Re: Language Review: Interlingua

This is a response to ~monerulo’s gemlog reviewing Interlingua.

Language Review: Interlingua

I enjoyed this conlang review, as well as the previous one on Ido. I’m not a big conlang person, but I did learn a bit of Esperanto (i.e. all the grammar but only the most common vocabulary) many years ago, when I was a teenager. I occasionally see discourse about Esperanto online, and I do agree with some of the main criticisms (that it’s too eclectic and idiosyncratic). There was a really good article on the old WWW called “Esperanto: Why Not To”, which I unfortunately can’t find anymore.

In one rabbit-hole dive related to Esperanto criticisms, I came across Interlingua, and while I didn't bother trying to learn it, I did read up on its origins and so forth.

One thing monerulo criticizes Interlingua for is being a Romance zonal language, but not having Romance grammar, like verb inflection or adjective agreement. But they’re missing one thing which explains this: Interlingua isn't supposed to be an average *Romance* language, it’s supposed to be an average *Western European* language. One of the primary control languages for Interlingua is English, which doesn't have either of those grammatical features. (German and Russian are included as secondary control languages, but I don't think that’s relevant here).

I do agree with a lot of the other things that monerulo says about Interlingua (why create a conlang but have irregular verbs?), but understanding that it’s not just a Romance language makes a lot of the other issues more comprehensible.