Idiom Neutral is an international auxiliary language, published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language () under the leadership of

Waldemar Rosenberger Waldemar Rosenberger, (, Vladimir Karlovich Rozenberger, 1848–1918) from Saint Petersburg, Russia, became director of the International Volapük Academy in 1892. Under his leadership, the Academy began to experiment more with the Volapük langu ...

, a

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

History

The Academy had its origin as the (literally 'International Academy of the World Language') at a congress in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

in August 1887, was set up to conserve and perfect the auxiliary language

Volapük Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an ...

. Under Rosenberger, who became the Academy’s director in 1892, the group began to make considerable changes in the grammar and vocabulary of Volapük, changing its nature into an entirely different language. The vocabulary was almost completely replaced by words more closely resembling those used in Western European languages, and a number of grammatical forms unfamiliar to Western Europeans were discarded. It was understood that the changes effectively resulted in the creation of a new language, which was named (which means “the neutral idiom” or “the neutral language”). The name of the Academy was changed to in 1898 and the circulars of the Academy were written in the new language from that year. Those who continued to use Volapük re-formed the International Academy of Volapük, retaining its name (with a spelling change) as ''Kadäm Bevünetik Volapüka''. Dictionaries of Idiom Neutral including an outline of the grammar were published in several European languages in 1902 and 1903. The language, sometimes referred to as “Neutral” or “the Neutral language” by English-speaking writers, created interest among international language enthusiasts at the time. Rosenberger published a periodical in the language called . In 1907 Neutral was one of the projects considered by a committee of scholars which met in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

to select an international auxiliary language (what the committee actually decided upon is disputed; see

Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...

and its external links for more information). In 1908 the which had created Idiom Neutral effectively chose to abandon it in favor of

Latino sine flexione Latino sine flexione ("Latin without inflections"), Interlingua de Academia pro Interlingua (IL de ApI) or Peano's Interlingua (abbreviated as IL), is an international auxiliary language compiled by the Academia pro Interlingua under chairmanshi ...

, a simplified form of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

developed by Italian mathematician

Giuseppe Peano Giuseppe Peano (; ; 27 August 1858 – 20 April 1932) was an Italian mathematician and glottologist. 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 sta ...

. Peano was appointed the director of the , and its name was changed to . Peano's language was also called , not to be confused with the better-known

Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...

presented in 1951 by the

International Auxiliary Language Association The International Auxiliary Language Association, Inc. (IALA) was an American organisation founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together wi ...

( IALA). In 1912 Rosenberger published a reformed version of Neutral called .
Handbook of Reform-Neutral (1912) at archive.org

Grammar

The following is a rough sketch of Idiom Neutral

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

. It does not lay out every detail of grammar worked out for the language. The simple grammar of Idiom Neutral is similar to Interlingua's.

Writing and pronunciation

Twenty-two letters of the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

are used to write Neutral; the letters q, w, x, and z do not occur. The five

vowel A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...

s (a, e, i, o, u) are pronounced roughly as in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

. Vowels which appear next to each other are pronounced separately, not as a

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

. The

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...

s have the same values as in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, except that c is pronounced like English ''ch'' in ''church'', g is always like the ''g'' in ''gate'', and j is pronounced as the ''s'' in ''measure''. The combination sh is pronounced like English ''sh''. The

stress Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

falls on the vowel that precedes the last consonant. If no vowel precedes the last consonant (e.g. via ''way'') the stress is on the first vowel. In a few cases the vowel at the end of a word is stressed; these vowels are marked with an

acute accent The acute accent (), , is a diacritic used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accent in the Latin and Greek alphabets, precomposed ch ...

(e.g. idé ''idea''). Such accents are the only

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s used in writing Neutral words.

Nouns and adjectives

Unlike

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

and

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...

s can end in any letter. There is no

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...

for case. The

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

is formed by adding the letter i at the end of the word.

Adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

s can also end in any letter. They normally appear after the nouns they modify and do not agree in

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...

with their nouns, e.g. kaset grand ''big box'', kaseti grand ''big boxes''.

Comparison Comparison or comparing is the act of evaluating two or more things by determining the relevant, comparable characteristics of each thing, and then determining which characteristics of each are similar to the other, which are different, and t ...

of adjectives (and

adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

s) is with plu ... ka (''more ... than''), tale ... kuale (''as ... as'') and leplu (''most, -est'').

Verbs

Verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

s are conjugated as follows. Examples are shown for the verb amar ''to love'' in the

active voice Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages. A ...

; the endings do not change for

person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...

, except in the imperative.

Infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...

: amar ''to love''
Present: mi am ''I love''
Imperfect: mi amav ''I loved, I was loving''

Future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...

: mi amero ''I shall love''

Present perfect The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has present consequences. The term is used particularly in the context of English grammar to refer to forms like " ...

: mi av amed ''I have loved''

Pluperfect The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...

: mi avav amed ''I had loved''

Future perfect The future perfect is a verb form or construction used to describe an event that is expected or planned to happen before a time of reference in the future, such as ''will have finished'' in the English sentence "I will have finished by tomorrow." ...

: mi avero amed ''I shall have loved''
Conditional: mi amerio ''I would love''
Past conditional: mi averio amed ''I would have loved''
Imperative second person singular: ama! ''Love!''
Imperative second person plural: amate! ''Love!''
Imperative first person plural: amam! ''Let's love!''
Active

participle In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...

: amant ''loving''
Passive

: amed ''loved'' The

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing t ...

is formed with the verb esar ''to be'' and the passive participle: mi es amed ''I am loved'', mi averio esed amed ''I would have been loved'', etc. There is no inflection for a subjunctive or volitive. In expressions of desire etc., the present tense is used e.g. mi volu ke il am ''I want him to love''; ila demandav ke vo lekt it ''she asked you to read it''.

Other parts of speech

There is no definite or indefinite

article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...

s can be formed from adjectives by adding e. Some

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s are formed from other words by adding u e.g. relativu ''relative to'' from relativ ''relative'' (adj.).

Sample texts

''The apparatus must be addressed to the chief of the St. Petersburg station and must be insured by you and by your account; if the apparatus or parts of them are ruined or lost in the voyage, you must send others immediately in place of the apparatus and parts ruined or lost.'' ''The publication of Idiom Neutral will interest your son, who collects postage stamps, because this idiom is a practical language for correspondence with collectors in other countries.''

References

External links

* Holmes, M. A. F. (1903)
''Dictionary of the Neutral Language''
(Idiom Neutral), Neutral-English and English-Neutral, with a complete grammar in accordance with the resolutions of the International Academy of the Universal Language and a brief history of the Neutral Language

Rochester, N. Y. (1903); Milton Keynes, UK (2010).
Chapter on Idiom Neutral
in

Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth ce ...

's ''An International Language'' (1928)
LangMaker entry about Idiom Neutral (archived)

{{conlangs International auxiliary languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1900s 1902 introductions Volapük Constructed languages