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Words can be included in Interlingua in either of two ways: through regular derivation using roots and affixes or by establishing their eligibility as international words. The second of these methods is explained below. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Words can be included in Interlingua in either of two ways: by establishing their internationality or by deriving them using Interlingua words and affixes. ...

The control languages and the international vocabulary

The theory underlying Interlingua posits an international vocabulary, a large number of words and affixes that are present in a wide range of languages. Social forces, most notably the dynamism of science and technology, have spread this vocabulary to "all corners of the world". The goal of the International Auxiliary Language Association was to accept into Interlingua every widely international word in whatever languages it occurred.^[1] For practical reasons, however, IALA's researchers could not examine all the world's languages. Therefore, they conducted studies to identify a small group of languages that would deliver "the most generally international vocabulary possible", while still maintaining the unity of the language.^[2] The International Auxiliary Language Association that existed from 1924 to 1954 was a notable proponent of international auxiliary languages. ...

The languages selected are called control languages. The primary controls are English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, with Spanish and Portuguese taken as one language. The secondary controls are German and Russian. According to the rule of three, a word is eligible for Interlingua if it occurs in at least three of the four primary control languages, with either or both of the secondary control languages acting as possible substitutes. The rule of three does not define the form of an international word; this is done by the rule of two. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

Productive and receptive spheres

To provide generally international words, the control languages had to have a high degree of radiating power and a high degree of receptive power. In particular, they had to "radiate" a large number of words into other languages and to "absorb" a large number from other languages. Thus, IALA developed the concepts of productive and receptive spheres of language.

In classical antiquity, Latin and Greek were the languages of the dominant political and cultural forces. Afterward, these languages acted for two millenia as essential lingua francas in Western science and religion. As a result, the Western languages have imported many thousands of Greek and Latin words, either through ancestry or through transfer and loan. Many of these same words are found in non-Western languages, such as Arabic, Hindi, Swahili, and Japanese. Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Lingua franca, literally Frankish language in Italian, was originally a mixed language consisting largely of Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. ... Arabic ( or just ) is the largest living member of the Semitic language family in terms of speakers. ... Hindi (Devanagari: हिन्दी or हिंदी; IPA: ), an Indo-European language spoken mainly in northern and central India, is one of the official languages of the Union government of India [1][2]. It is part of a dialect continuum of the Indic family, bounded on the northwest and west by Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu... Swahili (also called Kiswahili; see Kiswahili for a discussion of the nomenclature) is an agglutinative Bantu language widely spoken in East Africa. ...

The IALA considered Greek and Latin, together with their descendents the Romance languages, to be the primary components of the productive sphere. English was the chief representative of the receptive sphere. In modern times, however, English has become a prolific source of international words, "radiating" them to such varied languages as Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, and Urdu, as well as to most Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages. The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages, are a subfamily of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Vulgar Latin dialects spoken by the common people evolving in different areas after the break-up of the Roman Empire. ... (اردو), historically spelled Ordu, is an Indo-Aryan language of the Indo-Iranian branch, belonging to Indo-European family of languages. ... The Slavic languages (also called Slavonic languages) comprise the languages of the Slavic peoples. ...

Initially, this view of an Anglo-Romance productive sphere permitted the researchers of IALA to greatly simplify the derivation of the international vocabulary. They could omit research into the receptive sphere, because all of the words that the languages of this sphere held in common were taken from the productive sphere. For example, Dutch and Hungarian have little in common, being of different language families, except for variations of many thousands of Greco-Latin international words such as information, international, and politics. These words are already found in the productive sphere. Thus, the addition of Dutch and Hungarian to Interlingua's control languages would not affect the resulting vocabulary.

Addition of two new controls

As research progressed, IALA found that a close adherence to the Anglo-Romance productive sphere led to the omission of some clearly international words. As a result, the rule of three was adjusted. The two most prominent languages in the receptive sphere, German and Russian, became control languages. A word that was missing from one or two of the productive controls was then eligible for Interlingua if it occurred in one or both, respectively, of the added receptive controls.

"Iberian"

The Iberian languages Spanish and Portuguese were considered as one language not because their separate importance was in question, but because their linguistic roles in the modern world were similar. The Iberian language describes a linguistic group identified with the Iberian civilization (7th century BC – 1st century BC), formed in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the Iberian peninsula. ...

Greek

Because the international vocabulary has a substantial Greek component, the absence of Greek as a control language sometimes evokes surprise. The paths by which Greek words enter the international vocabulary are different from those of the control languages. Greek contributed large numbers of international words in ancient times, leading to a large body of Greek vocabulary in Vulgar Latin. This vocabulary has accompanied Latin language material into the international vocabulary. In addition, many scientific and technical terms that make use of the Greek are coined in such languages as German and English. Many of these words, such as automobile and telephone, have passed into common use. Through these routes, Greek words become part of Interlingua without the Greek language itself being used as a control.

References

• Gode, Alexander, Interlingua: A Dictionary of the International Language. New York: Storm Publishers, 1951.

• Interlinguistic Standardization, Historia de Interlingua, 2001, revised 2006.

• International Auxiliary Language Association, General Report, 1945.

• Regula de Tres, accessed February 17, 2007.