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Authors: Ben K. <benk@tilde.team>
Date: 2021-04-17
gemini://carcosa.net/journal/20210409-interlingua.gmi
Nice to see so much discussion of conlangs (one of my favorite things) on Gemini. Linked above is a response to an initial post reviewing Interlingua. I agree with everything so there is little for me to add, except that I tend to think of Interlingua as intentionally being a Romance language even though Carcosa (I know that's not their name, but I couldn't find another one) pointed out it has non-Romance control languages. My understanding when I read about Interlingua was that those are "secondary" control languages that ended up having perhaps just a subtle influence on Interlingua's vocabulary. The possible grammatical influence was a good catch, and it's the first time I've heard of it. (Obviously, I never studied Interlingua.)
My favorite zonal constructed languages is Interslavic, or Medžuslovjansky (thanks, Wikipedia). As a person with Slavic heritage but does not speak a Slavic language (proficiently), Interslavic is the sort of thing I long for. Not for being easy, because it's not supposed to be, but for its inherent value as a language and potential to unite Slavic speakers. Interslavic has appeal like how studying Latin would have appeal, and the concept of having such a language actually goes back, if memory serves correct, to the 16th century, making the idea for a Slavic auxlang one of the very first auxlang projects in history.
I happen to know that prior to the current Interslavic project there also existed Slovio, which is a weird/interesting thing in itself. Slovio does something like take Esperanto's grammar and changes the lexicon to Slavic roots. Esperanto itself already being very much like a Slavic language, this probably seemed like an obvious thing for someone to do. Esperanto was also chiefly popular in Eastern Europe, so why not? Slovio in a way resembles Ido, where Esperanto served as a basis for making what somebody thought would be a more useful or proper language. (Ido - more Romance, Slovio - more Slavic.)
Then Interlingua would be to Esperanto what Interslavic is to Slovio, in some weird way. Sometimes I wonder why I never learned Slovio, since it seems to mesh completely with my interest in everything else it's related to, but the answer is probably because it doesn't have a Duolingo course. Why else haven't I learned Interslavic yet either?
Also I think Interslavic is not perfectly standardized, but I hope that the project will come to fruition eventually.
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