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111-558: Interlingua ( / ɪ n t ər ˈ l ɪ ŋ ɡ w ə / , Interlingua: [inteɾˈliŋɡwa] ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua literature maintains that (written) Interlingua

222-530: A "Proto-Human" language . His theories were often controversial, and some have been deprecated by later linguists. Swadesh was born in 1909 in Holyoke, Massachusetts , to Jewish immigrant parents from Bessarabia . His parents were multilingual, and he grew up with Yiddish , some Russian, and English as his first languages. Swadesh earned his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago , where he began studying with

333-448: A Prime Vista ("Interlingua at First Sight"). Interlingua as presented by the IALA is very close to Peano's Interlingua (Latino sine flexione), both in its grammar and especially in its vocabulary. A distinct abbreviation was adopted: IA instead of IL. An early practical application of Interlingua was the scientific newsletter Spectroscopia Molecular , published from 1952 to 1980. In 1954,

444-502: A combining marker. They are often written decomposed: That means that two sounds that are one character in IPA and are not ISO 646, also have no common alternative in ISO ;646: ʃ, ʒ. The following classification of auxiliary languages was developed by Pierre Janton in 1993: Some examples of the best known international auxiliary languages are shown below for comparative purposes, using

555-503: A compromise between models M and P, with certain elements of C. The German-American Gode and the French Martinet did not get along. Martinet resigned and took up a position at Columbia University in 1948, and Gode took on the last phase of Interlingua's development. His task was to combine elements of Model M and Model P; take the flaws seen in both by the polled community and repair them with elements of Model C as needed; and develop

666-479: A control language can contribute to the eligibility of an international word. In some cases, the archaic or potential presence of a word can contribute to its eligibility. A word can be potentially present in a language when a derivative is present, but the word itself is not. English proximity , for example, gives support to Interlingua proxime , meaning 'near, close'. This counts as long as one or more control languages actually have this basic root word, which

777-562: A decade, in Portugal under Salazar, in Romania under Ceaușescu, and in half a dozen Eastern European countries during the late forties and part of the fifties, Esperanto activities and the formation of Esperanto associations were forbidden. In spite of these factors more people continued to learn Esperanto, and significant literary work (both poetry and novels) appeared in Esperanto in the period between

888-540: A global scale. A special subgroup are languages created to facilitate communication between speakers of related languages. The oldest known example is a Pan-Slavic language written in 1665 by the Croatian priest Juraj Križanić . He named this language Ruski jezik ("Russian language"), although in reality it was a mixture of the Russian edition of Church Slavonic , his own Southern Chakavian dialect of Serbo-Croatian , and, to

999-443: A great number of simplified Esperantos, called Esperantidos , emerged as concurrent language projects; still, Ido remains today one of the more widely spoken auxlangs. Edgar de Wahl 's Occidental of 1922 was in reaction against the perceived artificiality of some earlier auxlangs, particularly Esperanto. Inspired by Idiom Neutral and Latino sine flexione , de Wahl created a language whose words, including compound words, would have

1110-465: A high degree of recognizability for those who already know a Romance language. However, this design criterion was in conflict with the ease of coining new compound or derived words on the fly while speaking. Occidental was most active from the 1920s to the 1950s, and supported some 80 publications by the 1930s, but had almost entirely died out by the 1980s. Its name was officially changed to Interlingue in 1949. More recently Interlingue has been revived on

1221-575: A large number of words and affixes that are present in a wide range of languages. This already existing international vocabulary was shaped by social forces, science and technology, to "all corners of the world". The goal of the International Auxiliary Language Association was to accept into Interlingua every widely international word in whatever languages it occurred. They conducted studies to identify "the most generally international vocabulary possible", while still maintaining

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1332-474: A lesser degree, Polish . Most zonal auxiliary languages were created during the period of romantic nationalism at the end of the 19th century; some were created later. Particularly numerous are the Pan-Slavic language projects. However, similar efforts at creating umbrella languages have been made for other language families as well: Tutonish (1902), Folkspraak (1995) and other pan-Germanic languages for

1443-534: A main reason why discussion about the idea of an international auxiliary language has appeared unpractical. Some contemporaries of Couturat, notably Edward Sapir saw the challenge of an auxiliary language not as much as that of identifying a descriptive linguistic answer (of grammar and vocabulary) to global communicative concerns, but rather as one of promoting the notion of a linguistic platform for lasting international understanding. Though interest among scholars, and linguists in particular, waned greatly throughout

1554-521: A majority, of the European languages. Their argument was that systematic derivation of words was a Procrustean bed , forcing the learner to unlearn and re-memorize a new derivation scheme when a usable vocabulary was already available. IALA from that point assumed the position that a naturalistic language would be best. IALA's research activities were based in Liverpool , before relocating to New York due to

1665-759: A malo. Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done. on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Notre Père, qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié, que ton règne vienne, que ta volonté soit faite sur la terre comme au ciel. Donne-nous aujourd’hui notre pain de ce jour. Pardonne-nous nos offenses, comme nous pardonnons aussi à ceux qui nous ont offensés. Et ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation mais délivre-nous du Mal. Amen. Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos, santificado sea tu nombre; venga

1776-464: A means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities. The term originates with one such language, Mediterranean Lingua Franca , a pidgin language used as a trade language in the Mediterranean area from the 11th to the 19th century. Examples of lingua francas remain numerous, and exist on every continent. The most obvious example as of the early 21st century

1887-421: A modification of some kind 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. If the singular does not end in a vowel, the final -s becomes -es. Unassimilated foreign loanwords , or borrowed words, are spelled as in their language of origin. Their spelling may contain diacritics , or accent marks. If

1998-445: A more naturalistic language based on the grammar and vocabulary of major world languages . In 1890 Schleyer himself left the original Academy and created a new Volapük Academy with the same name, from people completely loyal to him, which continues to this day. Under Waldemar Rosenberger , who became the director in 1892, the original Academy began to make considerable changes in the grammar and vocabulary of Volapük. The vocabulary and

2109-412: A ni cadie l'omnadiala pano, e pardonez a ni nia ofensi, quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti, e ne duktez ni aden la tento, ma liberigez ni del malajo. Amen. Nostr patr kel es in sieli! Ke votr nom es sanktifiked; ke votr regnia veni; ke votr volu es fasied, kuale in siel, tale et su ter. Dona sidiurne a noi nostr pan omnidiurnik; e pardona a noi nostr debti, kuale et noi pardon

2220-777: A nosotros tu reino; hágase tu voluntad así en la Tierra como en el cielo. El pan nuestro de cada día dánosle hoy; y perdónanos nuestras deudas así como nosotros perdonamos a nuestros deudores; no nos dejes caer en la tentación, mas líbranos del mal. Amén. Patro Nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, via nomo estu sanktigita. Venu via regno, plenumiĝu via volo, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero. Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ. Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn, kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj. Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono. Amen. Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo, tua nomo santigesez; tua regno advenez; tua volo facesez quale en la cielo, tale anke sur la tero. Donez

2331-867: A nostr debtatori; e no induka noi in tentasion, ma librifika noi da it mal. Amen. Nusen Patre, kel es in siele, mey vun nome bli sanktifika, mey vun regno veni; mey on fa vun volio kom in siele anke sur tere. Dona a nus dissidi li omnidiali pane, e pardona a nus nusen ofensos, kom anke nus pardona a nusen ofensantes, e non dukte nus en tentatione, ma liberisa nus fro malu. Amen. Patre nostro, qui es in caelos, que tuo nomine fi sanctificato; que tuo regno adveni; que tuo voluntate es facto sicut in celo et in terra. Da hodie ad nos nostro pane quotidiano, et remitte ad nos nostro debitos, sicut et nos remitte ad nostro debitores. Et non induce nos in tentatione, sed libera nos ab malo. Amen. Morris Swadesh Morris Swadesh ( / ˈ s w ɑː d ɛ ʃ / ; January 22, 1909 – July 20, 1967)

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2442-587: A number of distant genetic links among languages. He was the chief pioneer of lexicostatistics , which attempts to classify languages on the basis of the extent to which they have replaced basic words reconstructible in the proto-language, and glottochronology , which extends lexicostatistics by computing divergence dates from the lexical retention rate. Swadesh became a consultant with the International Auxiliary Language Association , which standardized Interlingua and presented it to

2553-849: A number of periodicals, including Panorama in Interlingua from the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI). Every two years, the UMI organizes an international conference in a different country. In the year between, the Scandinavian Interlingua societies co-organize a conference in Sweden, as a number of Interlingua speakers are in Scandinavia. National organizations such as the Union Brazilian pro Interlingua also organize regular conferences. Interlingua

2664-707: A position as researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and taught linguistics at the National School of Anthropology and History (Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia), in Mexico City . In 1966, he was appointed Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Alberta in Canada. He was developing plans for a major research project in Western Canada at the time of his death, in

2775-588: A short proposition of a "laconic" or regularized grammar of French. Some of the philosophical languages of the 17th–18th centuries could be regarded as proto-auxlangs, as they were intended by their creators to serve as bridges among people of different languages as well as to disambiguate and clarify thought. However, most or all of these languages were, as far as can be told from the surviving publications about them, too incomplete and unfinished to serve as auxlangs (or for any other practical purpose). The first fully developed constructed languages we know of, as well as

2886-488: A vocabulary. Alice Vanderbilt Morris died in 1950, and the funding that had sustained IALA ceased, but sufficient funds remained to publish a dictionary and grammar. The vocabulary and grammar of Interlingua were first presented in 1951, when IALA published the finalized Interlingua Grammar and the Interlingua–English Dictionary (IED). In 1954, IALA published an introductory manual entitled Interlingua

2997-408: A word (or variant thereof) is expected to appear in at least three of them to qualify for inclusion in Interlingua. These are English ; French ; Italian ; and a combination of Spanish and Portuguese which are treated as a single mega-language for Interlingua purposes, as both are west Iberian languages . Additionally, German and Russian have been dubbed "secondary control languages". While

3108-475: Is English . Moreover, a special case of English is that of Basic English , a simplified version of English which shares the same grammar (though simplified) and a reduced vocabulary of only 1,000 words, with the intention that anyone with a basic knowledge of English should be able to understand even quite complex texts. Since all natural languages display a number of irregularities in grammar that make them more difficult to learn, and they are also associated with

3219-417: Is comprehensible to the billions of people who speak Romance languages , though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred. Interlingua was developed to combine a simple, mostly regular grammar with a vocabulary common to a wide range of western European languages, making it easy to learn for those whose native languages were sources of Interlingua's vocabulary and grammar. The name Interlingua comes from

3330-566: Is much more recent or even contemporary. It is never older than the classical period. International auxiliary language The term "auxiliary" implies that it is intended to be an additional language for communication between the people of the world, rather than to replace their native languages. Often, the term is used specifically to refer to planned or constructed languages proposed to ease international communication , such as Esperanto , Ido and Interlingua . It usually takes words from widely spoken languages. However, it can also refer to

3441-575: Is presented on CDs, radio, and television. After the creation of Interlingua, the enthusiasm for constructed languages gradually decreased in the years between 1960 and 1990. All of the auxlangs with a surviving speaker community seem to have benefited from the advent of the Internet, Esperanto more than most. The CONLANG mailing list was founded in 1991; in its early years discussion focused on international auxiliary languages. As people interested in artistic languages and engineered languages grew to be

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3552-566: Is quicker to learn than other languages, usually in a third up to a fifth of the time. From early on, Esperantists created their own culture which helped to form the Esperanto language community . Within a few years this language had thousands of fluent speakers, primarily in eastern Europe. In 1905 its first world convention was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer. Since then world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during

3663-447: Is taught in some high schools and universities, sometimes as a means of teaching other languages quickly, presenting interlinguistics , or introducing an international vocabulary. A two-week course was taught at the University of Granada in Spain in 2007, for example. As of 2019, Google Keyboard supports Interlingua. Interlingua has a largely phonemic orthography . Interlingua uses

3774-427: Is the most prominent of several Interlingua periodicals. It is a 28-page magazine published bimonthly that covers current events, science, editorials, and Interlingua. It is not certain how many people have an active knowledge of Interlingua. Most constructed languages other than Esperanto have very few speakers. The Hungarian census of 2001, which collected information about languages spoken, found just two people in

3885-435: Is thus said to be potentially present in the other languages although they may represent the meaning with a single morpheme. Words do not enter the Interlingua vocabulary solely because cognates exist in a sufficient number of languages. If their meanings have become different over time , they are considered different words for the purpose of Interlingua eligibility. If they still have one or more meanings in common, however,

3996-656: The Chitimacha language , a now-extinct language isolate found among indigenous people of Louisiana . His fieldnotes and subsequent publications constitute the main source of information on this extinct language. He also conducted smaller amounts of fieldwork on the Menominee and Mahican languages, in Wisconsin and New York, respectively; both are part of the Algonquian language family . Swadesh taught linguistics and anthropology at

4107-538: The Cyrillic script . The vast majority of IALs use the Latin script . Several sounds, e.g. /n/, /m/, /t/, /f/ are written with the same letter as in IPA. Some consonant sounds found in several Latin-script IAL alphabets are not represented by an ISO 646 letter in IPA. Three have a single letter in IPA, one has a widespread alternative taken from ISO 646: Four are affricates, each represented in IPA by two letters and

4218-564: The Germanic languages ; Romanid (1956) and several other pan-Romance languages for the Romance languages ; and Afrihili (1973) for the African continent. Notable among modern examples is Interslavic , a project first published in 2006 as Slovianski and then established in its current form in 2011 after the merger of several other projects. In 2012 it was reported to have several hundred users. In

4329-539: The Greek and Germanic languages providing the second and third largest number. The remainder of the vocabulary originates in Slavic and non- Indo-European languages . A word, that is a form with meaning, is eligible for the Interlingua vocabulary if it is verified by at least three of the four primary control languages. Either secondary control language can substitute for a primary language. Any word of Indo-European origin found in

4440-481: The Guugu Yimithirr word gangurru is used in latinized form (Interlingua: kanguru , English: kangaroo ). The maintainers of Interlingua attempt to keep the grammar simple and word formation regular, and use only a small number of roots and affixes . This is intended to make the language quicker to learn. The American heiress Alice Vanderbilt Morris (1874–1950) became interested in linguistics and

4551-604: The Iroquois Confederacy , with their historic territory located in central New York state, but some had moved to Wisconsin in the 19th century.) In this same period in other WPA projects, writers were recording state histories and guides, and researchers were collecting oral histories of African Americans who had been born into slavery before the end of the Civil War. Swadesh was let go by the University of Wisconsin just as he

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4662-632: The Lord's Prayer (a core Christian prayer, the translated text of which is regularly used for linguistic comparisons). As a reference for comparison, one can find the Latin, English, French, and Spanish versions here: Pater noster, qui es in cælis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cælo, et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos

4773-543: The Mediterranean Lingua Franca were used in the past. In recent times, Standard Arabic , Standard Chinese , English , French , German , Italian , Portuguese , Russian , and Spanish have been used as such in many parts of the world. However, as lingua francas are traditionally associated with the very dominance—cultural, political, and economic—that made them popular, they are often also met with resistance. For this and other reasons, some have turned to

4884-564: The Purépecha language for this work. Together with rural school teachers, Swadesh worked in indigenous villages, teaching people to read first in their own languages, before teaching them Spanish. He worked with the Tarahumara , Purépecha , and Otomi peoples. Swadesh also learned Spanish in less than a year; he was fluent enough that he was able to give a series of linguistics lectures (in Spanish) at

4995-557: The Research Corporation , 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 , Peano's Interlingua (Latino sine flexione), Novial , and Interlingue (Occidental). In pursuit of

5106-545: The Science Service from the early 1950s until his death in 1970. IALA closed its doors in 1953 but was not formally dissolved until 1956 or later. Its role in promoting Interlingua was largely taken on by Science Service, which hired Gode as head of its newly formed Interlingua Division . Hugh E. Blair , Gode's close friend and colleague, became his assistant. A successor organization, the Interlingua Institute,

5217-693: The United States Army and Office of Strategic Services . He became a professor at the City College of New York after the war's end, but was fired in 1949 due to his membership in the Communist Party . He spent most of the rest of his life teaching in Mexico and Canada. Swadesh had a particular interest in the indigenous languages of the Americas , and conducted extensive fieldwork throughout North America. He

5328-812: The Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and publish his first book, La Nueva Filologia , in Spanish in 1941. Returning to the U.S., during the Second World War Swadesh worked on military projects for the U.S. Army and the OSS to compile reference materials on Burmese, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish. He also wrote easy-to-learn textbooks for troops to learn Russian and Chinese. Swadesh served in Burma , where Lt. Roger Hilsman described his linguistic skills as extraordinary. Swadesh learned enough of

5439-558: The University of Wisconsin in Madison from 1937 to 1939. During this time he devised and organized the highly original Oneida Language and Folklore Project. This program hired more than a dozen Oneida Indians in Wisconsin for a WPA project (under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration) to record and translate texts in the Oneida language . (The Oneida were historically one of the five nations of

5550-512: 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 more complex and scientific basis. Morris developed the research program of IALA in consultation with Edward Sapir , William Edward Collinson , and Otto Jespersen . Investigations of

5661-571: The 1880s–1900s, but none except Esperanto gathered a significant speaker community. Esperanto was developed from about 1873–1887 (a first version was ready in 1878), and finally published in 1887, by L. L. Zamenhof , as a primarily schematic language; the word-stems are borrowed from Romance, West Germanic and Slavic languages. The key to the relative success of Esperanto was probably the highly productive and elastic system of derivational word formation which allowed speakers to derive hundreds of other words by learning one word root. Moreover, Esperanto

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5772-524: The 1930s and 1940s, for example, were funded by IALA. Alice Morris edited several of these studies and provided much of IALA's financial support. For example, Morris herself edited Sapir and Morris Swadesh 's 1932 cross-linguistic study of ending-point phenomena, and Collinson's 1937 study of indication. IALA also received support from groups such as the Carnegie Corporation , the Ford Foundation ,

5883-434: 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. 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

5994-400: The 20th century, such differences of approach persist today. Some scholars and interested laymen make concrete language proposals. By contrast, Mario Pei and others place the broader societal issue first. Yet others argue in favor of a particular language while seeking to establish its social integration. Whilst most IALs use the Latin script , some of them, also offer an alternative in

6105-558: The 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet with no diacritics . The alphabet, pronunciation in IPA and letter names in Interlingua are: The book Grammar of Interlingua defines in §15 a "collateral orthography" that defines how a word is spelt in Interlingua once assimilated regardless of etymology. Interlingua is primarily a written language, and the pronunciation is not entirely settled. The sounds in parentheses are not used by all speakers. For

6216-549: The Academy's Idiom Neutral. Like Interlingue, Interlingua was designed to have words recognizable at sight by those who already know a Romance language or a language like English with much vocabulary borrowed from Romance languages; to attain this end the IALA accepted a degree of grammatical and orthographic complexity considerably greater than in Esperanto or Interlingue, though still less than in any natural language. The theory underlying Interlingua posits an international vocabulary ,

6327-585: The Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language was founded in 1900 by Louis Couturat and others; it tried to get the International Association of Academies to take up the question of an international auxiliary language, study the existing ones and pick one or design a new one. However, when the meta-academy declined to do so, the Delegation decided to do the job itself. Among Esperanto speakers there

6438-470: The Interlingua word for 'time' is spelled tempore and not * tempus or * tempo in order to match it with its derived adjectives, such as temporal . The language-specific characteristics are closely related to the sound laws of the individual languages; the resulting words are often close or even identical to the most recent form common to the contributing words. This sometimes corresponds with that of Vulgar Latin . At other times, it

6549-409: The Internet has also made it easier to publicize new auxlang projects, and a handful of these have gained a small speaker community, including Kotava (published in 1978), Lingua Franca Nova (1998), Slovio (1999), Interslavic (2006), Pandunia (2007), Sambahsa (2007), Lingwa de Planeta (2010), and Globasa (2019). Not every international auxiliary language is necessarily intended to be used on

6660-459: The Internet. In 1928 Ido's major intellectual supporter, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen , abandoned Ido, and published his own planned language, Novial . It was mostly inspired by Idiom Neutral and Occidental, yet it attempted a derivational formalism and schematism sought by Esperanto and Ido. The notability of its creator helped the growth of this auxiliary language, but a reform of the language

6771-494: The Latin words inter , meaning 'between', and lingua , meaning 'tongue' or 'language'. These morphemes are the same in Interlingua; thus, Interlingua would mean 'between language'. Interlingua focuses on common vocabulary shared by Western European languages, which are often descended from or heavily influenced by the Latin language (such as the Romance languages ) and Greek language . Interlingua organizers have four "primary control languages" where, by default,

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6882-558: The Naga language, after spending only one day with a local guide, that he was able to give a ten-minute thank-you speech in that language. Hilsman recalled that Swadesh had been strongly opposed to racial segregation in the United States . In May 1949, Swadesh was fired by the City College of New York (CCNY) due to accusations that he was a Communist . That was during the Red Scare , and he

6993-472: The Romance languages all do. Potentiality also occurs when a concept is represented as a compound or derivative in a control language, the morphemes that make it up are themselves international, and the combination adequately conveys the meaning of the larger word. An example is Italian fiammifero (lit. 'flamebearer'), meaning 'match, lucifer', which leads to Interlingua flammifero , or 'match'. This word

7104-606: The Second World Cardiological Congress in Washington, D.C. released summaries of its talks in both English and Interlingua. 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 medical journals provided article summaries in Interlingua. Gode wrote a monthly column in Interlingua in the Science Newsletter published by

7215-484: The UMI; the American Interlingua Society, established the following year, succeeded the institute. The original goal of an interlanguage meant for global events has faced competition from English as a lingua franca and International English in the 21st century. The scientific community frequently uses English in international conferences and publications, for example, rather than Interlingua. However,

7326-476: The World Wars and after them. Esperanto is spoken today in a growing number of countries and it has multiple generations of native speakers , although it is primarily used as a second language. Of the various constructed language projects, it is Esperanto that has so far come closest to becoming an officially recognized international auxiliary language; China publishes daily news in Esperanto. The Delegation for

7437-653: The auxiliary language problem were in progress at the International Research Council, the American Council on Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, the British, French, Italian, and American Associations for the advancement of science, and other groups of specialists. Morris created IALA as a continuation of this work. The IALA became a major supporter of mainstream American linguistics. Numerous studies by Sapir, Collinson, and Morris Swadesh in

7548-433: The concept of such a language being determined by international consensus, including even a standardized natural language (e.g., International English ), and has also been connected to the project of constructing a universal language . Languages of dominant societies over the centuries have served as lingua francas that have sometimes approached the international level. Latin , Greek , Sanskrit , Persian , Tamil , and

7659-420: The debate had been equivocal on the decision to use naturalistic (e.g., Peano's Interlingua , 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 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

7770-576: The diacritics do not affect pronunciation, they are removed. Words in Interlingua may be taken from any language, as long as their internationality is verified by their presence in seven control languages: Spanish , Portuguese , Italian , French , and English , with German and Russian acting as secondary controls. These are the most widely spoken Romance , Germanic , and Slavic languages , respectively. Because of their close relationship, Spanish and Portuguese are treated as one unit. The largest number of Interlingua words are of Latin origin, with

7881-481: The direction of Ido. The resulting four models that were canvassed were: An example sentence: The vote total ended up as follows: P 26.6%, M 37.5%, C 20%, and K 15%. The two more schematic models, C and K, were rejected. 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

7992-447: The early 1900s auxlangs were already becoming a subject of academic study. Louis Couturat et al. described the controversy in the preface to their book International Language and Science : Leopold Pfaundler wrote that an IAL was needed for more effective communication among scientists: For Couturat et al., Volapükists and Esperantists confounded the linguistic aspect of the question with many side issues, and they considered this

8103-507: The entire country who claimed to speak Interlingua. Advocates say that Interlingua's greatest advantage is that it is the most widely understood international auxiliary language besides Interlingua (IL) de A.p.I. 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 web pages include editions of Misplaced Pages and Wiktionary, and

8214-506: The fact that it is the most widely understood international auxiliary language 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 some active speakers currently on all continents, and the language is propagated by the Union Mundial pro Interlingua (UMI), and Interlingua

8325-676: The first constructed languages devised primarily as auxlangs, originated in the 19th century; Solresol by François Sudre , a language based on musical notes, was the first to gain widespread attention although not, apparently, fluent speakers. During the 19th century, a bewildering variety of such constructed international auxiliary languages (IALs) were proposed, so Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau in Histoire de la langue universelle (1903) reviewed 38 projects. Volapük , first described in an article in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer and in book form

8436-526: The first time in the history of mankind, sixteen years before the Boulogne convention , an international convention spoke an international language. However, not long after, the Volapük speaker community broke up due to various factors including controversies between Schleyer and other prominent Volapük speakers, and the appearance of newer, easier-to-learn constructed languages , primarily Esperanto . Answering

8547-502: The following year, was the first to garner a widespread international speaker community. Three major Volapük conventions were held, in 1884, 1887, and 1889; the last of them used Volapük as its working language. André Cherpillod writes of the third Volapük convention, In August 1889 the third convention was held in Paris. About two hundred people from many countries attended. And, unlike in the first two conventions, people spoke only Volapük. For

8658-448: The general rule mentioned above. For example, kilom e tro is acceptable, although kil o metro is more common. Interlingua has no explicitly defined phonotactics . However, the prototyping procedure for determining Interlingua words, which strives for internationality, should in general lead naturally to words that are easy for most learners to pronounce. In the process of forming new words, an ending cannot always be added without

8769-485: The grammatical forms unfamiliar to Western Europeans were completely discarded, so that the changes effectively resulted in the creation of a new language, which was named " Idiom Neutral ". The name of the Academy was changed to Akademi Internasional de Lingu Universal in 1898 and the circulars of the Academy were written in the new language from that year. In 1903, the mathematician Giuseppe Peano published his completely new approach to language construction. Inspired by

8880-441: The group was subsequently changed to Academia pro Interlingua (where Interlingua stands for Peano's language). The Academia pro Interlingua survived until about 1939. It was Peano's Interlingua that partly inspired the better-known Interlingua presented in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). After the emergence of Volapük, a wide variety of other auxiliary languages were devised and proposed in

8991-640: The idea of philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , instead of inventing schematic structures and an a priori language, he chose to simplify an existing and once widely used international language, Latin . This simplified Latin, devoid of inflections and declensions, was named Interlingua by Peano but is usually referred to as " Latino sine flexione ". Impressed by Peano's Interlingua, the Akademi Internasional de Lingu Universal effectively chose to abandon Idiom Neutral in favor of Peano's Interlingua in 1908, and it elected Peano as its director. The name of

9102-577: The idea of promoting a constructed language as a possible solution, by way of an "auxiliary" language, one example of which being Esperanto . The use of an intermediary auxiliary language (also called a "working language", "bridge language", "vehicular language", or "unifying language") to make communication possible between people not sharing a first language, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues, may be almost as old as language itself. Certainly they have existed since antiquity. Latin and Greek (or Koine Greek ) were

9213-421: The interlinguistic field. The first steps towards the finalization of Interlingua were taken in 1937, when a committee of 24 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. Originally, the association had not intended to create its own language. Its goal

9324-572: The intermediary language of all areas of the Mediterranean ; Akkadian , and then Aramaic , remained the common languages of a large part of Western Asia through several earlier empires. Such natural languages used for communication between people not sharing the same mother tongue are called lingua francas . Lingua francas have arisen around the globe throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages") but also for diplomatic and administrative convenience, and as

9435-469: The last consonant (e.g., l i ngua , 'language', ess e r , 'to be', requirim e nto , 'requirement') ignoring the final plural -(e)s (e.g. l i nguas , the plural of lingua , still has the same stress as the singular), and where that is not possible, on the first vowel ( v i a , 'way', i o cr e a , 'I create'). There are a few exceptions, and the following rules account for most of them: Speakers may pronounce all words according to

9546-700: The last goal, it conducted parallel studies of these languages, with comparative studies of national languages. At the Second International Interlanguage Congress, held in Geneva in 1931, IALA began to break new ground; 27 recognized linguists signed a testimonial of support for IALA's research program. An additional eight added their signatures at the third congress, convened in Rome in 1933. That same year, Herbert N. Shenton and Edward Thorndike became influential in IALA's work by authoring studies in

9657-468: The linguist Edward Sapir . He followed Sapir to Yale University , where he earned his Ph.D. in 1933. Inspired by Sapir's early lists of word similarities among Native American languages, he began a life work in comparative linguistics. In the 1930s, Swadesh conducted extensive fieldwork on more than 20 indigenous languages of the Americas , with travels in Canada, Mexico, and the US. He worked most prominently on

9768-415: The majority of the list members, and flame-wars between proponents of particular auxlangs irritated these members, a separate AUXLANG mailing list was created in 1997, which has been the primary venue for discussion of auxlangs since then. Besides giving the existing auxlangs with speaker communities a chance to interact rapidly online as well as slowly through postal mail or more rarely in personal meetings,

9879-500: The most part, consonants are pronounced as in English, while the vowels are like Spanish. Written double consonants may be geminated as in Italian for extra clarity or pronounced as single as in English or French. Interlingua has five falling diphthongs , /ai/, /au/, /ei/, /eu/ , and /oi/ , although /ei/ and /oi/ are rare. The general rule is that stress falls on the vowel before

9990-462: The national and cultural dominance of the nation that speaks it as its mother tongue, attention began to focus on the idea of creating an artificial or constructed language as a possible solution. The concept of simplifying an existing language to make it an auxiliary language was already in the Encyclopédie of the 18th century, where Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve , in the article on Langue , wrote

10101-608: The needs of the first successful artificial language community, the Volapükists established the regulatory body of their language, under the name International Volapük Academy ( Kadem bevünetik volapüka ) at the second Volapük congress in Munich in August 1887. The Academy was set up to conserve and perfect the auxiliary language Volapük , but soon conflicts arose between conservative Volapükists and those who wanted to reform Volapük to make it

10212-400: The other hand, it should maximally capture the characteristics common to all contributing languages. As a result, it can be transformed into any of the contributing variants using only these 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,

10323-562: The outbreak of World War II , where E. Clark Stillman established a new research staff. Stillman, with the assistance of Alexander Gode , constructed the methodology for selecting Interlingua vocabulary based on a comparison of control languages. In 1943 Stillman left for war work and Gode became Acting Director of Research. IALA began to develop models of the proposed language, the first of which were presented in Morris's General Report in 1945. From 1946 to 1948, French linguist André Martinet

10434-471: The public in 1951 (Esterhill 2000). In this role, he originated the lists of 100 and 200 basic vocabulary items, used (with some variation) in both lexicostatistics and glottochronology for comparison among languages. They have since been known as the Swadesh lists . Some scholars considered Swadesh as a supporter of monogenesis , the theory that all languages have a common origin: "Swadesh sought to show that all

10545-503: The result is often akin to Neo-Latin as the most frequent source of commonality, Interlingua words can have origins in any language, as long as they have drifted into the primary control languages as loanwords . For example, the Japanese words geisha and samurai and the Finnish word sauna are used in most Western European languages, and therefore in Interlingua as well; similarly,

10656-549: The rise of the Internet has made it easier for the general public with an interest in constructed languages to learn Interlingua. Interlingua is promoted internationally by the Union Mundial pro Interlingua. Periodicals and books are produced by national organizations, such as the Societate American pro Interlingua, the Svenska Sällskapet för Interlingua, and the Union Brazilian pro Interlingua. Panorama In Interlingua

10767-469: The summer of 1967. Swadesh is best known for his work in historical linguistics . Any language changes over centuries (consider, for example, the changes in English since the Middle Ages). Some languages diverge and become separate dialects, or languages that still belong to the same language family. Tracking similarities and differences between languages is part of historical linguistics. Swadesh proposed

10878-443: The supporters of various auxlangs. However, like the Delegation, it finally decided to create its own auxlang. Interlingua , published in 1951, was primarily the work of Alexander Gode , though he built on preliminary work by earlier IALA linguists including André Martinet , and relied on elements from previous naturalistic auxlang projects, like Peano's Interlingua (Latino sine flexione), Jespersen's Novial, de Wahl's Interlingue, and

10989-626: The two World Wars. Esperanto has become "the most outlandishly successful invented language ever" and the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Esperanto is probably among the fifty languages which are most used internationally. In 1922 a proposal by Iran and several other countries in the League of Nations to have Esperanto taught in member nations' schools failed. Esperanto speakers were subject to persecution under Stalin's regime. In Germany under Hitler, in Spain under Franco for about

11100-441: The unity of the language. This scientific approach of generating a language from selected source languages (called control languages ) resulted in a vocabulary and grammar that can be called the highest common factor of each major European language. Interlingua gained a significant speaker community, perhaps roughly the same size as that of Ido (considerably less than the size of Esperanto). Interlingua's success can be explained by

11211-451: The word can enter Interlingua with this smaller set of meanings. If this procedure did not produce an international word, the word for a concept was originally taken from Latin (see below). This only occurred with a few grammatical particles . The form of an Interlingua word is considered an international prototype with respect to the other words. On the one hand, it should be neutral, free from characteristics peculiar to one language. On

11322-460: The world's languages are related in one large family" (Ruhlen 1994:215). Others believe that Swadesh proposed early linkages, but believed that languages diverged immediately among peoples, as he expressed in his major, but unfinished work, The Origin and Diversification of Language (1971), published posthumously. Swadesh was married for a time to Mary Haas , a fellow American linguist. He later married Frances Leon, with whom he worked in Mexico in

11433-408: Was Director of Research. During this period IALA continued to develop models and conducted polling to determine the optimal form of the final language. In 1946, IALA sent an extensive survey to more than 3,000 language teachers and related professionals on three continents. Model P was unchanged from 1945; Model M was relatively modern in comparison to more classical P. Model K was slightly modified in

11544-487: Was a general impression that the Delegation would of course choose Esperanto, as it was the only auxlang with a sizable speaker community at the time; it was felt as a betrayal by many Esperanto speakers when in 1907 the Delegation came up with its own reformed version of Esperanto, Ido . Ido drew a significant number of speakers away from Esperanto in the short term, but in the longer term most of these either returned to Esperanto or moved on to other new auxlangs. Besides Ido,

11655-542: Was an American linguist who specialized in comparative and historical linguistics . Swadesh was born in Massachusetts to Bessarabian Jewish immigrant parents. He completed bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Chicago , studying under Edward Sapir , and then followed Sapir to Yale University where he completed a Ph.D. in 1933. Swadesh taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1937 to 1939, and then during World War II worked on projects with

11766-488: 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 summaries 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. Beginning in

11877-678: Was one of a number of anthropologists and other academics to be deprived of their employment during the McCarthy Era . Swadesh had been a member of the Denver Communist Party and was active in the protest movement against the execution of convicted spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg . Swadesh continued to work in the United States until 1954, aided by limited funding from the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. In 1956 Swadesh returned to Mexico, where he took

11988-426: Was one of the pioneers of glottochronology and lexicostatistics , and is known for his creation of the Swadesh list , a compilation of basic concepts believed to present across cultures and thus suitable for cross-linguistic comparison. Swadesh believed that his techniques could discover deep relationships between apparently unrelated languages, thus allowing for the identification of macrofamilies and possibly even

12099-483: Was proposed by Jespersen in 1934 and not long after this Europe entered World War II, and its creator died in 1943 before Europe was at peace again. The International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) was founded in 1924 by Alice Vanderbilt Morris ; like the earlier Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language , its mission was to study language problems and the existing auxlangs and proposals for auxlangs, and to negotiate some consensus between

12210-431: Was to begin the project. Floyd Lounsbury , then an undergraduate, was assigned to finish it. Lounsbury continued his studies in linguistics, later serving as Sterling Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at Yale University . In May 1939 Swadesh went to Mexico, where he had been hired to assist the government of Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas , who was promoting the education of indigenous peoples. Swadesh learned

12321-430: Was to identify which auxiliary language already available was best suited for international communication, and how to promote it more effectively. However, after ten years of research, many 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

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