Interlingue

History and activity

Beginnings

Edgar de Wahl announced the creation of Occidental in 1922 with the first issue of the magazine Cosmoglotta, published in Tallinn, Estonia under the name Kosmoglott. Occidental was a product of years of personal experimentation under the name Auli (auxiliary language), which he used from 1906 to 1921 and which later on gained the nickname proto-Occidental. De Wahl, originally a proponent of Volapük and then Esperanto, began creating Occidental after the failed vote to reform Esperanto in 1894.

De Wahl corresponded with other language creators, among them the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (creator of Latino sine flexione), from whom he gained an appreciation for its selection of international vocabulary, and Waldemar Rosenberger, the creator of Idiom Neutral.

Upon its announcement in 1922, Occidental was nearly complete. De Wahl had not intended to announce the language for a few years, but decided to accelerate its release after hearing that the League of Nations (LON) had begun an inquiry into the question of an international language. The first known publication in Occidental, a booklet entitled Transcendent Algebra by Jacob Linzbach, appeared shortly before Kosmoglott debuted.

Occidental began gathering followers due to its readability, despite a complete lack of grammars and dictionaries. Two years later in 1924, de Wahl wrote that he was corresponding with about 30 people "in good Occidental" despite the lack of learning material, and users of other languages began to join Occidental. The first dictionary, the Radicarium Directiv, a collection of Occidental root words and their equivalents in eight languages, was published the following year.

Kosmoglott was also a forum for various other planned languages, while still mainly written in Occidental. The name was changed to Cosmoglotta in 1927 as it began to officially promote Occidental in lieu of other languages, and that January the magazine's editorial and administrative office was moved to the Vienna neighborhood of Mauer, now part of Liesing. Much of the early success for Occidental in this period came from the office's new central location, along with the efforts of Engelbert Pigal, also from Austria, whose article Li Ovre de Edgar de Wahl (The Work of Edgar de Wahl) led to interest in Occidental from users of Ido. Use in France began in 1928, and by the beginning of the next decade the Occidental community was established in Germany, Austria, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland.

Vienna period and World War II

The Vienna period was also marked by financial stability. With the help of two major backers, Hanns Hörbiger, also from Vienna, and G.A. Moore from London, Cosmoglotta thrived despite the economic crisis. After the two died in 1931, Cosmoglotta was again forced to rely on revenue from subscriptions and republications.

The growing movement began campaigning more assertively for Occidental in the early 1930s, leveraging its at-sight readability by contacting organizations such as companies, embassies, printing houses and the LON with letters entirely in Occidental that were often understood and answered. Recordings of spoken Occidental on gramophone records for distribution were first made in this period.

The years from 1935 to 1939 were particularly active for Cosmoglotta and a second edition of the journal was published. Originally entitled Cosmoglotta-Informationes, it was soon renamed Cosmoglotta B, focusing on items of more internal interest such as linguistic issues, reports of Occidental in the news, and financial updates. In early 1936, not counting the 110 issues of Cosmoglotta and other journals and bulletins, a total of 80 publications existed in and about Occidental.

But the years before World War II posed difficulties for Occidental and other planned languages. They were banned in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, forced to disband, and kept under surveillance by the Gestapo, which also destroyed instructional materials. The prohibition of auxiliary languages in Germany was particularly damaging as this was where most Occidentalists lived at the time. The inability to accept payment for subscriptions was a financial blow that continued after the war along with Germany's division into zones of influence, not all of which allowed payments.

De Wahl, in Tallinn, was unable to communicate with the Occidental Union in Switzerland from 1939 to October 1947, first due to the war and thereafter the interception of mail between Switzerland and the Soviet Union. Unaware of this, de Wahl was bewildered at the lack of response to his continued letters; even a large collection of poetry translated into Occidental was never delivered. The only letter of his received in Switzerland came in 1947, asking the Occidental Union why it had not answered any of his. Meanwhile, de Wahl's house and his entire library had been destroyed during the bombardment of Tallinn. De Wahl himself was incarcerated for a time after refusing to leave Estonia for Germany, and later took refuge in a psychiatric hospital where he lived out his life.

Language standardization

During the war many Occidentalists took to standardizing the language. De Wahl had created Occidental with a number of unchangeable features, but believed that its following of the "laws of life" gave it a firm enough base that it could follow a "natural evolution" with a flexibility that would "allow time and practice to take care of modifications that would prove to be necessary". As a result, some words had more than one permissible form, which could not be resolved by decree alone, thus leaving the ultimate decision to the community by including both possible forms in the first Occidental dictionaries. One example concerned the verb scrir (to write) and a possible other form scripter, as both created internationally recognizable derivations: scritura and scritor from scrir, or scriptura and scriptor from scripter. De Wahl expressed a preference for scrir, finding scripter to be somewhat heavy, but commented that the latter was certainly permissible and that Occidental might take on a similar evolution to natural languages in which both forms come into common use, with the longer form having a heavier and formal character and the shorter form a lighter and more everyday tone (such as English story vs. history).

Orthography was another area in which several possibilities existed, namely etymologic orthography (adtractiv, obpression), historic orthography (attractiv, oppression), or simplified orthography (atractiv, opression). The simplified orthography eventually became the standard by 1939. With questions still remaining about the official form of some words and a lack of general material destined for the general public, much time during World War II was spent on language standardization and course creation, and due to the continuing war, in August 1943 the decision was made to create an interim academy to officialize this process.

This process had just about begun not long before the war, and the Swiss Occidentalists, finding themselves isolated from the rest of the continent, opted to concentrate on instructional materials to have ready by the end of the war.

IALA, Interlingua, and name change to Interlingue

The International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA), founded in 1924 to study and determine the best planned language for international communication, was at first viewed with suspicion by the Occidental community. Its co-founder Alice Vanderbilt Morris was an Esperantist, as were many of its staff, and many Occidentalists including de Wahl himself believed that its leadership under Esperantist William Edward Collinson meant that it had been set up with a staff of professional linguists under a neutral and scientific pretext to bolster a final recommendation for Esperanto. Relations soon improved, however, as it became clear that the IALA intended to be as impartial as possible by familiarizing itself with all existing planned languages. Ric Berger, a prominent Occidentalist who later joined Interlingua in the 1950s, made a personal visit to Morris in 1935 in which she and her husband showed a curiosity for Occidental and invited him to speak in the language, vastly improving Berger's opinion of the organization.

In 1945, the IALA announced that it planned to create its own language and showed four possible versions under consideration, all of which were naturalistic as opposed to schematic. Occidentalists were by and large pleased that the IALA had decided to create a language so similar in nature to Occidental, seeing it as a credible association that gave weight to their argument that an auxiliary language should proceed from study of natural languages instead of attempting to fit them into an artificial system. Ric Berger was particularly positive in describing the upcoming language as a victory for the natural school and "almost the same language" in 1948. Berger still had reservations, however, doubting whether a project with such a similar aspect and structure would be able to "suddenly cause prejudices [against planned languages] to fall and create unity among the partisans of international languages". Berger also feared that it might simply "disperse the partisans of the natural language with nothing to show for it" after Occidental had created "unity in the naturalistic school" for so long.

While the two languages had a 90 per cent identical vocabulary without orthographic differences taken into account (e.g. with filosofie and philosophia considered the same word), structurally and derivationally they were very different. De Wahl's Rule in Occidental had mostly done away with Latin double stem verbs (verbs such as act: ager, act- or send: mitter, miss-), while Interlingua simply accepted them as part and parcel of a naturalistic system. The control languages (Italian, Spanish and/or Portuguese, French, English) used by Interlingua to form its vocabulary for the most part require an eligible word to be found in three source languages (the "rule of three"), which would conflict with Occidental's Germanic substrate and various other words which would be by definition ineligible in a unified language that retained Interlingua's methodology. Interlingua also allowed optional irregular verbal conjugations such as so, son and sia as the first-person singular, third-person plural and subjunctive form of esser, the verb 'to be'.

Stagnation and revival

While the migration of so many users to Interlingua had severely weakened Interlingue, the ensuing drop in activity was gradual and took place over decades. Cosmoglotta B ceased publication after 1950, and the frequency of Cosmoglotta A began to gradually drop: once every second month from 1952, and then once per quarter from 1963. Other bulletins in Interlingue continued to appear during this time such as Cive del Munde (Switzerland), Voce de Praha (Czechoslovakia), Sved Interlinguist (Sweden), International Memorandum (United Kingdom), Interlinguistic Novas (France), Jurnale Scolari International (France), Buletine Pedagogic International (France), Super li Frontieras (France), Interlingue-Postillon (1958, Germany), Novas de Oriente (1958, Japan), Amicitie european (1959, Switzerland), Teorie e practica (Switzerland-Czechoslovakia, 1967), and Novas in Interlingue (Czechoslovakia, 1971). Barandovská-Frank believed that the ebb in interest in Occidental-Interlingue occurred in concert with the aging of the generation that was first drawn to it from other planned languages:

Most of those interested in Interlingue belonged to the generation that became acquainted in turn with Volapük, Esperanto and Ido, later on finding the most aesthetic (essentially naturalistic) solution in Occidental-Interlingue. Many subsequently moved to IALA's Interlingua, which however did not prove to be much more successful despite the impression its scientific origin made, and those who remained loyal to Occidental-Interlingue did not succeed in imparting their enthusiasm to a new generation.

Activity in Interlingue reached a low during the 1980s and early 1990s, when Cosmoglotta publication ceased for a few years. While issue 269 was published in 1972 after publishing once per season between 1963, issue 289 was not reached until summer 2000 for an average of less than one issue per year. According to Harlow, "in 1985 Occidental's last periodical, Cosmoglotta, ceased publication, and its editor, Mr. Adrian Pilgrim, is quoted as having described Occidental as a 'dead language.'" A decade later, a documentary film in 1994 by Steve Hawley and Steyger on planned languages introduced Interlingue speaker Donald Gasper as "one of the last remaining speakers of the language Occidental".

As was the case for other planned languages, the arrival of the Internet spurred Interlingue's revival. In the year 1999 the first Yahoo! Group in Occidental was founded, Cosmoglotta had begun publishing intermittently again, and the language became a subject of discussion in literature on auxiliary languages. One example is The Esperanto Book released in 1995 by Harlow, who wrote that Occidental had an intentional emphasis on European forms and that some of its leading followers espoused a Eurocentric philosophy, which may have hindered its spread. Still, the opposite view was also common in the community and Occidental gained adherents in many nations including Asian nations. An Interlingue Wikipedia was approved in 2004. In recent years official meetings of Interlingue speakers have resumed: one in Ulm in 2013, another in Munich in 2014 with three participants, and a third in Ulm the next year with five.

Language philosophy

De Wahl was first introduced to planned languages through Volapük, an international auxiliary language released in 1879. De Wahl later became one of the earliest users of Esperanto (la lingvo internacia), which he encountered for the first time in 1888 during his period as a Volapükist and for which he was in the process of composing a dictionary of marine terms. He quickly became a fervent supporter of Esperanto for a number of years in which he collaborated with Zamenhof on some parts of the language's design and translated one of the first works into Esperanto: "Princidino Mary", published in 1889 originally under the name Princino Mary. He remained an Esperantist until 1894 when the vote to reform Esperanto failed; he was one of just two that voted neither for Esperanto unchanged, nor for the reform proposed by Zamenhof, but for a completely new reform. Occidental would not be announced for a full 28 years after de Wahl had abandoned Esperanto, a period in which he spent working with other language creators trying to develop a system that combined naturalism and regularity, a combination that became a frequently referenced selling point in the promotion of Occidental.

Among those de Wahl worked with while developing Occidental were Waldemar Rosenberger (Idiom Neutral), Julius Lott (Mundolingue), and Antoni Grabowski (Modern Latin for a time, before returning to Esperanto). The method sought after by these "partisans of naturalism" was the distillation of existing words into their parts to obtain the international roots within them (such as naturalisation to nat-ur-al-is-ation), then used in other words to keep root words to a minimum while maintaining a natural appearance. This decomposition of existing words gave rise to a large number of affixes. For example, just those used to form nouns referring to a type of person are as follows: -er- (molinero – miller), -or- (redactor – editor), -ari- (millionario – millionaire), -on- (spion, spy), -ard (mentard, liar), -astr- (poetastro, lousy poet), -es (franceso, Frenchman), -essa (reyessa, queen). In de Wahl's opinion it was always preferable to opt for a productive suffix than to be forced to coin new words from completely new radicals later on. In addition to this, de Wahl's rule developed later allowed for regular derivation from double-stem Latin verbs.

The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language, a body of academics formed to study the problem of an international language and which recommended Esperanto with reforms (leading to the language known as Ido), occurred in 1907 before Occidental was announced. De Wahl thus chose to send a memorandum of principles on which to base an international language, a memorandum which arrived after the committee had already adjourned. It was only noted in passing by Louis Couturat, who was already familiar with de Wahl and his collaborators. The principles stated in the memorandum are listed in a request for the committee to declare:

Vocabulary

Though seemingly favourable to the Romance language family, de Wahl did not see Occidental as a Romance language and did not tolerate any nationalism or chauvinism in the choice of words for the language. His opinion on justice in the choice of vocabulary was that: "However many special, new, significant words each «culture» has respectively added to the common human culture, that much they receive." In an article entitled "International o Romanic" (International or Romance) in 1929, he gave examples from a number of categories in which particular languages had a particularly large influence. Those included Greek for science and philosophy (teorema, teosofie, astronomie), Latin for politics and law (social, republica, commission), Scandinavian, Dutch and English for navigation (log, fregatte, mast, brigg, bote), and various other international vocabulary originating in other languages (sabat, alcohol, sultan, divan, nirvana, orang-utan, bushido, té, dalai-lama, cigar, jazz, zebra, bumerang, etc.).

Symbol

The symbol of Occidental and its dimensions were chosen in 1936 after some deliberation and many other proposed symbols that included stylized letters, a star (as in Esperanto and Ido), a setting sun to represent the sun in the west (the Occident), a globe, and more. The tilde, already used by the Occidental-Union, was eventually selected based on five criteria: symbolic character, simplicity, originality, unlikeliness to be confused with another symbol, and for being bichromatic (having two colours) as opposed to polychromatic. Beyond the five criteria, the Occidentalists at the time referenced the advantages of the lack of a fixed meaning for the tilde in the public sphere, and its similarity to a waveform, implying speech.

Linguistic features

Orthography

Interlingue is written with 26 Latin letters: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, and z. The names of the letters are a, be, ce, de, e, ef, ge, ha, i, jot, ka, el, em, en, o, pe, qu, er, es, te, u, ve, duplic ve, ix, ypsilon, and zet. Accents are written on the five vowels to indicate irregular stress, with the acute accent (á é í ó ú) preferred, but others (è, ê, etc.) permitted.

Phonology

Sources on the pronunciations of the vowels are contradictory. Some say that the vowels have their Continental values (that is, [a e i o u]), others that they have different qualities when long and short; they also differ on the number of diphthongs (e.g. au eu ay ey). Earlier texts on Occidental described seven vowels (the five continental vowels plus y like [y], namely French u or German ü, and eu as German ö), but by the 1940s the official recommendation was that vocalic y be pronounced like i and eu as a diphthong instead of ö. Rough English equivalents for the vowels are as follows:

a as in French, German, Spanish or Italian, or English father.

e open or closed, as German, Spanish or Italian, or English bed and yes.

i as French, German, Spanish and Italian, or English machine.

o open or closed as in French, German, Spanish and Italian, or English door.

u as in German, Spanish and Italian, or English rule, pull. U after q is a short, almost consonantal (w).

y is a consonant after a vowel or beginning a word before a vowel, otherwise is pronounced as i.

Interlingue has non-obligatory vowel length. Rough English equivalents of the sounds are as follows:

short a is /æ/ as in "pat"

short e is /ɛ/ as in "pet"

short i is /ɪ/ as in "pit"

short o is /ɒ/ as in "pot"

short u is /ʊ/ as in "put"

Vowels are short in the following cases:

Stress

Words are generally stressed on the vowel before the final consonant: intercalar, parol, forme. Pluralizing a noun does not change the stress: paroles, formes. The endings -bil, -ic, -im, -ul and -um do not change the stress (even when more than one is present in a single word), nor does the adverbial ending -men: rapidmen, duplic, bonissim, singul, possibil, maximum, statisticas. Two vowels together are diphthongized and do not count as two syllables for the purpose of stress: familie, potentie, unless the word is a single consonant or consonant cluster followed by two vowels: die, deo. Compound words are stressed based on the last word in the compound: hodie, substrae. In cases where the accent is irregular, it is indicated by an accent: café, ínpossibil, numeró, númere, felicitá. The accent mark may also be used for emphasis as needed: Yó ea con la (ne tú).

Grammar

Like English, Interlingue has definite and an indefinite articles. The definite article (the) is li, and the indefinite (a, an) is un. Plural of a noun is made by adding -s after a vowel, or -es after most consonants. To avoid pronunciation and stress changes, words ending in -c, -g, and -m only add an -s: un libre, du libres, li tric, li trics, li plug, li plugs, li album, pluri albums.

The ending of the definite article can be modified to lo (masculine), la (feminine), lu (neuter), lis (plural), los (masculine plural), e las (feminine plural). The article itself can also be pluralized before words that are difficult to pluralize on their own: lis s (the s's).

Interlingue has two forms for the personal pronouns: one for the subject form (nominative), and one for the object form (accusative or dative, i.e. the oblique form):

The formal second person is vu, which is also the second person plural. The indefinite personal pronoun "one" is on. One can also specify the gender of third person plural by using illos (masculine) or ellas (feminine).

Only a few parts of speech in Interlingue (such as verbs in the infinitive) have entirely obligatory endings, while many other endings are optional though sometimes recommended. Some grammatical endings are:

ar, er, ir: verb infinitive. far (to do), posser (be able), scrir (to write)

e: the general substantival (noun) ending. Used obligatorily to differentiate nouns from other parts or speech, for reasons of pronunciation, or optionally for euphony.

i: the general adjectival ending, similar to -e in usage.

a: nouns that end in e formed from an -ar verb are often written with the -a ending if one wishes to emphasize the verbal (active) aspect. The a ending also makes nouns feminine: anglese (English person), angleso (Englishman), anglesa (English woman). This does not apply to nouns that on their own indicate the gender (patre, matre).

Ease of learning

As an international auxiliary language, ease of learning through regular derivation and recognizable vocabulary was a key principle in Occidental's creation. Cosmoglotta often featured letters from new users and former users of other international languages (primarily Esperanto and Ido) attesting to the language's simplicity. New users demonstrated their quick command of the language, and experienced auxiliary language users shared their experiences. Because many users of the language had encountered it after first learning Esperanto, data on learnability of the language for those without experience in other international auxiliary languages is scarce. One experiment to ascertain learning time was carried out in the years 1956 to 1957 in a Swiss Catholic high school (gymnasium) in Disentis on the time required to learn the language. The experiment showed that the students participating in the study, who had previous experience with French, Latin, and Greek, mastered both written and spoken Interlingue after 30 hours of study.

Interlingue literature

Some original texts published as separate books are:

Krasina, raconta del subterrania del Moravian carst, published in 1938 by Jan Amos Kajš.

Li astres del Verne, a collection of original poetry by Jaroslav Podobský, published both in 1935 and 1947.

Example texts

Li material civilisation, li scientie, e mem li arte unifica se plu e plu. Li cultivat europano senti se quasi in hem in omni landes queles have europan civilisation, it es, plu e plu, in li tot munde. Hodie presc omni states guerrea per li sam armes. Sin cessa li medies de intercomunication ameliora se, e in consequentie de to li terra sembla diminuer se. Un Parisano es nu plu proxim a un angleso o a un germano quam il esset ante cent annus a un paisano frances.

Possible pronunciation: [li mateˈrjaːl tsivilizaˈtsjoːn li ˈstsjentsje e ˈmeːm li ˈarte uˈniːfika se ˈpluː e ˈpluː li kultiˈvaːt ewroˈpaːno ˈsenti se ˈkwaːzi in ˈheːm in ˈomni ˈlandes ˌkweːles ˈhaːve ewroˈpaːn tsivilizaˈtsjoːn it ˈes ˈpluː e ˈpluː in li ˈtoːt ˈmunde hoˈdiːe ˈprɛsk ˈomni ˈstaːtes ˈgwɛrea per li ˈsaːm ˈarmes sin ˈtsɛsa li ˈmeːdjes de interkomunikaˈtsjoːn ameˈljoːra se e in konseˈkwentsje de ˈtoː li ˈtɛra ˈsembla dimiˈnweːr se un pariˈzaːno es ˈnuː plu ˈprɔksim a un aŋˈgleːzo o a un ʒerˈmaːno kwam il eˈseːt ˌante ˈtsent ˈanus a un pa.iˈzaːno franˈtseːs]

Translation: "Material civilization, science, and even art unify themselves more and more. The educated European feels himself almost at home in all lands that have European civilization, that is, more and more, in the entire world. Today almost all states war with the same armaments. Without pause the modes of intercommunication improve, and in consequence from that the world seems to decrease. A Parisian is now closer to an Englishman or a German than he was a hundred years before to a French peasant."