Concept
Latino sine flexione ("Latin without inflections"), Interlingua de Academia pro Interlingua (IL de ApI) or Peano's Interlingua (abbreviated as IL), is an international auxiliary language compiled by the Academia pro Interlingua under the chairmanship of the Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) from 1887 until 1914. It is a simplified version of Latin, and retains its vocabulary. Interlingua-IL was published in the journal Revue de Mathématiques in an article of 1903 entitled De Latino Sine Flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale (meaning On Latin Without Inflection, International Auxiliary Language), which explained the reason for its creation. The article argued that other auxiliary languages were unnecessary, since Latin was already established as the world's international language. The article was written in classical Latin, but it gradually dropped its inflections until there were none. Language codes ISO 639: ISO 639-2 and -1 were requested on 23 July 2017 at Library of Congress (proposed: IL and ILA); ISO-639-3 was requested on 10 August 2017 at SIL (proposed: ILA) and was rejected on 23 January 2018. In 1903, Peano published the article De Latino Sine Flexione to introduce his language. In this work, Peano quoted a series of suggestions by Leibniz about a simplified form of Latin. The article appeared to be a serious development of the idea, and Peano subsequently gained a reputation among the auxiliary language movement. In 1904, Peano undertook an essay about the way to obtain the minimal grammar of an eventual minimal Latin (Latino minimo), with a minimal vocabulary purely international. Peano and some colleagues published articles in Latino sine flexione for several years at the Revue de Mathématiques. Because of his desire to prove that this was indeed an international language, Peano boldly published the final edition of his famous Formulario mathematico in Latino sine flexione. However, as Hubert Kennedy notes, most mathematicians were put off by the artificial appearance of the language, and made no attempt to read it.
