Talk:Idiom Neutral

I have info on the grammar of the language which I'll add soon. --Cam 16:25, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Added. --Cam 15:02, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Does virtually extinct mean like a dozen speakers?Cameron Nedland 02:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * There are probably no fluent speakers. I guess someone put "virtually extinct" instead of just plain "extinct" because the grammar and dictionaries still exist; someone could learn it if they wanted to, in as much detail as it ever had. Contrast with say, Akkadian, which we can now only learn from what we have of the written language; a lot of the original richness of that language is gone, extinct, forever. --Cam 05:44, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Notability
Hey. I am not a conlanger, but I speak a constructed language and have a good understanding of Wikipedia's notability guidelines, and personally I have never heard of Idiom Neutral (although the name is sufficiently generic that it could sound like any number of other conlangs). So I was just encouraging those familiar with the subject to help establish notabiliy according to Wikipedia's already-established guidelines, by citing relevant, reliable secondary and tertiary sources. If this is just a language that you (or a group of conlangers) happened upon in your own research, then my (informed by Wikipedia's guidelines) opinion is that it doesn't belong on Wikipedia and you ought to start a conlang wiki. Kraŭs (talk) 13:58, 13 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay cool. I am also not a conlanger, but I am interested in international auxiliary languages (IALs) and their history.


 * Idiom Neutral is a dead IAL (revising what I said above 7 years ago). One might ask which dead IALs, if any, are notable enough to have Wikipedia articles. Various works list or mention dead IALs, but which works are appropriate sources, and how much of a mention or description is needed for notability, are not questions I am able to answer.


 * I can confirm that Idiom Neutral has a chapter devoted to it in Histoire de la langue universelle (pp. 484-506). This book is a history of IALs written in 1903 by Louis Couturat (of Ido fame) and Leopold Leau. The chapter includes a thorough description of the language. There is also a paragraph about Idiom Neutral on p. 465 of The Loom of Language by Bodmer and Hogben (a book which includes a lengthy section on IALs) and a few words on p. 143 of In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent. Of course, the mere name of the language appears in lists and timelines of IALs found in various other books and articles. These can be found relatively easily at Google Books, for example.


 * I don't know if these citations resolve the notability question, or what needs to happen to make notability indisputable. I present the info here if someone wants to use it. In any event I personally am not inclined to make further edits to this article other than reverting vandalism or possibly correcting typos. I will not stand in the way of its improvement, nor its deletion. Respectfully, Cam (talk) 02:49, 15 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Idiom Neutral is certainly notable, if only for its role in history. And from an encyclopedic point of view, one notability has been established, it remains, whether it is still in use nowadays or not. I do have to say that there is some ongoing activity in the Idiom Neutral group.
 * Interestingly, Idiom neutral is mentioned in the Hungarian census of 2001. According to it, the following constructed languages have speakers in Hungary: Esperanto 4570, Romanid 10, Esperantido 4, Ido 2, Interlingua 2, Idiom Neutral 1, Mundolingue 1. Best, &mdash;IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu?  09:06, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Notable.
It is notable not for "conlangers", but for IALs. After Volapük started the IAL movement, Idiom Neutral superseded it as official IAL of the late(r) IAL Academy. From Idiom Neutral, the IAL changed under Giuseppe Peano's presidency to Interlingua-IL / Latine Sine Flexione, which is the only regulated IAL that was used outside the IAL/Conlang movements (some thousands of pages in mathematics and natural sciences were published originally in Interlingua-IL). IL is also NOT a ConLang, but a variety of Latin.

Two worldwars later, IALA changed again to the Conlang Interlingua-IA, but then, a common IAL was no longer deemed necessary compared to East Block Russian and Western US-American. For those niches an IAL still had sense, Esperanto had prevailed; even sciences (or AE: "sciences and humanities") use Esperanton.

So Idiom Neutral, while as historic as Middle English, is part of the Volapük-Idiom Neutral-IL-IA line of IALs, the only IAL line notable apart from Esperanton (in the northern hemisphere). To deem a former official language of IALA "not notable" would be nonsense. --217.224.134.28 (talk) 18:04, 20 July 2017 (UTC)