Interglossa


Interglossa is a constructed language devised by biologist Lancelot Hogben during World War II, as an attempt to put the international lexicon of science and technology, mainly of Greek and Latin origin, into a language with a purely isolating grammar. Interglossa was published in 1943 as just a draft of an auxiliary. Hogben applied semantic principles to provide a reduced vocabulary of just over 880 words which might suffice for basic conversation among peoples of different nationality.

History

In 1943 Hogben published Interglossa: A draft of an auxiliary for a democratic world order. As a professor, Hogben had seen how hard it was for the students to memorize the terms of biology, as they were poorly acquainted with etymology and the classical languages. So he began to show them the international Greek and Latin roots of these terms to aid their memory. He started to compile a vocabulary, and later, during World War II at Birmingham, he devised some guidelines of syntax, thus completing the draft of a new auxiliary language especially based on the lexicon of modern science:
Eventually, Hogben became convinced that such an auxiliary language appeared to be more necessary than ever before, so he decided to publish his proposal, insisting that it was simply a draft:
Interglossa might be seen as the draft of its descendant auxiliary language Glosa, which has partly changed and expanded the lexicon.

Alphabet and pronunciation

Interglossa has a Latin alphabet using the 26 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet without any diacritics.


Most letters of the alphabet are pronounced in accordance with the symbols of the international phonetic alphabet, with the following exceptions:
In the following initial consonant combinations, the first element is silent: ct-, gn-, mn-, pn-, ps-, pt-.
The stress is generally on the penultimate syllable, e.g. billeta, nesia. If the word ends with two vowels, these might sound as a diphthong. But Hogben rather keeps a hiatus, stating that the stress in nesia is on the antepenultimate syllable.

Parts of speech

A classification of parts of speech relevant to an isolating language would not follow the categories appropriate to the flexional system of the Indo-European group. The vocables of Interglossa can be classified following the function of individual vocables in the “sentence-landscape” :
For ready recognition, a language free of flexions can benefit from two types of signposts of “sentence-landscape”: articles, and terminals :
Hogben prefers to have this number of exceptions instead of the disadvantage of mutilating a familiar international stem or of unduly lengthening the word.

Syntax

Interglossa is a purely isolating language like Chinese, not depending on suffixes, neither flexional nor derivational, yet it uses a kind of composites whose second component is a monosyllabic noun. Like in Chinese, composite nouns are essential, and so is the context. According to Hogben, such composite nouns may be self-explicit while we take into account its common context of use .
Interglossa provides a minimal grammar with a series of syntactic rules, yet differing from the usual grammar of inflexional-agglutinative languages like the Indo-European ones:

Lexicon

Unlike other auxiliary languages, Hogben's Interglossa tends to adopt the international words from Greek, on account of the intense infiltration of Greek roots into everyday life, which come from modern science and technology. For instance: microbe, microphone, telephone, etc..
Even so, a great part of the lexicon is of Latin origin. The term Inter-glossa itself is composed of the Latin inter and the Greek glossa. At times Hogben wavers between Greek and Latin, and suggests pairs of equivalent synonyms, for an eventual international committee to decide between them.
In 1943 Hogben announced the preparation of an additional volume, A short English-Interglossa Dictionary. It seems that this volume was not in fact published. Its manuscript is kept among Hogben's papers at the University of Birmingham, and was put online in 2014.

Sample text

The following is the Lord's Prayer, in Interglossa “U Petitio de Christi” :
Interglossa version:Text in Greek:English version :

Na Parenta in Urani:
Na dicte volo; tu Nomino gene revero;
plus tu Crati habe accido;
plus u Demo acte harmono tu Tendo
epi Geo homo in Urani;
Na dicte petitio: Tu date plu di Pani a Na;
plus Tu acte pardo plu malo Acte de Na;
metro Na acte pardo Mu; Su acte malo de Na.
Peti Tu non acte dirigo Na a plu malo Offero;
Hetero, Tu date libero Na apo Malo.
Causo Tu tene u Crati plus u Dyno plus un eu Famo
pan Tem.
Amen.
Πάτερ ημών ο εν τοις ουρανοίς,
αγιασθήτω το όνομά Σου,
ελθέτω η Βασιλεία σου,
γενηθήτω το θέλημά σου
ως εν ουρανώ και επί της γης.
Τον άρτον ημών τον επιούσιον δος ημίν σήμερον,
και άφες ημίν τα οφειλήματα ημών,
ως και ημείς αφίεμεν τοις οφειλέταις ημών.
Και μη εισενέγκης ημάς εις πειρασμόν,
αλλά ρύσαι ημάς από του πονηρού.
Ότι σου εστί η βασιλεία και η δύναμις και η δόξα

εις τους αιώνας.
Αμήν.
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever.
Amen.

Word-list

Hogben provides a numbered list of 880 words with etymologic clues. Some of the items are pairs of synonyms, for example: dirigo / controlo.
Hogben also provides an additional list of 74 international words, so actually there would be a lexicon of 954.
Hogben finally provides an alphabetical list, which unfortunately has frequent mistakes in the item numbers.
Syllables in bold type are "generic substantives" used in compound words.