Talk:Interlingua/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between 13 Apr 2001 and 20 Nov 2005.

Contents

Old discussion

Can someone please put some IPA into that section on pronunciation so I know what the hell you lot are going on about! Nicholas 16:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

If you do, you're going to be assigning unofficial values, which essentially means it'd be describing a language created by whomever added the IPA set. The designers of Interlingua never defined it with IPA symbols, instead using textual descriptions. Almafeta 06:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I moved a paragraph of personal experiences, which was too valuable to delete, to a "commentary" page under the name of its author. That brings up a policy question: should one create commentary pages like that for others, or just suggest that they do it themselves? I'm inclined toward the bolder option: do what you think is right, and let them fix it if they object. --LDC

Where do manufactured languages created only to allow machine assisted inter-language translation fit in?

Added category on Artificial languages for these, feel free to add some.

There is, incidentally, space for an Interlingua wikipedia...

And today it's growing!  :) Almafeta 14:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

I wondered about words that were present in Germanic and Slavic languages (English, German and Russian) but not any of the Romance languages. Examples: Eng: Swine, De: Schwein, Ru: Svinyja (Il: svin/swin?) or Eng: Snow, De: Schnee, Ru: Sneg (Il: sneg?) (Both from common Indo-European roots). It would seem those words usually wouldn't be eligible as Interlingua vocabulary? (Of course, these concepts already have the suitable words "porco" and "nive".)

Check out Folkspraak, the Germanic equivalent of Interlingua. -- Dissident (Talk) 18:58, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I am a member of the Yahoo group... =P Anyway, it seems that I misunderstood, and since German and Russian only are secondary languages for choosing vocabulary, this method wouldn't generally hold any validity in Interlingua anyway.

For some reason people want article to say that Interlingua is based on "European languages". It's clearly not, not was it intended to be: it's a Romance pidgin, common vocab with just enough grammar to hold it together. Gode even referred to those who wanted to make Interlingua a full-fledged language "Esperantists".

You're misrepresenting Gode here. The pejorative "Esperantists" was applied by him to ideologues who wanted to push the language as a universal language for international communication. -- Dissident (Talk) 20:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Okay. Could you clarify Gode's intentions then? Did he want to create an easily understandable pan-Romance vocabulary, or a written language that wasn't intended to be spoken, or maybe a pan-Romance language for international communication? Maybe it's more complicated than that, but it seems to me that if he wasn't after international communication, then his goal wasn't to create a full-fledged language. kwami 20:59, 2005 May 18 (UTC)
Take a look at the article on Alexander Gode. Interlingua was foremost meant as an as objective as possible registration of the "international" vocabulary (with corresponding grammar), which happens to be mostly based on the Romance language family, exactly because it was so influential on the European languages of other families. As a result of this, Interlingua should make it possible for people already familiar with one existing Romance language to comfortably communicate with each other, including through speech.
In my opinion, Interlingua is as close to a full-fledged language a constructed one can be, because any possible existing incompleteness could be remedied with the help of the established methodologies and the existing control languages.
I refer you to the Interlingua-English dictionary and the Interlingua Grammar for more info. -- Dissident (Talk) 22:45, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Just as an aside, it seems Gode changed his mind later; in the preface to the second edition of the Interlingua-English dictionary (1971), he states "Twenty years ago the Interlingua-English Dictionary was the product of a linguistic research venture; today it is an established tool of international communication." Almafeta 17:57, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Kwamikagami?

(I'm assuming that the above was Kwamikagami... you didn't sign the edit. nn;)

You shouldn't take Gode's comments as the true bible on Interlingua, when he neither created the language originally nor has been a factor in its evolution for the past 35 years.

  • The 'control languages' that Interlingua tries to accomodate have varied over the years, and are not primarially Romantic in nature, as you suggest. (As to my personal experiences, I have learned Interlingua from a pure English background.) As well as removing Italian's influence from the language, there have been recent arguments to include Hindi or Arabic as control languages. (Unfortunately, the UMI in its current incarnation is monolitically slow to make decision, but at least that'll keep it from falling the way Ido did in the 30s with its superfrequent revisions.)
  • There actually *is* a system for derivation of new words, but it is rarely used. This may be where you have got the 'double-stem verb' idea, since each verb can have its own stem change for derivation; these stems are not used today for forming past participles.
  • You also took out the elements relating to Interlingua's learning speed, its relation to Novial, and its relation to Occidental, all of which are important to understanding the language's history.
  • I'm also not sure where the 'passive use only' thing came from.
  • You took out that Interlingua's four irregular verbs are all optional conjugations, for elision and euphony.

Do you have anything against Interlingua? Maybe not directly, but a desire to push another interlanguage?

I take it you are an Idist... well, as long as we are both updating this page, shall we try to get it to featured article level? Almafeta 14:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Yep, that's me. No, I'm not an Idist. I know Esperanto reasonably well, but I like IL for itself. It is fun to pick up something in a language you hardly know and be able to read it! As for pushing another language, I would suggest teaching Espo in elementary schools, but that's because of its propedeutic value, whereas IL requires an existing knowledge of a Romance language to be really accessible. But I'm not trying to push another language here, I just think we should be up front about the realities of the language, which is a problem with all of the conlang articles.
Also, I only know IL from the basic IALA publications. It sounds like you know a lot more about the community and recent developments, so I'll defer to your expertise. I couldn't come close to writing a featured article. But I think we should at least lay out the details. I'll try to address your questions:
  • Control languages: from the original publications, it didn't seem that any secondary control language was at all important, except perhaps in deciding which Romance root to choose (head: capit or testa? etc), or maybe in the spelling or exact form. They don't supply any words to speak of. The vocab I've seen is well over 90% Latin-Romance (probably closer to 99%), and that is especially true of the most common words. I think that was my main objection to the article as I found it: it gave the impression that IL had significant Germanic or Slavic influences, and even explicitly stated that it was a pan-European language. Let me say that I read the same kind of nonsense about Esperanto, by people trying to show how universal it is: that the morphology is Turkic, or that it has East Asian adjectival verbs, etc., which is bunk. Espo is clearly Slavic/Romance/Germanic, with at best a hint of Semitic (in the jussive mood). IL is just as clearly pan-Western Romance (i.e., the dialect continuum from Italian to Portuguese, but not Romanian etc.). Or at least it was, in IALA's publications. It it's no longer primarily Western Romance, then there's been a vast restructuring of the language, and we should detail how and when this change took place, and state that the IALA publications are no longer a reliable introduction to the language. What do the new control languages add? If, say, Arabic, Persian, Hindi/Urdu, Malay, Hausa, and Swahili were used, the 3 rule would mean lots of common Arabic words would qualify for inclusion. But would these actually be used? Would they replace Romance words? Would people start saying rafik for "friend"? If not, and there were only a thin veneer of specialized vocab of Arabic origin, then I think we'd still have to say IL is a Western Romance language.
  • Derivation: I think we should separate theory from fact. In Espo, people claim the script is phonemic/phonetic (take your pick) because it's "defined" that way. Or that the grammar is regular by definition. Again, that's bunk. I've revised the Espo articles to say the script is nearly phonemic, and discussed voicing assimilation etc, and people objected rather indignantly that that's not "correct" Espo. But it doesn't matter: that's how people speak. The rules on paper are irrelevant if people don't follow them. The same's true for IL derivation: do people actually use vade for "go"? If people say va (and that's certainly my impression), then the verb is irregular. Sure, you could say vade yourself, but I imagine it would throw people for a second, which means that the regular forms disrupt fluency. And when listening or reading, you need to know the irregular forms. So you really can't just pretend the verb is regular and get away with it. (And really, who's going to bother with only a handful of irregular verbs?)
As for regular word derivation, again, it simply isn't used much. It's quite striking how nearly every IL word is a separate borrowing. You need to know all the irregular forms to understand the language, and when people go to all that effort, they tend to use them themselves. Especially when they're considered "naturalistic". I didn't describe the two-stem verbs (scrib-/script- etc) very well, but I think that it should be mentioned prominently. A lot of people seem to want to hide that, as if it's embarrassing. But it's entirely in line with the philosophy of IL, which is that irregularities are justified in a "naturalistic" language. And again, this is what people use. Something similar happens in Espo: Europeans borrow tons of Greco-Latin technical vocabulary because they're comfortable with it, confuse "international" with "universal", and don't want to go to the effort of deriving Espo equivalents; whereas Asians complain that all the redundant European vocabulary bogs the language down and makes it increasingly inaccessible to non-Europeans. These are important issues that shouldn't be swept under the rug.
  • Learning speed: I think that a claim that the irregular vocabulary improves learning time shouldn't be made unless there's some evidence for it. Sure, it improves passive legibility for those who know a Western Romance language, but knowing a language is a lot more than being able to read a newsletter. Do the irregularities help with production? That is, is it easier to hold a conversation because of them? If so, we should say so explicitly (and also why we believe it's true); if not, we should drop it, or else repeat the point about it helping passive comprehension.
As for Novial, I didn't understand the point you were trying to make. Many conlangs have productive derivation, so I listed Espo, Ido, and Novial at the first mention of Novial, and removed the second. If you want to discuss the influence of Novial on IL, great, but it's a little odd to hold it up as the example of regular conlang derivation when it never had much success as a conlang. I don't recall removing any discussion of IL's relationship to Occidental. Sorry, that's certainly relevant and should be in the article, maybe in a section on the history.
  • Passive use: I've read several opinions that IL was meant primarily for passive use, and that's certainly consistent with the structure of the language. You also see this in claims that IL is the most widely understood conlang, as if comprehension were all that mattered. You see it in people praising the language for being so easy to understand (by which they mean 'easy to read'). People are counted as "knowing" the language when they can't speak it. That's what I mean by passive. Of course, passive knowledge is easier than active production in any language, natural or constructed, but you wouldn't count someone as an Esperantist or Idist if they couldn't communicate! The passivity seems to be exteme in IL. You see this in the skimpy syntax of the IALA publications ("as in French or Spanish" - as if they were the same thing!), and in instructions like, Pronounce C "as in your own language". This was clearly not a language designed for active conversation, but for passive understanding of scientific articles, etc. This seems clear in Gode's whole approach. IL works very well for what it was designed for, and that's why people like it so much, but it wasn't meant to be a reformed Esperanto or Ido.
Now that Gode's influence has waned, this may no longer be the case, but IALA's version of IL wasn't a fully developed language: it was a constructed pidgin. I'm not saying it isn't a full-fledged language today, but if it is, we should discuss how and when this occurred, just as we would in a discussion about a creole. Tok Pisin has gone from being a pidgin like IALA's Interlingua to a creole at a similar degree of development as Esperanto, for example, and any good discussion of Tok Pisin covers that transition. If IL is currently making that journey (creolising, in effect), we should detail it as well: discuss how the pronunciation was standardized (if it ever was), how the syntax was filled out and made explicit and complete, how the semantics developed, etc.
I think we should also describe what goes on at the IL conferences. Have you ever been to one? At Volapuk conferences they spoke in German; when they tried Volapuk, things started falling apart. At Ido conferences, I understand that they argued about how best to reform Espo/Ido. People often attend Espo conferences, on the other hand, in order to gain fluency in the language, and it's considered bad form to use your native language. What about Interlingua? Do people converse effectively and spontaneously in the language? Is it considered bad form to speak anything other than IL? Or is IL only used for greetings and speeches, with much of the talk on the floor in English or Swedish? Either way, we should illustrate this (if we - by which I mean you! - can), as such 'language in use' is just as important to understanding a language as are verbal paradigms.
  • Optional conjugations: as above; the "optional" irregularities are the de-facto norm, and are not optional when it comes to reading, so calling them optional without further explanation seriously misrepresents the language.
—kwami 21:34, 2005 May 10 (UTC)


Ido conferences are like the Esperanto ones, but smaller. They also frown on the use of national languages. Considering the vast majority of Idists used to be Esperantists, that's no surprise. I've never been to an Interlingua conference, however. (unsigned)

Response to Kwamikagami

Wow. We've got lots to talk about -- and this is an awkwards place to do it. @_@ Anyhow...

  • "Control languages: from the original publications, it didn't seem that any secondary control language was at all important, except perhaps in deciding which Romance root to choose (head: capit or testa? etc), or maybe in the spelling or exact form. They don't supply any words to speak of. The vocab I've seen is well over 90% Latin-Romance (probably closer to 99%), and that is especially true of the most common words. I think that was my main objection to the article as I found it: it gave the impression that IL had significant Germanic or Slavic influences, and even explicitly stated that it was a pan-European language." At the time, it was rather romantic; both English (the primary Germanic influence) and Russian (the sole Slavic influence) were both heavily influenced by French. However, although the vocabulary may be mostly Romantic (I'd plug it at about 90-95%, but not 100%), the grammar is heavily based on English and German. Compare the verb tenses and clause rules of Interlingua to those of German and English, and then to those of French or Spanish. The primary ways that Interlingua's grammar deviates from the germanic languages is that you can't insert the object between the verb and preposition, and that you must put a word before a clause (this is directly from the romance languages).
And regarding roots, here's an amusing anecdote: For a while, Dutch was a secondary control language, and in very rare circumstances, a Dutch root could slip through the word creation process unaltered. Many of those words were changed, but some were not, and if you look through the Interlingua dictionary, about 5 of these 50,000 are unmodified Dutch. (Even today, the Dutch-Interlingua dictionary has 140,000 entries to English's 50,000, so there may be even more examples of germanic roots entering Interlingua by way of Dutch.)
  • "If you want to discuss the influence of Novial on IL, great, but it's a little odd to hold it up as the example of regular conlang derivation when it never had much success as a conlang." I used it specifically because many others who are also students or creators of conlangs are familiar with Novial, and one that's respected enough so that it's had three different groups in the last ten years try to 'revitalise' the language. Success as a conlang is rather relative -- Volapük was rarely used, but the fact that an artifical language was used for international communications at all made it a success.
  • "You see this in the skimpy syntax of the IALA publications ("as in French or Spanish" - as if they were the same thing!), and in instructions like, Pronounce C "as in your own language". This was clearly not a language designed for active conversation, but for passive understanding of scientific articles, etc. Those are the rules from the thirty-minute Interlingua pamphlets -- much like the much-touted "sixteen rules of Esperanto." Of course, being able to speak Esperanto requires more knowledge of grammar than sixteen rules! As far as I know, the full grammar of Interlingua has only been published on paper, with only such skimpy beginner-friendly guidelines as given above. The closest thing I have seen to an electronic version of the full 'official' grammar is portuguese alone.
  • "Optional conjugations: as above; the "optional" irregularities are the de-facto norm, and are not optional when it comes to reading, so calling them optional without further explanation seriously misrepresents the language." Not really. Personally, I use esse, habe, and vade in preference to es, ha, and va; they are understood as quickly as their contractions, and it's nice to be fully regular for the ease of new interlinguaphones. (In fact, the only time I see va used in Interlingua today is (1) to mark a future tense with va + infinitive, and (2) when someone is translating a song and absolutely needs to translate a syllable.)
  • "I think we should also describe what goes on at the IL conferences. Have you ever been to one?" No, and I doubt I will anytime soon -- most Interlingua conferences take place in Europe, and the Societate American pro Interlingua doesn't hold them at all. T_T From reports, most conversations take place in Interlingua. Getting personal again: I have had the pleasure of having a conversation in Interlingua with a girl from China over IMs. We shared no other language, and yet we were able to talk about our hobbies and our daily lives. That, in and of itself, helped make my time learning this language worth it -- communicating with someone I could not have otherwise.  :)

control languages

Hey Almafeta, I just added "primary" to "allowing those familiar with one of the primary control languages to read and understand it at first sight." It really should be "one of the Romance control languages", because familiarity with English is insufficient to allow Interlingua to be understood at first sight, but I know you'd just revert it. At least this way it doesn't suggest that a German or Russian speaker will find Interlingua to be transparent.

However, I imagine a Catalan or Sardinian speaker would have no problem. What, really, is your objection to the rather obvious fact that Interlingua is a Western Romance language? And please don't tell me the absence of verbal inflections for person makes the grammar Germanic; that's no more true than the claim that Esperanto's agglutinative morphology makes its grammar Turkic.

I'm afraid your approach could backfire. If someone who only knows English reads your description, they'll understand that they should be able to understand Interlingua without study. Then they'll look at the sample text, and realize that's false. Since this is the one thing they can judge for themself, it may cause them to dismiss the entire article as unreliable. kwami 20:40, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

Number of users

That bit about the number of users estimated at being from 50 to a few thousand is then followed by a statement that the Interlingua conference is attended by about 50 people. Where does the first number come from? I have no idea how someone could estimate the number of speakers based on the number that make the effort to attend a biannual conference. I find the number to always be at least four times that, and usually more. Mithridates 04:09, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Just because they attend the con doesn't mean they can speak the language -- go to any Esperanto con and you'll see what I mean. Reporting con attendance and reporting what people are estimating are two entirely different things. Almafeta 08:57, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

big POV issues

Excuse me for being frank, but this is the most slanted article I've read on wikipedia. The first example sentence of interlingua is clearly insulting Esperanto, and what's more, the article's section on pros and cons seems to be using weasel words and the straw man tactic. The article can be cleaned up to be something great, but as it stands now, it is propoganda.--67.184.163.248 00:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Ikiroid

I 'm going to attempt to neuter the insulting section. Can't have babies anymore but I hope it will be be acceptable to everyone.--Jondel 00:55, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Uh, there doesn't seem to be a need to remove more than this phrase:'were soon disillusioned.'. Can't seem to see any more POVs.--Jondel 01:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
Could we remove the POV notice, if there are no objections, I would like to remove it.--Jondel 00:22, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I think so too, remove it. Roger4911 07:32, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Tommorrow , I promise. Neutrality at its extreme. --Jondel 08:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The main POV I had complained about some time ago, trying to deny that IL is Romance based, no longer seems to be an issue. (Although I think it would be useful to word the classification as "Artificial (Romance based)" in the table as well.) The rest of the article is much improved over what I remember. However, a few questionable statements remain:
The article now says that IL is the "most developed (simplified) of the artificial languages". As an inherently unverifiable statement, that's pure POV. What is the definition of "developed"? And what is meant by "simplified" - especially considering that in the previous paragraph, it was stated that it was considered important to retain irregular morphology and spelling in IL - the opposite of what most people would consider simple. A bit later, "which makes it very natural" - the most abused word in IL discussions. Nothing comes to mind offhand, but it can't be hard to reword that to get the same point across, that IL is extremely accessible (or perhaps recognizable) to Western Europeans, or something along those lines. I think the intention is correct, only the wording POV.
"allowing those familiar with one of the primary control languages to read and understand it at first sight." No, I take issue with that. Almost at first sight, perhaps, or with very little study, but the little grammatical words trip up the novice, and a lot can depend on understanding them correctly. Sure, if you're only interested in the gist of a technical passage, it can be readily understood, but not if you truly wish to understand the language, or if the writer is not being very literal and concrete.
I don't see how "A second defense is that grammars and vocabulary lists are already available for Interlingua in two dozen languages" is a defence at all. IL could be translated into 5000 languages, but that has no effect on the nature of IL. It seems to be equating inherent accessibility with the simple availability of material. By that criterion, Mongol and Quechua are a far more accessible as international languages than IL!
"It is a lot easier to read Interlingua without training than to read Esperanto, which is a constructed language." We've forgotten here that we're only considering Western Europeans (though of course the statement is certainly true for them), but even aside from that, IL is also a constructed language.
Like I said, though, much better than before, and these are minor points and easily amended. kwami 08:41, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree, IL is romanced based. It is easy to read without training (I could read it instantly) if you know a lot of Spanish, a little French(ma- but , essey-e try), Italian or Latin(sed, ipso, ab , esser, etc). I can 't agree that Quechua or Mongol is far more accessible. A combination of Spanish or Italian or French is far more accessible. About less training, even with out the Romance languages, the grammar is too simple(? ) I confess I haven't seen Esparanto's to compare grammar simplicity. --Jondel 08:54, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, of course IL is more accessible. I was being facetious. One of the defences used in the article was that IL material is available in "two dozen languages", as if this were a big deal. Mongol and Quechua material is available in more languages than that, so by that definition... (I'm just trying to show that the argument is silly and should be removed.)
And yes, with a combination of Latin and Romance languages, IL is probably instantly accessible. But with knowledge of a single Romance language, I doubt it is. I could read it pretty well knowing French and Spanish, but the "little words" still tripped me up, and I had the constant feeling I was missing something. Rather like trying to read Portuguese with just a knowledge of Spanish: pretty easy, but you miss things, sometimes vital things. Maybe I'm just using a different threshold for understanding.
Do you mean that the grammar is so simplified that IL is defective as a language? Maybe. But when you tell people a language is "simple", especially a constructed language project, they don't expect to have to memorize irregular verbs! (Although I understand that has been reduced since Goode published.) Eo has other things that makes it less accessible, but all the verbs are morphologically regular. The only oddities are syntactic: the copula, which is weird in most languages, and some verbs such as "to smoke" which are ambiguously both transitive and intransitive. Less accessible from a Romance perspective, but more regular from everyone else's. I guess whether 'simple' means accessible or regular is in the mind of the beholder! (Might be better just to use more-precise words.) kwami 21:14, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Read and write, speak and understand.

The table says that total speakers, divided into first language and second language, is only 1500 people.

Who decided what rules this table shall follow? Is there a template for languages which causes this? Then that template is very questionable.

I think languages should be measured/reported in how many who can: 1: Understand the spoken language. 2: Understand the written language. 3: Speak the spoken language. 4: Write the written language.

For interlingua these numbers are: 1: 600 millions, 2: 600 millions, 3: 1500, 4: 1500.

Maybe we should point out also how easy it is to learn to speak and write interlingua. I subscribed to Panorama for a number of years and could read it. I had to look up a few words because I never learned a romance language well, but I have use for these words when trying to understand romance languages in general besides learning interlingua, so I have use for this knowledge outside IL.

I could probably write IL if I tried. I have dictionaries to help with words I don't know, and I know how to build sentences in romance languages. It would take just a little effort to produce IL-compatible text.

There is a big difference between active speaking and passive listening, you need a lot more experience to speak a language than to understand it.

I can take myself as an example: I understand perfectly swedish, english and german, and I understand most of what they say in spanish, french, italian and dutch.

I speak and write only swedish and english well.

I have watched german television for 20 years but I never speak or write german, so I make a lot of grammatical mistakes when I use the language actively. Understanding is another mental process than to formulate your own sentences. (Especially if the other language has a more complicated and antiquated grammar than your own language.) That's why the numbers have to be reported separately for speaking and understanding, for writing and reading. Roger4911 07:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The table was designed for languages in general. It would be quite misleading to count people who have never heard of Interlingua as "knowing" it! That's not what people would understand a language "speaker" to mean. It would be like saying there are 200 million speakers of Slovak, because all other Slavs could get by with a Slovak speaker. We don't count the population of Brazil under Spanish, nor all of Latin America under Portuguese. We're constantly fighting a battle against people who make exaggerated claims for their favorite language, like boosting Turkish from 60 to 200 million, and I don't think you'll get much sympathy asking for special treatment for Interlingua. There's already been a concession made for constructed languages, in that people are counted just for knowing something of it, whereas for ethnic languages, such people are not counted: People only count for (a) being native speakers (1st language), and by (b) using a language for daily communication (2nd language). Under both criteria Interlingua would have 0 speakers, or at least something very close to for (b), while Esperanto would have only a thousand or so. So a population of 1500 for Interlingua is already quite generous. The fact that Interlingua is quite easy for many to read cold is something that should be covered in the text. kwami 08:11, 9

November 2005 (UTC)

I agree about inserting something about interlingua being understandable the first time(like it was for me). Basically people with a knowledge os Spanish, some french and Latin it would be easy.--Jondel 08:16, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

But that's clearly and adequately covered in the text. You wouldn't give the population of Polish as "80 million (easily understood by another 200 million)", would you? The point of tables like these is to facilitate comparisons between articles, which means the information should be similar between articles. kwami 08:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The numbers for how many people can understand, read and write the language are the important numbers. That makes it possible to compare the advantages of different languages in a rational way. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

But we have an entire article for that. Again, the table is for information common to all articles, and this doesn't fit. kwami 09:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Reply by Roger J:

> "It would be quite misleading to count people who have never heard of Interlingua as "knowing" it!

Did I use the undefined word "knowing"? No, I used real measurable data. We can set up a test for reading and comprehension in a language, for example. Those who pass that test can read and understand what they read in that language.

Further, if you count first and second languages you favorize big languages, and you don't get accurate numbers for a particular language. Somebody who knows several languages well will not be counted besides his first and second language. This categorization is made by somebody who knows languages from a perspective of first/second language. A typical primitive way to view languages. In Europe a lot of people speak 3 or more languages, and not just as a "second language" but really well.

It is especially important to report these numbers correctly for a language like IL, which is made to be readable and understandable to a lot of people without having to learn anything first. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Sorry if I've misrepresented what you said. However, you have misunderstood my point. A person can have many first and second languages. A "first language" is a native or mother tongue. If you're natively bilingual, you have two first languages. A "second language" is a language acquired later, but used for customary communication. If you use three languages besides your native language for daily communication, then you have three second languages. (Substitute other terminology if you like!) You speak of Europe, but in much of West Africa it's normal to speak four languages, and to use them on a daily basis. This is taken into account in the language numbers. However, mere fluency from school, if the language isn't actually used for daily affairs, doesn't count (with ethnic languages, anyway: IL and Eo are exceptions here).
And again, the argument you're using for IL could be used to boost the numbers of all languages. kwami 09:27, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

I'll let you get the last word on this issue, you do it so well.

Roger4911 16:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

POV Voting

I am an Interlingua enthusiast and despite this would like to revert to Kwamikagami's version. I am putting to vote some of the pointers below , hopefully so that we can all achieve an amicable consensus. Please separate themes in your arguments. Divide et impera. Divide and conquer. Please avoid useless imbroglios.

=Imbroglio

Roger: What is an imbroglio? Could you please use english here?Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

This is an English word. Do you want to discuss this interlingua instead? From http://www.dictionary.com :imbroglio.

n 1: an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation [syn: embroilment]

Imbroglios occur when dispute participants like to bring in another unrelated point of discussion is brought in before the point being discussed can be resolved. It's like throwing in a monkey wrench into the discussion machine/process. --Jondel 10:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


POV Voting proper

Interlingua is Romance based.
  • Agree --Jondel 00:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
    • Erm... false. Interlingua is based on the most common word with cognates in all five of the root languages for vocabulary (which usually turns out to be Latin or English, with the occasional French or German word), with the grammar being mostly Germanic (because many of the designers of the langauge were American or Dutch -- in the same way Esperanto's grammer is heavily Polish). Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Can you give examples of Germanic grammar in IL? I'd have no problem with that, except that I've never seen it. The morphology and syntax appear to be Romance as near as I can tell. (Not all aspects of Romance grammar are included, of course, since IL is simplified; I'm wondering about specifically Germanic aspects of the grammar (like, say, ablaut to mark the plural) that are found in IL but not in the Romance languages.) kwami 01:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't know if Interlinguans are propagating a myth and if they are they should stop. I don't see the German based grammar, but then I don't know German. The strength of Interlingua is because it is Romanced based. The combination of Latin-based languges like Brazillian(Portuguese), Spanish, French(in Africa) and Italian should make Interlingua popular. A lot of French is Latin (and some German). Many latin words are said to be found in German. Many scientific words will use latin making interlingua recommendable.--Jondel 10:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The IL wiki says,
Le grammatica de Interlingua es un anglo-romanic simplificate. Interlingua es un concretisation del vocabulario greco-latin commun que esseva incorporate durante millennios in tote le linguas de Europa e del Americas
(The grammar of IL is a simplified Anglo-Romance. IL is a realization of the common Greco-Latin vocabulary that over millennia has been incorporated in all the languages of Europe and the Americas)
Unfortunately, I cannot find anything more on IL grammar in IL wiki, but if this is correct, IL is not exactly Germano-Romance in its grammar. If I understand correctly from what I've read elsewhere, the English contribution was limited to eliminating things such as person agreement on verbs. This is a negative influence. It's not so much that elements of English grammar were adopted, as elements of Romance grammar that aren't present in English were dropped. But not completely: IL has a conditional mood and future inflection, a reflexive pronoun, separate verb declensions, etc., which are not present in English, and on the other hand has dropped all person agreement, even though some remains in English. This may be an English influence on IL, but it's hardly grounds for saying the grammar is based on English. I think we'd probably end up with a very different looking set up if it were. kwami 11:23, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Interlingua is Naturalistic.
  • Agree --Jondel 00:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Esperanto was the earlies successful artificial language.
  • Agree. --Jondel 00:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
    • False. Esperanto is the earliest successful artificial language still in use today, perhaps... but it had predecessors, such as Volapük, whose success (being used in more than one country, being used for publications, etc.) led the way for Zamenhof. Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I think the line in the article actually says that Esperanto was one of the first successful IAL's. kwami 01:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Give them their due. More ordinary non -linguists people have heard of Esperanto than Volapuk, etc.--Jondel 10:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Requires very little study for those oriented with primary control languages.
  • Agree. --Jondel 00:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Roger: No use for me to vote, four Jondels and one kwami on the other side Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Rather , for different views on which anyone if free to make one vote at each view point. It is useful for you to vote. A dialectic process involves the synthesis of a thesis and anti-thesis. Meaning, if an intelligent dialogue is to conclude maturely, both the proposer and critic must interact without cheating afterwhich both the proposer and critic develop a mature outlook on the subject. --Jondel 10:30, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I do not agree. It is obvious from the talk page that Kwamikagami has been critical to interlingua for a long time. He has tried all he can to make IL look bad. Such a person should not edit this page at all. Be positive, let esperanto friends edit the esperanto page and let Interlingua friends edit the IL page. Roger4911 01:17, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Roger, you are free to edit the esperanto page, the esparantists do not own the article.--Jondel 10:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger, the reason I am starting this dispute is because I do believe Interlingua is indeed superior(Isn't it?). If you believe something is better normally you would want challenges. Also the only way to achieve an intelligent conclusion is to 'give the devil his due'. (I am not saying Kwagami is a demon). Besides, this is the way things are done here at wikipedia and in open source. Participate, let interlingua rise on the merit of its own superiority. sorry, this corny but I tend to take the true believer /crusader stance. I've already written about half a dozen to a dozen articles at the ia wikipedia.

Roger: You are a young enthusiast, used by Kwami to achieve his goals. He suggests something and you fall for it.Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

If you insist on imbroglio style disputes, I 'm out. I won't be reverting your edits then since the disputes will be point less and time consuming for me. A show of force. Anti-Interlinguists are free to appeal for neutrality and sysop help based on wiki guidelines. Btw I can say all of these in interlingua having harldy studied and with confidence that another interlingua person would understand.--Jondel 01:44, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Roger, I'm rather puzzled. This is the kind of POV warring you see in the Urdu vs. Hindi pages, or on Macedonian, by people who know little of language. True, I personally prefer Esperanto. But I've also ordered Goode's books, studied IL, and subscribed for a brief time to Panorama. I enjoyed it, though it didn't captivate me. And I'm critical of Eo as well - I'm the one who's always insisting in the Eo articles that Eo is an inherently European language, that it isn't easy for non-Europeans to learn, and reverting the POVers who try to claim it's "universal". The latest debate I've had over there is with someone trying to say that Eo is more like Turkish or Swahili than European languages because it doesn't have ablaut, when I think it would be less misleading to say that Eo has done away with certain aspects of European grammar, not that it's 'universal'. I take the same stance here. We had a real POV war for a while with some people trying to claim that IL isn't Romance, but pan-European, just because German was a secondary control language. I'm glad that at least is over.

What have I said here that anyone could take issue with? That Esperanto wasn't one of the first constructed languages? (There were dozens before it, spanning centuries. Solresol and Volapük were both successes in their day, though I doubt anyone ever held a conversation in Solresol.) Calling IL 'naturalistic' rather than 'developed' or 'simplified'? (As I argue above, 'developed' is an inherently POV word, while I'm not sure that IL would fit people's conception of 'most simplified' unless we disambiguate that as well.) Not calling it 'natural'? (Of course it's not natural. It's a construct. I assume the writer meant 'naturalistic'.)

Roger: An encyclopedia must use normal language to be readable by anybody, but you insist that descriptions in common english is not good enough, you want your own language-student terminology, not understanding that this makes an article very hard to read, and to write.
It doesn't do any good to use "simple English" if the wording is so vague that no one knows what it's supposed to mean. An article should be both readable and accurate. People wanted to remove the POV banner, and I pointed out a few spots where I felt it was still POV. No one else corrected them, so I did, and I stuck pretty close to the original wording. If you can make it more readable, great! kwami
It is a similar phenomenon as when open source software advocates insist that the word "freeware" must not be used, it is to be called "proprietary", which tells the normal reader nothing, but the open source advocates are happy because their specialized view on software rules.
Such singleminded people should not write articles until they get much older and wiser, and learn to see the world from a general human perspective.
But they are young, with speeded and strongly convinced brains, and nothing can stop them from trying to impose their views on the world. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Kwami goes on:

That it may not be instantly comprehensible in all its details to everyone acquainted with a Romance language? (I'm going on my own experience there, but come on - do you expect me to believe that you immediately recognized which pronouns where neuter and which were masculine "at first sight"?) That its equal use to a Frenchman and a Japanese is proven by its having booklets published in Japanese? (What does that have to do with the nature of the language?)

How is any of this anti-IL propaganda? I don't make the language look bad. And if you're wise, you'll realize that having a propaganda tract written only by diehard ILers will turn people off - like the reader above who said he'd never seen such a biased article.

One of the problems Eo's had is what are called 'perpetual beginners'. These are people who study Eo for years and never achieve fluency. Why is this such a problem? I believe it's due to propaganda and overmarketing. Eo is marketed as the easiest solution to international communication. It's claimed that it can be picked up in a matter of hours. (Ring any bells out there? Isn't that just a little bit like "Understood by 600 million people" and "understandable at first sight"?) Well, people start learning it thinking these things are true, and of course they've been grossly mis-led. Sure, maybe a polyglot can pick up Eo in hours, but it would take most linguistically naive people weeks to get just the basics, and much much longer (with a lot of effort and study) to be able to converse fluently. We're talking a couple years for most people, and people don't put in that kind of time. They start, get discouraged, start again, etc. Decades later, they're still struggling. This isn't helping the language movement any, and is a disservice to those people. So yes, I am anti-propaganda with Eo, and I am anti-propaganda with IL. If you want a good article, and one that inspires any kind of confidence in your audience, you need outsiders to come by every once in a while and point out the BS. kwami 09:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I run or take active part in a few Interlingua groups, and I don't know of any 'perpetual beginners.' Of course, that's just first-hand experience, and I can't put that in the article, but it's not like we've had any serious research into the learnability, usability, and retention of various interlangs. Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I imagine that IL might not have the same problem. Eo vocab can end up being rather alien to many Europeans. My point is only that overmarketing isn't necessarily a good thing for the language, and also that we need to be careful it doesn't creep into Wikipedia. kwami 01:17, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
And this idea that the original language examples were "insulting" to esperantists. How sensitive do you have to be to be insulted by that sentence?
There was nothing insulting there at all, it was a simple fact.
In this kind of social climate it is impossible to work.

Kwami has taken command of this page, and we must wait for more reasonable people to show up before we can write a good article on interlingua. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Without Kwami the Esperanto page would still be claiming 8 million speakers. I'm anti-propaganda too. The Esperanto and Ido compared article is working out quite well for example because I write from an Idist perspective, JonMoore writes from his, and Kwami makes sure that everything there is accurate. He also doesn't sulk. PS lest you think I'm anti-Interlingua I've written at least 50 articles over there on ia under a different name. Mithridates 06:37, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
So are you not capable of working with other people? not capable of laying out a rational explanation for your views that other people can work with? That's hard to believe. And what is this about being 'insulting'? I never said anything of the kind. kwami 20:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

I'm surprised, and disappointed, that POV issues have popped up again. Kwami and I had worked hard from both sides to try to get a good article written... le sigh. Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to remove the POV notice and leave the editing to you Almafeta and Kwami.--Jondel 01:16, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Language Superiority/Simplicity

It seems that many users are posting messages here. They keep trying to get hardcore proof that a language they found simple is easy regradless of anything else. There is no language which everyone finds easy to learn. People fit different learning styles, and different languages appeal to different paradigms of thinking. Some people will turn away from languages that they see as simple or easy because they believe it is an insult to their intellect, or it doesn't show their skills. I know people who began taking french in order to prove to others that they could perfectly pronounce a language with so many differences from their own. I know people who have learned japanese and latin, not because they will ever use it in business and politics, but because it envelops an exuberant culture that is admired by their peers. Since the politicians and businesspeople will not learn it because it doesn't drive the economies, and because Esperanto and Interlingua strive to be ultimately NPOV culture-wise, I can't see why these languages would appeal to a large, diversified population anyway. It makes me sad, because, I love learning these languages, and I'd hate to see them never get to expand their population of speakers.--Ikiroid 22:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, Esperanto and Interlingua would probably not be considered "NPOV culture-wise", since the vocabulary is generally mainly taken from different Western European languages. The alternative would be to take some vocabulary from random large languages, (which basically would make the languages equally difficult and little accessible for everyone) or, like Lojban, having a computer merge words with the same meaning from different languages into a "general form". The two latter approaches are more neutrally, but they are probably less accessible to a lot of people than those Euroclones... 81.232.72.148 20:41, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

>large languages, (which basically would make the languages equally difficult and little accessible for everyo

Yes interlingua is culturally oriented but the powerful advantage is its simplicity, accesibility and that there are more speakers of the combined languages of Brazillian(Portuguese), Spanish (Latin America), French(Africa) than Chinese(?), Hindi(India ?). It is simple but is perfect for people who don't have the time to learn languages. Perfect for kids. Perfect for as a practical living language that you can actually use if you need to live in a Spanish speaking country, Italian or Portuguese(Brazilian). If people are planning to learn Latin, interlingua could help them as an intermediary step. Also, the root words used hardly or have no changes from real languages. When the tenses changes it reflects the tenses of the romance languages.--Jondel 00:24, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Edits to Pronunciation section

Hi guys! I made major changes to the Pronunciation section (including retitling it). I've been active in Interlingua since 1997 and am currently a board member of the American Society for Interlingua. This is my first stab at editing the Wikipedia, so forgive if I've made any technical errors or committed any faux pas. -- CJGB, 16 November 2005

Thanks for that. All I have to go on is Goode's publications.
Do you know of any specifically Germanic elements of the grammar? Not counting Romance distinctions that don't occur in English and were left out, I mean. This has been mentioned several times, and I was wondering if it could be justified. kwami 00:08, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I can't think of any specifically Germanic features in the grammar. In devising the grammar, they tried to include only features common to all of the primary control langs (En-Fr-It-Es/Pt). The result more or less Romance simplified under the influence of English (thus, no noun-adjective agreement, no subjunctive - except sia - and no grammatical gender). But one or two features of English were left out because they were missing in one of more of the Romance control languages. The continuous aspect in verbs ("I am reading") goes, because there's nothing quite like it in French ("je suis en train de lire" doesn't count). Free apposition ("schoolgirl uniforms") also goes - you have to say something like "uniformes pro pueras scholar". (But there is a kind of Romance apposition, as in "forestas virgine".) -- CJGB 17 Nov 05
To CJGB.Ben venite, welcome to wikipedia. There is a wiki written in interlingua. Why not create a user account for yourself here? Click at the upper right corner.--Jondel 00:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I just did. -- CJGB 17 Nov 05

Discussion on irregular verbs

Could you also take a look at the irregular verbs? Facer is mentioned as irregular, but I don't recall ever seeing that, and the past tense of esser was listed as fue, when I only recall seeing era. I put both era and fue in an expanded table, but am somewhat doubtful. kwami 04:46, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Sure, I'll take a close look when I have some guilt-free time. My suggestion is to present standard usage first (which is pretty much regular except for 'es', 'ha', 'va', and 'sia') and put the common variants in a subsection. I wouldn't cover very rare or theoretical in the main article, since I assume it's an overview for the general public. Such details could go into the article on irregularities (whatever it's called). In fact, I'm not even sure you need to lay them out as three conjugations, rather than giving one conjugation and noting that '-ite' replaces *'-ete' and '-iente' replaces *'-inte' (though you might not want to put it so compressedly). -- CJGB 11:35 PST 17 Nov 05
Comment: I hardly see era or fue. Esseva is very common.--Jondel 05:00, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Fue was listed in the 1951 grammar, not the finalized 1954 grammar, although it had already seen some use (and still sees some use today). Facer is totally regular; that was just my error. Almafeta 15:46, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
But both exist? Is there any difference in meaning? kwami 05:22, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't see fue in the dictionary only era. Probably a Spanish interlinguist forgot to modify this . Anyway, I need to check if it conforms with actual Interlingua grammar but I believe it would follow the Spanish grammar which I see that you know on your page (?) I suppose like Spanish , it would be like this era for a past continuative/past progressive action. ('When I was a child....): Quando era infante.. Or I was watching  :Io era vidente .. But 'I was hurt'.(I was hurt , happened once) -> Fue nocete. I can't help notice that you're questions are making interlingua appear more Spanish. I'm looking for the grammar reference to fue and era but still don't see it up to now.--Jondel 05:50, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I think 'Fue' is not an interlingua word. This however was found [era]² past of esser was, were.(= esseva)--Jondel 05:59, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
'Era' is reasonably common, as are 'son', 'sera', and 'serea'. 'Vamos' occasionally gets used in the sense of "let's" as in Vamos mangiar le caton! 'Let's eat the kitten' (but most people would say Que nos mangiar le caton!). --CJGB 11:45 PST 17 Nov 05
Well, this is the only place I've ever seen it that I can recall, and it's not in Gopsill's dictionary, so I'll take it out if nobody objects. Also, does anyone know how facer is irregular, as this article claims? And I can't find so or somos for io es and nos son. Can anyone confirm whether they exist? Thanks, kwami 08:06, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I already removed, fue. I don't know about facer being irregular. Son and somos are found at www.interlingua.com but I really don't see these used.--Jondel 08:17, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I see, it's the faciente form. Looks like there are quite a few more verbs like this, so I'll make a footnote. kwami 09:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
'Faciente' is the preferred form according to Interlingua Grammar, but current usage favours 'facente' by a margin of about 7:1, according to the INTERLNG archives. Maybe it should be relegated to the Irregularities article. --CJGB 11:45 PST 17 Nov 05
Yes, maybe it should. Should we also list duplicate grammatical words on that page, such as the three sets of demonstratives? kwami 00:13, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Is there a reason why you don't want the grammar parts to be in bold of facer, vader and ir to be in bold e.g. vadera , vadeva, facera, etc in the table in your copy edit? --Jondel 01:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes. The point of the three conjugations is to show regular inflection, so those endings are bold. But the point of including the irregular verbs is to show how they're irregular, so attention should be drawn to the unpredictable aspects of their inflections. There's no need to list facera at all, except to be complete. kwami 05:29, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

We need to change the example

Why does the sample text discuss Esperanto? Defensive comparisons with Esperanto are one thing, but this is a bit much! I think IL needs to stand on its own. If someone has a nice illustrative text in IL, I can translate it into Eo for a trilingual text. Or we could get some nice non-introspective Eo text and translate it into IL. Either way. kwami 21:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree. Have you seen the French article? It mentions Esperanto some 29 times compared to a bit over 50 for the word Interlingua. It's a wretched piece of work. Mithridates 00:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Isn't Esperanto like the standard artificial language? If you come up with a new softdrink, there might be references to Coke/Pepsi.If Esperanto is removed, how about comparisons then with a natural language like French or Spanish?--Jondel 01:38, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind comparisons with Esperanto. I think they're appropriate, because you're right, that's what our readers will have in mind. But I don't think our sample texts should be about Esperanto! That smacks of an inferiority complex. Something technical (because that's what IL was designed for) and something literary (Hamlet's soliloquy?) would be nice. kwami 02:10, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
The Babel text is also often used to compare languages. The only thing about using something technical is that virtually all technical texts in Interlingua are still copyrighted, whereas some translations (the Bible, some Shakespeare, etc.) were released as public domain. Almafeta 15:41, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
Could you get Hamlet's soliloquy, then? That's something we could easily find in a good Eo translation. (I've seen comparisons were the text was chosen to make the opposing language look as ridiculous as possible; Shakespeare should be fairly neutral.)
A copyrighted technical tract should be acceptable. Taking a paragraph for illustrative purposes rather than its technical content is fair use. Of course, it would have to be translated in Eo if we want a trilingual text, which raises questions of objectivity. How about the intro to the Declaration of Human rights? We should be able to get that in an independent Eo version. And of course the trilingual texts could always be used for the comparison article if we decide not to use them here. kwami 16:04, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Removal of sample texts about Esperanto references are fine by me. Typical samples are Our Lord's prayer(already there) and Declaration of Human Rights. There were a lot of objections to Our Lord's praver over at the Spanish Wiki for my Chabacano article because it was interpreted as evangelizing(propanda). Hamlet's soliloquy looks fine. I was thingking of adding a few phrases like 'How are you?' , 'Where are you going?' etc.--Jondel 03:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this isn't the right place of massive Eo/Ia comparisons. There's an actual Interlingua-Esperanto article, which could be expanded and made more neutral (it leans to Eo at present, though the author admits he's not the right person to give the Ia perspective). Also, they would be appropriate on the main International Auxiliary Language page, which seems a bit underdeveloped to me.

I agree the French page needs work. Hopefully we can develop the English Interlingua pages to the point that the French wiki-istas will translate it.--CJGB 01:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)