4. Auxiliary languages

Auxiliary language is a language which has been adopted by a speech community for such purposes as international communication, trade, or education, though only a minority of the community may use it as a mother tongue. The function of an auxiliary language can be performed by a natural language, which is termed in this case ‘lingua franca’, and artificial languages.

• Lingua franca originally meant ‘Frankish tongue’, which was used as a common language in the Mediterranean area in the Middle Ages. This language, which integrated French, Provencal, and Italian words, was mostly restricted to trade. Arab and Turkish merchants called Europeans ‘Franks’. In contemporary sociololinguistics, lingua franca is any natural auxiliary language used to permit routine communication between ethnic groups of people who speak different native languages. Lingua franca can be one of the languages or dialects of a particular region, or a ‘neutral’ language which is not native for the peoples in this region, or a pidgin grounded on some native or European language. Lingua francas are very common in heavily multilingual regions, e.g. Russian in the former republics of the USSR, Hindi in India, Swahili in East Africa.

When a lingua franca starts to be used in different communicative spheres, it becomes a koine. The term ‘koine’ initially referred to the Greek language, which was a common spoken and written language for Eastern Mediterranean countries in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In contemporary sociolinguistics, koine is understood as any (mostly spoken) language that provides a social integration of some region. Koine occupies an intermediate position between a lingua franca and a standard language. E.g. the central (Moscow) dialect in the 16^th – 17^th centuries.

International languages are lingua francas that have a widespread use as a medium of communication among different countries. At present, international communication is provided by the group of most spread languages known as ‘the Club of World Tongues’. These languages – English, Arab, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, and French – have a legal status as the ‘official’ or ‘working’ languages of the United Nations Organization and UNESCO. English is the most used language in the fields of science and technology. Another group of international languages is applied by world religions. These languages are: Latin used by the Catholic Church, Old Church Slavonic used by the Orthodox Church, Arab used by Islam, Sanskrit used by Hinduism and Buddhism.

• Artificial languages have been invented to serve some practical purposes. Several have been devised in an attempt to solve ‘the problem of Babel’. These languages are the focal concern of interlinguistics. In the 17^th – 20^th centuries, more than 1,000 artificial languages were devised. Among the most notable are Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, and Interlingua.

Volapuk /voul `pyk/, the first large-scale proposal of its kind, was invented by Martin Schlyer in 1879. The word means ‘world speak’. In Volapuk, the words of natural languages (English, German, French, Latin, etc.) are modified and become non-recognizable, e.g. Engl. world > vol, speak > puk. The grammar has a synthetic type: it includes a considerable number of morphological categories (2 numbers and 4 cases for nouns; 3 persons, 6 tenses, 4 moods, 2 voices, and 2 aspects for verbs). This principle of construing a language was ineffective, and the further projects involved mostly international words and the analytical type of grammar where morphological categories were minimized.

Esperanto /esp `r entou/ was invente in 1887 by a Polish oculist, Ludwig Zamenhoff (1815-1917). The scheme was first published using the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (‘Doctor Hopeful’). The language was first called ‘Lingua Internacia’, but the name ‘Esperanto’ quickly cought on, and in dew course became the official title. There is now a large translated literature in Esperanto, and several countries transmit radio broadcasts in it. Estimates vary about the number of fluent speakers, from less than 1 million to over 15 million. Most seem to be in the countries of Eastern Europe, but there are significant numbers in Japan, China, and elsewhere.

Ido /`i:dou/, created in 1907, is a modified version of Esperanto. Its name means ‘derived from Esperanto’.

Novial /`novi l/ was invented in 1928 by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. The name of the language is the acronym of New International Auxiliary Language. It was largely based on the previous proposals, mainly Ido.

Interlingua was devised in 1959 by the International Auxiliary Language Association. It uses a Romance-based grammar, with a standardized vocabulary based on the main western European languages.

Artificial languages and systems of communication have also been invented in order to program computers (e.g. BASIC, FORTRAN), communicate with robots, and help people with hearing difficulties.