One Year of Study Revised: October 2011-2012

It's been just over one month since my last post, in which I declared my one-year study plan for languages. One month down, eleven months to go. So how has it been going? Good and bad.

First, the good: I made 900-word parallel literary translations into Interlingua and Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) from the novel La Chartreuse de Parme. The translations can be found at The Joy of Literature.

Now, the bad: it has sadly become clear that, given my other commitments, I simply do not have the time to learn two auxlangs to fluency at the same time as learning French. Therefore I have been forced to make a choice between Interlingua and LdP. And my choice is LdP. So my revised plan is exactly the same as my original plan except that Interlingua has been removed.

The following three languages will be my focus:

English

French

Lingwa de Planeta

For each of these languages, my goals for the year are:

English : to read and write literature

French : to read literature and other texts

Lingwa de Planeta : to read and translate literature

Explanatory Note:

Why LdP instead of Interlingua?

I believe LdP is clearly a better auxlang than Interlingua for global literary use, being easier to read, easier to pronounce, and incorporating vocabulary from around the world rather than just from Romance languages. It is also easier to speak and to write for those like myself who are not native speakers of a Romance language. Lastly, LdP is primarily designed to be easy whereas Interlingua is primarily designed to be naturalistic; this really counts when it comes to truly global use... for example I cannot imagine readers in China being willing to learn Interlingua but I can easily imagine them being willing to learn LdP. Apart from being easier, the design of LdP pays attention to making people feel welcome by including words from a much more diverse collection of natural languages than the small number of source languages of Interlingua. Since my intention is to write literature for global consumption, rather than merely for European consumption or merely for those who speak Indo-European languages, LdP is clearly a better choice, even taking into account its relative immaturity. In my opinion LdP has greater potential than Interlingua to succeed globally. In other words, for global literary use I have now come to believe that worldlangs are the answer.

As a minor additional note, I have stylistic problems with Interlingua. It is very difficult to write well without being a native speaker of a Romance language, perhaps impossibly so without assistance. To be honest, I also find French easier to read than Interlingua, for passive comprehension, despite the fact that my command of French is so poor that I can barely carry out even a simple conversation. This greater ease of reading is partially because French resources are more readily available. I also enjoy reading French far more than reading Interlingua because in my opinion French is a much more beautiful language. So, to be honest, I'd rather be reading French than reading Interlingua.