How much has interest in international auxiliary languages grown since 1985?
Thursday, July 31, 2008
That's hard to tell, but there's a way to compare the interest in them compared to other non-IAL subjects. Google Groups offers an advanced search that goes all the way back to 1981, so I've gone over a few IAL-related and non-IAL related terms from 1985 to 2008 to compare the rate of increase between them all. Since it's July 30th 2008 right now the start date was set to January 1st of 1981 and the first end date to search at was set as July 30th 1985, then 1990, and so on until 2005, then the last shows the three years between 2005 and 2008.
The rate of increase between the date before is shown in percent below. Note that this isn't an attempt to compare IALs between each other, but rather the interest in IALs compared to regular concepts. The non-IAL terms were chosen from those that had nothing to do with any large events in the past that would skew the results (Saddam Hussein, Afghanistan, World Trade Center, Monica Lewinsky, etc.).
| Search term | 1985 | 1990 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2008 | Avg. rate of increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Esperanto | 170 | 1480 +770% | 17900 +1100% | 176000 883% | 314000 +78% | 373000 +18% | 570% |
| Bulgaria | 79 | 731 +825% | 27100 +3607% | 235000 +767% | 448000 +90% | 681000 +52% | 1068% |
| Ido language | 0 | 17 | 443 +2505% | 3140 +608% | 5930 +88% | 8590 +44% | 811% |
| Calgary | 259 | 3740 +1344% | 54700 +1362% | 549000 +903% | 1900000 +245% | 2150000 +13% | 773% |
| Occidental interlingue | 55 | 183 +232% | 273 +49% | 140% | |||
| Novial | 5 | 53 +960% | 655 +1135% | 1020 +55% | 1430 +40% | 547% | |
| Spanish | 845 | 4430 +424% | 114000 +2473% | 3510000 +2980% | 3340000 -4% | 4760000 +42% | 1183% |
| Lojban | 0 | 38 | 602 +1484% | 8740 +1351% | 46100 +427% | 62700 +36% | 824% |
| Mongolia | 27 | 297 +1000% | 5090 +1613% | 50300 +888% | 102000 +102% | 156000 +52% | 731% |
| -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| Avg. increase of IAL-related content | 578% | ||||||
| Avg. increase of non-IAL related content | 938% |
The hasty conclusion to draw from this would be that the world is relatively no more interested in IALs now than it was in the past. The one consoling factor I suppose would be that at least interest hasn't dropped off the face of the Earth in this time.
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