To function as an effective international auxiliary language, Ido was specifically designed to be grammatically, orthographically, and lexicographically regular (and, above all, easy to learn and use).

It draws its vocabulary from English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, and is largely intelligible to those who have studied Esperanto.

Several works of literature have been translated into Ido,[5] including The Little Prince,[6] the Book of Psalms, and the Gospel of Luke.

It was during this time that French mathematician Louis Couturat formed the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language.

They concluded that no language was completely acceptable, but that Esperanto could be accepted "on condition of several modifications to be realized by the permanent Commission in the direction defined by the conclusions of the Report of the Secretaries [Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau] and by the Ido project".

[10] Esperanto's inventor, L. L. Zamenhof, having heard a number of complaints, had suggested in 1894 a proposal for a reformed Esperanto with several changes that Ido adopted and made it closer to French: eliminating the accented letters and the accusative case, changing the plural to an Italianesque -i, and replacing the table of correlatives with more Latinate words.

Zamenhof, undoubtedly reminiscent of his experience of the 1894 reforms, strongly supported the Esperanto Committee majority decision.

[11] When the president of the Committee asked who was the author of Ido's project, Couturat, de Beaufront and Leau answered that they were not.

De Beaufront was the person who presented Ido's project and gave a description as a better, richer version of Esperanto.

A month later, Couturat accidentally forwarded Jespersen a copy of a letter in which he acknowledged that de Beaufront was the author of the Ido project.

[13] Although it fractured the Esperanto movement, the schism gave the remaining Esperantists the freedom to concentrate on using and promoting their language as it stood.

[14] At the same time, it gave the Idists freedom to continue working on their own language for several more years before actively promoting it.

[8] In 1928 Ido's major intellectual supporter, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, published his own planned language, Novial.

[21] Following the 2008–2011 elections of ULI's direction committee, Gonçalo Neves replaced Carnaghan as secretary of linguistic issues in February 2008.

Verbs in Ido, as in Esperanto, do not conjugate depending on person, number or gender; the -as, -is, and -os endings suffice whether the subject is I, you, he, she, they, or anything else.

Adjectives and adverbs are compared in Ido by means of the words plu = more, maxim = most, min = less, minim = least, kam = than/as.

The simple adverbs do not need special endings, for example: tre = very, tro = too, olim = formerly, nun = now, nur = only.

The derived and composed adverbs, not being originally adverbs but derived from nouns, adjectives and verbs, have the ending -e. Ido word order is generally the same as English (subject–verb–object), so the sentence Me havas la blua libro is the same as the English "I have the blue book", both in meaning and word order.

ol, like English it and Esperanto ĝi, is not limited to inanimate objects, but can be used "for entities whose sex is indeterminate: babies, children, humans, youths, elders, people, individuals, horses, [cattle], cats, etc."

From Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido by Beaufront: Lu (like li) is used for all three genders.

Composition in Ido obeys stricter rules than in Esperanto, especially formation of nouns, adjectives and verbs from a radical of a different class.

For instance, if I remember correctly, where Esperanto only has the suffix -igi*, Ido has several: *-ifar*, *-izar*, *-igar*, which match subtleties which were meant to make language clearer, but that, in practice, inhibit natural expression.

Basing the vocabulary on various widespread languages was intended to make Ido as easy as possible for the greatest number of people possible.

This allows a user to take existing words and modify them to create neologisms when necessary, and allows for a wide range of expression without the need to learn new vocabulary each time.

There are only two exceptions to this rule:[18] First, patro for "father", matro for "mother", and genitoro for "parent", and second, viro for "man", muliero for "woman", and adulto for "adult".

is a magazine produced by the Spanish Ido Society every two months that has a range of topics, as well as a few dozen pages of work translated from other languages.

Other sites can be found with various stories, fables or proverbs along with a few books of the Bible translated into Ido on a smaller scale.

The emblem was originally a six pointed white star on a circular blue background, consisting of two concentric, equilateral triangles, with one vertically flipped.

However, this was soon changed due to the similarity it presented with the Star of David, since a true international auxiliary language should not have religious affiliations.

The current Ido Star is a concave isotoxal hexagon, with a vertically flipped equilateral triangle overlaid on top.