Spanish is spoken in most Latin American countries. There are few nations that use another language, such as Dutch. Languages such as English and French are now spoken by millions of people in Europe. Therefore, it can be challenging to find a job, training or just socialize with other people when migrating from Latin America to the Old Continent or vice versa.
Faced with these and other cases of barriers created by the official language of two different nations, an alternative emerged that makes it possible to maintain communication with a significant percentage of the world's population.
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What language can you master without having learned it?
In the mid-20th century, between 1924 and 1954, a group of professionals and academics interested in promoting universal languages proposed the language called Interlingua. According to the BBC, this language is considered “intermediate” and its main precursor is the Greek-Latin vocabulary.
Carlos Valcárcel uses Interlingua to create TikTok content. Photo: YouTube/BBC screenshot
Anyone who knows or speaks Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and English as well as other Romance languages can understand it without much effort. “If you speak one of the control languages, one of the languages from which it is extracted, you don't need a lot of prior study to understand it,” Carlos Valcárcel, a doctor of linguistics and university professor in Spain, told the English medium in 2023.
Valcárcel Riveiro started studying Interlingua 16 years ago. With this preparation, he decided to generate content on TikTok in this language. This has caused surprise among users of the popular short video network, as they understand what he is talking about without being aware of exactly what language he is using.
“In my videos I don’t speak Anglese, I don’t speak Spanish or Italian, I don’t speak French… No, I speak Interlingua,” he explained in one of his most famous clips.
Likewise, the alphabet of this language is modern Latin, although it does not contain the letter “ñ” of Spanish. The use of “ç”, which is used in Portuguese and French, is also not provided.
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How was Interlingua born?
The emergence of interlanguage stems from the desire to create a universal language. But not only that, it was also created to end wars and misunderstandings between different nations.
Since its creation, it was intended to be understandable. That is why it is not even necessary to have studied them to understand them, because anyone who speaks any of the above languages will find it easy or easy to understand the message of their interlocutor.
Can English speakers understand Interlingua?
Anglo-Saxon languages inherited several words from Latin, so those who know English classified as “educated” can speak it easily.
“Usually the more schooling you have, the fewer problems you have with Interlingua and the more educated your English is, the fewer problems you have. The Anglophone Interlingua speakers are almost all professionals, university students, they speak English very close to Latin,” said Carlos Valcárcel in Consider.