Interlingua – ‘Neo-Latin’

Here we will be looking at a language you have never seen before but are very likely to understand almost entirely!

Le Genesis es le prime libro del Pentateucho (le prime parte del Torah e del Biblia), anque appellate le Prime Libro de Moses. Illo es le prime libro in le Biblia e assi del Vetere Testamento e contine i.a. le narration super le creation del mundo e del prime homines, Adam e Eva. Genesis anque narra super le arco de Noe, le Turre de Babel, le tres patriarchas: Abraham, Isaac e Jacobo, e super le prehistoria del populo israelita.

If you were able to understand the above text, you are not alone! This is Interlingua! The text was a summary of the Book of Genesis from the Bible.

Coming from the latin words ‘inter’ – between and ‘lingua’ – langauge.

It has been called 21st century Latin or neo-Latin.

So, what is Interlingua?

It is the most widely used naturalistic conlang (constructed language) in the world – That is to say it is an artificial language where someone who has never studied the language before can still read almost all of the language. This is what differentiates it from the most widely known conlang, Esperanto. It can be read by Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and French speakers with little or no difficulty. If you don’t believe me, once more, see for yourself!

Here we have an example from the Declaration of Human Rights :

“Considerante que le recognoscentia del dignitate inherente a tote le membros del familia human e de lor derectos equal e inalienabile constitue le fundamento del libertate, del justitia e del pace in le mundo”

We can see how easy it is to understand here!

The languages chosen as the base of Interlingua were English, French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. German and Russian were also taken into account when creating vocabulary for the language.

Interlingua developed between 1937 and 1951 and was somewhat modelled on Peano’s Latino sine Flexione, a conlang that consisted of Latin without its inflexions and case endings.

It was decided the grammar should be simple, mostly regular and easy to learn. The vocabulary chosen was common to as many western European languages as possible.

Interlingua has even been used as a means to help learn another language.
Interlingua was taught in some schools as a means to later speed up the acquisition of other languages such as Spanish.

Research with Swedish students has shown that, after learning Interlingua, they can translate elementary texts from Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. In 1974 in Sweden, an Interlingua class were able to translate a Spanish text that students who had taken 150 hours of Spanish found too difficult to translate.

The International Auxiliary Language Association stated that in the year 2000, Interlingua had 1,500 speakers. It is hard to know how many speakers the language would have now.

It is a language that has no grammatical genders, plurals are formed by adding -s or -es after a final consonant. Verbs take the same form for all persons. (io vive, tu vive, illa vive). The subjunctive is not used.

The language has had a complicated history and there were attempts to surpress it in the Soviet Union. Teachers were often threatened with imprisonment if they continued to give lessons in the language.

The language is taught in secondary schools and universities all across the world. For example, the University of Granada offers an Interlingua course in collaboration with the Centro de Formación Continua.

There are also some short films in the language such as this one on YouTube about the dreaded “Clave Perdite”!

What do you think? It is a bit like Latin, right? And Spanish? And Italian? But understandable!

We think we understand a bit of Interlingua? Well, let’s learn a little bit more.

The following is taken from ‘Lesson One’ from the Interlingua website :

The indefinite article is un.
The definite article is le.
The infinitive of the verb always ends in -r and to conjugate in the Present Tense you simply remove the -r and use with the pronouns.

Bon die! Hic es Peter e Ann. Illes habita in un casa in Danmark. Peter e Ann ha un patre e un matre, senior (sr.) e seniora (sra.) Myles. Illes anque habita in le casa. Le casa es brun, e le tecto es nigre, e illo ha un jardin parve. Ann ha un catto nigre. Illo ha le nomine Marilyn. Ann ama Marilyn. Anque Peter ama le animal.
In le salon sede tote le familia Myles. In le salon es un tabula, un sofa, un sedia e un confortabile. Sr. Myles sede in le confortabile e lege un magazin international de interlingua, Panorama. Sra. Myles ascolta le radio, e Anna joca con Marilyn. Peter scribe un littera a su amico in Scotia. Le casa anque ha un cocina, un camera a dormir, un w.c., un camera pro Ann e un pro Peter.

Not to difficult to understand so? I would love to hear in the comments what you make of this language and how easy or difficult it was for you to understand.

I feel like it is a topic that deserves further reading and the experiment of learning Interlingua before a Romance Language such as Spanish should be repeated and the results of it should become known. The impact it could have on language learning could be huge.

Interlingua is a gorgeous language in its own right, not fully any Romance Language but rather a union of many of them with also a large influence from Latin and well worth learning, not just to learn other languages but also being to facilitate communication with over 800 million people worldwide. This is where Interlingua succeeds where Esperanto fails, and it is well positioned to succeed to fulfil its goal that was in mind when the language was created which is to become an International Auxiliary Language which I think could be achieved if only it received more exposure.

Thanks so much for your attention as always! 🙂

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http://www.interlingua.com/

Profesores Universidad Granada traducen al Interlingua Constitución Europea

Curso «Introducción a la Interlingüística. Interlingua hablado y escrito»

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com