Greetings all,

I recently read "Esperanto Sin Mitoj" (an interesting, albeit somewhat overpriced, book) and I was struck yet again at how there seems to be a lack of knowledge / awareness of Interlingua. Most non-casual Esperantists seem to be very aware of Volapuk and Ido but rarely is there a mention of Interlingua.

This is surprising to me as Interlingua is very much alive (after over 60 years) : there is an active international organization (the UMI), face-to-face conferences, recent (printed) publications, a regular podcast, a high-quality printed magazine, etc. I don't follow the Ido movement but I don't think they have quite the same level of activity or organization.

I'm not interested in starting a debate about the relative merits of various auxiliary languages (although something tells me I've probably opened a big can of worms), but I'm wondering why there seems to be so little attention paid to Interlingua among the Esperanto community (as compared to Ido, Volapuk, Klingon (!), etc.).

Any comments or opinions would be much appreciated.

Amike,

Paul

P.S. I think it safe to say that almost every Interlingua speaker is also aware of Esperanto and many are also Esperanto speakers.

Maybe because Interlingua is a very different (naturalistic) approach than Esperanto.

pdenisowski: I'm wondering why there seems to be so little attention paid to Interlingua among the Esperanto community (as compared to Ido, Volapuk, Klingon (!), etc.).

Because it's the only serious contender to Esperanto and we don't want to be reminded of this unpleasant fact!

I think that people see Volapuk as a predecessor to Esperanto; it was the first relatively well-known language to try something that wasn't totally naturalistic, and many of the early Esperanto clubs were offshoots of Volapuk clubs, so there's some historic basis as well.

The fact that Ido was devised as an improvement to Esperanto means that it was, in a small way, our "competitor" for quite some time, and I think some Esperanto speakers still see it as a sort of competitor. There's a difficult history between Esperanto and Ido, obviously.

No one really talks about Interlingua. No one seems to think of it as a competitor. I do know some Esperanto speakers who speak it, most people seem aware of its existence, but I think it has a very different function than Esperanto, and interest (or lack thereof) reflects that.

Namely, Ido, Volapuk, and Esperanto were designed to be languages for everyone. You learn the language and speak it with others. It seems to me like Interlingua was mainly aimed at Europeans. You are meant to understand it passively because you already speak a related (Romance) language. Relatively little effort was given to making it easy, to preserve its naturalistic character.

My own feeling is that if you learn a Romance language like French, Spanish, or Italian, you get almost all of the benefits of Interlingua (being able to understand a large part of a text written in a Romance language), but you also get all of the resources created for that language community. Of course those languages are harder than Interlingua, but it's always a cost/benefit trade-off, of course.

I am aware of Interlingua and checked out a few books from the library after I decided that Ido just didn't have a user base large enough to support my desired learning. (I ultimately came to Esperanto.)

I have found that I can read Interlingua without much difficulty - which was it's original point. However, I suppose that speaking both English and Spanish would make it easier. I have virtually no ability to speak it as the natural character makes linguistic prediction functionally impossible (for me at least).

If it had stayed in the realm of, "Let's publish notices and scientific journals in Interlingua so everyone* can read them," then it would probably have a larger following.

* For a primarily European definition of "everyone".

The language that I am surprised never took off - in Europe at least - was the original Interlingua (now Latino sine flexione) created by Giuseppe Peano. But, I digress.

ludomastro:
If it had stayed in the realm of, "Let's publish notices and scientific journals in Interlingua so everyone* can read them," then it would probably have a larger following.

* For a primarily European definition of "everyone".

The language that I am surprised never took off - in Europe at least - was the original Interlingua (now Latino sine flexione) created by Giuseppe Peano. But, I digress.

You are quite wrong. I have studied Interlingua for a couple of weeks and FOR ME IS EXTREMELY EASY, but I don't like it and it has big faults.

- It is quite easy for peoples fo Western Europe, especially for us Spaniards. In this sense it's quite right, but NOT as a World's language. And also it's pronunciation is somewhat ridiculous and unstable and not fixed, as for instance, "Waltz" is pronounced "Valc", as it comes from German; and "Whisky" - "Ŭiski", etc; though there are few words of German origin and still less from other languages. The biggest bulk of words are taken from Latin, Italian, French, English and, above all from Spanish. I wonder if Chinese, Indonesian or Arabic people will find it as easy as me (and not especially because I might be more intelligent at all).
Example from here: http://www.interlingua.com/
.....................................
"Visita le nove section con films in interlingua. E vide como 24 personas ab tote le mundo presenta interlingua in 40-60 secundas - in lor linguas materne."
("e" for "and" is also Spanish, as we say "francés E inglés"; sounds better than "y" - iinglés- and in older Spanish "and" = "e")

Now in Spanish:
"Visite la nueva sección con filmes (or "películas") en interlingua. Y vea cómo 24 personas [procedentes] de todo el mundo presentan interlingua en 40-60 segundos - en su lengua materna.
..........................................
Panorama deveni digital
Recipe Panorama in colores ante omne alteres pro minus de moneta per devenir abonato digital.

"Panorama" deviene digital. Reciba "Panorama" en colores por menos de una moneda para devenir abonado digital.".......

I find it useful especially por non-english" scientists or somthing like that for making a "resumé" or "summary" or "abstract" of the original article. I suppose they feel more "independent" from other "imprerialistic" language. But the bulk ans stability of Esperanto literature, machine translators, dictionarys etc. etc. is overwhelming as compared with Interlingua. And also the "never-ending" arguments about the ACCUSATIVE -N (which I so much like and sometimes so useful is). And in Ido, besides the above mentioned "-n", for me and many others from here in the West, "chipa" (from "cheap") is easily understood, but I think ordinary Chinese people etc. would prefer "malkara" and not have to learn a NEW word.
ktp.

Friendly greetings

Eduardo

unpensador:
You are quite wrong. I have studied Interlingua for a couple of weeks and FOR ME IS EXTREMELY EASY, but I don't like it and it has big faults.

I was not attempting to advocate the use of Interlingua as a world language. I was simply stating my opinion that if left in a passive state, it might have been more widely adopted. While "demonstrably better" and "easier to use" are good, saturation tends to rule the day.

If you need some examples, see the prevalence of the Microsoft Windows operating system or even the current state of English as the world language.

When I was deciding which language I wanted to learn, I did evaluate Interlingua (amongst others).

The reason that I chose Esperanto over Interlingua is simply because there seemed to be soooo much more Esperanto material to work with.

I had visited what appeared to me to be the Interlingua "main" site, and while it looked interesting, it was all in Interlingua. There were no options for reading it in English, and while I could pick out words here and there, most of it was pretty opaque to me, and so it looked like a heck of a lot of work just to visit the place. I didn't see ANY "start here" sorts of links, and it just didn't seem like they were all that interested in acquiring new speakers. If you didn't already speak it, (it seemed) it wasn't for you.

Lernu, on the other hand, was much more easily accessible, and contained so much more introductory material (in a language I actually speak - English) that getting started was a breeze. Although I ended up learning Esperanto using the "Teach Yourself Esperanto" book, rather than with the Lernu materials, it just seemed like there was more going on with Esperanto. Lernu (I think) does a really good job at getting complete newbies up to speed. I didn't get an impression of anywhere near that level of support from the Interlingua sites I visited.

Esperanto good - Interlingua, Klingon, Ido, Volapuk ktp bad - all gobbledygook.

Simples!

For me, who didn't learn any Romance language, only Latin and Esperanto, Interlingua isn't easier to read than e.g. French or Italian - I understand a fair amount of it, but I always have to use a dictionary and it's going very slowly.

For the cited sentence

Panorama deveni digital
Recipe Panorama in colores ante omne alteres pro minus de moneta per devenir abonato digital.

I needed a minute to understand it and I'm still not sure whether I really got it.

There is barely any linguistic advantage of Interlingua IMHO, and there are many open questions (e.g. what to do in case of norm collisions between the control languages), so that I can't consider it a serious competitor for an international auxiliary language (Interlingua BTW is based on the hypothesis that an IAL is impossible).