These are English; French; Italian; and a combination of Spanish and Portuguese which are treated as a single mega-language for Interlingua purposes, as both are west Iberian languages.
[3] The maintainers of Interlingua attempt to keep the grammar simple and word formation regular, and use only a small number of roots and affixes.
[5] The American heiress Alice Vanderbilt Morris (1874–1950) became interested in linguistics and the international auxiliary language movement in the early 1920s.
[8][9] In its early years, IALA concerned itself with three tasks: finding other organizations around the world with similar goals; building a library of books about languages and interlinguistics; and comparing extant IALs, including Esperanto, Esperanto II, Ido, Peano's Interlingua (Latino sine flexione), Novial, and Interlingue (Occidental).
[10] That same year, Herbert N. Shenton and Edward Thorndike became influential in IALA's work by authoring studies in the interlinguistic field.
[7] The first steps towards the finalization of Interlingua were taken in 1937, when a committee of 24 linguists from 19 universities published Some Criteria for an International Language and Commentary.
[12] To that point, much of the debate had been equivocal on the decision to use naturalistic (e.g., Peano's Interlingua, Novial and Occidental) or systematic (e.g., Esperanto and Ido) words.
[7] Stillman, with the assistance of Alexander Gode, constructed the methodology for selecting Interlingua vocabulary based on a comparison of control languages.
[7] IALA began to develop models of the proposed language, the first of which were presented in Morris's General Report in 1945.
During this period IALA continued to develop models and conducted polling to determine the optimal form of the final language.
[18] Beginning in the 1980s, UMI has held international conferences every two years (typical attendance at the earlier meetings was 50 to 100) and launched a publishing programme that eventually produced over 100 volumes.
[22][18] Several Scandinavian schools undertook projects that used Interlingua as a means of teaching the international scientific and intellectual vocabulary.
However, the rise of the Internet has made it easier for the general public with an interest in constructed languages to learn Interlingua.
[24] The Hungarian census of 2001, which collected information about languages spoken, found just two people in the entire country who claimed to speak Interlingua.
[26] by virtue of its naturalistic (as opposed to schematic) grammar and vocabulary, allowing those familiar with a Romance language, and educated speakers of English, to read and understand it without prior study.
[23] Interlingua is taught in some high schools and universities, sometimes as a means of teaching other languages quickly, presenting interlinguistics, or introducing an international vocabulary.
Written double consonants may be geminated as in Italian for extra clarity or pronounced as single as in English or French.
[citation needed] Unassimilated foreign loanwords, or borrowed words, are spelled as in their language of origin.
[3] A word, that is a form with meaning, is eligible for the Interlingua vocabulary if it is verified by at least three of the four primary control languages.
Potentiality also occurs when a concept is represented as a compound or derivative in a control language, the morphemes that make it up are themselves international, and the combination adequately conveys the meaning of the larger word.
[3] Words do not enter the Interlingua vocabulary solely because cognates exist in a sufficient number of languages.
[35] The French œil, Italian occhio, Spanish ojo, and Portuguese olho appear quite different, but they descend from a historical form oculus.
Czech and Polish oko, Russian and Ukrainian око (óko)) are related to this form in that all three descend from Proto-Indo-European *okʷ.
A reader skimming through the IED notices many entries followed by large groups of derived and compound words.
Although all derived words in the IED are found in at least one control language, speakers may make free use of Interlingua roots and affixes.
Gode and Hugh E. Blair explained in the Interlingua Grammar that the basic principle of practical word-building is analogical.
An Interlingua speaker can freely form saxophonista from saxophone and radiographista from radiographia by following the same pattern.
[34] Three common verbs usually take short forms in the present tense: es for 'is', 'am', 'are;' ha for 'has', 'have;' and va for 'go', 'goes'.
on earth, as it is in heaven.et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
[45] It consists of a white four-pointed star extending to the edges of the flag and dividing it into an upper blue and lower red half.