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by chch 3244 days ago
That's one of the things I like about the auxiliary language Interlingua[1] over Esperanto[2]. To quote from Wikipedia:

"Interlingua has detached itself from the movement for the development and introduction of a universal language for all humanity. Whether or not one believes that a language for all humanity is possible, whether or not one believes that Interlingua will become such a language is totally irrelevant from the point of view of Interlingua itself. The only fact that matters (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its ambition of reflecting the cultural and thus linguistic homogeneity of the West, is capable of rendering tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is by its present contributions and not by the promises of its adherents that Interlingua wishes to be judged."

It was created with a goal of taking its structure and vocabulary from other common European (mostly Romance) languages, which means if one is familiar with those languages, they can already decently read Interlingua. The same passage from above, for those who might know some Romance language:

"Interlingua se ha distachate ab le movimento pro le disveloppamento e le introduction de un lingua universal pro tote le humanitate. Si o non on crede que un lingua pro tote le humanitate es possibile, si o non on crede que interlingua va devenir un tal lingua es totalmente indifferente ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme. Le sol facto que importa (ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme) es que interlingua, gratias a su ambition de reflecter le homogeneitate cultural e ergo linguistic del occidente, es capace de render servicios tangibile a iste precise momento del historia del mundo. Il es per su contributiones actual e non per le promissas de su adherentes que interlingua vole esser judicate."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

[2] Not that I've actually studied either, for full disclosure.

3 comments

For the curious, there's a similar take on Slavic languages called Slovio.

http://www.slovio.com/

Yeah, there were many such attempts in Slavic world. It gives you uncomfortable 80% understanding, while just speaking your own languages gives you like 60% between most pairs. Not good enough to make people use it.
From my personal experience as a native Slavic speaker in other countries, this doesn't work well across groups - i.e. if my language is East Slavic, and my interlocutor speaks West or South Slavic, we can't really get far; certainly nowhere even close to 60%.

But, yes, with English being the de facto standard, these more localized attempts are becoming redundant - you want to know English anyway because you want to talk to more people, and once you know it, you might as well use it to talk even to people whose languages are related to yours.

I'm Polish, and with Slovaks, Belarussians, Ukrainians it's more than 60%. With Czechs it's maybe 50% cause of their pronounciation, with Russians it's maybe 40-50%, because they have weird word roots.

Maybe it's because I'm vaguely aware of the phonetic changes between east and west Slavic languages (ić - it, ska - skaja, etc), because I've heard some Russian and Ukrainian on street markets in 90s.

Haven't had much experience with other Slavic speakers, but Serbian sounds quite close to western Slavic from the songs I've heard.

There is also Interslavic that continues from Old Church Slavonic: http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/

I natively know Polish and I know some very little Russian back from high school and Interslavic is more clear to me than Slovio.

I'm interested in linguistics so during one CS conference in Zagreb I asked a few Czechs, Croats, Slovaks, Slovenians, one Belarusian (native in Russian actually but he knew some Belarusian) and back in Poland a few Poles who know only Polish and the results were quite mixed.

It really might be better to just treat this as a curio and speak your own (especially in your own West/East/South Slavic language subgroup) and hope for the best. Or just speak English...

At that point you might as well just speak a Spanish/Italian mashup.
I learned French in high school and not Spanish (thanks to growing up in southern Louisiana), and I can't read Spanish or Italian texts unless I'm extraordinarily lucky about vocabulary, but I can read Interlingua just fine. I suspect I'd be hopelessly lost in an ad-hoc mashup of Spanish and Italian, but Interlingua is pretty good about constraining vocabulary to things that are usually obvious to a speaker of any Romance language and not adopting shifts that have only taken place in one / a few languages.
I mean, yes, that's basically what this is but it tries to go for words that are in at least 3 (I think?) romance languages.
This has been done, it's called Interlingua (de IALA, to disambiguate it from the other conlang csalled Interlingua).
Yeah, I can basically understand texts written in interlingua.
I can understand the above paragraph too (from a background in English/Italian/Latin/school-level French), but I can't say there's anything beautiful about it!
Beauty isn't really the goal here.