| Latino sine flexione | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Created by | Giuseppe Peano | |||
| Date created | 1903 | |||
| Setting and usage | international auxiliary language | |||
| Users | virtually extinct (date missing) | |||
| Category (purpose) |
constructed language
|
|||
| Category (sources) | Completely based on Latin, but influenced by ideas in other auxiliary languages | |||
| Language codes | ||||
| ISO 639-3 | – | |||
|
||||
Latino sine flexione ("Latin without inflections"), or Peano’s Interlingua (abbreviated as IL), is an international auxiliary language invented by the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) in 1903. It is a simplified version of Latin, and retains its vocabulary. It was published in the journal Revue de Mathématiques, in an article entitled De Latino Sine Flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale,[1] which explained the reason for its creation. The article argued that other auxiliary languages were unnecessary, since Latin was already established as the world’s international language. The article was written in classical Latin, but it gradually dropped its inflections until there were none.
Contents |
In 1903 Peano published the article «De Latino Sine Flexione» to introduce his language, by quoting a series of suggestions by Leibniz about a simplified form of Latin.[2][3] Peano’s article appeared to be a serious development of the idea, so he gained a reputation among the movement for the auxiliary language. In 1904 Peano undertook an essay about the way to obtain the minimal grammar of an eventual minimal Latin (Latino minimo), with a minimal vocabulary purely international.[4]
Peano and some colleagues published articles in Latino sine flexione for several years at the Revue de Mathématiques. Because of his desire to prove that this was indeed an international language, Peano boldly published the final edition of his famous Formulario mathematico in Latino sine flexione. Sadly, as Hubert Kennedy notes, most mathematicians were put off by the artificial appearance of the language, and made no attempt to read it.[5]
In October of 1907, Peano was at the Collège de France in Paris to take part in the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language. Having declared for Latino sine flexione to be adopted, he eventually could not participate in the final voting, because of labour affairs at Turin.[6]
On 26 December 1908, Peano was elected member and director of the Akademi internasional de lingu universal still using Idiom Neutral, which was refounded one year later under the name Academia pro Interlingua. Every academician might use his favourite form of Interlingua, the term being initially used in a general sense as a synonym for international language, yet it soon began to be specially used to denote a reformed Latino sine flexione based on the common rules the academicians were reaching by frequent votings. Thus, the name Interlingua soon began to denote the language evolving from the Academia Pro Interlingua,[5] with the corresponding abbreviation IL.
However, every member was free to write in his own personal style, and indeed some members were proposing radical reforms which eventually might end up as independent languages (like Michaux's Romanal or De Wahl's Interlingue). For this reason, the name Peano’s Interlingua might be regarded as the most accurate for the particular standard by Peano. (As found in “Interglossa and its predecessors”.[7])
The discussions to reach a standard Interlingua may be seen on the pages of Discussiones, the official journal of the Academia pro Interlingua from 1909 to 1913. This and subsequent journals of the academy have been recently published in a CD-Rom by the mathematics department of the university of Turin,[8] the place where Peano developed his teaching and research.
Since «De Latino Sine Flexione» had set the principle to take Latin nouns either in the ablative or nominative form (nomen was preferred to nomine ), in 1909 Peano published a vocabulary in order to assist in selecting the proper form of every noun,[9] yet an essential value of Peano’s Interlingua was that the lexicon might be found straightforward in any Latin dictionary (by getting the thematic vocal of the stem from the genitive ending, that is: -a -o -e -u -e from -æ -i -is -us -ei). Finally, a large vocabulary with 14 000 words was published in 1915. [10]
A reformed Interlingua was presented in 1951 by Alexander Gode as the last director of the International Auxiliary Language Association. It was claimed to be independent from Peano’s Interlingua, because it had developed a new method to detect the most recent common prototypes. But that method usually leads to the Latin ablative, so most vocabulary of Peano’s Interlingua would be kept. Accordingly, the very name Interlingua was kept, yet a distinct abbreviation was adopted: IA instead of IL.
Though Peano removed the inflections of Latin from nouns and adjectives, he did not entirely remove grammatical gender, permitting the option of a feminine ending for occupations. The gender of animals is immutable. All forms of nouns end with a vowel and are taken from the ablative case, but as this was not listed in most Latin dictionaries, he gave the rule for its derivation from the genitive case. The plural is not required when not necessary, such as when a number has been specified, the plural can be read from the context, and so on. Verbs have few inflections of conjugation; tenses and moods are instead indicated by verb adjuncts. The result is a change to a positional language.
Particles that have no inflection in classic Latin are used in their natural form:
The form of nouns depends on the Latin declensions.
| Latin declension number (genitive ending) | 1: -æ | 2: -i | 3: -is | 4: -us | 5: -ei |
| Latino ending | -a | -o | -e | -u | -e |
| Latin declension/nominative form | Latin genitive | Latino | English |
| 1st: rosa | rosæ | rosa | rose |
| 2nd: laurus | lauri | lauro | laurel |
| 3rd: pax | pacis | pace | peace |
| 4th: casus | casus | casu | case |
| 5th: series | seriei | serie | series |
Those proper nouns written with the Roman alphabet are kept as close to the original as possible. The following are examples: München, New York, Roma, Giovanni.
| Number | Singular | Plural |
| 1st person | me | nos |
| 2nd person | te | vos |
| 3rd person | illo (male), illa (female), id (neutral) | illos |
| Reflexive | se | se |
Verbs are formed from the Latin by dropping the final -re of the infinitive. Tense, mood, etc., are indicated by particles, auxiliary verbs, or adverbs, but none is required if the sense is clear from the context. If needed, the past may be indicated by preceding the verb with e, and the future with i.
There are specific endings to create the infinitive and participles:
Adjectives are formed as follows:
Adjectives can be used as adverbs if the context is clear, or cum mente or in modo can be used:
As with Latin, neither the definite nor the indefinite article exists in Latino sine Flexione. When necessary they may be translated with pronouns or words such as illo (it, that) or uno (one):
| Capital letters | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | X | Y | Z |
| Lower case | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | x | y | z |
| IPA phonemes | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| a | b | k | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | k | r | s | t | u | w | ks | y | z |
According to Peano's guide to the language in 1931, "most Interlinguists are in favour of the old Latin pronunciation." This gives the pronunciation of vowels as follows:
Consonants are pronounced as in English with the following exceptions:
The following simplifications to pronunciation are also allowed:
The stress is based on the classical Latin rule:
A secondary accent may be placed when necessary as the speaker deems appropriate.
This is a sample text, intended to give the viewer a basic understanding of how the language sounds, and how related to Latin Latino sine Flexione is.
| Latino sine Flexione version: | Interlingua version | Latin version: | English (ELLC - 1988[11]) |
|
Patre nostro, qui es in celos, |
Patre nostre, qui es in le celos, |
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, |
Our Father (who are) in heaven, |
| Latin | Latino sine flexione | English |
| Vox populi, vox Dei. | Voce de populo, voce de Deo. | The voice of the people is the voice of God. |
| Hodie mihi, cras tibi. | Hodie ad me, cras ad te. | It is my lot today, yours to-morrow. |
| Gratia gratiam generat, lis litem generat. | Gratia genera gratia, lite genera lite. | Goodwill begets goodwill, bickering begets bickering. |
| In medio stat virtus. | Virtute sta in medio. | Virtue stands in the middle. |
| Qui non laborat, non manducet. | Qui non labora, non debe manduca. | He that laboureth not, let him not eat. |
| Medice, cura te ipsum. | Medico, cura te ipso. | Physician, cure thyself. |
| De gustibus non est disputandum. | Nos ne debe disputa de gustu. | There is no disputing about tastes. |
| Ars imitatio naturae est. | Arte imita natura. | Art imitates nature. |
| Do ut des. | Me da ut te da. | I give so that you give. |
| Designatio unius est exclusio alterius. | Qui designa uno, exclude alio. | Who chooses one excludes another. |
Peano formally defended the maxim that the best grammar is no grammar, bearing in mind the example of Chinese. But Peano’s Interlingua still shares a major flaw with many other auxiliary languages according to Lancelot Hogben, namely having either too much grammar of the wrong sort, or not enough of the right.[7](p. 10). Hogben argues that at least nouns and verbs should be easily distinguished by characteristic endings, so that we can easily get an initial understanding of the sentence. Thus, in Peano’s Interlingua the verbs might be given some specific, standardized verbal form, such as the infinitive, which is sufficient at the Latin indirect speech. Instead, the raw imperative is proposed in «De Latino Sine Flexione»:
Lingua latino habet discurso directo, ut: “Amicitia inter malos esse non potest”, et discurso indirecto: “(Verum est ) amicitiam inter malos esse non posse”. Si nos utimur semper de discurso indirecto, in verbo evanescit desinentia de persona, de modo, et saepe de tempore. Sumimus ergo nomen inflexibile (…), sub forma magis simplice, qui es imperativo.
[Translation: ] The Latin language has a direct discourse, like: “Friendness among the bad ones is not possible”, and indirect discourse: “(It is true that ) friendness among the bad ones is not possible”. If we always make use of indirect discourse, the desinences of person, mode, and (frequently) time, get vanished off the verb. So we take the name unflexed (…), under the simplest form, which is the imperative.— Peano (1903, § 4)
Another handicap is the lack of a pure article, which clearly indicates a noun. Indeed Peano occasionally suggested that illo and uno might work as articles (as if, for example, the English that and one were used for the and an), but for Hogben an article must be an empty word, a "pure" article, so to speak. In Peano’s Interlingua, nouns and adjectives or participles have a similar look. Other auxiliaries have attempted some kind of distinctive mark (for example, the adjectival -a of Esperanto, the -i of Interlingue, and the fixed position of the adjective before the noun in Interglossa), while the syntax of Peano’s Interlingua remained conservative:
Because P [Peano’s Interlingua] is the isolating offspring of its highly flexional parent, Latin, it has a poor equipment of empty words, and an aristocratic indifference to the necessity for simple rules of sentence-construction. The fact is that no pioneer of language-planning –least of all Peano– has undertaken the task of investigating what rules of word-order contribute most to intrinsic clarity of meaning and ease of recognition.
— Lancelot Hogben (1943, p. 11).
Reviewing the list of more widely known Latin titles, one might conclude that the sequence noun-adjective is the norm in Latin, yet the inverted sequence is also current.[12] The ratio is over 2 to 1 in a list of Latin titles commented by Stroh.[13] E.g. “Principia Mathematica”. As for a sequence nominative-genitive, it may be the norm in Latin in a similar ratio. E.g. “Systema Naturae”. Indeed, the sequence nominative-genitive must always be the norm in Peano’s Interlingua, since the preposition de must introduce the genitive. Thus, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica would turn into Principio Mathematico de Philosophia Naturale. Since the function of both the adjective and the genitive is often the same, one might infer that the sequence noun-adjective might always be the norm.