A group of people that I was among at a restaurant today included a lady who told me that she knows an 'Interlingua bigot' who tried to propagandise her. I said that I would try to find material comparing E-o and Interlingua. We have the observations of the late great Don Harlow, of course, which I can notify her of immediately, but if anyone has good references or ideas, by all means write them here. I'll send the information to the lady who made the enquiry, once there's a reasonable amount of material.

Well, from what I've read, EO and Interlingua have almost entirely different goals. Comparing them would be somewhat pointless. For example, I believe Interlingua isn't even designed to be a spoken language, it's more for scientists and doctors to use in their technical publications.

Ne ĝusta, mi pensas...

They both have kind of the end goal of being spoken as a world language, by all kinds of uloj

Where things get a bit like apples and oranges is the way both languages attempt to achieve that. EO is more regular and I suppose more neutral grammatically speaking. Interlingua was designed using several romance (and possibly 2~3 non-romance backup) source languages with the purpose of creating a European language that is instantly understandable to the large amount of people who speak them.

The problem with the whole Apple and Oranges comparison is that people often desire a different fruit, something that's more in-between

However I can kind of compare them directly-

Interlingua is easy when compared to living romance grammar, and quite understandable upon first glance (probably more so than EO), the problem is that it's so darn irregular - unlike English which uses double consonants often to change vowel length, this language just uses them because the look familiar. Pronunciation isn't simple either and I personally find that it sounds a bit unnatural (or incomprehensible) when compared to the written version, more so than EO which many people have commented that it sounds a bit odd (mostly youtubers ). EO is much better because you can practically spell the language from the audio (that's one of the lernu! exercises isn't it?).

For me personally, they're both too darn complicated and completely ignore my laws of brevity . But EO is my favourite personally, interlingua is like learning latin words for me, it's meant to be spoken and written in a certain way but it just looks so scientific that I feel the need horribly anglicise it

Now for some links for Miland:

Usual Antimoon forum rubbish. Russo-Polish influence apparently doesn't sound like a real language.

Antimoon guest:

-Romance words look softer and sound cooler and Slavic word not quite -

For a Maori or Hawaiian speaker Romance words look harsh and full of consonants LOL

This person said exactly what I wanted to say

Wikipedia article which compares the two. Funny line here mentions that Gode saw an un-neutral approach more possible, where as the Union Mundial pro Interlingua website calls IL perfectly neutral - someone's missing some info somewhere.

Similar Wiki article for EO vs. Ido comparison if anyone's interested

One final big issue with IL - it's said that you can use it to communicate with people who speak a romance language, but seriously - who is going to reply to someone who's speaking some artificial Latin clone? Maybe if you were Italian in Argentina and they recognised your language and decided to have a go at inter-lingual conversation. But if you're speaking something that sounds like French, Spanish and Italian combined, it's like speaking Scottish English mixed in with Tok Pisin, Japanese English some South African slang and then expecting English speakers in India to understand you.

"Hello laddie, mi dok i stap in za back o' mi bakkie, i stap sleepin an' snoring like dai youkai zat he is mate."

ceigered:

Thanks, that looks very helpful, especially the wiki article.

It makes me think that we should ban things like Interlingua from the internet. They give people, especially the english and french speaking, a very skewed view of constructed languages.

Some interesting academic articles about Interlingua from Don Harlow's site:

Whorfian linguistic relativism and constructed languages, by W. A. Verloren van Themaat:
http://www.donharlow.org/Languages/themaat.html

Neo-Romanticism in Language Planning, by Edo Bernasconi: http://www.donharlow.org/Languages/novlatin.html

The Neo-Romance Languages, by Edo Bernasconi: http://www.donharlow.org/Languages/novlatin2.html

The Gode-Lapenna Debate, correspondence initiated and collected by Floyd Hardin: http://www.donharlow.org/Languages/debate.html

Those would suffice, I think.

@ Rogir's comment:
LOL! (or should I say, REL?)

patrik:Some interesting academic articles about Interlingua from Don Harlow's site..

Thanks, the one about the Gode-Lapenna debate reminded me of Auld's letter which I read a few years ago!

One major problem with learning Interlingua. What happens when someone speaks back to you?

Suppose you go to France and you speak fluent Interlingua. Suppose you find a Frenchman who wasn't offended that you'd butchered his beautiful language. Suppose he actually understood everything he said. Now suppose he starts talking back to you. Do you really think you'll understand him as well as he understood you?

Now repeat that for Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and Italian.

I think I'll stick with Esperanto!

I overlooked this one:

Five Theses to Hammer on the Gates of Babel, by Dr. Alexander Gode:
http://donh.best.vwh.net/Languages/theses.html

And you're welcome, Miland.