Peano’s Interlingua

Something about Peano’s Interlingua which is also called Latino sine flexione. It was heavily criticized by Langelot Hogben. According to Hogben the biggest shortages were a lack of articles and a chance of mixing up verbs with nouns. It is true that nouns has 5 different endings and verbs could have been derived in more explicit way but why linguists did built up the whole new artificial Latin based language instead of revising Peano’s Interlingua.

Peano’ principles of formatting inflexible Latin:

Nouns

Verbs

• basic form: ama (loves)
• infinitive: amare (to love)
• past participle: amato (loved)
• present participle: amante (loving)

Pronouns

Adjectives and adverbs

The rule of building adjectives and adverbs is so obscure that it is best to browse the Peano’s wordlist at: https://sites.google.com/site/latinosineflexio/de-latino-sine-flexione-1903

Then let’s play with the idea that Peano’s Interlingua has the articles. There are no genders in his language so we have to invent only an indefinite and definite article. I thought first that they could be “un” and “la” but la is problematic because Italian articulated prepositions demand that all the articles are linked to prepositions. In Spanish that happens only with de + el and a + el and in Gode’s and Blair’s Interlingua with de + le  and a + le. That’s why I chose “un” and “le” .

Moreover I am not at home with that me-pronoun because it is also the object form in Peano’s Latino. It should be “ego” because we are dealing with simplified Latin. Unfortunately it doesn’t sound good in my ear at least. “Io” is more melodic. The same goes with “te” and we need “tu”. (Perhaps it is the case but this table is deficient.)

Here the articles are used as in English.

What about if the verbs inflected after all

We all see that our sentences are in somewhat clumsy when we compare them with modern Romance languages. The Latin verb system is difficult but we don’t have to copy it literally. I think that we can ignore subjunctive and build up present and past perfect using nte – ending and habere –verb. At this point I will skip the conditional and future because I haven’t figured anything handy for them.

Habes (tu) videto le novo domo?
Certe, (ego) habeo videto id. Id habet esseto ibi aliquamdiu.
Cum (ego) habeo venito (le) domo, super le mensa erant flores.
Matre emebat illos.
Ego habeo apportato flores etiam. Non sciebam ut matre habebat emeto illos.
Non problema!

Have you seen the new house?
Sure, I have seen it. It has been there for some time.
When I came home there were flowers on the table.
Mother bought them.
I brought also flowers. I didn’t know that mother had bought them.
No harm done!

PS There might be some mistakes in my post because I haven’t found much information on Peano’s Interlingua. I saw that some of Peano’s articles are on the Internet but it would be too much to ask that I read them through in order to find a couple of words. For example “Matre emebat illos” could be wrong because the new Interlingua has the object form for illos. It is “los”. The rest of the sentences are quite all right. Anyway, I believe that I have showed my point that Peano’s Interlingua could have been revised instead of inventing the whole new Interlingua. Somehow I feel that it would have been better to stick with Latin but what do I know. This kind of simplified Latin would be a good aid in learning the Classical Latin. On the other hand, when linguists decided to build up a new artificial language there was no Internet and English hasn’t the influence it has today, and thus there were a demand for the global language.

It’s great
When we think
small.
© Yelling Rosa
19/11 –15

in Peano’s Interlingua with flexible verbs:

Id est grande
cum nos cogitamus
minus.
© Yelling Rosa
19/11 –15

HAVE A NICE DAY!!!
HABE UN DULCE DIE!!!

PS Wow, this was fun 😉