Novial/AIL History

History

If I were writing the history of the Interlanguage movement,¹ I should first deal with the great theorists, who have espoused and advocated this idea as such - Descartes, Comenius, Leibniz, Schuchardt, Ostwald - and then with those who have made contributions to the practical solution of the question, among whom I should give prominence to Pirro, Schleyer, Zamenhof, Couturat, Rosenberger and de Wahl. But here I am more concerned with the future than with the past, and shall therefore content myself with the briefest mention of those facts from which I think a conclusion can be drawn that may assist us in paving the way for a future adoption of a rational interlanguage.

¹ The standard work is L. Couturat et L. Leau, Histoire de la langue universelle (Paris 1903) with its continuation, Les nouvelles langues internationales (Paris 1907). The history since 1907 has not yet been written; much is contained in the seven big volumes of Progreso, the periodical of the Idists. See also A. L. Guérard, A Short History of the International Language Movement (London 1922) and the very short abstract in E. Sylvia Pankhurst, Delphos, the Future of International Language (London 1927). The two latter works are not reliable in every minute particular, but give on the whole a readable presentation of the chief facts.