international language

Language for international use, auxiliary to the national languages and not in opposition to them. Some 500 international language schemes have been advocated.

At first these were mostly arbitrary and impractical, such as Solresol and Ro. Volapuk broke new ground, but proved difficult for speech and memory; Esperanto had more success. Many imitators claimed to have avoided the defects of Esperanto, but none of them has survived except Ido (reformed Esperanto), and two competing schemes, Interlingue and Interlingua, which sacrifice regularity for naturalness. The claim that English is already an international language is rejected by advocates of Esperanto and its counterparts, as English is difficult to learn and its use is politically controversial in some countries.