page_title: Interlingue
section_title: Beginnings
hierarchical_section_title: Interlingue / History and activity / Beginnings
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Gruppenfoto der Mitglieder mit rückseitigen Unterschriften. V.l.n.r.: Engelbert Pigal, Karl Janotta, A. Deminger, Hanns Hörbiger, Eugen Moess, Franz Houdek, Johann Robert Hörbiger
context_page_description: Interlingue, known until 1949 as Occidental, is a planned international auxiliary language created by Edgar de Wahl, a Baltic German naval officer and teacher from Tallinn, Estonia, and published in 1922. The vocabulary is based on already existing words from various languages and a system of derivation using recognized prefixes and suffixes. The language is thereby naturalistic, at the same time as it is constructed to be regular. Occidental was quite popular in the years up to, during, and shortly after the Second World War, but declined thereafter until the advent of the Internet.
  Interlingue is devised so that many of its derived word forms reflect the forms common to a number of Western European languages, primarily those in the Romance family, along with a certain amount of Germanic vocabulary. Many words are formed through application of de Wahl's rule, a set of rules for regular conversion of verb infinitives into derived words including from Latin double-stem verbs. The result is a language easy to understand at first sight for individuals acquainted with several Western European languages.
context_section_description: The activities of Occidental and its users can be seen through the magazine Cosmoglotta, which began publication in 1922 in Tallinn, Estonia under the name Kosmoglott. The language that de Wahl announced that year was a product of years of personal experimentation under the name Auli (auxiliary language), which he used during the period from 1906 to 1921 and which later on gained the nickname proto-Occidental. During the development of the language de Wahl explained his approach in a letter to an acquaintance the Baron d'Orczy written in Auli: "My direction in the creation of a universal language seems quite regressive to you...I understand that quite well, because I am starting it right from the other end. I do not begin with the alphabet and the grammar and then have to adopt the vocabulary to it, but just the other way around: I take all international material of words, suffixes, endings, grammatical forms etc., and then I work to organize that material, put it in order, compile, interpolate, extrapolate and sift through it." During the development of Occidental through Auli, de Wahl corresponded frequently with the Italian mathematician and creator of Latino sine flexione Giuseppe Peano and gained an appreciation for the international vocabulary in that language, writing that "I believe the "Vocabulario commune" book by Professor Peano to already be a more valuable and scientific work than the entire scholastic literature of Ido on imaginary things evoked by the "fundamento" of Zamenhof."
  Occidental was announced in 1922 at a stage of near but not total completion. De Wahl had not intended to announce the language for another few years but did so then through the publication of Kosmoglott after hearing that the League of Nations had begun an inquiry into the question of an international language and after receiving a favorable reply the year before from Under-Secretary General Nitobe Inazō of the League of Nations which had adopted a resolution on the subject on 15 September 1921. However, the first known publication in Occidental, a booklet entitled "Transcendent algebra" by Jacob Linzbach appeared already in 1921.
  Occidental began gathering followers despite a complete lack of grammars and dictionaries due to its readability. Two years later in 1924, de Wahl wrote that he was in correspondence with some 30 people "in good Occidental" despite the lack of learning material. Two Ido societies joined Occidental in the same year, one in Vienna, Austria called IdoSocieto Progreso (renamed as Societé Cosmoglott Progress) and the Societo Progreso in Brno, Czechoslovakia, which changed its name to Federali (Federation del amicos del lingue international). The first dictionary was published the next year in 1925, the radicarium directiv which was a collection of Occidental root words and their equivalents in 8 languages.
  For a number of years Kosmoglott was a forum for various other planned languages, while still mainly written in Occidental. Until 1924 the magazine was also affiliated with the Academia pro Interlingua, which promoted Peano's Latino sine flexione. In 1927 the name was changed to Cosmoglotta as it began to officially promote Occidental in lieu of other languages, and in January of the same year the magazine's editorial and administrative office was moved to Vienna, Austria in the region of Mauer, now part of Liesing. Much of the early success for Occidental in this period came from the office's new central location, along with the efforts of Engelbert Pigal, also from Austria, whose article Li Ovre de Edgar de Wahl (The Work of Edgar de Wahl) led to interest in Occidental from users of the Ido language.
caption: Participants at an Occidental gathering in Vienna, 1928: Engelbert Pigal, Karl Janotta, A. Deminger, Hanns Hörbiger, Eugen Moess, Franz Houdek, Johann Robert Hörbiger
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