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Interlingua
Last update: Saturday 11th of February 2012
| Interlingua | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pronunciation: | IPA: /inteɾˈliŋgwa/ | |
| Created by: | International Auxiliary Language Association | 1951 |
| Setting and usage: | Scientific registration of international vocabulary; international auxiliary language | |
| Total speakers: | unknown | |
| Category (purpose): | constructed language international auxiliary language Interlingua | |
| Writing system: | Latin alphabet | |
| Category (sources): | English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Russian and Latin | |
| Regulated by: | no regulating body | |
| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | ia | |
| ISO 639-2: | ina | |
| ISO 639-3: | ina | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-based pronunciation key. | ||
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is the most widely used naturalistic auxiliary language.
Interlingua's underlying design philosophy is completely a posteriori; its features, most notably its vocabulary, are intended to be seen not so much as a creation, but rather as an extraction of that what is common to several major Western Indo-European languages. The largest number of Interlingua words are of Latin origin and have entered Interlingua through the Romance languages. The second and third largest number are words of Greek and Germanic origin. Still other words originate in Slavic and non-Western languages. The grammar of Interlingua is simple when compared to its source languages (but not so when compared to other, schematic constructed languages).
Interlingua is unusual for being immediately understandable to populations numbering in the hundreds of millions. Conversely, it can be – and is – used as an introduction to resembling natural languages.