spanish. Unstressed vowels should not be pronounced as a schwa ([ə]), as could be the tendency of a speaker with an English language background.

The following table shows the circumstances in which a letter must or may be pronounced differently than the corresponding IPA value of its lowercase form; there is however, a considerable latitude granted to any prospective speaker when choosing the particular allophone to realize a phoneme, thus allowing for the influence of his or her native language habits as long as it all remains within reason and doesn't hinder communication:^[25]

Letter combination and context	Official preferred pronunciation(s)	Official optional pronunciation(s)	Notes
<a>	[ɑ], [a]		Official grammar says "like a in English 'father';" On one hand, most English dialects lack [a], but on the other hand [ɑ] is virtually nonexistent in the Romance languages.
<ch>	[k]		<ch> can also be pronounced as /ʃ/ in deviating words.
<c> before <e>, <i> or <y>	[t​͡s]	[s]
<c> otherwise	[k]
<e>	[e]	[ɛ]
<g>	[g]		Many occurrences of the sequence <gi> and all occurrences of <g> in the suffix <age> get pronounced like the <j> (/ʒ/). These deviations are marked in the dictionary.
<h> after <r> and <t>	silent
<h> otherwise	[h]	silent
<i> unstressed before a vowel	[j] or [i]		Should be [j] wherever phonotactically possible.
<j>	[ʒ]	[d​͡ʒ], [j]
<n> before <g> or <k>	[ŋ]
<ph>	[f]
<qu>	[kw]		The frequently used particles <que> and <qui> can also be pronounced /ke/ and /ki/ respectively.
<q> otherwise	[k]		Very rare.
<r>	[ɾ]	[ɹ], [ɻ], [r]?	Official grammar says "like rr in 'merry' or, better, like r in Spanish 'caro';" Reason would allow one to pronounce <r> as any rhotic consonant, in particular [r], given this is the Italian pronunciation.
<sh>	[ʃ]		Mostly used in loanwords and to indicate phonemes in deviating pronunciations.
<s> between vowels	[s]	[z]	Optional pronunciation not allowed with <ss>.
<tch>	[t​͡ʃ]		Only used to indicate phonemes in deviating pronunciations.
<ti> unstressed before a vowel and not after <s>	[t​͡sj]	[sj], [tj]
<u> unstressed before a vowel	[w] or [u]		Should be [w] wherever phonotactically possible.
<u> otherwise	[ʊ]	[u]	Not [ʌ], [a] or [y].
<x>	[ks]	[gz]
<y> unstressed before a vowel	[j]		If a vowel sound is phonotactically necessary then [i] would make the most sense.
<y> otherwise	[i]

Double consonants are pronounced as single. Interlingua has at least three falling diphthongs, /ai/, /au/ and /eu/,^[26] but an exhaustive list is not given by either the official dictionary or the grammar.

[edit] Stress

The general rule is that stress falls on the vowel before the last consonant (e.g., lingua, esser, requirimento, 'language', 'to be', 'requirement'), and where that isn't possible, on the first vowel (via, 'way', io crea, 'I create'). There are a few exceptions, and the following rules account for most of them:

• Adjectives and nouns ending in with a vowel followed by -le, -ne, or -re are stressed on the third-last syllable (fragile, margine, altere 'other', 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 'century').
• Words ending in -ic are stressed on the second-last syllable (cubic).
• The addition of a plural suffix doesn't change the stress of a noun (canton, cantones).
• 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 second-last syllable (e.g. il esserea sage 'it would be wise').

Users may allow their native habits to influence where they stress their words. For example, kilometro is acceptable, although kilometro is preferred for etymological reasons.

[edit] Exceptions

Whenever the pronunciation or the stress of a word deviates from above rules, this is in principle indicated in the Interlingua-English Dictionary. Some are words that are (slightly) pronounced irregularly in the source languages of Interlingua and this causes the same to happen in Interlingua. An example is <chocolate>, which starts with a /ʃ/ (and is indicated in the dictionary with a "(sh-)" after the word).

Like its source languages, Interlingua also has a number of words that can be considered to be unassimilated loanwords of foreign origin; they exhibit traits that can deviate even more wildly from the norm. Not only can they be pronounced differently than the spelling suggests, but they can even exhibit foreign sounds like the voiceless velar fricative [x] and the close front rounded vowel [y], or the spelling may contain diacritics or other marks. If, however, the diacritics would be superfluous given the pronunciation system of Interlingua, they are removed.

[edit] Phonotactics

Interlingua has no explicitly defined phonotactics. However, the prototyping procedure for determining Interlingua words, which strives for internationality, should in general lead naturally to word shapes that are easy for most learners to pronounce. In the process of building new words through derivation, an affix cannot always be added without some kind of modification in between. A good example is the plural -s, which is always preceded by a vowel to prevent the occurrence of a hard-to-pronounce consonant cluster at the end. These measures, however, come at the expense of making the rules of the language more complicated; in this example, this is manifested in the stress rules mentioned above, where an additional rule is necessary in order to prevent that pluralizing a word (unnaturally) causes a different syllable to be stressed. An example where Interlingua phonotactics does prove to be possibly challenging for many speakers would be when trying to pronounce words that start with <pn>, <ps> or <pt>.

[edit] Vocabulary

See also: Interlingua vocabulary and Interlingua dictionaries

The vocabulary of Interlingua is built in a systematic manner from existing source or control languages. These languages are foremost the four most spoken Romance languages, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian, and the most spoken Germanic language, English; the second most spoken Germanic language, German, and the most spoken Slavic language, Russian, play the role of backup languages. Because the Iberian languages, Spanish and Portuguese, are more closely related to each other than any other pair of control languages, they are treated as a combined unit.

[edit] Eligibility

A word, that is a form with meaning, enters the Interlingua vocabulary if it is in any way attested to in at least three of four control units, including archaically and/or "potentially". At first, only the Romance languages and English are considered; if the procedure fails for a concept that has a word in all these languages, German or Russian can take the place of a unit.

A word can be "potentially" present when a word seems to be a derivative, but the suggested root doesn't actually exist in the language itself (example: English proximity giving support to Interlingua proxime, meaning 'near, close'); this counts as long as there exists a language that actually does have this basic root. Another case where "potentiality" can lead to sufficient international support for a word is when a concept is represented as a derivative or a compound by a control language, its constituent morphemes are themselves attested to and their combination adequately cover the meaning of the larger word (example: Italian fiammifero (lit: flamebearer), meaning "match, lucifer", leading to Interlingua flammifero); this word is thus said to be "potentially" present in the other languages despite the fact they may represent the meaning with a single morpheme.

Words do not just enter the Interlingua vocabulary just because cognates exist in sufficient languages; if their meanings have become different over time, they are considered different words for the purpose of Interlingua etymology, although the occurrence of overlap in polysemy can still cause a word shape to enter Interlingua, if only with a restricted set of meanings that are each separately sufficiently supported.

The official dictionary was not explicit in saying what course of action had been taken in case the procedure still failed (which almost only occurs with grammatical particles), but the listing shows that in that case the word for the concept had simply been taken directly from Latin (see below).

[edit] Form

The form of an Interlingua word is designed to be an "international prototype" with respect to the other words; on the one hand it should be neutral in the sense it is free from characteristics peculiar to one language, on the other hand it should maximally capture the non-specific characteristics such that transforming it into any of the contributing variants would depend only on these same language specific characteristics. If the word has any derivatives that occur in the source languages with appropriate parallel meanings, then their morphological connection must remain intact; for example, the Interlingua word for 'time' is spelled tempore and not *tempus or *tempo in order to match it with its derived adjective temporal.

The language specific characteristics are closely related to the sound laws of the individual languages; the resulting words are often close to or even identical with the most recent ancestral form common to the contributing words, which usually corresponds with that of Vulgar Latin/Proto-Romance. However, as a counterexample, just because English can contribute to a cognate does not mean that the resulting prototype will go all the way back to where English meets the Romance languages and be proto-Indo-European.

General example: The French oeil, Italian occhio, Spanish ojo and Portuguese olho, 'eye', appear quite different, but they descend from a historical form oculus. This, and international derivatives like ocular and oculista, determine the form oculo to be used in Interlingua.

[edit] Evolution of Interlingua vocabulary

New words can be derived internally – that is, from existing Interlingua words – 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 limited than in schematic IALs.

For the dictionary to simply pick the Latin word in case all else fails has become controversial to the point of Interlingua users making their own (subjective) choices for word form. Examples include emer being replaced by southern Romance comprar (meaning 'to buy'), because the former only occurs as a cognate in derivatives of the source languages and nimis being replaced with southern Romance troppo (meaning 'too (much)'). The prototype for 'but' is technically mais, but the dictionary still lists Latin sed and some have rejected them both in favor of Italian (and Occidental) ma.

[edit] Grammar

The design philosophy behind the grammar of Interlingua was that it was to contain exactly every grammatical feature that is present in all of the main control languages and that the form of these features were to be determined in as much the same way as the vocabulary was.^[27]

This had led to Interlingua having a grammar similar to that of the Romance languages, but greatly simplified, primarily under the influence of English, since if a grammatical feature was absent from so much as one of the primary control languages, it was dropped. Thus, Interlingua has no noun-adjective agreement by either gender, case, or number (cf. Spanish and Portuguese gatos negros, 'black cats'), since this is absent from English, it has no progressive verb tenses (English I am reading), since they are absent from French, and the definite article le is invariable, as in English. Conversely, Interlingua does have a singular-plural distinction of nouns since all the control languages do.

Nouns have no grammatical gender.^[27][28] Plurals are formed by adding -s after a final vowel, -hes after a final -c and -es after a different final consonant.^[27] Personal Pronouns take one form for the subject, one for the (in)direct object and reflexive (except for the third person cases, where the reflexive forms are all of the distinct form se) and two for the possessives (depending on the relative position of the pronoun with respect to article and noun).^[27][28] Most adverbs are derived regularly from adjectives by adding -mente (or -amente after a -c). An adverb can be formed from any adjective in this way.^[29]

The verb system is a simplified version of the systems found in the Romance languages. Verbs take the same form for all persons (io, tu, illa vive, 'I live', 'you live', 'she lives'). The only exceptions are some optional forms for esser, 'to be'. The indicative (pare, 'appear', 'appears') is the same as the imperative (pare! 'appear!'), and there is no subjunctive except one for esser, sia.^[27] Three common verbs usually take short forms in the present tense: es for 'is', 'am', 'are;' ha for 'has', 'have;' and va for 'go', 'goes'.^[28] A few irregular verb forms are available, but rarely used.^[30]

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 (e.g., Ille ha arrivate, 'He has arrived').^[27] Simple and compound tenses can be combined in various ways to express more complex tenses (e.g., Nos haberea morite, 'We would have died').^[31]

Word order is generally Subject–Verb–Object, except that a direct object or reflexive pronoun comes before the verb if the sentence is in a non-imperative simple tense/mood (Io les vide, 'I see them'); this change of word order to Subject–Object–Verb comes from the Romance languages.^[27][28] Adjectives may precede or follow the nouns they modify, but they most often follow it.^[27] The position of adverbs is flexible, though constrained by common sense.^[28]

[edit] Criticisms and controversies

See also: Irregularities and exceptions in Interlingua, Esperanto and Interlingua compared, and Ido and Interlingua compared

While Interlingua is a successful auxiliary language, it has been criticised, often by proponents of other auxiliary languages, which usually focus on issues it was never meant to address. This may be partly because both opponents and supporters see Interlingua as a candidate for being the universal second "neutral" language for the world to use.

Being a European-based language, Interlingua is not easily presented 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. Speakers of languages other than Indo-European have an additional disadvantage.

Conversely, Interlingua has been suggested as a 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 purpose.

One point of criticism that does take Interlingua's design goals into account is that its credential as being "Standard Average European" is too weak outside the Romance languages. Some opponents see the Germanic, Slavic, and Celtic languages, in particular, as having little influence.

Proponents point out that Interlingua's source languages include not only Romance languages but English, German, and Russian as well. Moreover, the source languages are widely spoken internationally, and large numbers of their words also appear in other languages – still more when derivative forms and loan translations are included. Tests showed that if a larger number of source languages were used, the results would be about the same. So, IALA selected a much simpler extraction procedure for Interlingua with little adverse effect on its internationality. In addition, the grammar of Interlingua is still simpler than most or all Indo-European languages, contributing to ease of learning.

Finally, other auxiliary languages have a mix of words that is similar to Interlingua's, but accidentally hidden. Wordforms are frequently altered to fit pre-established rules of grammar and orthography. For example, all accusative adjectives might end in -en, or the letter x might be replaced by combinations such as gz and ks. In addition, some schematic languages contain words that look unfamiliar because they are entirely invented. Thus, the linguistic mix of the schematic auxiliary languages is not so much sweeping and inclusive as difficult to make out.

[edit] Samples

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.

From an essay by Alexander Gode:

Interlingua se ha distachate ab le movimento pro le disveloppamento e le introduction de un lingua universal pro tote le humanitate. Si o non on crede que un lingua pro tote le humanitate es possibile, si o non on crede que interlingua va devenir un tal lingua es totalmente indifferente ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme. Le sol facto que importa (ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme) es que interlingua, gratias a su ambition de reflecter le homogeneitate cultural e ergo linguistic del occidente, es capace de render servicios tangibile a iste precise momento del historia del mundo. Il es per su contributiones actual e non per le promissas de su adherentes que interlingua vole esser judicate.^[32]

Interlingua has detached itself from the movement for the development and introduction of a universal language for all humanity. Whether or not one believes that a language for all humanity is possible, whether or not one believes that Interlingua will become such a language is totally irrelevant from the point of view of Interlingua itself. The only fact that matters (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its ambition of reflecting the cultural and thus linguistic homogeneity of the West, is capable of rendering tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is by its present contributions and not by the promises of its adherents that Interlingua wishes to be judged.

[edit] Notes

[edit] 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; Hugh E. Blair [1951] (1955). Interlingua; a grammar of the international language, Second Edition, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing. ISBN 0-8044-0186-1. OCLC 147452. Retrieved on March 5, 2007. 
• 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.
• International Auxiliary Language Association [1951] (1971). in Alexander Gode (ed.): Interlingua-English; a dictionary of the international language, "Foreword" and "Acknowledgements" by Mary Connell Bray, Second Edition, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing. ISBN 0-8044-0188-8. OCLC 162319. Retrieved on March 5, 2007. 
• 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.

[edit] External links

[edit] Interlingua organizations

• Union Mundial pro Interlingua, the official site of the UMI
• Union Interlinguiste de France
• Interlingua Italia
• Suomen Interlinguayhdistys, the Finnish Association for Interlingua
• Svenska Sällskapet för Interlingua, the Swedish Society for Interlingua
• Societate American pro Interlingua, the American Society for Interlingua
• União Brasileira pró Interlíngua, the Brazilian organization
• Interlingua Brasil
• Dansk Interlingua Union, the Danish organization
• Interlingua, Lingua International, A Dutch website
• Interlingua - Medzinárodný jazyk na Slovensku a vo svete, a Slovak site
• Interlingua: Communication Sin Frontieras, a Polish site
• Magyar Interlingua Weboldal, a Hungarian site
• Frank Esterhill on the Interlingua Institute

[edit] Dictionaries, grammars, and language study

• Search the Interlingua-English Dictionary online
• Very basic English-Interlingua search/translation page
• Full text of the Interlingua-English Dictionary
• Concise English-Interlingua Dictionary
• Wikibooks Basic Interlingua-English dictionary
• Dictionaries and glossaries at Babylon
• Comprehensive Interlingua dictionaries at Softbear
• The Ispell Interlingua dictionary
• Interlingua Grammar
• Text and sound samples of Interlingua
• A new Interlingua course for English speakers, sign-up required, but free
• A new Interlingua course for German speakers
• An Interlingua course for Italian speakers
• English-Interlingua Dictionary at Wiktionary

[edit] News and information in Interlingua

• Panorama in Interlingua
• Interlingua in Interlingua
• [blacklisted internodio.cjb.net/ Internodio], website in Interlingua containing news items, some also in audio (periodically updated)
• Interlingua Science and Ecology
• Planetology in Interlingua A planetologist studies the structure of non-stellar celestial bodies

[edit] Computers and Internet

• Directory of websites in Interlingua at Open Directory Project
• Google in Interlingua
• An Interlingua Google group
• The europa.* Usenet hierarchy, which uses Interlingua for the denomination of its newsgroups and for documentation
• Documents of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in Interlingua
• Interlingua wallpapers
• A search engine for Interlingua websites

[edit] Entertainment

• From MegaTokyo, a sample of animé in Interlingua
• The Interlinguistic Eye, humor in Interlingua
• Games and quizzes in Interlingua, for children and adults

[edit] Government and public service sites

• Høje-Taastrup Guiden, a municipal Danish Tourist site
• The València Youth Hostel in Spain
• The City of Borno in northern Italy
• Raven Run, a Kentucky animal, bird, and plant sanctuary
• Gotland, a Swedish province in the Baltic Sea

[edit] Religion and Philosophy in Interlingua

• Christianismo Reformate, a site presenting Reformation Christianity in Interlingua
• The Fellowship of Isis, a cutting-edge Egyptian religion
• The Tao Te Ching in Interlingua
• The Book of Mormon in Interlingua
• The Humanist Manifesto at the Dutch website
• Rationalism in Interlingua

[edit] Documents and literature

• Manifesto de Interlingua (by Alexander Gode)
• Interlingua - Latino Moderne (by Alexander Gode)
• Interlittera: Interlingua and Literature
• Guide to the papers of Alexander Gode at SUNY-Albany
• E-Books in Interlingua
• Maliyat Journal, the site of an Iranian professional journal
• The Constitution of the European Union in Interlingua
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Interlingua, presented by the United Nations