Intralingua
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| Intralingua | |
|---|---|
| Interlinguia | |
 | |
| Writing | w:Latin |
| Region: | w:Romance-speaking world |
| Genders: | 2 |
| Cases: | 0 |
| Alignment | Nominative-Accusative |
| Proto-language: | w:Vulgar Latin |
| Typology: | Fusional |
| Word-Order | SVO |
| Languages: | w:Portuguese language, w:Spanish language, w:Italian language, w:French language,
, |
| Population: | 1200 million |
 | |
|
Africa: SEDES • Middle Semitic • Kintu • Guosa Central Asia: Jalpi • Caucas • Zens • Dravindian • Neo-Sanskrit Europe: Intralingua • Folksprak • Interslavic • Balkan • Samboka Far East: Dan'a'yo • IM • MSEAL | |
Anthropology
Intralingua (/ɪntraˈlɪŋɡwə/; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an Italic international auxiliary language (IAL), only slightly adapted from Interlingua, developed between 1937 and 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) . It ranks among the top most widely used IALs (along with Esperanto and Ido), and is the most widely used naturalistic IAL:in other words, its vocabulary, grammar and other characteristics are derived from natural languages, rather than being centrally planned. Interlingua was developed to combine a simple, mostly regular grammar with a vocabulary common to the widest possible range of western European languages, making it unusually easy to learn, at least for those whose native languages were sources of Interlingua's vocabulary and grammar. Conversely, it is used as a rapid introduction to many natural languages.
The name Intralingua comes from the Latin words intar, meaning "within", and lingua, meaning "tongue" or "language". These morphemes are identical in Interlingua.
Phonology
Consonants
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Labial- velar |
Velar | Glottal | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p | b | t | d | k | ɡ | |||||||
| Nasal | m | n | |||||||||||
| Tap | ɾ | ||||||||||||
| Fricative | f | v | s | z | ʃ | (d)ʒ | (h) | ||||||
| Affricates | (ts ~ tʃ) | ||||||||||||
| Approximant | j | w | |||||||||||
| Lateral approximant | l | ||||||||||||
Vowels
| Front | Back | |
|---|---|---|
| High | i | u |
| High-mid | e | o |
| Low | a | |
Orthography
- c is pronounced t͡s (or optionally s) before "e, i, y"
- h is normally silent
- q only appears in the digraph qu, which is pronounced [kw] (but k in the conjunction and pronoun que and pronoun qui)
- t is generally [t], but ti followed by a vowel, unless stressed or preceded by "s", is pronounced [t͡sj] (or optionally [sj])
Morphology
Word order is SVO, except that a direct object pronoun or reflexive pronoun comes before the verb. Adjectives may precede the noun they modify, but they most often follow it. The position of adverbs is flexible. The grammar of Intralingua is similar to that of the Romance languages, but greatly simplified, under the influence of English.
Lexicography
The form of an Intralingua word is considered an international prototype with respect to the other words. On the one hand, it should be neutral, free from characteristics peculiar to one language. On the other hand, it should maximally capture the characteristics common to all contributing languages. As a result, it can be transformed into any of the contributing variants using only these language-specific characteristics. If the word has any derivatives that occur in the source languages with appropriate parallel meanings, then their morphological connection must remain intact; for example, the Intralingua word for 'time' is spelled tempore and not *tempus or *tempo in order to match it with its derived adjectives, such as temporal.
The language-specific characteristics are closely related to the sound laws of the individual languages; the resulting words are often close or even identical to the most recent form common to the contributing words. This sometimes corresponds with that of Vulgar Latin. At other times, it is much more recent or even contemporary. It is never older than the classical period.