Interlingua sounds pretty interesting. I like the idea of being able to travel through Europe and communicate with Italian, French, and Spanish speakers, if only at a rough level. I am not sure how well it actually works though. Anyone have experience with it?

edit: The again, most of them probably speak English. I forget that most people aren't monolingual like myself.

Ironically I've found Interlingua easier since I learnt Esperanto... So who knows .

It's certainly a nice planned language, in terms of usefullness, well, you'll have decide on that yourself depending on whether you want to use it as an aid to learn other romance languages, or if you just want to know a romance language but don't plan on using it conversationally (e.g. just to learn the way the things work in those languages), or whether you would like another auxiliary language alongside Esperanto (in which case their are many other choices like Lingua Franca Nova, or you might just want to have Esperanto by itself).

To be perfectly honest though, there's the risk that using Interlingua as a way to get by in romance countries with rough romance-language skills might backfire - after all, if someone came up to you in the street and started speaking something that sounded like a mix between English, Scots, Dutch and Norwegian, you might understand him but it'd be very awkward. Generally, I think it's safe to assume that if you're going travelling, you should expect only to use English/Esperanto/Interlingua with people who have learnt them, more due to social reasons or because people might be busy and don't want to decipher foreign-sounding registers.

Here's a link Miland once posted on these forums:
http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/EBook/chap03.ht...

Hello Brad!

Interlingua may certainly an interesting option for interacting with for instance Europeans. There is an Interlingua Wikipedia at

http://ia.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principal

There is evidently the page of Interlingua at

http://www.interlingua.com/

Sincerely,

Martin

BradP:Interlingua sounds pretty interesting. I like the idea of being able to travel through Europe and communicate with Italian, French, and Spanish speakers, if only at a rough level. I am not sure how well it actually works though. Anyone have experience with it?

edit: The again, most of them probably speak English.

Ha, ha. Don't expect a comfy gap-less english-bridge language situation. Knowing "Sorry" and "Thank you" phrases of the regarding countries could be a good opener instead of ambushing unsuspecting non-English Europeans with native English talking. You could get fail in France . But don't worry, you will find your way around, but probably you will have to speed down and simplify your English means will need lots of patience.

In my opinion it's better actually to learn a romance language than to learn Interlingua. Italian and Spanish are mutually intelligible to a limited degree, and if you speak one, a speaker of the other will probably be able to understand you if you're talking about something basic (and perhaps they will even speak the other one). Or else French is still a very useful information for Western Europe, and also useful in many parts of Africa.

It's better to speak bad Spanish (French, Italian, Catalan, whatever) than to bother with Interlingua, in my opinion.

ceigered:
To be perfectly honest though, there's the risk that using Interlingua as a way to get by in romance countries with rough romance-language skills might backfire - after all, if someone came up to you in the street and started speaking something that sounded like a mix between English, Scots, Dutch and Norwegian, you might understand him but it'd be very awkward.

Haha, yeah. While I was thinking about it I went to the Scots Wikipedia, and it immediately made me start laughing. Not that it is a bad language, but I just found the fact that it was borderline English incredibly amusing for some reason.

It more so just makes me feel safe, that if I would need to speak to someone, to ask where a safe place to stay is, or something necessary, then I would have a backdrop. I am actually not going to Europe (probably) any time soon. But it would also be fun to just try out with friends I think.

It might take me a while to achieve bad Spanish, as I have barely attained a bad grasp of Esperanto. I'm just not enjoying any type of studying very much. I think a big part is that I don't like to study in front of the computer.

Well as Erinja said, an actual Romance language if you have the time is by far the best option (I'm impartial to Italian, as Italian's closest to French out of the rest, and it's fairly intelligible with Spanish. The big hitter here is that with a bad romance language skills, you've got more chance understanding what they say back to you (It's all well and good knowing Interlingua, until you get hit with an irregularity, nuance or unique feature from the average romance language, and they have quite a few, for example Portuguese's articles are not "el" or "la" or "le", but "o", "a", "os", "as", etc. In french, "le" + "à" (at/to) = au, but "la" + "à" = à la, and in italian, in + definite article gives you this:
in + il = nel
in + lo = nello
in + l' = nell'
in + i = nei
in + gli = negli
in + la = nella
in + le = nelle
*wipes sweat from brow, drinks some powerade* )

So, there's the risk that they might be able to understand you (let's face it, it's Europe, linguistically, there's so much variation I'm sure most are use to almost anything), but then if they reply in proper Spanish/Italian/French you might be standing there going "what are they saying" due to their accent not exactly conforming to Interlinguic standards .

And like qwertz said - in France they might just go "Très bien, mais une autre personne stupide anglaise." (great, yet another silly English person )

All that said, your experience might be completely different. Or you might want to learn Interlingua with a smattering of every romance language and of German (German's useful I hear in Europe) and you might do quite well. And another Interlingua speaker probably won't hurt, since the role of Interlingua, Folkspraak etc is to help bring these closely related speaker-communities together and give people a chance to overcome what small differences we have between each other (similar to Esperanto on the small scale). But just be aware that like how in an English speaking country, there can be negative stigma towards immigrants who don't learn English perfectly, it's definitely in Europe/the rest of the world as well :-/ (less so in touristy places for understandable reasons)

erinja:In my opinion it's better actually to learn a romance language than to learn Interlingua. Italian and Spanish are mutually intelligible to a limited degree, and if you speak one, a speaker of the other will probably be able to understand you if you're talking about something basic (and perhaps they will even speak the other one). Or else French is still a very useful information for Western Europe, and also useful in many parts of Africa.

It's better to speak bad Spanish (French, Italian, Catalan, whatever) than to bother with Interlingua, in my opinion.

You know, it's funny. When I travelled to Italy with my parents, my mother got by speaking a lot of Spanish in markets and other places when she didn't know the Italian.

Like you said, though, it is better to actually learn some of the language spoken in the place where you're visiting. Maybe use your Esperanto to get friends and guides, because I assume more people speak Esperanto than Interlingua (correct me if I'm wrong), but also know enough of the native language that non-Esperantists don't think you're useless.

I've done fine using Italian in Spain, on a limited basis, and I've done plenty of using Yiddish in Germany, taking care to avoid the Slavic- and Hebrew-derived vocabulary words.

The plus to choosing a national (vs. international or constructed) language is that maybe whoever you're talking to will speak it. Europeans often speak more than one language. Interlingua is easily understood passively but not so easy to learn to actually speak, so I don't know that you'd even save yourself ever so much time by studying Interlingua instead of studying a commonly-spoken Romance language.

BradP:edit: The again, most of them probably speak English. I forget that most people aren't monolingual like myself.

I meant to respond to this part before, or I supposed that someone else would answer, but I haven't seen it addressed.

Do not assume that Europeans will speak English. If you assume this, you will truly have some bad surprises. It's not true in Western Europe, and it's most certainly not true in Eastern Europe, particularly with the older generation. Rules of thumb (no offense to anyone here) - the more north you are in Europe, and the more west, the more people will speak English. The more south, and the more east, the fewer will speak English. Yes, nearly all Europeans seem to speak more than one language, at least to a degree, and at least the people living in cities. But in rural areas they could well be monolingual. And don't assume that the foreign language they studied in school was English. They may have studied Spanish, French, or German in school. They may speak one or two foreign languages fluently, but still speak no English.

I had some personal experience with this in Switzerland. Wealthy, western, industrialized country. I was in Bern, the capital. Everyone speaks English, right? Nope. I met an Esperantist who speaks Esperanto perfectly, plus at least three other languages (German, Russian, presumably French, and probably Swiss German as well, which differs significantly from standard written German). He didn't speak English. Not to any level, at any rate. Very highly educated person, had travelled a lot, but didn't want to visit the US because he didn't have even the minimal language of language skills needed to travel as a tourist. Second experience in Bern - I was in a bakery in the city center, looking to buy a couple of things. I had some questions and I didn't know how to ask them in my (very poor) Yiddish, to the German-speaking cashier. English? Nope. Italian to the rescue! She spoke Italian and I was able to get my questions answered and make sure I bought what I wanted.