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Comment by yomkippur | Hacker News Reader

yeah but it sounds so horrible

It went for regularity instead of naturality. If you want to sacrifice a little regularity, for naturality, check out Interlingue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingue

Knowing nothing about either language as such, the name seems utterly weird: According to Wikipedia, it was created (as "Occidental") in 1922 and renamed to "Interlingue" in 1949. WP also notes: "Not to be confused with Interlingua..." But the linked page for Interlingua says: "Interlingua [...] is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951..."

So why the heck did they rename Occidental to something that differs by one letter from another language that they must have known about?!? Just totally baffling.

It was renamed from Occidental because some weird group (communist I think) calling themselves something similar and that was being associating with the language Occidentalists.

As for the name change, I think it has a very general meaning, like amongst-language with the e ending being typical for Occidental nouns and the a ending for Interlingua nouns (maybe). Weirdly enough, the name push was by a guy called Ric Berger who was a Occidentalist who moved to Interlingua and probably played a part in naming both languages. BTW, both languages are very similar in vocabulary roots with Interlingua drawing inspiration from Occidental during its development (if I understood correctly).

Ah, I see, thanks.

First thing that springs to mind: So maybe this Berger guy was trying to force or at least encourage a merger?

Yes, I think that is the case. There is a bit more history between Interlingue and Interlingua than I have mentioned, and I think Ric played a part of that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ric_Berger

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