Interlingua in 2005

INTERLNG has been rife with discussion the past week and a bit on particles in Interlingua, namely whether the Latin particles the language has (etiam, nunc, tunc, etc.) are sufficient or whether it should expand its scope to minor Romance languages like Catalan/Occitan/Romanian instead. These discussions are nostalgic, reminiscent of some others I saw in 2005 when I first became interested in the language, and they are the ones that entirely turned me off of the language after a few weeks of fervent support. Every IAL has discussions on new vocabulary and often the language itself (Ido is infamous for its in/ability to decide on a word for computer), but Interlingua always comes across as one step away from being pulled into a Romance-derived quicksand. Were the Latin particles to be removed in the name of internationality / pan-Romance mutual intelligibility the next step is to propose verbs that conjugate by person (which we can already see sometimes in son instead of es for the plural), then grammatical gender, subjunctive, and all the rest. Which would be a fine regional auxlang of its own, but not Interlingua.

In any case, Occidental followed by Mondial are still my two favourites.

Here's what the increasingly bitter and pedantic discussion looks like:



-----

Salutes amicos e Ado:

----- Original Message -----

> Io pensa, Ado, que tu ignora le facto que Stillman e Gode esseva
> facie a facie a un problema enorme que illes debe reducer in
> su labor si on pote facer lo. Illes voleva regulas pro practicas
> que non esseva onerose o duplicative, o redundante. Lor
> regulas non esseva absolutos mais heuristic. Gode multe vices
> ha indicate isto.
> Assi io diceva:

> >>Io pensa que il ha un altere ration proque in 1939 on
> >>decideva non a usar le linguas romance minor de catalano/occitano,
> >>o romaniano. Un decision ha essite facite a usar solmente 4
> >>linguas,

> >>anglese, francese, italiano, e espaniol/portugese mesmo quando Gode

> >>comenciava su studio del particulas in 1939. Plus tarde In breve,
> >>in INTERLINGUISTIC STANDARDIZATION de 1943 Stillman
> >>e Gode credeva que le cerca de iste linguas esserea labor
> >>redundant,

> Ado:

> >E clarmente quando illes reguardava le particulas illes videva que
> >iste
> >linguas romance minor no essearea redundante, si on voleva extraher
> >un
> >prototipo de tres linguas romance, nam un forma commun mancava al
> >linguas major.

> Stan:
> Isto pote occurre solmente si un sol lingua manca de un variante pro
> junger se con le resto a causa de alcun occurrentia accidental de
> historia. Le francos, un tribo germanic, cambiava le demonstrativos,
> per exemplo, per crear ce-ci, ce-la secundo un formula schematic
> non trovate in alcun altere lingua romance.

> >
> >Sed illes non persequeva iste linea de investigation. Illes se
> >tornava
> >al Latino.

> Tu vole arguer que le particulas latin seligite per Gode e Stillman,
> a un
> plus alte grado, ha radiate a altere linguas europee? Io rememora
> vider
> in le secunde volumine del INTERLINGUISTIC STANDARDIZATION
> que illes concludeva que particulas generalmente non es international
> ni radiate a altere linguas. Tu construe un impossibilitate pro
> particulas
> romance durante que tu non vide que le mesme occurre con particulas
> pur latin que tu favora, e a un grado plus sever.

> >
> >E proque non continuar le investigation intra le linguas romance

> >minor?
> >Le clar responsa es in le citation ad infra:
> >>
> >>proque le major parte de parolas contribuite per iste
> >>linguas a altere linguas jam esseva representate per le major
> >>linguas romance e anglese (que habeva absorbite alcun parolas de
> >>provencial/occitano).

> Illes se preoccupava con parolas in le vocabulario general e non
> grammatical. Illes diceva nihil super particulas in iste section.
> Il ha necun exemplos de particulas in lor discussion. Tu projice
> alque que non es la.

> Io diceva:

> >>Pro proba de mi assertion, isto es lo que Stillman e Gode diceva
> >>in 1943 in INTERLINGUISTIC STANDARDIZATION super le linguas
> >>romance minor:
> >>(Io traduce pro le beneficio de non anglophonos):

> Stillman e Gode:

> >>"41. Le function que nos vole assignar al gruppo romance de linguas
> >>es uno que illos es equippate a performar proque illos representa
> >>como
> >>un gruppo un unitate comparativemente compacte cultural de alte
> >>international potentia.
> >>
> >>Il es consequentemente apparente que le termino 'gruppo romance
> >>de linguas' non pote esser aqui intendite a servir in su senso
> >>historico-philologic le plus extendite. Inter le linguas
> >>plenmente constitute como national sovente coperite per le termino
> >>"romance", il ha al minus un, romaniano, que factores historic e
> >>geographic ha separate tanto plenmente a parte del altere membros
> >>del gruppo que illo debe esser segregate del consideration. {SAM:
> >>Isto me sembla alquanto exaggerate e superficial. Alcuno qui
> >>examina un dictionario romanian va vider milles de parolas
> >>romance}. Del altere latere un considerabile numero de plus o
> >>minus dialectos romance independente como Rheto-romance,
> >>corsicano, sardeniano, etc.. non pote poner se super un par con
> >>le linguas romance major.
> >
> >Tunc le linguas romance minor "non pote poner se super un par con le

> >linguas romance major".

> Solmente in radiar parolas a altere linguas directemente e non via le
> tres linguas romance major. Le particulas in qualcunque lingua
> rarmente
> se radia a altere linguas. E illes voleva un definition pro linguas
> romance pro le recerca. Mais illes pensava non de particulas
> mais de parolas in le vocabulario general de iste linguas.

> Stillman e Gode:

> >>Mesmo in le caso de provencial e
> >>catalano, con referentia a cuje classification como o real linguas
> >>o mer dialectos il esserea impossibile a attinger accordo general,
> >>il es un facto perfectemente obvie que lor contributiones al
> >>vocabulario international esseva facite indirectemente per o le
> >>francese o espaniol. Parolas como 'bastille, cable, cadet, cocoon,
> >>lime, nougat, ruffian,' etc, non gaude le currentia international
> >>como parolas provencial, que illes pote plus o minus monstrar se
> >>mesme a esser, mais plus tosto como parolas que ha radiate se de
> >>Francia.

> Stan: Tu vide alcun particulas como exemplos in le texto in alto?

> Ado:

> >Ecce un echo del parte in le introduction al IED que parla de
> >linguas
> >ques es centros de radiation de terminos international. Es a dicer
> >que
> >le linguas romance major radia parolas dum le linguas romance minor
> >-
> >non.

> Le fallacia de tu argument es que tu assume que 'radiar parolas'
> include in lor pensata, le particulas. Particulas non radia. Isto
> es lo que illes se mesme concludeva. Le particulas
> deveni a vices similar mais ancora formas mutate in descendentes
> de un lingua. Assi similar variantes de particulas in linguas es
> le resultato del commun causes de formas ancestral que ha
> supervivite intacte o con pauc cambios, e a vices con major
> cambios, mais ancora con characteristicas que suggere lor
> ancestria, quando on nota le cambios regular de phonemas
> a partir del ancestral al filial linguas.

> Stillman e Gode:

> > >Assi il sembla que non solmente Romaniano mais
> >>equalmente le minor dialectos romance e mesmo le provencial e

> >>catalano debe esser excludite de nostre restringite definition

> >>technical del gruppo romance de linguas."
> >
> >"Mesmo le provencal e catalano debe esser excludite..." Il es
> >difficile
> >de exprimer isto plus clarmente.

> Tu sembla incapace de vider le rationamento que ha ducite a
> iste conclusion. Nihil discussion concerneva le particulas in iste
> linguas.

> Stan:

> >>Nota que lor ration pro excluder iste minor linguas romance es
> >>pragmatic e non absolute, e non exclude lor uso in studios del
> >>particulas se mesme.
> >
> >Tu ha facite iste argumento plure vices. Sed claro le exlusion non
> >era
> >solo pragmatic nam le particulas monstrava a Gode e Stillman - tosto
> >o

> >plus tarde - que le linguas minor romance poterea esser utile si on

> >vole extraher un prototipo de tres linguas romance.

> Gode non jammais ha dicite a me quando nos discuteva iste
> problema a su bureau in Nove Yorkin 1961 que ille habeva alcun
> problema con cercar linguas romance minor. Io ha monstrate le
> un bon libro del etymologia del linguas romance (Bourciez,
> Élémentos de linguistique romane." Illo ha monstrate formas
> intermedie in le evolution de formas del latino a in le linguas
> filial. Illo monstrava que le demonstrativos in espaniol, portugese,
> catalano, e romaniano, e in parte italiano esseva derivate de un
> forma
> eccu+ille -> cu+ille -> quelle, e atque+ille -> accu+ille = aquelle.
> (Isto non es le final theoria que io favora, mais alora illo
> monstrava
> que formas in a- in le demonstrativos debe esser explicate, si on
> cerca le prototypo). Il esseva a iste puncto que ille ha date me
> su cartas de su studio del particulas in 1939-1940 a fin que io
> poteva facer un similar studio.

> Ado:

> >Tamen illes non cambiava curso post observar le manco de formas
> >commun
> >in le particulas del linguas romance major. Nimis tarde? A pena. Le
> >IED
> >no era publicate usque 1951.
> >
> >Stillman assere le ration de excluder le linguas romance minor
> > clarmente - illes non era par con le linguas romance major e illes
> > no
> >era centros de radiation de parolas international.

> Mais isto es lo que io argue: illes ha claudite lor mentes a un
> alternative
> solution per prejudicio contra le linguas romance minor--prejudicio
> basate super le analyse solmente del parolas del general vocabulario.

> >
> >Il pare que pro Stillman e Gode un prototipo basate super un lingua
> >de
> >fonte e duo linguas minor romance simplemente non habeva
> >internationalitate, al minus non le internationalitate que illes
> >cercava. A lor puncto de vista, un particula Latin vale plus que un
> >tal
> >prototipo.

> Il es un preferentia subjective pro le latino, que vale minus hodie.
> Le valuta de un lingua non es importante. On vole solutiones secundo
> le methodologia objective usate con le resto del vocabulario. E
> selectionar
> un gruppo de linguas con particulas similar, a causa de un ancestre
> commun, es natural, mais illo require al minus 4 o 5 linguas si on
> usa
> un regula de tres pro le selection pro facer bastante solutiones
> possibile. Isto es
> monstrate con le uso de germano e russo como linguas supplementari
> in le caso de parolas in le vocabulario general.

> Lor preferentia pro le latino esseva quando le latino esseva ancora
> un major subjecto in le curriculos de scholas in multe paises. Illo
> non
> es hodie, e esseva declinante in mesmo 1940 e certemente a 1951. Illo
> non es un lingua international in su grammatica ni su particulas.
> E su particulas non ha radiate multo a altere linguas como
> particulas usate in aquelle linguas.

> Nonobstante, Ado, le formas del latino, etiam, nam, nimis, quia,
> sed, illac, hic, olim, ex, ab, quare, unquam, nondum, etc. o se
> eclipsava
> del linguas filial, o cambiava multo lor forma in illos. Le
> particulas del
> latino es mesmo minus international que aquellos del linguas romance.

> Tu ha un tendentia de projicer lo que tu vole creder in le factos.

> Amicalmente,
> Stan

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Link roundup, 7 July 2013

• The most recent episode of Radio Interlingua has an interview with a female interlinguist. The majority of IAL users tend to be men, so a female voice is always a bit of a novelty.
• After all the attention on Reddit and elsewhere, Mickey Mangan has begun making episodes of The Lernen to Talk Show.

• An article about using Kaapse Afrikaans in schools.
• 'Valencian and Catalan are the same language'.
• On the current situation of Spanish language teaching in the Philippines.
• Russia's planned reform of its space industry.
• SpaceX's newest Grasshopper test, this time making it to an altitude of 325 m:

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Link roundup: 10 June 2013

• 
  A "translation" of the Bible into Texan. The translation is actually just replacing the word you with y'all when the original is the plural you, which actually makes it more precise. Without the loss of thou English wouldn't have needed all the substitutes we have: y'all, your guyses, etc.
• Some more research on habitability around white and brown dwarf stars seems to show less possibility for life around them than previously believed, but the conclusion is far from definite.
• Chris Hadfield has announced his retirement from the Canadian Space Agency.
• France24 to launch a Spanish-language channel, after the current French, English, and Arabic versions.
• Will Smith talking in Spanish a bit, a language he clearly loves to use:

• A poem in Interlingua recently uploaded to YouTube:

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Link roundup, 10 February 2013

여러분 새해 복 많이 받으세요! 올해도 더 많은 언어를 배우시고 나로호를 또 발사하시고 점점 길고양이를 사랑하는 한국이 되길 바랍니다.

--- The 10th of February means we're just five days away from the closest approach of asteroid 2012 DA14, and the articles on the close approach are continuing to increase in number. The real eye candy will come a bit after, as Goldstone will begin radar observations just after closest approach. On the 15th we'll see a lot of videos though showing this asteroid as a tiny, rapidly moving streak in the sky.

--- A new analysis of red dwarf stars has lead to a preliminary conclusion that the nearest earth-like planet may be 13 light years away, around a red dwarf. The nearest one could actually be 4 light years away around a sun much like our own, but about 13 is our best roundabout guess at the moment. For a good layman's paper on the habitability of red dwarf stars, see here.

--- The MAVEN probe has finished construction. This one will be going to Mars to study the upper atmosphere, in particular the rate at which it is lost to space. I'm not the biggest Mars fan out there but the results from this will be interesting, both for the ability it will give us to trace backwards to estimate the previously held atmospheres of not just Mars but other planets, and also to estimate how terraforming would work on a terrestrial body.

--- A review of Tesla's Model S.

--- Apparently Italy is going to begin promoting a proficiency test called CLIQ (Certificazione Lingua Italiana di Qualità): "Le nostre ambasciate, i consolati e gli istituti italiani di cultura sono gia' pronti per assicurare la massima diffusione della CLIQ in tutti i Paesi e in tal senso e' stata sottoscritta una specifica convenzione tra Ministero e Associazione CLIQ".

--- Esperanto: an international auxiliary clusterfuck. Kind of reminiscent of this often referenced page called learn not to speak Esperanto, except the author of this post (who knows Esperanto very well) still concludes that it is worth learning:

"To learn it and take part in its culture of 1.5 million speakers, and read its uniquely rewarding literature is an experience worth having. As such, it is worth learning: if only to become part of the community of its speakers, many of whom are among the coolest people I've ever met."

There's a lot to get at in the post and the comments below show others beginning to do so, and a small mention of Interlingua is at the end as well. Considering how much of the post is devoted to derivation I'd like to see his opinion of Ido as well.

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Link roundup for 01 December 2012

--- In November we had another free asteroid flyby, one of my favourite events where the simple proximity of an asteroid to Earth gives us the opportunity to view it from fairly up close, without the need to launch anything to observe it. Goldstone once again is the observatory that has given us the eye candy we want and need:

The asteroid was 6.5 million km away at closest approach, and it won't come this close again for some two centuries. Diameter is 1.5 km, giving a surface area of 7 square km, about the same as Gibraltar.

--- Even brown dwarfs may grow rocky planets.

--- Not sure if this is a new discovery, but I found a copy of Novialiste from 1938 on Archive.org. It's a total of 198 pages, and being four years after the reform of 1934 the language looks rather...viscerally displeasing. Novial at that time is kind of like the critical image some Esperantists have of Ido: a language that is always changing, reforming, changing again, tweaking this and tweaking that. Ido, however, wisely put an end to constant reforms and has hardly changed at all since then, but Novial went overboard with the constant tweaking.

--- Le angulo linguistic: a helpful page from interlingua.com about how to properly use the language. There are a lot of Romance L1 users that try to use Interlingua as they would their mother tongues, such as using sia for the subjunctive.

--- An article on the estranged brothers Afrikaans and Dutch. Nice insight here into how Afrikaans is converted to Dutch automatically by a speaker of Dutch:

Anyway, my personal ambition is to read a book by Brink or another Afrikaans writer in the original once I get my hands on a copy of a suitable novel. The fact that this is not such a big task is evidenced by the following. Here is a paragraph from today’s Beeld:

“Terwyl Suid-Afrika se nuwe krieketheld eergister met sy merkwaardige vegtersbeurt in Australië besig was, het sy vriendin al die aksie misgeloop omdat sy op ’n vliegtuig was.”

I would not even think in English reading this. I would just read it as Dutch:

“Terwijl Zuid Afrika’s nieuwe crickeheld eergisteren met zijn merkwaardige vechtersbeurt in Australiëe bezig was, heeft zijn vriendin al de aktie misgelopen omdat zij op een vliegtuig was.”

--- The Pontifical Academy for Latin is now on Wikipedia as of a few weeks ago.

--- The front page article on the Latin Wikipedia this month is our beloved Respublica Coreana.

--- And finally back to Afrikaans: Riaan Cruywagen had his last news bulletin last week, over a career spanning some 7000 broadcasts. Good lord that's a crisp accent.

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La (frua) fino de mia esperanta eksperimento

Esperanto por mi estas plej bona kiel lingvo pasiva.

Unue mi devas ekskuzi min: ŝajnas ke la tempo de mia esperanta eksperimento ne estis bona - en la venontaj tagoj mi voyaĝos (du aeroplanoj) kaj ne povos skribi esperante ĉiun tagon; do la eksperimento daŭris nur dek-unu tagoj, ne dudek-unu. Sed mi pensas ke la dek-unu tagoj estis sufiĉa.

Kial?

Unue, mi volis scii pri la Esperanto-komunumo en la reto. Mia demando estis: ĉu oni povas rekomendi Esperanto kiel lingvo por blogisto, blogisto kiu volas 1) skribi pri aĵoj kaj vidi komentoj; 2) krei amikeco inter aliaj blogistoj. La respondo estas emfaza jes. En mia unua skribaĵo venis multaj personoj kiuj skribis komentoj, dicante ke jes, ili vidis la skribaĵon, kaj jes, la esperanto-blogistoj estas multaj. En la reto oni trovas situoj kiel: Verda Stelo kaj Kiberio (kaj komprenende Libera Folio); komprenende ekzistus multaj aliaj. Do mi rekomendos Esperanton a personoj kiuj volas lerni lingvon artefaritan, kaj konsideras ke la grandeco de la komunumo estas la plej grava.

Due, mi volis scii pri miaj pensoj pri Esperanto se mi uzus ĝin serioze. En 2005 mi studis Esperanton nur kvar/kin tagoj, kaj poste eklernis Idon. Ekde 2005 ĝis nun mi uzis Idon (mi ankoraŭ scias Idon plej bone), Interlingua-n, Occidental-on, LFN, ktp., sed ne Esperanton. Do mi mankis la sperton uzi ĝi.

Kaj kiam mi uzis Esperanton, mi trovis ke mi ŝatas Esperanton pli kiel lingvo pasiva, sed ne multe kiel lingvo aktiva. Honeste, kiel Idisto kiam mi uzis Esperanton mi sentis ĝin kiel fruan Idon. Ido vere estas la kuzo de Esperanto, ĉar kiam mi uzis Esperanton mi ĉiam pensas pri Ido, sed kiam mi uzis aliajn lingvojn mi neniam pensas pri Ido. Sed interesa aĵo - kiam mi uzis Interlingua mi ĉiam pensas pri Occidental, kaj ankaŭ preferas Occidental. Eksemple kiam mi skribas "Illo habeva essite in le schola" mi preferus skribi kurte "Il hat esset in li scol". Miaj okuloj ŝatas Interlingua-n kaj Esperanton, sed miaj manoj preferas skribi en Ido kaj Occidental.

Do la konkludo estas: 1) Mi povas rekomendi Esperanton al personoj kiuj pensas ke la grandeco de komunumo gravas; 2) En la estonteco mi foje skribos esperante - ne ĉiun tagon, sed kiam mi havas aĵo por skribi; 3) Mi daŭros preferi Occidental kaj Ido al Esperanto kaj Interlingua kiam mi volas skribi grandan aĵon.

Dankon pro la intereso kaj komentoj!

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FreeCol now available in Interlingua

Yesterday the UMI informed us on its Facebook page that the strategy game FreeCol (kind of like Civilization, but free) is now available in Interlingua and I've been trying it out. Translating a game like this is naturally an excellent idea, and a brilliant way to promote a language. It also happens to be available in a number of other languages as well, including (of course) Esperanto, Afrikaans, Estonian, Occitan, Persian, and many others. It seems that a language does not have to be completely translated in order to be available either, as Persian is only about half complete and untranslated parts simply appear in English...actually, according to this page Persian is only 17% translated, Interlingua is at 100%, Esperanto is at 93.53%, Afrikaans 97.5%, Ido is at 1.03%, and even Ancient Greek is at 26.7%. A translation into another IAL shouldn't be too hard, and Sambahsa comes to mind here.

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Creating necessary and useful content in at-sight IALs

A discussion on this has been going on for a few days over at Auxlang, namely that though at-sight IALs (Interlingua, Occidental, etc.) are easy to understand and kind of fun to try out, the majority of those with a Romance language as an L1 still likely don't have the patience for more than perhaps a page of content, which makes the idea of creating literature in an IAL quite tough. Or more precisely, in terms of literature at-sight languages probably don't have the advantage of being able to appeal to 600 million instead of just a few thousand regular users, because the former group isn't likely to spend that much time with one.

On the other hand, much shorter and "practical" content is still of definite use. One easy example is this video in Hungarian, with Interlingua subtitles (and about Esperanto). Unless you know Hungarian, you need to use the Interlingua subtitles to understand the video. And while this video may not be the most crucial subject in the world, a breaking news report (let's say from Icelandic on Ejyafjallajökull the day it erupted) quickly translated into Interlingua/Occidental just might be.



The IALA's original approach with scientific material was also a good example of making use of Interlingua, as it only involved short technical documents, and scientists are used to reading material in a kind of foreign language anyway. I've just started learning to program in Python (thanks to advice I received here which encouraged me to do so after years of procrastination), and the first program I've created on my own has been one that calculates the gravity and escape velocity (and mass if necessary) of an asteroid or other body. Since it's not that big five minutes suffices to turn it into Occidental, and now it looks like this.

The top example shows how it works when you know the mass, and the second is slightly longer as the user first inputs the radius and mass (usually 4 g/cm^3 for an asteroid) after which the surface gravity and escape velocity is calculated. It's not that difficult to understand that it's about an asteroid with a 500 metre radius, a mass of 2.09 * 10^10 kilograms and this a surface gravity 0.006% that of the Earth and an escape velocity of just 2.7 km/h (IOW, anyone can just make a short hop to break the asteroid's gravity).

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Comparison of Mondial and Interlingua

Mondial, while now largely unknown, is probably the IAL that most resembles Interlingua. None of Heimer's books can be seen online, but luckily a blog written in 2009 has quite a bit of content that allows us to make a comparison. The comparison will focus on learnability. Anything not mentioned here is due to the languages using the same, or almost exactly the same methodology. The languages are almost 100% mutually intelligible.


Verbs - Mondial verbs all end in -ar, in Interlingua they have three endings (-ar, -er, -ir). Unlike Occidental, having three endings makes a difference for the student in conjugating verbs (facer becomes ha facite, not facete). Mondial is easier here.

First person plural imperative: in Interlingua it's que nos (lit. that we) plus the verb, in Mondial one puts -mo on the end. Que nos parla! in Interlingua is Parlamo! in Mondial. Neither language has an edge here.

More verb conjugation is pretty much the same: Interlingua -va for past tense is -vi in Mondial, -ia and -a are the same in both (edit: should have written -ea for Interlingua). Mondial has one irregular verb (the verb to be), while Interlingua has three. Irregular in this case though means little, as the extra burden on the student is minimal and no student of Interlingua will fail to learn the language due to es, ha and da.

Mondial has an impersonal pronoun lo, which is used in sentences like lo pluvia (it's raining).

Mondial has no double letters in its words, meaning that the -mente adverbial ending will simply become -ente with an adjective like intim (intimate), which becomes intimente (intimately).

Irregular comparatives: both use some optional irregular forms for words like larger, worse, etc. (major, pejor...) though simply using plu (Interlingua plus) is not incorrect either.

Irregular accent: Interlingua has words with irregular accents, but as with English this is not indicated. Mondial uses a standard accent (á, ú, etc.) to show when it is irregular in words like citá.

Orthography: Mondial uses the same tricks Italian does to retain a more regular orthography. Ge, gi are pronounced like English jay, gee, while one writes gue and gui for a hard g (gay, gee as in geese). Ce and ci are also pronounced like tsay and tsee, so for a hard k sound one writes que and qui (pronounced kay and kee, not kway and kwee).


Conclusion: Mondial is more or less the language I had hoped Interlingua would be when I first took a look at it in 2005. Unfortunately it is now more or less unknown, and doesn't have the (very impressive) large dictionaries that Interlingua has. Fortunately it is a naturalistic language, which makes derivation quite intuitive and most of the time Mondial and Interlingua share the same vocabulary, so modifying an Interlingua dictionary shouldn't be that hard a task.

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Word frequency for Occidental, Lingua Franca Nova, Ido, Interlingua, Esperanto

Some more playing around with Wordle, this time with a few auxlangs. Let's start with Occidental.


Occidental is taken from Cosmoglotta, so it's the most politically-themed of the languages chosen here. That's why you can see the words Esperanto and IALA in there. I think I removed li (the) when I made this yesterday.

Next is Lingua Franca Nova, which was taken from three long articles from the LFN Wiki. Capitan, barcon (ship) and viaja made it in there because of a translation of Treasure Island, not because LFNistes always talk about sailing the high seas and nabbing treasure.

After that is Ido, which was made from the complete text of the Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza. The word la is actually the most frequent but when included it absolutely dwarfs the rest of the words so it had to be taken out. Here are the rest.

Following that is Interlingua, which is taken from the Curso de Conversation. It has a lot of names so those were removed.

Finally we have Esperanto, but that didn't work so well as the supersigned letters weren't detected properly. Strange because the application even has an option to remove common Esperanto words, which I did, so the three largest (kaj, de and la) don't show up here.

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One other possible downside to naturalistic constructed languages

Take a look at this message written yesterday in Interlingua and English by a user of the language who has decided to cut down on his Interlingua activities a bit. On Auxlang we often talk about how extremely naturalistic languages like Interlingua have a tendency to be pulled in certain directions by native speakers of languages that serve as source languages, because it may come across as a bit odd to see a language that has put so much effort into looking natural, but still uses something like esseva for the past tense of the verb to be.

The post above also shows that this naturalistic appeal may also give users a desire to actually start using a "natural" language like Spanish or Portuguese or Italian after spending so much time with Interlingua, since with a fair amount of competency with Interlingua these languages are generally pretty easy to understand, and upon reaching that point the Interlingua can begin to look pretty small in comparison - with Spanish/Portuguese/Italian one can find discussions on just about anything, but in Interlingua (and Ido, and Lingua Franca Nova and all the rest) one tends to see the same people every day. So it's hard to say whether this is simply due to the language having a naturalistic appearance or whether it is due to the size of the community, or perhaps both.

One wonders if a language like Lingua Franca Nova wouldn't also bleed into something like Papiamentu as well. I actually find this to be unlikely since there are so many creoles in the world compared to the number of major Romance languages, and so LFN comes across almost as just another type of Romance creole, one of dozens and dozens found around the world.

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Scientific synopsis in Interlingua sighted

During its first few years after its creation, synopses for scientific papers were often written in Interlingua in order to demonstrate to scientists how easy it was to understand at first sight. A page here I stumbled across shows an interesting example of this from a paper written in 1967. What makes it particularly interesting is that it is a site that has nothing to do with IALs either.

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How to properly use Interlingua to learn other languages

This applies to many other constructed languages as well (especially Occidental and Latino sine Flexione), but let's go with Interlingua because it's the most often talked about online as a way to familiarize oneself with Romance languages, namely Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent Romanian and of course Latin. It also has the most detailed dictionaries of the available naturalistic auxiliary languages.

First a quick introduction: Interlingua is one of the so-called "Big Three", and is either the second or third-most used constructed language after Esperanto (Ido is the other one of the three, and it also has a speaker base about the same as that of Interlingua). It is constructed in order to be as easy to read (and hear, but it's mostly written) as possible at first sight, which results in a larger vocabulary to learn but also a more recognizable one for those familiar with one of the source languages. Wikipedia compares the two with this example:

Esperanto	Interlingua	English
sana	san	healthy
sano	sanitate	health
malsana	malade	sick, unhealthy
malsano	maladia	malady, illness, disease
malsanulejo	hospital	hospital
saniĝi	recovrar	to become healthy, recover
sanigi	curar	to make healthy, cure
malsaniĝi	cader malade	to become sick, fall ill

You can see above that the Interlingua words are largely recognizable to an English speaker, but due to the Romance influence a lot of them are only recognizable at first sight to someone who knows a language like French or Spanish. The word for healthy resembles French and others, while the word for health looks like sanity in English but refers here to physical health. Sick is also the same as French and others.

This similarity along with the simple grammar Interlingua uses is why it is often recommended online as an introductory language to Romance languages, a language that is not only simple to learn but similar enough to every other Romance language that they become readable afterwards.

This is true and it is a very good method, but there are two things to say beforehand. They are:

One, be sure to remember that this is a familiarity with vocabulary alone. It will not bring about familiarity with grammatical gender (you still won't know whether a word is masculine, feminine or neuter in other languages most of the time), and verb endings in other Romance languages will still be unrecognizable bits of conjugation tacked on to the end. French  This is actually a good thing, because grammatical gender and grammar differs between the Romance languages and trying to find a common bond between them all there would be impossible, so the best thing to do is to construct a language that uses the elements common to them all (vocabulary) and leaves the grammar as simple as possible. This lets the student spend the majority of his/her time on vocabulary alone.

Two, and this is the most important point (it's the reason why this post is being written), do not simply use the language for conversing with others. Languages by their very nature are huge swaths of territory that even native speakers make scant use of. This means that after studying the language for perhaps a month you will begin to gain a sense of false fluency, because the language is fairly easy to read and a lot of the discussion online is centered on linguistics. It will be tempting after about a month to look at a paragraph like this:

"Introduction al interlinguistica. Interlingua parlate e scribite" es le titulo del curso, arrangiate al universitate del 9 al 27 de novembre per le Departimento de Didactica e Organisation Scholar sub direction de Francisco Salvador Mata e Hermenegildo de la Campa Martínez, ambes diligente autores de publicationes in e super interlingua.

...and think "man, that was easy. I understand this all. I'm done Interlingua."

No you're not. At least not if the reason for learning it is to gain a passive understanding into other Romance languages.

As mentioned, the content you will find online is usually pretty simple and the vocabulary is limited, and this imparts a sense of false fluency. But if you really know a language like Interlingua you should be able to write about and explain some pretty obscure concepts. Diligente autores de publicationes in e super interlingua (diligent authors of publications in and about Interlingua) is easy, but can you say a muddy brassworker? (un latonero fangose / fangose latonero) Can you say bundles of wheat? (fardos de frumento) Can you say a leather belt with spots? (un cinctura de corio con maculas)

It's very unlikely that you'll find a speaker of Interlingua that will be able to write about such subjects without the aid of a dictionary, but the vocabulary is still something the student needs to learn in order to attain this unconscious familiarity with other Romance languages. Laton (brass) is the same in Spanish and in French it's laiton, mud is fango in Italian, and fang in Catalan, a belt is cinturón in Spanish, cintura in Italian and ceinture in French. So these are clearly all words that the student would want to know in order to gain a familiarity with these languages.

So how is this accomplished then? Easy - translate pages and pages of content from one language (probably English) into Interlingua. Conversation with average people will not bring up obscure words like this that must be learned, but a translation from a book will. Pick something copyright-free and with a huge vocabulary like Charles Dickens that will require you to look up the meaning of words you may not even encounter all that often in your native tongue. Continue that practice daily until you have reached a point where you almost never have to refer to a dictionary even to translate works of literature such as these. Only after reaching this point will you have thoroughly utilized Interlingua as a tool to passively understand Romance languages.

How long will this take? From an English-only base and with an hour a day of translation, perhaps six months or so. Not a bad investment for someone who intends to get into Romance languages later on but won't be going abroad in the near future.

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Comparison between Novial and Interlingua (and Esperanto)

The most recent change to the Novial Wikipedia as of today is this one, the addition of a link to the Interlingua Wikipedia of an article that has been translated nearly word for word from Novial into Interlingua. It also contains a note saying that it might be worth it for the Novialists reading to interest themselves in Interlingua considering the ease of translation between the two (i.e. one could take one's existing knowledge of one to use in learning the other). Probably not all that effective an approach considering how far off the beaten track Novial is compared to some other auxlangs; in order to be a Novial supporter one must either 1) like pretty much all auxlangs already (in which case Interlingua would probably be one), or 2) consider the others to be flawed to the extent that one has no choice but to support Novial, in spite of its much smaller user community.

Nevertheless, it's a good source from which to make a quick comparison. Here it is.

Novial	Interlingua	English
Morfologia, in linguistike, es li studio del elementes de vordes in lingues.	Morphologia linguistic es le studio del elementos de parolas in linguas.	Morphology, in linguistics, is the study of elements of words in languages. (note: Interlingua version actually means linguistic morphology)
Li maxim mikri signfikant elemente de vordes es li morfeme.	Le plus micre elemento significante de parolas es le morphema.	The smallest significant element of words is the morpheme.
Es tri chefi tipes de morfologia trovat in li lingues del monde:	Il ha tres typos principal de morfologia trovate in le linguas del mundo:	There are three types of morphology found in the languages of the world:
Isolant morfologia, in kel generalim vordes kontena nur un morfeme;	Morfologia isolante, in que generalmente parolas comporta solmente un morphema;	Isolating morphology, in which generally words contain only one morpheme;
Aglutinativ morfologia, in kel generalim vordes es simpli series de morfemes;	Morfologia agglutinative, in que generalmente parolas son simple series de morphemas;	Agglutinative morphology, in which generally words are (a) simple series of morphemes;
Flektional morfologia, in kel vordes konsista ek radikes e finales ("flektiones") kel modifika li sense del radike.	Morfologia flexional, in que parolas consiste ex radices e finales ("flexiones") que modifica le senso del radice.	Flexional morphology, in which words consist of radicals and finals (flexions) which modify the sense of the radical.

For a much longer comparison between Novial and Esperanto, see here.

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Ten languages you might want to take a second look at

Here are ten languages that don't often get much consideration by the prospective student, but are worth taking a second look at for those that are undecided on which language they want to learn. Long-time readers will recognize much of this, but this is the first time they have been all gathered together in a single post.


1. Icelandic

Icelandic is spoken by only a tad over 300,000 people, but given its maintenance of an archaic grammatical structure and pent for linguistic purity (creating words from existing terms instead of borrowing them from other languages) it is a favourite for linguists. It is also very similar to Old English, which apparently was mutually comprehensible with Icelandic at the time. Anyone else will tell you that Icelandic is fiendishly difficult and that unless you are really interested in Icelandic itself you should stick with easier and more often-used Scandinavian languages - Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. And yes, Norwegian is probably the easiest language for English speakers to learn. Icelandic has one advantage it can claim over the others though: regional variation in Icelandic is almost non-existent. This means that you can learn Icelandic from a textbook and then perfect it with your friends in Reykjavik, and not need to worry about going to another city and finding out that they happen to speak a variant completely unintelligible to you, as is the case with the other three. It's not because Iceland is small though, because it's actually over twice the size of Denmark and Denmark has a great many dialects that are unintelligible to those that only speak the standard language.

One other tiny plus: being able to read Faroese.


2. Bulgarian

Bulgarian has quite a different grammar from the other Slavic languages (Russian/Polish/Czech etc.), and this difference makes it quite a bit friendlier to the average English speaker. One very important distinction is the presence of a definite article (English the), which doesn't exist in other Slavic languages. Bulgarian does this by adding a suffix, like in the Scandinavian languages and also in Romanian. The word for moon (luna, Луна) becomes lunata (Луната), which means the moon.

Another big difference: pretty much no palatalization, as this article states.

Much bigger than these two is the following: Bulgarian has no cases (except for a very few remnants). No nominative/genitive/accusative...instead, Bulgarian uses prefixes as one does in English. Actually, there are cases in pronouns, but those exist in English as well (I/me, we/us) so not hard for the English speaker to pick up.

Finally, Bulgarian isn't just a Slavic language but also the direct descendant of Old Church Slavonic, which was more or less the Latin of the Slavic languages at the time.


3. Latin

Many people study languages for the career benefits they bring. This usually means choosing languages like French, Spanish, German, Japanese and Chinese, as opposed to say Romanian, Dutch, and Vietnamese. A large part of these benefits come from the number of speakers of the language, its geographic extent, and the average GDP of those that use it. So why is Latin here? Well, if we assume that the goal of someone learning a language is to get a steady and high-paying job, Latin has this too: Latin teachers are in very short supply right now. As shown in this post, Latin has been enjoying a steady increase year by year in just about every country, but at the same time many Latin teachers are retiring and schools are having trouble finding replacements. Latin is probably one of the only languages one could learn, in fact, that leads to such a steady career just by being fluent in it. Other languages will usually require a secondary skill to go along with it. Chinese plus experience in international trade, German plus ten years in the automotive sector...many that spend a great deal of time learning a language are given a rude surprise when they realize that simply being fluent in it doesn't provide the benefit they thought it would, but Latin differs from modern languages in being valuable careerwise in and of itself.

In addition to this, after devoting years to becoming fluent in Latin the other Romance languages then become a cinch.

4. Norwegian

Though spoken by many more people than Icelandic, Norwegian is still not usually on the list of languages prospective students think of learning so it gets a mention here. As mentioned above it is likely the easiest language for English speakers to learn. It does have the drawback of having a great number of regional variants, but then again so does German and this never seems to stop people from learning it. Norwegian has two official variants: Bokmål and Nynorsk, but they are similar enough to each other that often when reading a discussion online written in both variants you won't even recognize which is which until a little ways into reading a post.

As mentioned in Latin above, though many learn languages for the economic benefit alone, what is often overlooked is that simply knowing a language spoken by many does not usually signify making more money. Compare knowing French in Canada with Spanish in the United States: Spanish is extremely common in the US and knowing it is a big plus, but French is an official language in Canada and knowing it helps one get stable government jobs, so in spite of the smaller population it is French for Canadians that provides more of a direct benefit than Spanish for Americans.

Norwegian is a bit similar here, in that though it is spoken by only about 5 million people, those 5 million people happen to live in a country with the second highest GDP per capita ($95,062 per capita compared to $46,859 for the United States), and one with an extremely stable political system, a well-educated populace, and an impressive high-tech sector. While many still succeed at finding employment in Norway without knowing the language (in multinational corporations that need certain skills), it certainly can't hurt.

The other benefit to Norwegian is quite interesting: studies show that not only is Norwegian the easiest Scandinavian language for other Scandinavians to understand, but Norwegians also understand other Scandinavian languages the best too. In that way Norway is the ideal gateway language to continental Scandinavia.

5. Persian (Farsi)

Persian is a language with a difficult-looking exterior, but has quite a simple grammar: no cases, verbs are extremely regular, not too hard to pronounce, and it's an Indo-European language and thus has a lot in common with English and other European languages. It's also a so-called "mission critical" language, meaning that the CIA pays signing bonuses of up to $35,000 for those that are fluent in it. That doesn't mean that one should necessarily learn it only in order to get involved in intelligence gathering, but it does show how valuable a skill it is. It also has fairly low regional variation, and is understood not only in Iran but also in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Iranians are (and always have been) fairly progressive, very friendly, and very modern, and as their reaction to the elections on June 12th this year showed, they want a government that also has these traits.

6. Turkish

Turkish is a language with a surprisingly large geographic extent. Most think of Turkish as simply the language of Turkey, but it can be used in an astounding number of areas. There are nearly a million Turks in neighboring Bulgaria, an autonomous community of 150,000 in Moldova use a language almost the same as Turkish, Turkish is an official language of Kosovo, then there's Northern Cyprus, Azerbaijan (technically the language there is Azeri but it's more or less the same), as well as the northwest part of Iran, some parts of Iraq and Syria, and then there are Turkic languages spoken throughout Central Asia such as Kazakh, Uzbek, and Kyrgyz, and even into China with Uyghur and even a language called Salar that resembles Istanbul Turkish but is located right in the middle of China in the provinces Qinghai and Gansu. And not only that, but there is an extremely large Turkish minority in Germany as well (3.5 million) concentrated particularly in the capital, and there are many Russian republics where the official language is a Turkic one - Tatarstan is one. Ukraine has another one in the south (Crimea) where a Turkic language is spoken.

Add to all this the fact that the Turkish population is increasing by about a million a year and may one day in the future join the EU, and it's a pretty good language to learn. It has a grammar completely different from English, but it's very logical and has very few irregularities.





7, 8, 9. Constructed languages: The Big Three (Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua)

There are dozens and dozens of languages that have been constructed in order to hopefully some day serve as the world's second language, but of all those only three have managed to create and retain a community of any size - Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. The population estimates for these languages is generally thought to be anywhere from 100,000 to 2 million for Esperanto, to a few thousand for Ido and Interlingua. Esperanto is the only one of the three that is able to bring people together in numbers upwards of a thousand, whereas Ido and Interlingua gatherings usually only number a dozen or two, but being able to gather anyone together to speak a constructed language really is quite an accomplishment so they deserve to get mentioned together.

The advantages to these three languages are that they are ridiculously easy, have an extremely friendly community, and are similar enough to many other European languages that they become that much easier to understand after learning one of these three. It was only after learning Ido, for example, that I began to be able to understand a lot of written Spanish and Italian, languages that I had never taken a look at until then.

Economic benefits: not much, although Esperanto has an interesting network of people that are willing to provide free lodging to travellers in exchange for speaking to them in the language, and many have gone from country to country in places like Europe spending almost no money at all thanks to this.

The simplicity of these languages means that even if you are a complete dud at learning languages you should still be able to acquire fluency in one of these, because they were specifically made to be easy to learn, and thus they offer a gateway to bilingualism that might be unavailable for the otherwise linguistically disinclined. Oh, and you never know - one day one of them may succeed and become the world's second language, and then you'll have a head start on that.

One recommendation for anyone choosing to learn one of these: choose one, and stick with it. Don't get into the endless debate over which language is better than which.

10. Lithuanian

Lithuanian is well-known among linguists for being the most archaic of the Indo-European languages, retaining a lot of the phonology, grammar and other aspects of the theoretical Proto-Indo-European language from 5000 years ago. There's something about learning words like skaityti (to read), vilkas (wolf), vyras (man) and ugnis (fire), and knowing that they correspond to Proto-Indo-European (s)kʷeyt/(s)kʷoyt, wĺ̥kʷos, wiHrós (also Latin vir), and egni (also Latin ignus, from which terms like ignite are derived) that sends a tingle down your spine.

Okay, but isn't it insanely difficult? Not exactly - it's complex in some areas, but extremely regular in others (verbs in particular). A post on the difficulty of learning Lithuanian can be seen here, and an online course here provides a really easy way to learn the basics; after going through that the language doesn't seem half as scary as it did before. The economic benefits are admittedly quite minimal, but if you were interested in it before but afraid to learn it due to its reputation as being a herculean task you might want to give it a second look. It sounds good sung too.

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Portuguese in Indonesia, and Diário de Notícias, the American version

There are two more pieces of news on the subject of Portuguese that are worth mentioning.

The first one is a letter to the editor in the Jakarta Post on the Portuguese language in Indonesia, where there is a fair amount of resistance to the idea since East Timor has Portuguese as an official language, and Portugal supported the independence of the state as well. The letter makes the point that Portuguese isn't a language spoken by one country alone, that Brazil has a far larger population than Portugal and that languages shouldn't be thought of in such political terms anyway.

An interesting example of a somewhat similar situation can be found in Korea vs. Taiwan, both of which were colonized by Japan and only became independent again after Japan lost in WWII. After the war Korea forbid the Japanese language and it was only in 2002 (or was that 2001?) when Japanese books, tv etc. were legally allowed to be sold in Korea, which resulted in the generations born after the war knowing almost nothing about the language. Japanese is still quite easy to learn compared to other languages but the average person here barely knows a few words of the language, plus perhaps hiragana but almost nothing beyond that. At the same time Taiwan has been much more positive towards Japan even after the war (for obvious geopolitical reasons as well - they need all the friends they can get) and you're much more likely to find a Taiwanese person who speaks Japanese than a Korean. IMO unless a country's language is seriously in danger of dying out, there's no reason in refusing to learn a language out of spite when a useful knowledge of it can be retained fairly easily.

The Baltic countries vis a vis Russia also make a similar comparison.


The second article is here, and it's great news - a journal called Diário de Notícias has been digitized thanks to some generous donations, all 84,000+ pages of it. What's especially interesting about this newspaper is that it was the main Portuguese newspaper in the United States from 1919 to 1973, and so there's a huge wealth of historical information on the US and the immigrant community there for those that can read the language.

Here's one example:

See that part at the end? It's a bit of information on a new language called "Interlingua" being used by the International Cardiology Association, because this newspaper clipping is from 1954 so only three years after the language was first published.

To search the archives, click here. I've been enjoying poring over old newspapers online recently so I may write a few posts based on articles from Diário de Notícias if I find anything of interest.

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Romance languages could be an "antidote" to the hegemony of English / las lenguas románicas pueden ser un "antídoto" contra la lengua "hegemónica"

The Romance language world.

There's an interesting article here in Spanish on efforts to create a kind of sphere of mutual comprehensibility between Romance languages in order to combat the "hegemony" of the English language, in a forum using seven Romance languages without a translator. It would be really interesting to see a video of this in action.

I wonder if the people at the UMI (Union Mundial pro Interlingua) know about this conference, considering that Interlingua is pretty much a simplified mesh of Romance languages in order to be as easy to understand as possible at first sight.

Here are some parts from the article:

El experto en lengua francesa de la Comisión Europea (CE) Jean-François Baldi aseguró hoy que las lenguas románicas pueden ser un "antídoto" contra la lengua "hegemónica", el inglés, y por ello propuso que su estudio sea complementario al de la lengua franca anglosajona.

The expert of the French language in the European Commission, Jean-François Baldi, said today that Romance languages could be an "antidote" against the "hegemony" of English, and suggested that their study should be complementary to that of the Anglo-Saxon lingua franca.

El delegado adjunto para la lengua francesa de la CE intervino esta mañana en la conferencia "Lenguas románicas: traducción, multilingüismo y construcción europea", que acogerá hoy y mañana la Facultad de Filología de Santiago de Compostela y con la que se pretende fomentar la intercomprensión de las lenguas románicas, con 215 millones de hablantes en la Unión Europea.

The deputy for the French language at the EC spoke this morning at the conference: "Romance languages: translation, multilingualism and the building of Europe", which will happen today and tomorrow at the Faculty of Philology of Santiago de Compostela, with which it intends to promote mutual understanding of Romance languages, with 215 million speakers in the European Union.

En este foro convivirán sin traducción siete idiomas -francés, portugués, español, catalán, gallego, italiano y rumano- con el objetivo de "desarrollar el potencial de comprensión mutua por la cercanía de lenguas y su origen común"...

In this forum seven languages will coexist without translation - French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Italian and Romanian, with the objective to "develop the potential of mutual comprehension by the proximity of languages and their common origin"...



In case you're wondering how much Interlingua resembles other Romance languages, I'll make a quick translation of that last part there:

In iste foro convive sin traduction septe linguas - francese, portugese, hispano, catalan, gallego, italiano e romaniano - con le objectivo de "disveloppar le potential de comprehension mutual per le proximitate de linguas e su origine commun"

The language I personally prefer is Occidental, but considering the larger size of the Interlingua movement I wonder if they are involved with this at all, and if not, what they're waiting for.


Edit: Wikipedia has an example of the similarities between a great number of Romance languages. I'll add Interlingua and Occidental to the list for comparison.

Latin	(Illa) Claudit semper fenestram antequam cenat.
Aragonese	Ella tranca/zarra siempre la finestra antis de zenar.
Asturian	Ella pieslla siempre la ventana/feniestra primero de cenar.
Bergamasque (Eastern Lombard)	(Lé) La sèra sèmper sö la finèstra prima de senà.
Catalan	Ella tanca sempre la finestra abans de sopar.
Franco-Provençal (Arpitan)	(Le) Sarre toltin/tojor la fenétra avan de goutâ/dinar/sopar.
French	Elle ferme toujours la fenêtre avant de dîner/souper.
Galician	(Ela) Pecha sempre a fiestra/xanela antes de cear.
Interlingua	Illa claude semper le fenestra ante le cena.
Italian	(Lei) chiude sempre la finestra prima di cenare.
Leonese	Eilla pecha siempres la ventana primeiru de cenare.
Milanese (Western Lombard)	(Lee) la sara semper su la finestra primma de disnà.
Mirandese	Eilha cerra siempre la bentana/jinela atrás de jantar.
Neapolitan	Essa nzerra sempe 'a fenesta primma 'e magnà
Occidental	Ella sempre clude li fenestre ante li supé.
Occitan	(Ela) Barra sempre/totjorn la fenèstra abans de sopar.
Piedmontese	Chila a sara sèmper la finestra dnans da fé sin-a.
Portuguese	(Ela) Fecha sempre a janela antes de jantar.
Romanian	Ea închide totdeauna fereastra înainte de cină.
Romansh	Ella clauda/serra adina la fanestra avant ch'ella tschainia.
Friulian	Jê e siere simpri il barcon prin di cenâ.
Corsican	Ella chjudi sempre u purtellu primma di cenà.
Sardinian	Issa serrat semper sa bentana antes de chenare.
Sicilian	Idda chiudi sempri la finestra àntica pistìa.
Spanish	Ella siempre cierra la ventana antes de cenar.
Venetian	Ła sara sempre ła finestra prima de senar.
Walloon	Ele sere todi li finiesse divant di soper.
Translation	She always closes the window before dinner/supper.

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