Language Review: Interlingua

Zonal constructed languages, of which probably the most famous is Interslavic, are trying to find a middle between a group of related languages. There are some zonal Romance languages, for example:

Neolatino

Interromanico

And then there's Interlingua. Its creator Gode was commissioned to make an international auxiliary language: a better Esperanto. But he himself wanted to make a zonal Romance language. So the end result is basically a zonal Romance language but without most of the grammar complexities such as verb inflection or adjective agreement. So... is it good?

Lexicon

There's a leaflet called "Le sex beneficios de Interlingua". Huh, did you know that Interlingua could help with... wait a moment! "Sex" just means 6. Hey Interlingua! Couldn't you have changed it to "seis" or something? You're supposed to be optimized for being understood, and that includes not being misunderstood!

And the explanation goes something like this. Interlingua has a procedure for building its dictionary. It's not arbitrary like Esperanto where Zamenhof could just make up words like "edzo" that nobody knows for sure where they come from. No, you take all the Romance languages, then something something prototype and voilà. Nobody could change a word in Interlingua! Interlingua is discovered, not invented!

OK. By the way, why 9 was "nove" in Gode's dictionary but nowadays it's "novem"? "Oh, we just changed it so that it doesn't get confused with nove (new)."

Wait... what?

Welcome to the slightly insane world of Interlingua.

Word Building

As in my previous post on Ido:

Review of Ido

I'll try to focus on word building.

Let's try to translate "conceivable" into Esperanto and Interlingua.

Esperanto

koncept- + -ebla = konceptebla

Interlingua

First let's look at the regular derivation:

-ar + -bile > -abile

-er + -bile > -ibile

-ir + -bile > -ibile

That's what's considered regular in Interlingua. But we're just getting started.

Interlingua has irregular verbs. Yes, an international auxiliary language with irregular verbs, what a great idea! My favourite irregular stem is fer-/lat-, for example, transfer- + -tion > translation. The verb 'conciper' (conceive) is also irregular, so it has a second stem, 'concept'. Now we just need to apply that pesky rule in paragraph 152:

> In the case of verbs which have an irregular second stem, the form -ibile is used with that stem when it ends in -s-, -pt-, -st-, or -x-. E.g. perciper (-cip-/-cept-) 'to perceive' > perceptibile 'perceptible';

Ok, if perciper > perceptibile, then conciper > conceptibile, right? Nope, this word is actually an exception. The correct form is 'concipibile', and it's natural in the sense that English has the same quirk: conceive > conceivable, perceive > perceptible. Despite being natural, it's an exception from an already horrible rule that deals with irregular verbs which should not exist in the first place.

Conclusion

At that point one must wonder why learning Interlingua with all its irregularities and exceptions makes any sense. Yes, Interlingua is still simpler than Spanish, but it has horrors like double consonants ('sonetto' - a sonnet) which Spanish avoids. (There's an alternative Interlingua spelling system without double consonants but nobody uses it.)

On the other hand, Esperanto is catching up: while in orthodox Esperanto you may only use the root 'nov-' for 'new', modern Esperanto has accepted many international words starting with 'neo-' and now it is a recognizable prefix that can be used along 'nov-'. Thus Esperanto has followed Interlingua's word building strategy, but without its nightmares.

My conclusion is this: unless you specifically want a Latin-flavored Esperanto for aesthetical reasons, it's not clear Interlingua is worth the effort. As an international auxiliary language, it's worse than Esperanto due to irregularities. As a zonal language, it's worse than Neolatino due to missing grammar (and both are much less useful than Spanish). As a pan-European language, it would make some sense but only if irregular verbs are dealt with somehow, as most Germanic and Slavic language speakers would often understand only the second stem. All that said, there appears to be some market for Latin-flavored (even if overcomplicated) Esperanto, so why not.

2021-04-09 ~monerulo