By the way, the pronunciation of Interlingua is not fully settled. It is about the same as Church Latin, except that "dicerea" would be pronounced "ditserea" instead of "dicherea".

Seems like a sort of resurrected Medieval Latin, but much more simplified, easier to read and learn, and yet different enough in orthography, grammar, and pronunciation from Church Latin to be able to easily retain a certain degree of cultural independence!

Peter Haugen, lecturer at the University of Wisconsin, and author of World History for Dummies, on page 217 of his book writes: "Latin is a dead language. But did you know that it lived long after the fall of the Roman Empire? Only when Renaissance scholars tried to save Latin did the language ossify into the sterile tongue it's been ever since."

Basically in the Renaissance scholars brought the ruin of Latin — until then a living and dynamic language — because they started reading Latin texts from 1,500 years earlier, and in realising how different their Latin was from Cicero's, they sought to reintroduce the old rules of grammar and usage as part of a classical education.

This turned what was the natural language of educated Europeans in the Middle Ages into a de facto artificial language. It turned Latin into a klubajxo, a language of the few, and for restricted, outside of normal daily life purposes. When Latin became tedious and inflexible, and began to look very different from the popular languages and dialects that surrounded it in Europe, it eventually fell out of use even in most areas of scholarship. Perhaps the inflexible Church also contributed to this. It didn't make much sense for a Protestant to learn Latin after a while, since it was also the language of the Catholic Church, and this may have also accelerated its demise.

Interlingua looks and sounds like an elegant Castilian or Italian dialect, and looks very natural, so natural that it could easily become a language used daily if given a try from a few creative people and VIPs.

I think you are right about the UMI not helping in the process of linguistic diffusion by insisting on using primary texts (dictionaries, grammars, etc.) for the purpose of collecting funds. Since the last major primary texts in Interlingua were printed in the 1950s, the only way newcomers to the language can get their hands on them, in order to be able to truly master the language, is by buying the old texts from the old-timers. This will not open up the "market" for Interlingua, and aid its diffusion.

What the UMI should have done was make a deal with modern publishers that print books on demand: that way the old dictionaries and grammars could be reprinted today for a modest premium compared to the mass-printed texts, and the holders of the copyrights and their children could still collect significant royalties — that would have even encouraged them, if inclined, to produce their own new books seeing the significant new market demand. And the increase in the numbers of Interlingua users or speakers would have in turn benefited even the UMI and their small press, which is not producing any new works of note lately in the language.

Cesidio Tallini



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