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Ido () is a constructed language derived from a reformed version of Esperanto, and designed similarly with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse languages. To function as an effective international auxiliary language, Ido was designed specifically to be Grammar, Orthography, and Lexicon regular (and, above all, easy to learn and use). It is the most successful of the many Esperanto derivatives, known as .
Ido was created in 1907 due to a desire to reform the perceived flaws of Esperanto, a language that had been created 20 years earlier to facilitate international communication. The name comes from the Esperanto word , meaning "offspring", since the language is a derivative of Esperanto. After its inception, Ido was endorsed by some of the Esperanto community. A setback occurred with the sudden death in 1914 of one of its most influential proponents, Louis Couturat. In 1928, promoter Otto Jespersen quit the movement for his own language Novial.
The popularity of Ido decreased for two reasons: the emergence of further schisms developing from competing reform projects, and a general lack of awareness of Ido as a candidate for an international language. It was not until the spread of the Internet that it began to regain popularity.
Ido uses the same 26 letters as the English (Latin) alphabet, with no . It draws its vocabulary from English, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese, and is largely intelligible to those who have studied Esperanto.
Several works of literature have been translated into Ido, including The Little Prince, the Book of Psalms, and the Gospel of Luke. As of the year 2000, there were approximately 100–200 Ido speakers in the world.Blanke (2000), cited in Sabine Fiedler "Phraseology in planned languages" , Phraseology / Phraseologie, Walter de Gruyter 2007. pp. 779. As of 2022, Ido has 26 speakers in Finland, according to Statistics Finland.
This delegation made a formal request to the International Association of Academies in Vienna to select and endorse an international language; the request was rejected in May 1907. The Delegation then met as a Committee in Paris in October 1907 to discuss the adoption of a standard international language. Among the languages considered was a new language submitted anonymously after the Committee's deadline by someone using the name Ido. In the end the committee, always without plenary sessions and consisting of only 12 members, concluded the last day with 4 votes for and 1 abstention. They concluded that no language was completely acceptable, but that Esperanto could be accepted "on condition of several modifications to be realized by the permanent Commission in the direction defined by the conclusions of the Report of the Secretaries Louis and by the Ido project".
Esperanto's inventor, L. L. Zamenhof, having heard a number of complaints, had suggested in 1894 a proposal for a reformed Esperanto with several changes that Ido adopted: eliminating the accented letters and the accusative case, changing the plural to an Italianesque -i, and replacing the table of correlatives with more Latinate words. However, the Esperanto community voted and rejected Zamenhof's reformed Esperanto, and likewise most rejected the recommendations of the 1907 Committee composed nominally of 12 members. Zamenhof, undoubtedly reminiscent of his experience of the 1894 reforms, strongly supported the Esperanto Committee majority decision. Furthermore, controversy ensued when the "Ido project" was found to have been devised mainly by Louis de Beaufront, whom Zamenhof had chosen to represent Esperanto to the committee (Zamenhof himself could not represent Esperanto as the committee's rules dictated that the creator of a submitted language could not defend it). The Committee's meetings were performed mainly in French, with occasional German. When the president of the Committee asked who was the author of Ido's project, Couturat, de Beaufront and Leau answered that they were not. De Beaufront presented Ido's project and gave a description of it as a better, richer version of Esperanto. Couturat, Leau, de Beaufront and Jespersen were finally the only members who voted, all of them for Ido's project. A month later, Couturat accidentally forwarded Jespersen a copy of a letter in which he acknowledged that de Beaufront was the author of the Ido project. Jespersen was angered by this and asked for a public confession. De Beaufront procrastinated for four months before making a public confession.
It is estimated that some 20% of Esperanto's major promoters and 3–4% of ordinary Esperantists switched to Ido, which from then on suffered constant modifications seeking to perfect it, but which ultimately had the effect of causing many Ido speakers to abandoned trying to learn it. Although it divided the Esperanto movement, the schism gave the remaining Esperantists the freedom to concentrate on using and promoting their language as it was. At the same time, it gave the Idists freedom to continue working on their own language for several more years before actively promoting it. The Uniono di la Amiki di la Linguo Internaciona ( Union of Friends of the International Language) was established along with an Ido Academy to develop the details of the new language.
Couturat, who was the main proponent of Ido, was killed in an automobile accident in 1914. This, along with World War I, practically suspended the activities of the Ido Academy from 1914 to 1920. In 1928 Ido's major intellectual promoter, the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, published his own planned language, Novial and ended his promotion of Ido.
Camiel de Cock was named secretary of linguistic issues in 1990, succeeding Roger Moureaux. He resigned after the creation of a linguistic committee in 1991. De Cock was succeeded by Robert C. Carnaghan, who had the title from 1992 to 2008. No new words were adopted between 2001 and 2006. After the 2008–2011 elections of ULI's direction committee, Gonçalo Neves replaced Carnaghan as secretary of linguistic issues during February 2008. Neves resigned during August 2008. A new linguistic committee was formed in 2010. In April 2010, Tiberio Madonna was appointed as secretary of linguistic issues, succeeding Neves. In January 2011, ULI approved eight new words. This was the first addition of words in many years. After a series of severe conflicts with the Directing Committee of ULI, Tiberio Madonna was revoked as secretary of linguistic issues on the 26th of May 2013 by official announcement from Loïs Landais, the secretary of ULI.Anunco di la DK pri Tiberio Madonna, ULI-IDO, yahoogroups, May 26th 2013 During January 2022, ULI approved a set of new words (34)Progreso 382 January–April 2022
| + Ido vowels ! ! | Front vowel ! | Back vowel |
| +Ido consonants ! ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Labial consonant ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Alveolar ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Post- alveolar ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Palatal ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Velar consonant ! colspan=2 Width=13% | Glottal |
All polysyllabic words are stressed on the second-to-last syllable except for verb , which are stressed on the last syllable skolo, ka feo and lernas for "school", "coffee" and the present tense of "to learn", but i rar, sa var and drin kar for "to go", "to know" and "to drink". If an i or u precedes another vowel, the pair is considered part of the same syllable when applying the accent rulethus radio, fa milio and manuo for "radio", "family" and "hand", unless the two vowels are the only ones in the word, in which case the "i" or "u" is stressed: dio, frua for "day" and "early".
| a as in "p art" | |
| b as in "sta ble" | |
| most similar to ts as in "ca ts"*(also used in the digraph ch) | |
| d as in "a dopt" | |
| most similar to e as in " egg" or e as in "b et" | |
| f as in "a fraid" | |
| hard g as in " go" | |
| h as in " hat", "a hoy" | |
| i as in "mach ine", ee in "b ee" | |
| s as in "plea sure, mea sure" or g in "mira ge, bei ge" | ĵ or ĝ |
| k as in "s kin, s kip" | |
| most similar to l as in " lamb" | |
| m as in "ad mit" | |
| n as in "a nalogy" | |
| most similar to o as in " or" | |
| p as in "s pin, s park" | |
| same as k*(used only in the digraph qu) | - |
| flapped or rolled r as in Italian language or spanish language;or the r in ve ry in Scottish English pronunciation (cf Pronunciation of English /r/) | |
| s as in "ea st"*(also used in the digraph sh) | |
| t as in "s take, s top" | |
| u as in "r ude" | |
| v as in "a void" | |
| w as in "a ward" | - |
| x as in "e xcept" or "e xist" | - |
| y as in " yes" | j |
| z as in " zebra" |
| ch as in " chick" | ĉ |
| qu as in " quick" | - |
| sh as in " shy" | ŝ |
Some of the grammatical endings are defined as follows:
These are the same as in Esperanto except for -i, -ir, -ar, -or and -ez. Esperanto marks noun plurals by an agglutinative ending -j (so plural nouns end in -oj), uses -i for verb infinitives (Esperanto infinitives are tenseless), and uses -u for the imperative. Verbs in Ido, as in Esperanto, do not conjugate depending on person, number or gender; the - as, - is, and - os endings suffice whether the subject is I, you, he, she, they, or anything else. For the word "to be," Ido allows either esas or es in the present tense; however, the full forms must be used for the past tense esis and future tense esos." Adjectives and adverbs are compared in Ido by means of the words plu = more, maxim = most, min = less, minim = least, kam = than/as. There exist in Ido three categories of adverbs: the simple, the derived, and the composed. The simple adverbs do not need special endings, for example: tre = very, tro = too, olim = formerly, nun = now, nur = only. The derived and composed adverbs, not being originally adverbs but derived from nouns, adjectives and verbs, have the ending -e.
Ido generally does not impose rules of grammatical agreement between grammatical categories within a sentence. For example, the verb in a sentence is invariable regardless of the number and person of the subject. Nor must the adjectives be pluralized as well the nounsin Ido the large books would be la granda libri as opposed to the Esperanto la grandaj libroj.
Negation occurs in Ido by simply adding ne before a verb: Me ne havas libro means "I do not have a book". This as well does not vary, and thus the "I do not", "He does not", "They do not" before a verb are simply Me ne, Il ne, and Li ne. In the same way, past tense and future tense negatives are formed by ne before the conjugated verb. "I will not go" and "I did not go" become Me ne iros and Me ne iris respectively.
Yes/no questions are formed by the particle ka in front of the question. "I have a book" (me havas libro) becomes Ka me havas libro? (do I have a book?). Ka can also be placed in front of a noun without a verb to make a simple question, corresponding to the English "is it?" Ka Mark? can mean, "Are you Mark?", "Is it Mark?", "Do you mean Mark?" depending on the context.
| + Pronouns !rowspan="3" | !colspan="7"singular !colspan="6" | plural !rowspan="3" | reflexive !rowspan="3" | indefinite |
ol, like English it and Esperanto ĝi, is not limited to inanimate objects, but can be used "for entities whose sex is indeterminate: babies, children, humans, youths, elders, people, individuals, horses, cattle, cats, etc."
Lu is often mistakenly labeled an epicene pronoun, that is, one that refers to both masculine and feminine beings, but in fact, lu is more properly a "pan-gender" pronoun, as it is also used for referring to inanimate objects. From Kompleta Gramatiko Detaloza di la Linguo Internaciona Ido by Beaufront:
Hence, while in Esperanto an adjective (for instance papera), formed on the noun radical paper(o), can mean an attribute (papera enciklopedio "paper-made encyclopedia") and a relation (papera fabriko "paper-making factory"), Ido will distinguish the attribute papera ("paper" or "of paper" (not "paper-made" exactly)) from the relation paper ala ("paper-making").
Similarly, krono means in both Esperanto and Ido the noun "crown"; where Esperanto allows formation of "to crown" by simply changing the ending from noun to verb kroni ("crowning" is kronado), Ido requires an affix so the composition is reversible: kron izar ("the act of crowning" is kron izo).
According to Claude Piron, some modifications brought by Ido are in practice impossible to use and ruin spontaneous expression:
Ido displays, on linguistic level, other drawbacks Esperanto succeeded to avoid, but I don't have at hand documents which would allow me to go further in detail. For instance, if I remember correctly, where Esperanto only has the suffix -igi*, Ido has several: *-ifar*, *-izar*, *-igar*, which match subtleties which were meant to make language clearer, but that, in practice, inhibit natural expression.
Another analysis showed that:
| + Comparison of Ido vocabulary with its six source languages (by # of roots) |
| +Comparison of Ido vocabulary with Esperanto and Latin (or Germanic root) !Ido !Esperanto !Latin !Germanic |
New vocabulary is generally created through an analysis of the word, its etymology, and reference to the six source languages. If a word can be created through vocabulary already existing in the language then it will usually be adopted without need for a new radical (such as wikipedio for Wikipedia, which consists of wiki + enciklopedio for encyclopedia), and if not then an entirely new word will be created. The word alternatoro for example was adopted in 1926, likely because five of the six source languages used largely the same orthography for the word, and because it was long enough to avoid being mistaken for other words in the existing vocabulary. Adoption of a word is done through consensus, after which the word will be made official by the union. Care must also be taken to avoid if possible, and usually a new word undergoes some discussion before being adopted. Foreign words that have a restricted sense and are not likely to be used in everyday life (such as the word intifada to refer to the conflict between Israel and Palestine) are left untouched, and often written in italics.
Ido, unlike Esperanto, does not assume the male sex by default. For example, Ido does not derive the word for "waitress" by adding a feminine suffix to "waiter", as Esperanto does. Instead, Ido words are defined as sex-neutral, and two different suffixes derive masculine and feminine words from the root: servisto for a waiter of either sex, servistulo for a male waiter, and servistino for a waitress. There are only two exceptions to this rule: First, patro for "father", matro for "mother", and genitoro for "parent", and second, viro for "man", muliero for "woman", and adulto for "adult".
| Ido
Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo, tua nomo santigesez; tua regno advenez; tua volo facesez quale en la cielo, tale anke sur la tero. Donez a ni cadie Elided pano, e pardonez a ni nia ofensi, quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti, e ne duktez ni aden la tento, ma liberigez ni del malajo. | English
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. |
Wikipedia includes an Ido-language edition (known in Ido as Wikipedio); in 2018 it was the 93rd most visited Wikipedia, and is second most viewed Wikipedia edition in artificial language (after Esperanto).
After a search to find an appropriate new symbol, the Ido-Akademio decided on the current Ido symbol, created by their secretary, Paul von Jankó (hence the alternative name the Jankó star). The current Ido Star is a Concave polygon Isotoxal figure hexagon, with a vertically flipped equilateral triangle overlaid on top.
Additional notes
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