Idiom Neutral is an

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a ...

, 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, Russian Empire, became director of the International Volapük Academy in 1892. Under his leadership, the Academy began to experiment more with the Vola ...

, a St. Petersburg

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

History

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

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

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 in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God told him to create an international lang ...

. 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 city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

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

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

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 the chairmansh ...

, a simplified form of

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

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 Mathematical notati ...

. 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 (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...

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, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

. 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 the Roman script, is a 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 Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

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

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

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 countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

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

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, 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

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s have the same values as in English, 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 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 alphabet, Latin, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic, and Greek alphabet, Greek scripts. For the most commonly encountered uses of the accen ...

(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 ''diacrit ...

s used in writing Neutral words.

Nouns and adjectives

Unlike

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

and

noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

s can end in any letter. There is no

inflection In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

for

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

. The

plural In many languages, a plural (sometimes list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated as pl., pl, , or ), is one of the values of the grammatical number, grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than ...

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

Adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

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 most basic 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 can ...

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, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

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

Verbs

Verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

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

active voice Active voice is a grammatical voice prevalent in many of the world's languages. It is the default voice for clauses that feature a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most Indo-European languages ...

; the endings do not change for

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who 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 suc ...

, 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 that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all ...

: amar ''to love''

Present The present is the period of time that is occurring now. The present is contrasted with the past, the period of time that has already occurred; and the future, the period of time that has yet to occur. It is sometimes represented as a hyperplan ...

: 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 ex ...

: mi amero ''I shall love''

Present perfect The present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and Perfect (grammar), perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has consequence in present. The term is used particularly in the context of English grammar to r ...

: mi av amed ''I have loved''

Pluperfect The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we ''had arrived''" ...

: 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 (; abbr. ) 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 a verb and used as an adject ...

: 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 ...

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 The subjunctive (also known as the conjunctive in some languages) is a grammatical mood, a feature of an utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unrealit ...

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.

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

s can be formed from adjectives by adding e. Some

preposition Adpositions are a part of speech, class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various thematic relations, semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositi ...

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 worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Ste ...

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

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