Interlingua: achieving critical mass

Not that long after starting this blog, I wrote the following important thing:

Any constructed language which had more than 1,000 to 10,000 reasonably fluent speakers in 1993, when the World Wide Web was popularised, and which has had a considerable online presence (including lessons and dictionaries) for several years, and which nevertheless has not grown exponentially in number of speakers since that time, has already failed. That is, the language has failed to gain popular acceptance and probably never will gain popular acceptance (unless induced artificially, such as by government decree). This is probably due to the language being more difficult than consumers were willing to accept, relative to the perceived benefits of learning the language.

At least, that was my opinion six months ago.

I basically still agree with my former conclusion, except that I would revise the numbers down dramatically: perhaps to "more than 20 to 100 reasonably fluent speakers," assuming those speakers were all active on the internet, in public.

To be honest, I doubt there are more than 10,000 really fluent speakers of Esperanto in the world and I doubt there are more than 200 really fluent speakers of any other constructed language; I doubt there are more than 1000 fluent speakers of all other constructed languages put together.

What I mean by "already failed" is that we should stop wondering if these languages are one day going to take the world by storm and suddenly have 1,000,000 really fluent speakers. They are not. At least, not without government intervention. The free market, left to its own devices, has already rejected them. Unless market conditions change, these products will remain failures.

Consumers have chosen English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Malay, Russian, Swahili, Afrikaans, and various other languages for their auxiliary communication needs. And they have done so in their millions. These are successful products. Meanwhile, with constructed languages, it is as if we are still trying to market VHS video cassettes in a world which has long since changed to DVD and Blu-ray. Nobody is buying. We can trumpet the benefits of VHS as loudly as we like but still nobody will buy; DVD is the successful product.

So, what can we do? Well, we either: (a) change the market by petitioning for government intervention (for example to have constructed languages taught in schools or made official languages of the European Union); (b) change the product to make it more attractive to consumers; or (c) market the existing product more effectively (for example targeting niche markets).

My personal interest is in (b) and (c). I'm not interested in politics. My ideal is that good products simply become popular because those products have been refined to the point where they are excellent and they sell themselves; this is very much what happens with open-source software, including newly invented computer programming languages. There is no reason why newly invented human languages could not also succeed, based merely on excellent and refined design. Good products (which are freely available at no cost) are good products and consumers will use them; this is proven by open-source software. So my favoured approach is (b). However obviously (c) is also very important. In my case, my niche markets are in literature; I merely aim to reach readers.

Anyway, so what? Who cares? Good questions.

Enough theoretical talk. Let's get practical...

Interlingua

Let's think about the niche market of reaching readers who are native speakers of Romance languages. What we want is for English-speaking authors to be able to write for such audiences without having to learn a natural Romance language, such as Spanish or Portuguese or Italian, which might not be practical. Interlingua is quite well suited for this.

Yes, yes, nobody is going to read a whole novel written in Interlingua. Or are they? The answer, 99.9999% of the time, is no. However I can see scenarios in which people might occasionally do so. For example, if the writer were a massively famous best-selling author, such as J.K.Rowling; she might publish a novel written in Interlingua, perhaps with English on facing pages in parallel, and targeted at the South American market, for Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking readers. The marketing blurb would be: "Read the new Harry Potter novel by the best-selling British author, in her own words, without a translator." The author could also answer fan-mail in Interlingua. This would allow readers for the first time to really feel a close connection to the famous author by being able to read her stories and her words without a translator having changed the words. Naturally, if even one famous author does this and succeeds, it would create a phenomenon. Would any famous author be interested in doing this? Yes, maybe. Some authors might enjoy being able to directly connect with foreign readers.

Another example is a good fantasy novel set in an alternative world which speaks Interlingua. Imagine that a massively popular movie, as popular as Avatar, features some characters who speak Interlingua from time to time. Perhaps the movie is an epic, alternative history in which the Roman Empire never collapsed. Latin has become modernised and is represented in the movie, for the sake of ease and simplicity, by using Interlingua. So after this film grosses a billion dollars at the box office, suppose a novelization of the film is released, written entirely in Interlingua. The book becomes a cult hit in South America, Spain and Italy and an entertainment magazine, written in Interlingua, is successfully launched and remains popular with a small but very vocal group of fans.

Of course, the above are examples of (a): changes in market conditions. Note also it took a change in thinking: language as entertainment.

But all this is pie-in-the-sky stuff for me. I am not famous and I do not know anyone famous. So if I wish to have any kind of success writing in a constructed language, I'm definitely going to have to find the right niche market, which was option (c), and which probably involves writing short literature.

More importantly, I really need option (b). A better product. A better language. The language I use has to be Blu-ray not VHS. Reading it has to be very easy, enjoyable, entertaining, and fill your mind with vivid colour, your heart with emotion, and your imagination with cinematic sound and living characters. The language has to jump off the page and impress you. You have to love it.

Now, if such a constructed language already existed, and if any world-class author were already using it today, that language would be exponentially growing in popularity today, right now.

Again, why isn't this happening? Because all the notable constructed languages we already have (except those used by so few people that they have not yet had the chance to be tested by the market) have already failed.

What I mean is, just doggedly continuing to do the same thing over and over, decade after decade, without fundamentally improving the product (that is, the language in question) will not work (unless market conditions change).

This means, to succeed, we must...

Improve Interlingua

The purpose of that preamble was to justify why I have decided not to adopt Interlingua in its classical, traditional form, as currently seen on interlingua.com and as currently promoted by the Union Mundial pro Interlingua.

Interlingua in its traditional form has already failed. See discussion above.

However, Interlingua is an incredibly valuable linguistic resource. As a giant repository of so-called Standard Average European vocabulary it is without peer. As a massively funded project (relatively speaking) running from at least 1937 to 1951 it eclipses all other constructed international auxiliary languages in the history of the world. Try to find dictionaries better than those of Interlingua for any constructed language: you will not. Esperanto has reasonably good dictionaries but those of Interlingua are simply superb. The grammar is also logical and justifiable, for a highly naturalistic language. The limited but instant comprehensibility to native speakers of Romance languages, without any prior study, is perhaps equalled but never surpassed by any other constructed language. Interlingua is liquid gold awaiting its moment.

Unfortunately we have been casting this liquid gold in the wrong moulds, producing lemons instead of gold coins. It's time to make gold coins.

So, in Interlingua we have a solid resource. It is real. It is not artificial. It is, like gold, mined. It has been extracted from the natural world. It is an element. We just need to make slightly different use of it.

In short, we need to find a way to make Interlingua sexy.

I will be doing a lot of thinking about this but so far I conclude:

(1) The collateral orthography, or something like it, must be used. Here's an example: orthographia collateral becomes ortografia colateral. In plain terms, easier spelling. Why? Because a constructed language which looks a bit like Spanish and sounds a bit like Spanish cannot be ridiculously more difficult to spell than Spanish, or consumers will always choose Spanish instead. Quite possibly the spelling reform needs to go somewhat further than that allowed by the official collateral orthography. I think it was a fatal mistake not to include the collateral orthography in the original Interlingua-English Dictionary; all words should have been listed in both traditional and collateral spellings. Had that been done, the language might have had much greater success. (Note: the traditional orthography is still useful but should not be the only choice, which the current format of dictionaries unfortunately dictates.)

(2) Stress must be marked. This was another fatal error. The language should have pitched itself to the market as being as easy to pronounce as Spanish (yet more international and easier to learn). Either this had to be done by entirely regular rules of pronunciation (which might arguably not be in keeping with the admirably naturalistic nature of Interlingua vocabulary) or it had to be done by allowing (and indeed promoting) the optional marking of stress. Optional, so the use of keyboards is easy, but highly encouraged. The grammar should have decreed that to optionally mark stress (with an acute accent or similar) in irregularly stressed words is absolutely correct and legal. Typing on your mobile phone? Don't bother adding the accents (since they don't change the meaning of words, with rare exceptions, and also don't change vowel sounds). Writing a novel or a stage play or a legal contract? Use the accents.

(3) The language must be made slightly less verbose.  Looking at Interlingua prose literature, I can see that authors have already voted with their manuscripts that esseva, essera, and esserea are too verbose and too unnatural for optimal modern literary use. The forms era, sera, and serea are superior and look more believable as natural-language forms of the verb "to be" (past tense, future tense, and conditional mood, respectively). The same goes for the imperative, sia. Other similar improvements might be adopted but care should be taken not to deviate too far from what Interlingua is: natural. It should not become artificial. However, as Afrikaans and Indonesian show us, there is no need to conjugate verbs for person; therefore I reject son and somos. Conjugating for person would be fine if the design philosophy of the language required it and if such conjugation occurred for all tenses, but irrationally and randomly drifting towards natural Romance languages by using son instead of es without having any equivalent for the past tense is a recipe for disaster. On the other hand, using widely (and indeed officially) accepted forms like era and sera is necessary in order to streamline the language and make it less "clunky".

(4) The language must be made modern. As much as I love Latin and like to see all the Latin grammatical words in Interlingua, the current trend towards adoption of more modern forms is the right move (e.g. ma instead of sed). This does not mean that one can just randomly start throwing in your favourite Romance language's conjunctions (e.g. mais from French, although officially allowed, should not be used; ma is short, sweet, modern, and effective). It also means the language must absorb many modern terms directly from English, where those terms can reasonably be said to occur in the other source languages (e.g. i-Pod, blog, hip hop, OK, podcast). The language will never succeed if modern technological and computer jargon cannot be expressed in it with the same ease as in natural languages, and be understood internationally. Why? Because the internet is where new languages succeed and it is the domain of the young; allow young people to communicate internationally, in an international jargon, for example when playing online computer games, and you have a winner. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) could then be created using Interlingua mixed with modern English terms, allowing easier international team-play without requiring players to learn English. Similarly, modern business and financial terminology, imported from English, must be available.

(5) All electronic dictionaries, grammars, and courses must be free. There must be unlimited free downloads of all materials necessary to learn and speak the language. Peer-to-peer file-sharing should be encouraged. Copying and distribution should be fully legal without any need to request permission. As much literature, music, cinema, and radio as possible should be freely available and copying and distributing it should be unrestricted.

(6) The language must stay true to its concept. Some would say this means only the traditional orthography should be used. No. That would mean the language would continue to fail, as it has failed until now. Simpler spelling is a necessity, not a luxury, if Interlingua is ever to succeed. However, one obviously should not adopt an orthography so artificial as to resemble, for example, Esperanto or even Novial; Interlingua must always be able to pass for a natural language. It must be believable as what it is: natural or almost natural. Never clockwork-like and reminiscent of a wind-up toy; as long as people can look at it and think it looks like a 'real language' then Interlingua will have credibility with the general public. So, we must try to find as many improvements as we can which do not deviate too much from the original, official form of the language; we should not throw the Interlingua-English Dictionary or the Interlingua Grammar out the window and do whatever the heck we feel like. The original concept must be respected. However to say that we cannot mark stress or can only use the traditional orthography is to condemn the language to certain failure.

Of course, Interlingua is just Interlingua. It cannot be all things to all people. Esperanto is better for some applications. Lingwa de Planeta is better for other applications. Afrikaans is better for still other applications. English is better for some applications. Arabic is better for some applications. However, there is a place for Interlingua and I think potentially a slightly significant one.

To get there, however, it must embrace the future and change.

The good thing is, massive change is not needed. We just need to gently nudge the ship in the right direction, stop being quite so traditional about everything, and everything should turn out fine. More fun. Less spelling headaches.

Slight change is all that is needed. Let's get started...