Interlingua

Interlingua (, Interlingua: [inteɾˈliŋɡwa]) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua proponents maintain that (written) Interlingua is comprehensible to the over 900 million native speakers of Romance languages, though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred. Interlingua was developed to combine a simple, mostly regular grammar with a vocabulary common to a wide range of western European languages, making it easy to learn for those whose native languages were sources of Interlingua's vocabulary and grammar. The name Interlingua comes from the Latin words inter, meaning 'between', and lingua, meaning 'tongue' or 'language'. These morphemes are the same in Interlingua; thus, Interlingua means 'between language'.