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 ...
without
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 ...
s"), 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
The Academia pro Interlingua was an organization dedicated to the promotion of international auxiliary languages, and is associated in particular with Prof. Giuseppe Peano's language Latino sine flexione (Latin without inflections).
The ''Academia ...
under chairmanship of the 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 ...
(1858–1932) from 1887 until 1914. It is a simplified version 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 ...
, and retains its
vocabulary
A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...
. Interlingua-IL was published in the journal ''Revue de Mathématiques'' in an article of 1903 entitled ''De Latino Sine Flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale'' (meaning ''On Latin Without Inflection, International Auxiliary Language''), which explained the reason for its creation. The article argued that other auxiliary languages were unnecessary, since Latin was already established as the world's international language. The article was written in classical Latin, but it gradually dropped its
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 ...
s until there were none.
Language codes
ISO 639
ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization that is concerned with representation of names for languages and language groups.
It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ''ISO 639/R ...
:
ISO 639-2
ISO 639- 2:1998, ''Codes for the representation of names of languages — Part 2: Alpha-3 code'', is the second part of the ISO 639 standard, which lists codes for the representation of the names of languages. The three-letter codes given for ea ...
and -1 were requested on 23 July 2017 at Library of Congress (proposed: ''IL'' and ''ILA''); ISO-639-3 was requested on 10 August 2017 at SIL (proposed: ''ILA'') and was rejected on 23 January 2018.
History
In 1903 Peano published the article ''De Latino Sine Flexione'' to introduce his language, by quoting a series of suggestions by
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
about a simplified form of Latin. Peano's article appeared to be a serious development of the idea, so he gained a reputation among the movement for the auxiliary language.
In 1904 Peano undertook an essay about the way to obtain the minimal grammar of an eventual minimal Latin (''Latino minimo''), with a minimal vocabulary purely international.Peano, Giuseppe (1904). ''Vocabulario de Latino internationale comparato cum Anglo, Franco, Germano, Hispano, Italo, Russo, Græco et Sanscrito' Torino.
Peano and some colleagues published articles in Latino sine flexione for several years at the ''Revue de Mathématiques''. Because of his desire to prove that this was indeed an international language, Peano boldly published the final edition of his famous
Collège de France
The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris n ...
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 take part in the
Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language
The Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language (french: Délégation pour
l'adoption d'une langue auxiliaire internationale) was a body of academics convened in the early part of the 1900s (decade) to decide on the issue of ...
. Having declared for Latino sine flexione to be adopted, he eventually could not participate in the final voting, because of labour affairs at Turin.
On 26 December 1908, Peano was elected member and director of the ''Akademi internasional de lingu universal'' still using Idiom Neutral, which was refounded one year later under the name
Academia pro Interlingua
The Academia pro Interlingua was an organization dedicated to the promotion of international auxiliary languages, and is associated in particular with Prof. Giuseppe Peano's language Latino sine flexione (Latin without inflections).
The ''Academia ...
. Every academician might use their favourite form of Interlingua, the term being initially used in a general sense as a synonym for international language, yet it soon began to be specially used to denote a reformed Latino sine flexione based on the common rules the academicians were reaching by frequent votings. Thus, the name Interlingua soon began to denote the language evolving from the Academia Pro Interlingua, with the corresponding abbreviation ''IL''.
However, every member was free to write in their own personal style, and indeed some members were proposing radical reforms which eventually might end up as independent languages (like Michaux's Romanal or De Wahl's
Interlingue
Interlingue (; ISO 639 ''ie'', ''ile''), originally Occidental (), is an international auxiliary language created in 1922 and renamed in 1949. Its creator, Edgar de Wahl, sought to achieve maximal grammatical regularity and natural character. ...
). For this reason, the name ''Peano's Interlingua'' or ''Interlingua (IL)'' might be regarded as the most accurate for the particular standard by Peano. (As found in "Interglossa and its predecessors".Hogben, Lancelot (1943). ''Interglossa. A draft of an auxiliary for a democratic world order, being an attempt to apply semantic principles to language design'' Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Eng. / New York: Penguin Books: p. 10-11. OCLC 1265553.)
The discussions to reach a standard Interlingua may be seen on the pages of ''Discussiones'', the official journal of the Academia pro Interlingua from 1909 to 1913. This and subsequent journals of the academy have been recently published in a CD-Rom by the mathematics department of the university of
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital ...
, the place where Peano developed his teaching and research.
Since ''De Latino Sine Flexione'' had set the principle to take Latin nouns either in the ablative or nominative form (''nomen'' was preferred to ''nomine''), in 1909 Peano published a vocabulary in order to assist in selecting the proper form of every noun, yet an essential value of Peano's Interlingua was that the lexicon might be found straightforward in any Latin dictionary (by getting the thematic vowel of the stem from the genitive ending, that is: ''-a -o -e -u -e'' from ''-ae -i -is -us -ei'').
Finally, a large vocabulary with 14 000 words was published in 1915.Peano, Giuseppe (1915). ''Vocabulario Commune ad Latino-Italiano-Français-English-Deutsch pro usu de interlinguistas' Cavoretto - Torino.
A reformed
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 ...
was presented in 1951 by
Alexander Gode
Alexander Gottfried Friedrich Gode-von Aesch (October 30, 1906 – August 10, 1970) was a German-born American linguist, translator and the driving force behind the creation of the auxiliary language Interlingua.
Biography
Born to a German fat ...
as the last director of 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 ...
. It was claimed to be independent from Peano's Interlingua, because it had developed a new method to detect the ''most recent common prototypes''. But that method usually leads to the Latin ablative, so most vocabulary of Peano's Interlingua would be kept. Accordingly, the very name ''Interlingua'' was kept, yet a distinct abbreviation was adopted: ''IA'' instead of ''IL''.
Alphabet and pronunciation
According to Peano's guide to the language in 1931, "most Interlinguists are in favour of the old Latin pronunciation." This gives the pronunciation of vowels as follows:
* a—as in father:
* e—as in they:
* i—as in feet:
* o—as in tone:
* u—as in rule:
* y—as French u:
* j—as in yes:
* ae—as in eye:
* oe—as in boy:
Consonants are pronounced largely as in English, with the following clarifications:
* b—like English b, but like p if followed by s or t:
* g—like g in go, get:
* h—silent in rh otherwise like English h:
* qu—as qu in quarrel:
* r—as in corr (trilled):
* v—like English w.:
* x—as ks.:
* ch, ph, th—as c, p, t in can, pan, tan:
* c—like k always, as in scan, scat: (not aspirated)
* p—as in span
* t—as in stand
Not all consonants and vowels are pronounced distinctively by all people. The following variant pronunciations are allowed:
* y as
* ae and oe as
* h silent
* ch, ph, th as
* ph as
* v like English v,
* w like English v
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 ...
is based on the classical Latin rule:
* Words with two syllables have the stress on the
penult
Penult is a linguistics term for the second to last syllable of a word. It is an abbreviation of ''penultimate'', which describes the next-to-last item in a series. The penult follows the antepenult and precedes the ultima. For example, the main ...
.
* Words with three or more syllables have the stress on the penult only if it is heavy (closed or had a long vowel in Classical Latin), otherwise on the
antepenult
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
(p. xii).
A secondary accent may be placed when necessary as the speaker deems appropriate.
Parts of speech
Though Peano removed the inflections of Latin from
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 and
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, he did not entirely remove
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
, permitting the option of a
feminine
Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered fe ...
ending for
occupations
Occupation commonly refers to:
*Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment
*Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces
*Military occupation, th ...
. The gender of animals is immutable. All forms of nouns end with a
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 ...
and are taken from the ablative case, but as this was not listed in most Latin dictionaries, he gave the rule for its derivation from the
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
. The plural is not required when not necessary, such as when a number has been specified, the plural can be read from the context, and so on; however Peano gives the option of using the suffix -s to indicate it when needed.
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 have few
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 ...
s of conjugation; tenses and moods are instead indicated by verb adjuncts. The result is a change to a positional language.
Particles
Particles that have no inflection in classical Latin are used in their natural form:
* ''Supra, infra, intra, extra''... (but ''superiore, inferiore, interiore, exteriore'' from ''superior, -oris'' and so on.)
* ''Super, subter, inter, praeter, semper''... (but ''nostro, vestro, dextro...'' from ''noster, -tra, -trum'' and so on.)
* ''Tres, quatuor, quinque, sex, septem, octo, novem, decem''... (but ''uno'' from ''unus, -a, -um''; ''duo'' from ''duo, -ae, -o''; ''nullo'' from ''nullus, -a, -um''; ''multo'' from ''multus, -a, -um'', etc.)
Nouns
The form of nouns depends on the Latin declensions.
Those proper nouns written with the Roman alphabet are kept as close to the original as possible. The following are examples: München, New York, Roma, Giovanni.
Pronouns
* Personal
* Demonstrative: ''illo'' (it, far), ''isto'' (it, near), ''ipso'' (itself); for conjunction: ''que'' (''me vide que illo es rapide'' = I see that it is fast)
* Possessive: ''meo'', ''tuo'', ''suo'', ''nostro'', ''vestro'', (''suo'')
* Relative and conjunctive: ''qui'' (who, that human), ''quod'' (which, that thing)
* Reflexive: ''se''
* Indefinitive: ''un'', ''uno'' (''One'' tells...), ''ullo'' (any), ''omne'' or ''omni'' (all, each, every), ''aliquo'' (anyone), ''nullo'' (nothing), ''nemo'' (no one)
Verbs
Verbs are formed from the Latin by dropping the final ''-re'' of the infinitive. Tense, mood, etc., are indicated by particles, auxiliary verbs, or adverbs, but none is required if the sense is clear from the context. If needed, the past may be indicated by preceding the verb with ''e'', and the future with ''i''.
There are specific endings to create the
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 ...
and
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 ...
* Imperfectum (past): amaba (loved), legeba (read)
* Future: amara (will/shall love), legera (will/shall read)
* Conditional: amare (would love), legere (would read)
The endings ''-ra'' and ''-re'' are stressed in future and conditional.
Compound tenses
Composite tenses can be expressed with auxiliary words:
* Praeteritum: habe amato (have loved)
* Future: debe amare / vol amare / habe ad amare (must love / will love / have to love)
* Continuous tenses: me es scribente (I am writing)
Adjectives and adverbs
Adjectives are formed as follows:
* If the nominative neuter ends with -e, the Latino form is unchanged.
* If the nominative neuter ends with -um, the Latino form is changed to -o: novum > novo (new).
* In all other cases, adjectives are formed with the ablative case from the genitive, as is the case with nouns.
Adjectives can be used as adverbs if the context is clear, or ''cum mente'' or ''in modo'' can be used:
* Diligente (diligent): ''Cum mente diligente'', ''cum diligente mente'', ''in modo diligente'', ''in diligente modo'' = diligently.
Comparative and superlative
* Positive: ''illo es tam habile quam te'' (it is as handy as you)
* Comparative: ''illo es magis habilis quam te'' or ''illo es plus habilis quam te'' (it is handier than you) and ''illo es minus habilis quam te'' (it is less handier than you)
* Superlative: ''maxim de...'' and ''minim de...''
As with Latin, neither the definite nor the indefinite article exists in Latino sine flexione. When necessary they may be translated with pronouns or words such as ''illo'' (it, that) or ''uno'' (one):
* Da ad me libro = give me (the) book
* Da ad me hoc libro = give me this book
* Da ad me illo libro = give me that book
* Da ad me uno libro = give me a book
* Da ad me illo meo libro = give me that book of mine
* Da ad me uno meo libro = give me a book of mine
Peano formally defended the maxim that ''the best grammar is no grammar'', bearing in mind the example of
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
. (In modern linguistics, counter to popular and Peano's usage, ''
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 ...
'' does not refer to morphological structures alone, but also to
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
and
phonology
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
, for example, which both Latino sine flexione and Chinese still have. In this sense, "languages without grammar" cannot exist.) According to
Lancelot Hogben
Lancelot Thomas Hogben FRS FRSE (9 December 1895 – 22 August 1975) was a British experimental zoologist and medical statistician. He developed the African clawed frog ''(Xenopus laevis)'' as a model organism for biological research in his ear ...
, Peano's Interlingua still shares a major flaw with many other auxiliary languages, having "either too much grammar of the wrong sort, or not enough of the right". (p. 10) Hogben argues that at least nouns and verbs should be easily distinguished by characteristic endings, so that one can easily get an initial understanding of the sentence. Thus, in Peano's Interlingua the verbs might be given some specific, standardized verbal form, such as the
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 ...
, which is sufficient at the Latin
indirect speech
In linguistics, indirect speech (also reported speech or indirect discourse) is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence ''Jill said she was coming' ...
. Instead, the raw imperative is proposed in ''De Latino Sine Flexione'':
According to Hogben, another handicap is the lack of a pure
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 ...
, which might clearly indicate the nouns. Nevertheless, Peano occasionally suggested that ''illo'' (that) and ''uno'' (one) might be used as articles.
Once more according to Hogben, the syntax of Peano's Interlingua remained conservative:
Reviewing the list of more widely known Latin titles, one might conclude that the sequence ''noun-adjective'' is the norm in Latin, yet the inverted sequence is also current."Note on Peano's Interlingua Updated: June 2014. The ratio is over 2 to 1 in a list of Latin titles commented by Stroh.Stroh, Wilfried (2009). ''Le latin est mort. Vive la latin!''
007. ''Latein ist tot, es lebe Latein''
7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8. It is the only prime number preceding a cube.
As an early prime number in the series of positive integers, the number seven has greatly symbolic associations in religion, mythology, ...
Paris: Les Belles Lettres. . E.g. "''
Principia Mathematica
The ''Principia Mathematica'' (often abbreviated ''PM'') is a three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics written by mathematician–philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell and published in 1910, 1912, and 1913. ...
''".
As for a sequence ''nominative-genitive'', it may be the norm in Latin in a similar ratio. E.g. "''
Systema Naturae
' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...
''". Indeed, the sequence ''nominative-genitive'' must always be the norm in Peano's Interlingua, since the preposition ''de'' must introduce the genitive. Thus, '' Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' would turn into ''Principio Mathematico de Philosophia Naturale''. Since the function of both the adjective and the genitive is often the same, one might infer that the sequence ''noun-adjective'' might always be the norm.
See also
*
Interslavic
Interslavic (''Medžuslovjansky'' / ''Меджусловјанскы'') is a pan-Slavic auxiliary language. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between speakers of various Slavic languages, as well as to allow people who do not speak a S ...