Auxiliary Languages
Constructed Languages
Course 1 · Chapter 3 · Auxiliary Languages
An auxiliary language (auxlang) is a language designed as a second language for people who share no first language. Chapter 2 ended with Volapük, whose designer kept it too complex and too closely held. The auxlangs in this chapter are the answer to that failure: Esperanto first, then the two best-known languages that tried to improve on it, Ido and Interlingua. The chapter also asks the hard question the designers faced: what does it mean for a bridge language to succeed?
Esperanto: A Short Regular Grammar
Esperanto was published in 1887 by the Polish-Jewish eye doctor L. L. Zamenhof, in a short book usually called the Unua Libro ("First Book"). Its grammar was meant to fit on a single page, and a later work, the Fundamento de Esperanto (about 1905), fixed the core of the language. At the first World Esperanto Congress in 1905, the Declaration of Boulogne recognised that book as the unchangeable foundation, while leaving the vocabulary and style open to growth. You have met the system in Esperanto Basic Conversation 1; here it is as a design:
| Design idea | How Esperanto does it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| The word class is in the ending | -o noun, -a adjective, -e adverb, -i verb (infinitive) | bono "goodness", bona "good", bone "well" |
| No irregular verbs | One ending per tense: -as present, -is past, -os future | mi amas / amis / amos "I love / loved / will love" |
| Plural and object are marked simply | -j for plural, -n for the object | Mi amas vin. "I love you." |
| Words are built, not memorised | Affixes such as mal- (opposite), -ej- (place), -ist- (person who does) | bona → malbona "bad"; lerni → lernejo "school" |
| One sound, one letter | Spelling follows pronunciation; stress is always on the next-to-last syllable | hundo (HUN-do) |
The vocabulary was drawn mostly from the Romance and Germanic languages, which made many words recognisable to learners in Europe. That choice shows how to define the target audience: a European bridge first, a world language only as an ambition.
Ido: A Reform
In 1907 an international committee, the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language, considered Esperanto and several other proposals, and recommended adopting it subject to changes. The changed language, published soon after, was called Ido ("offspring" in Esperanto). Its supporters wanted to remove features they found awkward, such as the accented letters of Esperanto, and to make the vocabulary more regular and international. The creator of Esperanto, Zamenhof, and most Esperantists did not accept the changes.
The result is a classic split. Ido gained a loyal small community but never matched the size of Esperanto, and the quarrel between the camps cost both of them years. The lesson for designers is one from Chapter 2 in a new form: once a language has a community, reform is risky, because every change divides the speakers it was meant to help.
Interlingua: A Naturalistic Approach
Interlingua, published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA), took a different route. Instead of building a regular system, its designers examined the vocabulary that the major European languages already share (largely from Latin and Greek) and made that common stock the language. The grammar was simplified, but the aim was a language a speaker of a Romance language could often understand on sight, with little or no study.
This divides the auxlangs into two design philosophies:
| Approach | Idea | Strength | Weakness | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schematic | Build the language from a regular system, with a few fixed rules | Quick to produce, regular, and easy to speak after a short course | Looks artificial; vocabulary choices can feel arbitrary | Esperanto, Ido |
| Naturalistic | Take the words and patterns that natural languages already share | Easy to read at sight, especially for speakers of related languages | Harder to make fully regular; the shared stock favours Western Europe | Interlingua |
What Makes a Language Easy to Learn?
Putting the three together gives a checklist that explains most of an auxlang's design. The first three are about the language, the last two about the learner's world:
- Regular grammar: no irregular verbs and few exceptions (Esperanto has almost none).
- Phonetic spelling: you can read it aloud and spell what you hear.
- A word-building toolkit: a small set of affixes that multiplies the vocabulary you learn.
- Familiar roots: the more of the vocabulary you already recognise, the faster you start (the benefit of an a posteriori vocabulary from Chapter 2).
- Distance from your first language: a speaker of French or Spanish finds Interlingua easier than a speaker of Japanese does. No auxlang is equally easy for everyone.
What Counts as Success?
Zamenhof's dream was that Esperanto would become everyone's second language. It did not. But "did it replace English" is the wrong test for a bridge language, and the real question has several parts:
| Test | Question | How Esperanto does |
|---|---|---|
| Universal adoption | Did it become the world's common second language? | No |
| A living community | Is it used every day by real people? | Yes: international meetings, clubs, books, online use |
| Learnability | Can learners reach a useful level quickly? | Often reported to take far less time than a natural language, though this is hard to measure fairly |
| Stability | Is there a shared standard? | Yes, in the form of the Fundamento since 1905 |
| Native speakers | Do children grow up speaking it? | A small number do |
How many speakers? This is hard to answer. Estimates of Esperanto speakers range from the tens of thousands to around two million, depending on what counts as a "speaker" and who is counting. Estimates for those who grew up speaking it as a first language are far smaller, in the low thousands at most. Treat any single figure as a rough guess, and ask where it came from.
- "Esperanto is dead." It has a living community, though a small one.
- "Esperanto was meant to replace all other languages." Zamenhof's aim was a neutral second language, kept alongside each person's mother tongue.
- "An auxlang has to look like English." The big ones draw mainly on Romance and Germanic roots, which can seem familiar to Europeans and less so to others.
Hands-On Exercises
Build Esperanto words with the affixes. Using bona "good", lerni "to learn" and libro "book", form (a) the opposite of bona with mal-; (b) a word for "a place where one learns"; (c) the plural of libro; (d) "I will learn" with the future ending.
📄 View solutionClassify each design choice as schematic or naturalistic, and say which kind of "easy" (to understand, or to produce) it helps: (a) one verb ending for all verbs in the present tense; (b) using the Latin-derived word shared by French, Spanish and Italian for "house"; (c) a prefix that reverses the meaning of any word; (d) spelling changed to match the pronunciation.
📄 View solutionJudge Esperanto against the five success tests in the table. Give a one-sentence verdict for each, then write two sentences answering the question "Did Esperanto fail?" in a way that does not depend on just one test.
📄 View solutionChapter 3 Quick Reference
- Esperanto: Zamenhof, 1887 (Unua Libro); Fundamento about 1905; endings show the word class; no irregular verbs; affixes build words
- Ido: a reform (1907–08) of Esperanto; "offspring"; small community, and a damaging split
- Interlingua: 1951, IALA; a naturalistic language built from the vocabulary European languages already share
- Schematic = built from a regular system; naturalistic = taken from existing languages
- "Easy" can mean easy to understand or easy to produce
- Success is several tests: adoption, community, learnability, stability, native speakers
- Speaker counts are rough: tens of thousands to about two million depending on the definition