The perfect IAL needs to be imperfect

"An attribute of perfection is existence"

Introduction

An IAL (acronym for international auxiliary language) is a consciously invented language with the purpose to help simplify international communication between people of different cultures with different tongues. They have existed since a few centuries ago, but never been officially used. The ones that are the most relatively successful and still survive till these days are Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua. Their relative success must be due to something good they are doing, so they are the ones I'm going to talk about here.

Why no IAL has been successful?

Because of three factors: they still are complicated, culturally biased and their promoters are stubborn. Let's first talk about why they are complicated.

Complexity

They key for a IAL to be successful is to be simple to learn. So, the IALs need to focus in simplicity trough regularity in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. Irregularities in grammar take time to learn, e.g. when children say sawed instead of saw, or me instead of I. Interlingua has a naturalistic grammar, but with all the "exceptions", pronoun placing, short forms, it is complicated. On the other hand, Esperanto has a tremendously regular grammar, but because it is European-based, it is complex and strange for speakers of simpler, not European languages like Chinese --particularly the tenses and cases. Ido took away all that complexity from Esperanto and made it simpler, but still European-based and strange for speaker of simpler languages. The point should be to have a simple grammar to the extent that speakers of the grammatically simplest languages won't have any trouble learning. IALs need to focus on the people from the far east, particularly Chinese people, specially now that China has become a new super power with over a billion speakers. Take the pidgins as examples: how people who speak different languages make a simplified form of both using the inherent disposition of the human brain. The result are the natural simplistic pidgins. They exist all over the world and amazingly, despite each pidgin being based in a different set of languages, share grammatical similarities. There's no wonder why Chomsky talked about a "universal grammar".

Now there's the simplicity through vocabulary. All three IALs have done a great job in here. They've managed to collect a common vocabulary to the European languages, but it is Interlingua the one which has been the most successful in this aspect and the only one to have a systematic method to do it. The problem is it's very Romace biased. A IAL cannot take all major languages as source, because of the great differences that exist between them. For instance, people like to say Chinese has a billion speakers, but that number of persons actually don't speak the same language literally: although China has an standardized writing system, the symbols are actually pronounced in extremely different ways in each region, with some grammatical differences, making most dialects unintelligible one another. Chinese monosyllabic words are so different from roots of other languages that finding similarities would be more a coincidence than evidence of an actual ancient etymological connection. If we merge a western and a Chinese root to create a new word, the resulting one would not be understandable for any of the speakers. That's why we cannot underestimate the power of Interlingua which used a large vocabulary pool that reaches a lot of people. We can't ignore either the fact Ido uses less vocabulary and roots to build new words, which makes it easier to learn because uses less words and the ones which we wouldn't know can be guessed from the meaning of the roots.

If we want a perfectly neutral language that takes vocabulary from all the most important languages of the world, with perfect neutral grammar that would not favor any language and has a high degree of utility, we all could well learn lojban. Its vocabulary is universal, its grammar is perfectly neutral, so neutral that is not based on existing grammars but on the inherent logical ability all human brains have, and also has a high degree of utility and unambiguity --it's almost perfect. The problem is that lojban, with all the logic, is very weird to learn. It is like a computer code --in fact, it's used as one-- and as such it is not "natural" to learn, it feels too "artificial". Humans haven't, doesn't and would not think with perfect logic ever, therefore language itself, the communicable reflection of our thoughts, cannot be that logical either. As we don't think like computers --all the time at least--, lojban is not an IAL kind to learn, despite its great simplicity. Actually, lojban was created to "teach" the brain to think and express logically --similar to what math does to the brain of mathematicians, physicians, etc. Hey, it is perfect, but we don't wear perfect clothing all day long.

Many claim that they don't want an european-biased IAL. Well, look around: in almost every country of this world ties and suits are used for formal ocasions. They use european democracy, western based economical systems, architecture, scientific method, standards, etc., they don't seem to complain about it and yet they haven't lost their core culture. Plus, European languages reach the greatest extent of population around the world and their shared roots and frequent loanwords from each other have created an standardized scientific international language --de facto, of course-- which serves as a wordlender for many other languages. Take Japanese as an example. 

Last, we have the simplicity through pronunciation or phonetics. We all agree that the Latin alphabet is the most widespread and simple, that creating a new one wouldn't be cost-effective. Interlingua loses in this category. Things like "j's are pronounced different when followed by e's and i's" seem arbitrary and are unnecessary. Esperanto wins in this one, but uses too many weird symbols which could be easily mistaken. Ido simplified this, creating a one-letter-one-sound alphabet. But still has many weird sounds that are even strange for the speakers of Romances, not to mention that many are similar, not easily learnable, and could take time to learn by speakers of languages where they do not exist. The phonetics of the IALs must be universal, using common phonemes or at least the ones that can be easily learnt and contrasted.

Cultural bias

I've already mention some of this before. So the point is we all should realize that a IAL would be an AUXILIARY language, a back-up, a second one; it will NOT replace our primary language. In fact, what an auxiliary language wants is exactly that: to preserve our mother tongue so we can learn one single language for INTERNATIONAL communication; its purpose is not to overtake our language in any way. Actually, a moderately neutral language might have a tremendous effect on how weak cultures are influenced by big ones, which is an anthropological principle that cannot be denied or stopped --and a physical one too: if two objects have contact with each other, that will have an immediate, permanent effect in both of them. Let's put it this way: if you learn an European-centered IAL, you will be influenced by the mild culture it could contain --given Europe is culturally too diverse, so the mixture of all those cultures would have an homogenizing effect, plus the effect of the IAL makers attempt to make it culturally neutral-- and any other culture that might influence yours by the language has first to pass through the IAL, acting this last one as a filter that europeanizes all foreign influence to the level of europeanization you would already have, thus diminishing the cultural repercussions. What would you prefer: an imperfect yet simple and sort of neutral language or to keep the status quo of the English language even more imperfect and culturally biased dominion? It sounds like I'm trying to justify the Europe-centered cultural influence, but granted it already exists around the whole world and cannot be avoided, let's use it for something good --it's the same reason that applies for the use of Latin alphabet. There's a plus: if the European/Western world supports and uses the IAL, its leverage on the rest of the world would make them use it too.

Stubborn promoters

When the IALA (International Auxiliary Language Association) first came, it rejected all proposed IALs of the time, but claimed that some were better than others. The promoters of each IAL, instead of getting together to make a SWOT analysis and come in following years with a new, perfected IAL, they dedicated to support their own and criticize other IALs --not always in a constructive way-- and, instead of using the criticism to improve their IALs, they started to justify their mistakes. They were not a united community and that was their biggest failure.

I know IALs communities and organizations don't count with a lot of funding, but that is not an excuse to justify why they are not advertised. The trick is to use key people. E.g.: I  first came in contact with Esperanto because in a popular TV series a character said she spoke many languages including Esperanto. I was curious and look it up on the Internet. So, if IALs are used by some influential people to reach the right common and scholar population --let's say they are used in medical congresses by big exponents of  some core fields and in scientific publications--, people themselves would become the promoters. 

Conclusion

I think the most perfected IALs are Interlingua and Ido. If we are making a European-based IAL, at least we can make it easier for speaker of non-indoeuropean languages to learn. That way the Chinese who would be interested in learning a IAL would say "wow, that's easy, all I have to do is learn vocabulary", and the European would say "it seems pretty familiar, let's learn the grammar". IALs don't need to be perfect, they just need to accomplish their purpose the best cost-effective way possible. So, though not perfect, IALs need to be perfected, or better, unified. We can put together the best attributes of each and come up with a suitable IAL with a bigger, merged population of supporters, a project for the advancement of international communication: a joint commettee of the Interlingua and Ido promoters with linguists, anthropologists and other experts from all over the world to reach a consensus in the interest of humankind's communication.