International auxiliary language
Encyclopedia
An international auxiliary language (sometimes abbreviated as IAL or auxlang) or interlanguage is a language
meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. An auxiliary language is primarily a second language
.
Languages of dominant societies over the centuries have served as auxiliary languages, sometimes approaching the international level. Arabic
, English
, French
, Mandarin
, Russian
and Spanish
have been used as such in recent times in many parts of the world. However, as these languages are associated with the very dominance—cultural, political, and economic—that made them popular, they are often also met with resistance. For this reason, some have turned to the idea of promoting an artificial or constructed language
as a possible solution.
The term "auxiliary" implies that it is intended to be an additional language for the people of the world, rather than to replace their native languages. Often, the phrase is used to refer to planned or constructed language
s proposed specifically to ease worldwide international communication, such as Esperanto
, Ido
and Interlingua
. However, it can also refer to the concept of such a language being determined by international consensus, including even a standardized natural language (e.g., International English
), and has also been connected to the project of constructing a universal language
.
s of the 17th-18th centuries could be regarded as proto-auxlangs, as they were intended by their creators to serve as bridges among people of different languages as well as to disambiguate and clarify thought. However, most or all of these languages were, as far as we can tell from the surviving publications about them, too incomplete and unfinished to serve as auxlangs (or for any other practical purpose). The first fully developed constructed languages we know of, as well as the first constructed languages devised primarily as auxlangs, originated in the 19th century; Solresol
by François Sudre
, a language based on musical notes, was the first to gain widespread attention although not, apparently, fluent speakers. Volapük
, first described in an article in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer
and in book form the following year, was the first to garner a widespread international speaker community. Three major Volapük conventions were held, in 1884, 1887, and 1889; the last of them used Volapük as its working language. André Cherpillod writes of the third Volapük convention,
However, not long after this the Volapük speaker community broke up due to various factors, including controversies between Schleyer and other prominent Volapük speakers, and the appearance of newer, easier-to-learn
planned languages, primarily Esperanto
. This language was developed from about 1878-1887, and published in that year, by L. L. Zamenhof
. Within a few years it had thousands of fluent speakers, primarily in eastern Europe. In 1905 its first world convention was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer. A wide variety of other auxlangs were devised and proposed in the 1880s-1900s, but none except Esperanto gathered a speaker community until Ido
.
The "Délégation pour l'adoption d'une langue auxiliaire internationale" was founded in 1900 by Louis Couturat
and others; it tried to get the International Association of Academies
to take up the question of an international auxiliary language, study the existing ones and pick one or design a new one. However, the meta-academy declining to do so, the Delegation decided to do the job itself. Among Esperanto speakers there was a general impression that the Delegation would of course choose Esperanto, as it was the only auxlang with a sizable speaker community at the time; it was felt as a betrayal by many Esperanto speakers when in 1907 the Delegation came up with its own reformed version of Esperanto, Ido
. Ido drew a significant number of speakers away from Esperanto in the short term, but in the longer term most of these either returned to Esperanto or moved on to other new auxlangs. Still, Ido remains today one of the three most widely spoken auxlangs.
Edgar von Wahl's Occidental
(also called "Interlingue"; 1922) was in reaction against the perceived artificiality of some earlier auxlangs, particularly Esperanto; von Wahl created a language whose words, including compound words, would have a high degree of recognizability for those who already know a Romance language. However, this design criterion was in conflict with ease of coining new compound or derived words on the fly while speaking. Occidental gained a small speaker community in the 1920s and 1930s, and supported several publications, but had almost entirely died out by the 1980s. More recently Occidental has been revived on the Internet.
The International Auxiliary Language Association
was founded in 1924 by Alice Vanderbilt Morris
; like the earlier Delegation, it at first worked on studying language problems and the existing auxlangs and proposals for auxlangs, and attempted to negotiate some consensus between the supporters of various auxlangs. However, like the Delegation, it finally decided to create its own auxlang; Interlingua
, published in 1951, was primarily the work of Alexander Gode
, though he built on preliminary work by earlier IALA linguists including André Martinet
. Interlingua, like Occidental, was designed to have words recognizable at sight by those who already know a Romance language or a language like English with much vocabulary borrowed from Romance languages; to attain this end Gode accepted a degree of grammatical and orthographic irregularity and complexity considerably greater than in Volapük, Esperanto or Ido, though still less than in most natural languages. Interlingua gained a significant speaker community, perhaps roughly the same size as that of Ido (considerably less than the size of Esperanto.)
Esperanto suffered a setback after the 1922 proposal by Iran and several other small countries in the League of Nations to have Esperanto taught in member nations' schools failed, and Esperanto speakers were subject to persecution under Hitler and Stalin's regimes, but in spite of these factors more people continued to learn Esperanto, and significant literary work (both poetry and novels) began to appear in Esperanto in the period between the World Wars.
All of the auxlangs with a surviving speaker community seem to have benefited from the advent of the Internet, Esperanto more than most. The CONLANG mailing list was founded in 1991; in its early years discussion focused on international auxiliary languages. As people interested in artistic language
s and engineered language
s grew to be the majority of the list members, and flame-wars between proponents of particular auxlangs irritated these members, a separate AUXLANG mailing list was created, which has been the primary venue for discussion of auxlangs since then. Besides giving the existing auxlangs with speaker communities a chance to interact rapidly online as well as slowly through postal mail or more rarely in personal meetings, the Internet has also made it easier to publicize new auxlang projects, and a handful of these have gained a small speaker community, including Kotava, Lingua Franca Nova
, Mondlango and Toki Pona
.
The history of the most notable constructed auxiliary languages are summarized in this table:
For Couturat et al., both Volapukists and Esperantists confounded the linguistic aspect of the question with many side issues, and they considered this a main reason why discussion about the idea of an international auxiliary language has appeared unpractical. Leopold Pfaundler wrote that an IAL was needed for more effective communication among scientists:
proposed by the philosopher Leibniz, to suggestions for the adoption of Chinese writing, to recent inventions such as Blissymbol.
Within the scientific community, there is already considerable agreement in the form of the schematics used to represent electronic circuits
, chemical symbols, mathematical symbols,and the Energy Systems Language
of systems ecology
. We can also see the international efforts at regularizing symbols used to regulate traffic, to indicate resources for tourists, and in maps. Some symbols have become nearly universal through their consistent use in computers and on the internet.
', the language has continued to develop since the first signs were standardised in 1973, and it is now in widespread use. International sign is distinct in many ways from spoken IALs; many signs are iconic
and signers tend to insert these signs into the grammar of their own sign language, with an emphasis on visually intuitive gestures and mime. A simple sign language called Plains Indian Sign Language
was used by indigenous peoples of the Americas
.
Gestuno is not to be confused with the separate and unrelated sign language Signuno, which is essentially a Signed Exact Esperanto. Signuno is not in any significant use, and is based on the Esperanto community rather than based on the international Deaf community.
Criticisms directed against Esperanto and other early auxlangs in the late 19th century included the idea that different races have sufficiently different speech organs that an international language might work locally in Europe, but hardly worldwide, and the prediction that if adopted, such an auxlang would rapidly break up into local dialects. Advances in linguistics have done away with the first of these, and the limited but significant use of Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua on an international scale, without breakup into dialects, has disproven the latter. Subsequently, much criticism has been focused either on the artificiality of these auxlangs, or on the argumentativeness of auxlang proponents and their failure to agree on one auxlang, or even on objective criteria by which to judge auxlangs. However, probably the most common criticism is that a constructed auxlang is unnecessary because natural languages such as English are already in wide use as auxlangs and work well enough for that purpose.
One criticism already prevalent in the late 19th century, and still sometimes heard today, is that an international language might hasten the extinction
of minority languages. One response has been that, even if this happens, the benefits would outweigh the costs; another, that proponents of auxlangs, particularly in the Esperanto movement, are generally also proponents of measures to conserve and promote minority languages and cultures.
Although referred to as international languages, most of these languages have historically been constructed on the basis of Western European languages. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was common for Volapük and Esperanto, and to some extent Ido, to be criticized for not being Western European enough; Occidental and Interlingua were (among other things) responses to this kind of criticism. More recently all these major auxlangs have been criticized for being too European and not global enough. One response to this criticism has been that doing otherwise in no way makes the language easier for anyone, while drawing away from the sources of much international vocabulary, technical and popular. Another response, primarily from Esperanto speakers, is that the internationality of a language has more to do with the culture of its speakers than with its linguistic properties. The term "Euroclone" was coined to refer to these languages in contrast to "worldlangs"
with global vocabulary sources; the term is sometimes applied only to self-proclaimed "naturalistic" auxlangs such as Occidental and Interlingua, sometimes to all auxlangs with primarily European vocabulary sources, regardless of their grammar, including Esperanto and Lingua Franca Nova.
The response to this argument was made by Alexander Gode and reiterated by Mario Pei: A vocabulary selected from a broad variety of languages does not make the language any easier for speakers of any one language. Gode's example compares a paragraph in Interlingua with a paragraph with words from Chinese, Japanese, Malay, and other non-European languages. The first is readily understood by anyone familiar with the Romance languages, and not difficult for most English speakers:
The second is not only difficult for Europeans, but the Malay speaker will not understand the Chinese words, the Chinese speaker will not understand the Japanese words, and the Japanese speaker will not understand the Malay words:
An a priori vocabulary such as that of Spokil
or Kotava, or a vocabulary constructed mathematically, such as that of Loglan
or Lojban
, would likely be as comprehensible.
Gode argues, additionally, that the western languages are the de facto languages of international science, medicine, and technology, and therefore an IAL based on them provides the best access to that literature. Nevertheless, it must be said that a more neutral vocabulary, perhaps even an a priori one, would be less offensive to some non-Europeans.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, many proposals for auxlangs based on global sources of vocabulary and grammar have been made, but most (like the majority of the European-based auxlangs of earlier decades) remain sketches too incomplete to be speakable, and of the more complete ones, few have gained any speakers. More recently there has been a trend, on the AUXLANG mailing list and on the more recently founded worldlang mailing list, to greater collaboration between various proponents of a more globally based auxlang.
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
meant for communication between people from different nations who do not share a common native language. An auxiliary language is primarily a second language
Second language
A second language or L2 is any language learned after the first language or mother tongue. Some languages, often called auxiliary languages, are used primarily as second languages or lingua francas ....
.
Languages of dominant societies over the centuries have served as auxiliary languages, sometimes approaching the international level. Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
have been used as such in recent times in many parts of the world. However, as these languages are associated with the very dominance—cultural, political, and economic—that made them popular, they are often also met with resistance. For this reason, some have turned to the idea of promoting an artificial or constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
as a possible solution.
The term "auxiliary" implies that it is intended to be an additional language for the people of the world, rather than to replace their native languages. Often, the phrase is used to refer to planned or constructed language
Constructed language
A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...
s proposed specifically to ease worldwide international communication, such as Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, Ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
and Interlingua
Interlingua
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
. However, it can also refer to the concept of such a language being determined by international consensus, including even a standardized natural language (e.g., International English
International English
International English is the concept of the English language as a global means of communication in numerous dialects, and also the movement towards an international standard for the language...
), and has also been connected to the project of constructing a universal language
Universal language
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some circles, it is a language said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. It may be the ideal of an international auxiliary language...
.
History
Some of the philosophical languagePhilosophical language
A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles, like a logical language, but may entail a strong claim of absolute perfection or transcendent or even mystical truth rather than satisfaction of pragmatic goals...
s of the 17th-18th centuries could be regarded as proto-auxlangs, as they were intended by their creators to serve as bridges among people of different languages as well as to disambiguate and clarify thought. However, most or all of these languages were, as far as we can tell from the surviving publications about them, too incomplete and unfinished to serve as auxlangs (or for any other practical purpose). The first fully developed constructed languages we know of, as well as the first constructed languages devised primarily as auxlangs, originated in the 19th century; Solresol
Solresol
Solresol is an artificial language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. He published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years...
by François Sudre
François Sudre
Jean-François Sudre was a French author and musician born in Albi, France in 1787 and died in Paris in 1862.He is best known for his work on developing a musical language called Solresol, as well as patenting the Sudrophone.- External links :*...
, a language based on musical notes, was the first to gain widespread attention although not, apparently, fluent speakers. Volapük
Volapük
Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...
, first described in an article in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer
Johann Martin Schleyer
Martin Schleyer was a German Catholic priest who invented the constructed language Volapük. His official name was "Martin Schleyer"; he added the name "Johann" unofficially....
and in book form the following year, was the first to garner a widespread international speaker community. Three major Volapük conventions were held, in 1884, 1887, and 1889; the last of them used Volapük as its working language. André Cherpillod writes of the third Volapük convention,
- In August 1889 the third convention was held in Paris. About two hundred people from many countries attended. And, unlike in the first two conventions, people spoke only Volapük. For the first time in the history of mankind, sixteen years before the Boulogne convention, an international convention spoke an international language.
However, not long after this the Volapük speaker community broke up due to various factors, including controversies between Schleyer and other prominent Volapük speakers, and the appearance of newer, easier-to-learn
Hardest language
Many languages have been claimed to be the hardest language to learn. Assessments have been used to determine language difficulty based on the ease with which infants learn a particular language as their first language, and how challenging a language is to learn as a second language by older...
planned languages, primarily Esperanto
History of Esperanto
The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. The number of speakers has grown gradually over time, although it has not had much support from governments and international bodies, and has sometimes been...
. This language was developed from about 1878-1887, and published in that year, by L. L. Zamenhof
L. L. Zamenhof
Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...
. Within a few years it had thousands of fluent speakers, primarily in eastern Europe. In 1905 its first world convention was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer. A wide variety of other auxlangs were devised and proposed in the 1880s-1900s, but none except Esperanto gathered a speaker community until Ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
.
The "Délégation pour l'adoption d'une langue auxiliaire internationale" was founded in 1900 by Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist.-Life:Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France, he was educated in philosophy and mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure...
and others; it tried to get the International Association of Academies
International Association of Academies
The International Association of Academies was an academy designed for the purpose of linking the various Academies around the world, of which the first meeting was held in Paris, France, in 1900. The first president was M. J. de Goeje, a Dutch Orientalist....
to take up the question of an international auxiliary language, study the existing ones and pick one or design a new one. However, the meta-academy declining to do so, the Delegation decided to do the job itself. Among Esperanto speakers there was a general impression that the Delegation would of course choose Esperanto, as it was the only auxlang with a sizable speaker community at the time; it was felt as a betrayal by many Esperanto speakers when in 1907 the Delegation came up with its own reformed version of Esperanto, Ido
Ido
Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
. Ido drew a significant number of speakers away from Esperanto in the short term, but in the longer term most of these either returned to Esperanto or moved on to other new auxlangs. Still, Ido remains today one of the three most widely spoken auxlangs.
Edgar von Wahl's Occidental
Occidental language
The language Occidental, later Interlingue, is a planned language created by the Balto-German naval officer and teacher Edgar de Wahl and published in 1922....
(also called "Interlingue"; 1922) was in reaction against the perceived artificiality of some earlier auxlangs, particularly Esperanto; von Wahl created a language whose words, including compound words, would have a high degree of recognizability for those who already know a Romance language. However, this design criterion was in conflict with ease of coining new compound or derived words on the fly while speaking. Occidental gained a small speaker community in the 1920s and 1930s, and supported several publications, but had almost entirely died out by the 1980s. More recently Occidental has been revived on the Internet.
The International Auxiliary Language Association
International Auxiliary Language Association
The International Auxiliary Language Association was founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and...
was founded in 1924 by Alice Vanderbilt Morris
Alice Vanderbilt Morris
Alice Vanderbilt Morris , born Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, was a member of the American Vanderbilt family. She co-founded the International Auxiliary Language Association .-Biography:...
; like the earlier Delegation, it at first worked on studying language problems and the existing auxlangs and proposals for auxlangs, and attempted to negotiate some consensus between the supporters of various auxlangs. However, like the Delegation, it finally decided to create its own auxlang; Interlingua
History of Interlingua
The History of Interlingua comprises the formation of the language itself as well as its community of speakers.Ultimate credit for Interlingua must go to the American heiress Alice Vanderbilt Morris , who became interested in linguistics and the international auxiliary language movement in the...
, published in 1951, was primarily the work of Alexander Gode
Alexander Gode
Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch or simply Alexander Gode was a German-American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.-Biography:Born to a German father and a Swiss mother, Gode studied at the University of Vienna and the...
, though he built on preliminary work by earlier IALA linguists including André Martinet
André Martinet
André Martinet was a French linguist, influential by his work on structural linguistics....
. Interlingua, like Occidental, was designed to have words recognizable at sight by those who already know a Romance language or a language like English with much vocabulary borrowed from Romance languages; to attain this end Gode accepted a degree of grammatical and orthographic irregularity and complexity considerably greater than in Volapük, Esperanto or Ido, though still less than in most natural languages. Interlingua gained a significant speaker community, perhaps roughly the same size as that of Ido (considerably less than the size of Esperanto.)
Esperanto suffered a setback after the 1922 proposal by Iran and several other small countries in the League of Nations to have Esperanto taught in member nations' schools failed, and Esperanto speakers were subject to persecution under Hitler and Stalin's regimes, but in spite of these factors more people continued to learn Esperanto, and significant literary work (both poetry and novels) began to appear in Esperanto in the period between the World Wars.
All of the auxlangs with a surviving speaker community seem to have benefited from the advent of the Internet, Esperanto more than most. The CONLANG mailing list was founded in 1991; in its early years discussion focused on international auxiliary languages. As people interested in artistic language
Artistic language
An artistic language is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed within the context of fictional worlds, such as J. R. R....
s and engineered language
Engineered language
Engineered languages are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical languages , logical languages , and experimental languages...
s grew to be the majority of the list members, and flame-wars between proponents of particular auxlangs irritated these members, a separate AUXLANG mailing list was created, which has been the primary venue for discussion of auxlangs since then. Besides giving the existing auxlangs with speaker communities a chance to interact rapidly online as well as slowly through postal mail or more rarely in personal meetings, the Internet has also made it easier to publicize new auxlang projects, and a handful of these have gained a small speaker community, including Kotava, Lingua Franca Nova
Lingua Franca Nova
Lingua Franca Nova is an auxiliary constructed language created by Dr. C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. Its vocabulary is based on the Romance languages French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. The grammar is highly reduced and similar to the Romance creoles...
, Mondlango and Toki Pona
Toki Pona
Toki Pona is a constructed language, first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto....
.
The history of the most notable constructed auxiliary languages are summarized in this table:
| Language name | ISO | Year of first publication | Creator | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solresol Solresol Solresol is an artificial language devised by François Sudre, beginning in 1827. He published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years... |
1827 | François Sudre François Sudre Jean-François Sudre was a French author and musician born in Albi, France in 1787 and died in Paris in 1862.He is best known for his work on developing a musical language called Solresol, as well as patenting the Sudrophone.- External links :*... |
The famous "musical language" | |
| Communicationssprache Communicationssprache Communicationssprache, also known as Universal Glot, Weltsprache and Komuniklingvo, is one of the earliest international auxiliary languages.- Overview :It was created by Joseph Schipfer and first published in 1839 in Wiesbaden.... |
1839 | Joseph Schipfer Joseph Schipfer Joseph Schipfer was a German nobleman, landowner and vine producer, today mostly known for his creation of the language Communicationssprache.... |
Based on French vocabulary | |
| Universalglot Universalglot Universalglot is an a posteriori international auxiliary language published by the French linguist Jean Pirro in 1868 in Tentative d'une langue universelle, Enseignement, grammaire, vocabulaire... |
1868 | Jean Pirro Jean Pirro Jean Pirro was a French linguist who in 1868 invented the "universal language", Universalglot. He was also the father of André Pirro.-See also:*Constructed languages... |
Arguably the first fully developed IAL | |
| Volapük Volapük Volapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used... |
vo, vol | 1879–1880 | Johann Martin Schleyer Johann Martin Schleyer Martin Schleyer was a German Catholic priest who invented the constructed language Volapük. His official name was "Martin Schleyer"; he added the name "Johann" unofficially.... |
First to acquire a sizable international speaker community |
| Esperanto Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887... |
eo, epo | 1887 | L. L. Zamenhof L. L. Zamenhof Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:... |
By far the most popular constructed language. |
| Spokil Spokil Spokil is a constructed language, created by the Frenchman Adolphe Nicolas.During the 1880s, the most popular international auxiliary language was undeniably Volapük. However, after a brief period of overwhelming success, rivalry on the part of the more practical and less complicated Esperanto led... |
1887 or 1890 | Adolph Nicolas | An a priori language by a former Volapük advocate | |
| Mundolinco Mundolinco Mundolinco is a constructed language created by the Dutch author J. Braakman in 1888. It is notable for apparently being the first Esperantido, i.e. the first Esperanto derivative.... |
1888 | J. Braakman | The first esperantido Esperantido Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. Esperantido originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as Ido. The word Esperantido is derived from Esperanto... |
|
| Bolak Bolak (Blue Language) Bolak is a constructed language that was invented by Léon Bollack. The name of the language means both `blue language' and `ingenious creation' in the language itself.-History:... |
art | 1899 | Léon Bollack Léon Bollack Léon Bollack was a rich French trader who created The Blue Language or Bolak in 1899. After a few years, he joined the Ido movement; it is possible that the blue color of the Ido flag was his proposal. He uttered the phrase: "It seems to me that both the Esperanto and Volapük poets are worth only... |
Mixes a priori and a posteriori elements, from Romance and Germanic languages |
| Idiom Neutral Idiom Neutral Idiom Neutral is an international auxiliary language, published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language under the leadership of Waldemar Rosenberger, a St... |
1902 | Waldemar Rosenberger Waldemar Rosenberger Waldemar Rosenberger, from Saint Petersburg, Russia, became director of the Volapük Academy in 1892. Under his leadership, the Academy began to experiment more with the Volapük language. In 1902 the Academy proposed a heavily revised version which was known as Neutral and later Idiom Neutral.... |
A naturalistic IAL by a former advocate of Volapük | |
| Latino sine Flexione Latino sine Flexione Latino sine flexione , or Peano’s Interlingua , is an international auxiliary language invented by the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano in 1903. It is a simplified version of Latin, and retains its vocabulary... |
1903 | Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in... |
"Latin without inflections," it replaced Idiom Neutral in 1908 | |
| Ido Ido Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages... |
io, ido | 1907 | Louis de Beaufront Louis de Beaufront Marquis Louis de Beaufront was a major influence in the development of Ido, an international auxiliary language. Beaufront was initially an advocate of Esperanto and was largely responsible for its early diffusion in western Europe as well as one of its first French proponents.Much of Beaufront's... and Louis Couturat Louis Couturat Louis Couturat was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist.-Life:Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France, he was educated in philosophy and mathematics at the École Normale Supérieure... |
The most successful offspring of Esperanto |
| Adjuvilo Adjuvilo Adjuvilo is a language created in 1910 by Claudius Colas under the pseudonym of "Profesoro V. Esperema". Although it was a full language, it may not have been created to be spoken. Many believe that as an Esperantist, Colas created Adjuvilo to help create dissent in the then-growing Ido movement... |
1910 | Claudius Colas Claudius Colas Claudius Colas was a French Esperantist who lived from 1884 to 1914. In 1910, he created the constructed language Adjuvilo, which was a complete language that was never meant to be spoken but instead an effort to help create dissent in the then-growing Ido movement... |
An esperantido created to cause dissent among Idists | |
| Occidental Occidental language The language Occidental, later Interlingue, is a planned language created by the Balto-German naval officer and teacher Edgar de Wahl and published in 1922.... (aka Interlingue) |
ie, ile | 1922 | Edgar de Wahl Edgar de Wahl Edgar von Wahl or Edgar de Wahl was a teacher and creator of the language Occidental... |
A sophisticated naturalistic IAL |
| Novial Novial Novial [nov- + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed international auxiliary language intended to facilitate international communication and friendship, without displacing anyone's native language... |
nov | 1928 | Otto Jespersen Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin... |
Another sophisticated naturalistic IAL |
| Sona Sona language Sona is a worldlang created by Kenneth Searight and described in a book he published in 1935. The word Sona in the language itself means "auxiliary neutral thing", but the name was also chosen to echo "sonority" or "sound".... |
1935 | Kenneth Searight Kenneth Searight Kenneth Searight was the creator of the international auxiliary language Sona. His book Sona; an auxiliary neutral language outlines the language's grammar and vocabulary. Encounters with Searight also influenced English author E.M... |
Best known attempt at an unbiased vocabulary | |
| Esperanto II Esperanto II Esperanto II was a reform of Esperanto proposed by René de Saussure in 1937, the last of a long series of such proposals beginning with a 1907 response to Ido later called Antido 1... |
1937 | René de Saussure René de Saussure René de Saussure was a Swiss Esperantist and professional mathematician, who composed important works about Esperanto and interlinguistics from a linguistic viewpoint... |
Last of the classical esperantido Esperantido Esperantido is the term used within the Esperanto and constructed language communities to describe a language project based on or inspired by Esperanto. Esperantido originally referred to the language of that name, which later came to be known as Ido. The word Esperantido is derived from Esperanto... s |
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| Mondial Mondial (language) Mondial is an international auxiliary language created by Dr. Helge Heimer, a Swede, in the 1940s. A well-developed project, it received favourable reviews from several academic linguists but achieved little practical success... |
1940s | Helge Heimer | A naturalistic European language | |
| Interglossa Interglossa The auxiliary language Interglossa was devised by the scientist Lancelot Hogben during World War II. It appears to be a straightforward attempt to put the international lexicon of science and technology, mainly of Greek and Latin origin, into a language with a purely isolating grammar. Interglossa... |
igs | 1943 | Lancelot Hogben Lancelot Hogben Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS was a versatile British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He is best known for developing Xenopus laevis as a model organism for biological research in his early career, attacking the eugenics movement in the middle of his career, and popularising books on... |
A combination of isolating, quasi-pidgin grammar with a strong Greco-Latin vocabulary, later heavily modified to form the basis of Glosa Glosa Glosa is an international auxiliary language based on a previous draft auxiliary called Interglossa. As an isolating language, there are no inflections, so that words always remain in their dictionary form, no matter what function they have in the sentence... |
| Blissymbols Blissymbols Blissymbols or Blissymbolics was conceived as an ideographic writing system called Semantography consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts... |
zbl | 1949 | Charles Bliss | An ideographic writing system, with its own grammar and syntax. |
| Interlingua Interlingua Interlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association... |
ia, ina | 1951 | Alexander Gode Alexander Gode Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch or simply Alexander Gode was a German-American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.-Biography:Born to a German father and a Swiss mother, Gode studied at the University of Vienna and the... / IALA International Auxiliary Language Association The International Auxiliary Language Association was founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together with research and experiment that may hasten such establishment in an intelligent manner and... |
A large project to discover common European vocabulary. |
| Intal Intal language Intal is an international auxiliary language, published in 1956 by the German linguist Erich Weferling. The name of the language is the acronym for INTernational Auxiliary Language... |
1956 | Erich Weferling | A compromise solution to unite the most common international auxiliary languages in one system. | |
| Frater Lingua sistemfrater Frater , an a posteriori international auxiliary language, published in Frater . The simplest International Language Ever Constructed, in 1957 by the Vietnamese linguist Phạm Xuân Thái... |
1957 | Pham Xuan Thai | Innovative blend of Greco-Latin roots and non-western grammar | |
| Afrihili Afrihili Afrihili is a constructed language designed in 1970 by Ghanaian historian K. A. Kumi Attobrah to be used as a lingua franca in all of Africa. The name of the language is a combination of Africa and Swahili... |
afh | 1970 | K. A. Kumi Attobrah | a pan-African language |
| Kotava | avk | 1978 | Staren Fetcey | A sophisticated a priori IAL |
| Uropi Uropi Uropi is a constructed language which was created by Joël Landais, a French English teacher. Uropi is a synthesis of European languages, explicitly based on the common Indo-European roots and aims at being used as an auxiliary language for Europe and thus contributing to building a European identity... |
1986 | Joël Landais | Based on the common Indo-European roots and the common grammatical points of the IE languages | |
| Lingua Franca Nova Lingua Franca Nova Lingua Franca Nova is an auxiliary constructed language created by Dr. C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. Its vocabulary is based on the Romance languages French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. The grammar is highly reduced and similar to the Romance creoles... |
lfn | 1998 | C. George Boeree et al. | A Romance vocabulary with a creole-like grammar |
| Modern Indo-European Modern Indo-European Modern Indo-European is a proposed international auxiliary language based on the extinct Proto-Indo-European language, presented by two undergraduate students at Extremadura University, Carlos Quiles and María Teresa Batalla, in 2006... |
2006 | Carlos Quiles, María Teresa Batalla | Based on reconstruction of the extinct Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European language The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans... |
|
| Sambahsa-Mundialect | 2007 | Olivier Simon | Mixture of simplified reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language Proto-Indo-European language The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans... and worldlang Worldlang A worldlang is a type of international auxiliary language that derives its roots, phonology, and possibly grammar from different language families in order to avoid perceived European bias... s |
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Scholarly study
In the early 1900s auxlangs were already becoming a subject of academic study. Louis Couturat et al. described the controversy in the preface to their book International Language and Science:- The question of a so-called world-language, or better expressed, an international auxiliary language, was during the now past VolapükVolapükVolapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...
period, and is still in the present EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
movement, so much in the hands of Utopians, fanatics and enthusiasts, that it is difficult to form an unbiased opinion concerning it, although a good idea lies at its basis. (1910, p. v).
For Couturat et al., both Volapukists and Esperantists confounded the linguistic aspect of the question with many side issues, and they considered this a main reason why discussion about the idea of an international auxiliary language has appeared unpractical. Leopold Pfaundler wrote that an IAL was needed for more effective communication among scientists:
- All who are occupied with the reading or writing of scientific literature have assuredly very often felt the want of a common scientific language, and regretted the great loss of time and trouble caused by the multiplicity of languages employed in scientific literature.
Classification
The following classification of auxiliary languages was developed by Pierre Janton in 1993:- A priori languagesA priori (languages)An a priori language is any constructed language whose vocabulary is not based on existing languages, unlike a posteriori constructed languages. Examples of a priori languages include Ro, Solresol, Mirad, Klingon, and Na'vi...
are characterized by largely artificial morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s (not borrowed from natural languages), schematic derivationDerivation (linguistics)In linguistics, derivation is the process of forming a new word on the basis of an existing word, e.g. happi-ness and un-happy from happy, or determination from determine...
, simple phonologyPhonologyPhonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
, grammarGrammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
and morphologyMorphology (linguistics)In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
. Some a priori languages are called philosophical languagePhilosophical languageA philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles, like a logical language, but may entail a strong claim of absolute perfection or transcendent or even mystical truth rather than satisfaction of pragmatic goals...
s, referring to their basis in philosophical ideas about thought and language. These include some of the earliest efforts at auxiliary language in the 17th century. A modern example of a fully developed a priori language is Kotava (1978). Some more specific subcategories:- OligosyntheticOligosynthetic languageAn oligosynthetic language is any language using very few morphemes, perhaps only a few hundred, which combine synthetically to form statements. It is contrasted to polysynthetic languages...
or oligoisolating languages have no more than a few hundred morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s. Most of their vocabulary is made of compound words or set phrases formed from these morphemes. SonaSona languageSona is a worldlang created by Kenneth Searight and described in a book he published in 1935. The word Sona in the language itself means "auxiliary neutral thing", but the name was also chosen to echo "sonority" or "sound"....
and Toki PonaToki PonaToki Pona is a constructed language, first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto....
are well known examples, although Toki Pona is not primarily a priori. - Taxonomic languages form their words using a taxonomic hierarchy, with each phoneme of a word helping specify its position in a semantic hierarchy of some kind; for example, Ro and Arahau.
- PasigraphiesPasigraphyA pasigraphy is a writing system where each written symbol represents a concept rather than a word or sound or series of sounds in a spoken language. The aim is to be intelligible to persons of all languages...
are purely written languages without a spoken form, or with a spoken form left at the discretion of the reader; many of the 17th-18th century philosophical languages and auxlangs were pasigraphies. This set historically tends to overlap with taxonomic languages, though there's no inherent reason a pasigraphy needs to be taxonomic. - Logical languages, for example, LoglanLoglanLoglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning...
and LojbanLojbanSee also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
, aim to eliminate ambiguity. Both these examples, it should be noted, derive their morphemes from a broad range of natural languages using statistical methods.
- Oligosynthetic
- A posteriori languages are based on existing natural languages. Nearly all the auxiliary languages with fluent speakers are in this category. Most of the a posteriori auxiliary languages borrow their vocabulary primarily or solely from European languages, and base their grammar more or less on European models. (Aficionados sometimes refer to these European-based languages as "euroclones", although this term has negative connotations and is not used in the academic literature.) InterlinguaInterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
was drawn originally from international scientific vocabularyInternational Scientific VocabularyInternational scientific vocabulary comprises scientific and specialized words whose language of origin may or may not be certain, but which are in current use in several modern languages. The name "International Scientific Vocabulary" was first used by Philip Gove in Webster’s Third New...
, in turn based primarily on Greek and Latin roots. GlosaGlosaGlosa is an international auxiliary language based on a previous draft auxiliary called Interglossa. As an isolating language, there are no inflections, so that words always remain in their dictionary form, no matter what function they have in the sentence...
did likewise, with a stronger dependence of Greek roots. [Glisa] is derived from Glosa. It is improved with high clarity and same isolating, developed en 2010. Although a posteriori languages have been based on most of the families of European languages, the most successful of these (notably EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and InterlinguaInterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
) have been based largely on Romance and/or Latin elements.- Schematic (or "mixed") languages have some a priori qualities. Some have ethnic morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s but alter them significantly to fit a simplified phonotacticPhonotacticsPhonotactics is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes...
pattern(e.g., VolapükVolapükVolapük is a constructed language, created in 1879–1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 , 1887 and 1889 . The first two conventions used...
, Toki PonaToki PonaToki Pona is a constructed language, first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa of Toronto....
) or both artificial and natural morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s (e.g., Perio). Partly schematic languages have partly schematic and partly naturalistic derivation (e.g. EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
and IdoIdoIdo is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...
). Natural morphemeMorphemeIn linguistics, a morpheme is the smallest semantically meaningful unit in a language. The field of study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology. A morpheme is not identical to a word, and the principal difference between the two is that a morpheme may or may not stand alone, whereas a word,...
s of languages in this group are rarely altered greatly from their source-language form, but compound and derived words are generally not recognizable at sight by people familiar with the source languages. - Naturalistic languages resemble existing natural languages. For example, OccidentalOccidental languageThe language Occidental, later Interlingue, is a planned language created by the Balto-German naval officer and teacher Edgar de Wahl and published in 1922....
, InterlinguaInterlinguaInterlingua is an international auxiliary language , developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association...
, and Lingua Franca NovaLingua Franca NovaLingua Franca Nova is an auxiliary constructed language created by Dr. C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. Its vocabulary is based on the Romance languages French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. The grammar is highly reduced and similar to the Romance creoles...
were developed so that not only the root words but their compounds and derivations will often be recognizable immediately by large numbers of people. Some naturalistic languages do have a limited number of artificial morphemes or invented grammatical devices (e.g. NovialNovialNovial [nov- + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed international auxiliary language intended to facilitate international communication and friendship, without displacing anyone's native language...
). (Note that the term "naturalistic" as used in auxiliary language scholarship does not mean the same thing as the homophonous term used in describing artistic languageArtistic languageAn artistic language is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed within the context of fictional worlds, such as J. R. R....
s.) - Simplified natural languages reduce the full extent of vocabulary and partially regularize the grammar of a natural language (e.g. Basic EnglishBasic EnglishBasic English, also known as Simple English, is an English-based controlled language created by linguist and philosopher Charles Kay Ogden as an international auxiliary language, and as an aid for teaching English as a Second Language...
, Special EnglishSpecial EnglishSpecial English is a controlled version of the English language first used on October 19, 1959, and still presented daily by the United States broadcasting service Voice of America. World news and other programs are read one-third slower than regular VOA English. Reporters avoid idioms and use a...
and GlobishGlobishGlobish may refer to:* Globish , a formalized natural language subset of English grammar and vocabulary* Globish , a simplified constructed language related to, but independent of, standard English...
).
- Schematic (or "mixed") languages have some a priori qualities. Some have ethnic morpheme
Methods of propagation
As has been pointed out, the issue of an international language is not so much which, but how. Several approaches exist toward the eventual full expansion and consolidation of an international auxiliary language.- Laissez-faire. This approach is taken in the belief that one language will eventually and inevitably "win out" as a world auxiliary language (e.g., International English) without any need for specific action.
- Institutional sponsorship and grass-roots promotion of language programs. This approach has taken various forms, depending on the language and language type, ranging from government promotion of a particular language to one-on-one encouragement to learn the language to instructional or marketing programs.
- National legislation. This approach seeks to have individual countries (or even localities) progressively endorse a given language as an official language (or to promote the concept of international legislation).
- International legislation. This approach involves promotion of the future holding of a binding international convention (perhaps to be under the auspices of such international organizations as the United NationsUnited NationsThe United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
or Inter-Parliamentary Union) to formally agree upon an official international auxiliary language which would then be taught in all schools around the world, beginning at the primary level. This approach seeks to put international opinion and law behind the language and thus to expand or consolidate it as a full official world language. This approach could either give more credibility to a natural language already serving this purpose to a certain degree (e.g., if English were chosen) or to give a greatly enhanced chance for a constructed language to take root. For constructed languages particularly, this approach has been seen by various individuals in the IAL movement as holding the most promise of ensuring that promotion of studies in the language would not be met with skepticism at its practicality by its would-be learners.
Pictorial languages
There have been a number of proposals for using pictures, ideograms, diagrams, and other pictorial representations for international communications. Examples range from the original Characteristica UniversalisCharacteristica universalis
The Latin term characteristica universalis, commonly interpreted as universal characteristic, or universal character in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts...
proposed by the philosopher Leibniz, to suggestions for the adoption of Chinese writing, to recent inventions such as Blissymbol.
Within the scientific community, there is already considerable agreement in the form of the schematics used to represent electronic circuits
Circuit diagram
A circuit diagram is a simplified conventional graphical representation of an electrical circuit...
, chemical symbols, mathematical symbols,and the Energy Systems Language
Energy Systems Language
The Energy Systems Language , also referred to as Energese, Energy Circuit Language and Generic Systems Symbols, was developed by the ecologist Howard T. Odum and colleagues in the 1950s during studies of the tropical forests funded by the United States Atomic Energy Commission...
of systems ecology
Systems ecology
Systems ecology is an interdisciplinary field of ecology, taking a holistic approach to the study of ecological systems, especially ecosystems. Systems ecology can be seen as an application of general systems theory to ecology. Central to the systems ecology approach is the idea that an ecosystem...
. We can also see the international efforts at regularizing symbols used to regulate traffic, to indicate resources for tourists, and in maps. Some symbols have become nearly universal through their consistent use in computers and on the internet.
Sign languages
An international auxiliary sign language has been developed by deaf people who meet regularly at international forums such as sporting events or in political organisations. Previously referred to as Gestuno but now more commonly known simply as 'international signInternational Sign
International Sign is an international auxiliary language sometimes used at international meetings such as the World Federation of the Deaf congress, events such as the Deaflympics, and informally when travelling and socialising...
', the language has continued to develop since the first signs were standardised in 1973, and it is now in widespread use. International sign is distinct in many ways from spoken IALs; many signs are iconic
Iconicity
In functional-cognitive linguistics, as well as in semiotics, iconicity is the conceived similarity or analogy between the form of a sign and its meaning, as opposed to arbitrariness.Iconic principles:...
and signers tend to insert these signs into the grammar of their own sign language, with an emphasis on visually intuitive gestures and mime. A simple sign language called Plains Indian Sign Language
Plains Indian Sign Language
The Plains Indian sign languages are various manually coded languages used, or formerly used, by various Native Americans of the Great Plains of the United States of America and Canada...
was used by indigenous peoples of the Americas
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
.
Gestuno is not to be confused with the separate and unrelated sign language Signuno, which is essentially a Signed Exact Esperanto. Signuno is not in any significant use, and is based on the Esperanto community rather than based on the international Deaf community.
Criticism
There has been considerable criticism of international auxiliary languages, both in terms of individual proposals and in more general terms.Criticisms directed against Esperanto and other early auxlangs in the late 19th century included the idea that different races have sufficiently different speech organs that an international language might work locally in Europe, but hardly worldwide, and the prediction that if adopted, such an auxlang would rapidly break up into local dialects. Advances in linguistics have done away with the first of these, and the limited but significant use of Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua on an international scale, without breakup into dialects, has disproven the latter. Subsequently, much criticism has been focused either on the artificiality of these auxlangs, or on the argumentativeness of auxlang proponents and their failure to agree on one auxlang, or even on objective criteria by which to judge auxlangs. However, probably the most common criticism is that a constructed auxlang is unnecessary because natural languages such as English are already in wide use as auxlangs and work well enough for that purpose.
One criticism already prevalent in the late 19th century, and still sometimes heard today, is that an international language might hasten the extinction
Language death
In linguistics, language death is a process that affects speech communities where the level of linguistic competence that speakers possess of a given language variety is decreased, eventually resulting in no native and/or fluent speakers of the variety...
of minority languages. One response has been that, even if this happens, the benefits would outweigh the costs; another, that proponents of auxlangs, particularly in the Esperanto movement, are generally also proponents of measures to conserve and promote minority languages and cultures.
Although referred to as international languages, most of these languages have historically been constructed on the basis of Western European languages. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it was common for Volapük and Esperanto, and to some extent Ido, to be criticized for not being Western European enough; Occidental and Interlingua were (among other things) responses to this kind of criticism. More recently all these major auxlangs have been criticized for being too European and not global enough. One response to this criticism has been that doing otherwise in no way makes the language easier for anyone, while drawing away from the sources of much international vocabulary, technical and popular. Another response, primarily from Esperanto speakers, is that the internationality of a language has more to do with the culture of its speakers than with its linguistic properties. The term "Euroclone" was coined to refer to these languages in contrast to "worldlangs"
Worldlang
A worldlang is a type of international auxiliary language that derives its roots, phonology, and possibly grammar from different language families in order to avoid perceived European bias...
with global vocabulary sources; the term is sometimes applied only to self-proclaimed "naturalistic" auxlangs such as Occidental and Interlingua, sometimes to all auxlangs with primarily European vocabulary sources, regardless of their grammar, including Esperanto and Lingua Franca Nova.
The response to this argument was made by Alexander Gode and reiterated by Mario Pei: A vocabulary selected from a broad variety of languages does not make the language any easier for speakers of any one language. Gode's example compares a paragraph in Interlingua with a paragraph with words from Chinese, Japanese, Malay, and other non-European languages. The first is readily understood by anyone familiar with the Romance languages, and not difficult for most English speakers:
- La sol dice: "io me appella sol. Io es multo brillante. Io me leva al est, e cuando io me leva, il es die. Io reguarda per tu fenestra con mi oculo brillante como le auro, e io te dice quando il es tempore a levar te. E io te dice: 'Pigro, leva te. Io non brilla a fin que tu resta al lecto a dormir, sed que tu lege e que tu te promena.'"
The second is not only difficult for Europeans, but the Malay speaker will not understand the Chinese words, the Chinese speaker will not understand the Japanese words, and the Japanese speaker will not understand the Malay words:
- Mata-hari yu: "Wo-ti nama mata-hari. Wo taihen brillante. Wo leva wo a est, dan toki wo leva wo, ada hari. Wo miru per ni-ti fenestra sama wo-ti mata brillante como kin, dan wo yu ni toki ada tempo a levar ni. Dan wo yu ni: 'Sust, leva ni. Wo non brilla sam-rap ni tomaru a toko a nemuru, sed wo brilla sam-rap ni leva ni, dan que ni suru kam, ni yomu, dan ni aruku.'"
An a priori vocabulary such as that of Spokil
Spokil
Spokil is a constructed language, created by the Frenchman Adolphe Nicolas.During the 1880s, the most popular international auxiliary language was undeniably Volapük. However, after a brief period of overwhelming success, rivalry on the part of the more practical and less complicated Esperanto led...
or Kotava, or a vocabulary constructed mathematically, such as that of Loglan
Loglan
Loglan is a constructed language originally designed for linguistic research, particularly for investigating the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis. The language was developed beginning in 1955 by Dr James Cooke Brown with the goal of making a language so different from natural languages that people learning...
or Lojban
Lojban
See also discussed by Arthur Protin, Bob LeChevalier, Carl Burke, Doug Landauer, Guy Steele, Jack Waugh, Jeff Prothero, Jim Carter, and Robert Chassell, as well as , the concepts which "average English speakers won't recognize" because most of them "have no exact English counterpart".Like most...
, would likely be as comprehensible.
Gode argues, additionally, that the western languages are the de facto languages of international science, medicine, and technology, and therefore an IAL based on them provides the best access to that literature. Nevertheless, it must be said that a more neutral vocabulary, perhaps even an a priori one, would be less offensive to some non-Europeans.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, many proposals for auxlangs based on global sources of vocabulary and grammar have been made, but most (like the majority of the European-based auxlangs of earlier decades) remain sketches too incomplete to be speakable, and of the more complete ones, few have gained any speakers. More recently there has been a trend, on the AUXLANG mailing list and on the more recently founded worldlang mailing list, to greater collaboration between various proponents of a more globally based auxlang.
See also
See List of constructed languages#Auxiliary languages for a list of designed international auxiliary languages.- Artistic languageArtistic languageAn artistic language is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed within the context of fictional worlds, such as J. R. R....
- Characteristica universalisCharacteristica universalisThe Latin term characteristica universalis, commonly interpreted as universal characteristic, or universal character in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scientific, and metaphysical concepts...
- Comparison of international auxiliary languages
- Engineered languageEngineered languageEngineered languages are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical languages , logical languages , and experimental languages...
- Hardest languageHardest languageMany languages have been claimed to be the hardest language to learn. Assessments have been used to determine language difficulty based on the ease with which infants learn a particular language as their first language, and how challenging a language is to learn as a second language by older...
-- often a goal opposite to the IAL designs - InterlinguisticsInterlinguisticsInterlinguistics is the study of various aspects of linguistic communication between people who cannot make themselves understood by means of their different first languages...
- International Language ReviewInternational Language ReviewThe International Language Review was a magazine which was intended as a forum for proponents of the various international language projects to discuss and develop their ideas, started in 1955 by Floyd and Evelyn Hardin from Denver, Colorado, and published...
- Language planningLanguage planningLanguage planning is a deliberate effort to influence the function, structure, or acquisition of languages or language variety within a speech community. It is often associated with government planning, but is also used by a variety of non-governmental organizations, such as grass-roots...
- Lingua francaLingua francaA lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.-Characteristics:"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the linguistic...
- Universal languageUniversal languageUniversal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's population. In some circles, it is a language said to be understood by all living things, beings, and objects alike. It may be the ideal of an international auxiliary language...
- World languageWorld languageA world language is a language spoken internationally which is learned by many people as a second language. A world language is not only characterized by the number of its speakers , but also by its geographical distribution, and its use in international organizations and in diplomatic relations...
- Bahá'í Faith and auxiliary languageBahá'í Faith and auxiliary languageThe Bahá'í Faith teaches that the world should adopt an international auxiliary language, which people would use in addition to their mother tongue. The aim of this teaching is to improve communication and foster unity among peoples and nations...
- Zonal constructed languagesZonal constructed languagesZonal constructed languages are constructed languages made to facilitate communication between speakers of a certain linguistic group or of two closely related languages....
External links
- Proposed Guidelines for the Design of an Optimal International Auxiliary Language — An article written by Richard K. Harrison.
- The Function of an International Auxiliary Language — An article written by linguist Edward SapirEdward SapirEdward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the early development of the discipline of linguistics....
discussing the need for prospects of an international language.
- Farewell to auxiliary languages, a criticism of the auxiliary language movement by Richard K. Harrison.
- Thoughts on IAL Success, an essay by Paul O. Bartlett
- IAL Wiki — a wiki for the Auxlang Community.
- OneTongue.com — A project for promoting a world auxiliary language.
- Which International Auxiliary Language (IAL) should you learn?
- Language International