Re: Language Review: Interlingua

This is a response to ~monerulo’s gemlog reviewing Interlingua.

=> Language Review: Interlingua

I enjoyed this conlang review, as well as the previous one on Ido. I’m not a big conlang person, but I did learn a bit of Esperanto (i.e. all the grammar but only the most common vocabulary) many years ago, when I was a teenager. I occasionally see discourse about Esperanto online, and I do agree with some of the main criticisms (that it’s too eclectic and idiosyncratic). There was a really good article on the old WWW called “Esperanto: Why Not To”, which I unfortunately can’t find anymore.

In one rabbit-hole dive related to Esperanto criticisms, I came across Interlingua, and while I didn't bother trying to learn it, I did read up on its origins and so forth.

One thing monerulo criticizes Interlingua for is being a Romance zonal language, but not having Romance grammar, like verb inflection or adjective agreement. But they’re missing one thing which explains this: Interlingua isn't supposed to be an average Romance language, it’s supposed to be an average Western European language. One of the primary control languages for Interlingua is English, which doesn't have either of those grammatical features. (German and Russian are included as secondary control languages, but I don't think that’s relevant here).

I do agree with a lot of the other things that monerulo says about Interlingua (why create a conlang but have irregular verbs?), but understanding that it’s not just a Romance language makes a lot of the other issues more comprehensible.