InsaneInter:It's like saying Afrikaans is better than Dutch.

Whenever I hear Afrikaans I'm reminded of the claim that the ĥ sound in Esperanto is too difficult. It's an incredibly common sound in Afrikaans (along with the schwa, which isn't in Esperanto at all. Popido, anyone?)

InsaneInter:You seem to be right about the Ido thing though. It seems tight, but it's annoying how they say how much "better" it is than Esperanto. They look a lot alike to me, and Ido is based off it. It's like saying Afrikaans is better than Dutch. Basically, it screams "Esperanto SUX!! Ido RULEZZZ!!!!" Childish.

I am not committed to either Esperanto or Ido, but for many years I have chided Ido advocates for their attitude. They keeping going on about "Esperanto reformed" or "Esperanto improved" when they should just promote their language and quit denigrating others.

That said, there are various online forums conducted entirely in Interlingua (to which I myself am partial) or Ido. This being lernu! however, I don't know whether I should promote them here.

I would suggest Interlingua : it has a decent (and growing) following and an active community, including printed books, conferences, magazines, and podcasts. There's a lot of information and learning materials available as well, including my Interlingua-English dictionary (similar to my Esperanto-English dictionary).

One of the biggest advantages of Interlingua is that it can be useful even with non-Interlingua speakers. It's understandable (written and spoken) to many speakers of Romance languages without any study whatsoever.

It's also a very practically-oriented language : there is no "movado" or ideology associated with it.

Take a look at the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

Amike,
Paul

brw1:Interlingua is finitely better if you speak French,Spanish,or any other romance language you will understand both spoken and writen Interlingua fluently without study. Matter of Fact studying it will be a matter of reading and listening to conversations and learning alphabet. Ido seems to be Esperanto with a twist to me! See Esperanto language topic on Ido.

I think that isn´t true. I speak very well spanish and Esperanto, but my mother language is german. I dont´t understand spoken and written Interlingua. So I think only native speakers of spanish or italian can understand written and spoken Interlingua.

I would prefer learn Ido than Interlingua, because with a little bit of effort it is possible to understand written and spoken Ido very fast. Only later I would learn Interlingua, but just for fun. I believe that the combination of English and Esperanto is the best combination if you don´t prefer a special country or language. Esperanto is the only planned language with is really useful.

pdenisowski:Take a look at the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

I think the reason I went the Esperanto route instead of the Interlingua route is because Lernu is a very welcoming site for beginners.

I tell you, from where I sit, the Interlingua site is not.

The only English I can find on that site is Welcome to the website of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua, containing information on the international auxiliary language Interlingua, and a one-page presentation* that is mostly just general "marketing" information about Interlingua. Everything else is presented IN Interlingua.

Now, I get that the Interlinguists (or whatever they call themselves) believe that their language is simply so easy and obvious that anyone can just jump right in whether they know it or not, so there's no apparent need to provide introductory material in any national language. Or maybe they don't think that, but simply aren't interested in providing an easy path to entry. In either case, I personally find their website as - intentionally or not - built to repel new speakers rather than to invite them in. Interlingua is maybe not quite as intuitively obvious to all non-speakers as its speakers think it is.

If I were your typical English-speaking monoglot wanting to pick up a second language, and that page was where I found myself, I would run screaming from it. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration; I wouldn't actually be screaming. But I wouldn't be learning Interlingua either. Beginners who don't know a language (especially if they only know their native language) tend to find huge blocks of text in that unknown language intimidating, and that's the wrong introductory impression any auxiliary language should make.

Which was my experience, many years ago, and which is why I now speak Esperanto.

I've got nothing against Interlingua, and if people want to learn it I say go for it. It actually does look like a pretty cool language. I just wish the Interlingua set would build something a little friendlier to non-speakers. The way Lernu is.

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* Which does contain a link to "materials in English", which, when clicked on, leads to a page entirely in Interlingua. Guys. C'mon. Don't make us puzzle it out. Hold our hands. That's how you get new speakers interested. Something like Illo vole cambiar su nomine in interlingua: Libere Burgo - lifted directly off the main Interlingua page, linked to above - may as well be Latin as far as it goes. Utterly impenetrable (to me, at least); I literally haven't the faintest idea what two-thirds of those words mean. That's not the way to reel 'em in.

RiotNrrd:

pdenisowski:Take a look at the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

I think the reason I went the Esperanto route instead of the Interlingua route is because Lernu is a very welcoming site for beginners.

I tell you, from where I sit, the Interlingua site is not.

The only English I can find on that site is Welcome to the website of the Union Mundial pro Interlingua, containing information on the international auxiliary language Interlingua, and a one-page presentation* that is mostly just general "marketing" information about Interlingua. Everything else is presented IN Interlingua.

Now, I get that the Interlinguists (or whatever they call themselves) believe that their language is simply so easy and obvious that anyone can just jump right in whether they know it or not, so there's no apparent need to provide introductory material in any national language. Or maybe they don't think that, but simply aren't interested in providing an easy path to entry. In either case, I personally find their website as - intentionally or not - built to repel new speakers rather than to invite them in. Interlingua is maybe not quite as intuitively obvious to all non-speakers as its speakers think it is.

If I were your typical English-speaking monoglot wanting to pick up a second language, and that page was where I found myself, I would run screaming from it. Well, maybe that's a slight exaggeration; I wouldn't actually be screaming. But I wouldn't be learning Interlingua either. Beginners who don't know a language (especially if they only know their native language) tend to find huge blocks of text in that unknown language intimidating, and that's the wrong introductory impression any auxiliary language should make.

Which was my experience, many years ago, and which is why I now speak Esperanto.

I've got nothing against Interlingua, and if people want to learn it I say go for it. It actually does look like a pretty cool language. I just wish the Interlingua set would build something a little friendlier to non-speakers. The way Lernu is.

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* Which does contain a link to "materials in English", which, when clicked on, leads to a page entirely in Interlingua. Guys. C'mon. Don't make us puzzle it out. Hold our hands. That's how you get new speakers interested. Something like Illo vole cambiar su nomine in interlingua: Libere Burgo - lifted directly off the main Interlingua page, linked to above - may as well be Latin as far as it goes. Utterly impenetrable (to me, at least); I literally haven't the faintest idea what two-thirds of those words mean. That's not the way to reel 'em in.

Then there's the thing that learning materials are available only to a handful of languages — mine not included. I would be interested otherwise. Esperanto really has really big lead in terms of learning materials availability to many languages.

It is still very tiny percent of world's languages, though. Still beats almost any natural language.

RiotNrrd:I've got nothing against Interlingua, and if people want to learn it I say go for it. It actually does look like a pretty cool language. I just wish the Interlingua set would build something a little friendlier to non-speakers. The way Lernu is.

If I got it right. Most Interlingua folks are not English natives. Someones can not expect that these folks will create learning material in English first, isn't? Generally you seem to have missed their book delivery service Servicio de Libros UMI. There also English natives can find teaching book 'Interlingua Today, a course for beginners' which costs 16 Euro plus delivery. You're right, they should put it online for free.

However, if you want to promote your language, it is useful to include some introductory materials in a couple of widely spoken languages, such as English. You have to go through some levels of Interlingua-only menus to find the free Interlingua course on the website, which is a poor way to promote your language. Lots of people visit only the title page of a site and never move beyond that, so if you're requiring a ton of clicks in a foreign language, you're going to lose a lot of people. They would do well to have, as a bare minimum, a phrase in several languages on the homepage, saying "click here for information in [language]", leading to a page with a basic description of what Interlingua is, and a link to a course.

Take a look at this and then decide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latino_Sine_Flexione
I think I will stick with Esperanto to satiate my "international language" cravings. Ido might be good when translating fiction into Esperanto from another language - as a sort of "dialect" of Esperanto - like when people speak in the dialect of an ethnic language, a sort of non-mainstream dialect. Interlingua/Interlingue/Latino sine flexione (etc.) could be useful when trying to reflect in translation texts from a "long lost language" into Esperanto to represent a form of "pra-esperanto" - like inscriptions on a pottery shard or the inscriptions on a sunken temple. But I agree with non-latinate "mother-tongue-lings" that Interlingua is def NOT easy to understand at a glance - and I speak pretty good French, Spanish, and Portuguese and can mumble my way through Italian (and I took 4 years of Latin sometime during the last century when I was in elementary school).
One more thought: if you want a real living language that is sort of Interlingua-like, try Papiamento: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papiamento - and then book a flight to Aruba or Curacao to practice - maybe with some rum drink in the left hand and the Papiamento phrase book in the right.