Marq's Website

Intero

Intero was the project of Jonathan Moore and me. We both speak Esperanto, both agree that Esperanto has flaws, and both agree that Ido did a poor job of reforming Esperanto. Thus, we began discussing the flaws of Esperanto and before long, we were creating (yet another) clone of it. We decided to call it Intero while we worked on it, and the name stuck. Intero gets its name from the Esperanto preposition inter meaning "between". In the text that follows, my contributions will be in this color, and Jon's contributions will be in this color.

Developmental Principles

Intero shall be something between Esperanto and Ido.
- Intero seeks to improve Esperanto as Ido failed to do.
  - Intero shall not be a disaster similar to Ido.
Intero shall not deviate from Esperanto any further than is judged necessary.
- Intero shall be no more than a dialect of Esperanto.
Intero shall be more regular than Esperanto.
Intero shall use the unmodified latin alphabet.
Intero words shall be easier to pronounce.

Notice principle number two. Since Intero deviates not too much from Esperanto, it is possible to define the Intero language by simply noting its differences from Esperanto, and that is what I intend to do. However, that does mean that if you don't know anything about Esperanto, then you will have to learn about it before learning Intero. But on the plus side, we don't have to create dictionaries and lessons and such for Intero! If an aspect of the language isn't listed here, then it's just like Esperanto.

Orthographic Reform

An Esperanto j becomes an Intero y.
An Esperanto ĵ becomes an Intero j.
An Esperanto ŭ becomes an Intero w.
An Esperanto ĉ becomes an Intero x.
An Esperanto ŝ becomes an Intero c.
The Esperanto ĝ is eliminated.
The Esperanto ĥ is eliminated.

Above are just the orthographic reforms. They change in the written language, but not in the spoken language. In the following text, replacements for ĝ and ĥ will be given.

Phonetic Reform

An Esperanto sc becomes an Intero c.
An Esperanto ĝ becomes an Intero j.
An Esperanto ĥ becomes an Intero k.
An Esperanto c becomes an Intero c.
An Esperanto ps- becomes an Intero s-.
An Esperanto sv- becomes an Intero sw-.
An Esperanto gv becomes an Intero gw.
An Esperanto kv becomes an Intero kw.
An Esperanto kz becomes an Intero ks.
An Esperanto Ckt becomes an Intero Ct. (The capital "C" means any consonant.)
An Esperanto Ckc becomes an Intero Cc. (The capital "C" means any consonant.)
An Esperanto ŝv becomes an Intero cw.
An Esperanto v- becomes an Intero w- when the origin of the word had a "w" sound.
An Esperanto pneŭ- becomes an Intero pulm-.

Also presented above is the one major obstacle to defining Intero from Esperanto: the v- to w- change. Since I don't have a list of words to which this change applies, I would leave it up to the speaker for now and accept either the v- or the w- variants as correct.

Grammatic Reform

There is now a genitive nomial ending, -es.
The plural form of the genitive nominal ending is -oyes.
The adverbial instrumental ending is -el.
The adverbial temporal ending is -am.
The adverbial place ending is -e.
The adverbial directional ending is -en.
Even primitive adverbs end in -el, -en, -am, or -e as appropriate.
The Esperanto words pli and plej become the Intero prefixes pli- and pley-.
In Intero, there is no noun-adjective concordance.
Intero uses -ab to indicate masculinity and thus the roots indicate common gender.
The suffix -anto may refer to things as well as to people.
Intero mandates SVO syntax in order to eliminate the accusative -n.
The prefix ge- now indicates half way between a word and it's opposite. It could also indicate a monistic combination of a word and it's opposite.
An Esperanto -cj becomes an Intero -by.

Above, I note that the primitive adverbs take new endings. First, they may or may not drop their old endings according to this rule: one by one each letter is dropped from the end of the word until the last letter is a letter other than a, e, i, j, o, u, or ŭ. If the word is like nur, then it loses no letters and just becomes nurel. Most importantly, note that ne becomes nel. Continuing with the grammatic reform…

Pronomials
		Nominal		Possessive		Descriptive		Esperanto original roots
		singular	plural	singual	plural	singular	plural	Esperanto original roots
1st		mo	moy	mes	moyes	ma	moya	mi, ni
2nd	common	to	toy	tes	toyes	ta	toya	vi
2nd	rare	co	coy	ces	coyes	ca	coya	ci
3rd	masculine	labo	laboy	labes	laboyes	laba	laboya	li, ili
	feminine	lino	linoy	lines	linoyes	lina	linoya	ŝi, ili
	common	lo	loy	les	loyes	la	loya	ŝli, li (aŭ ŝi), ili
	neuter	xo	xoy	xes	xoyes	xa	xoya	ĝi, ili
	impersonal	no	noy	nes	noyes	na	noya	oni
	reflexive	zo	zoy	zes	zoyes	za	zoya	si

When a preposition is prefixed to a verb:

The direct object of the compound verb is the corresponding prepositional object of the simple verb.
The preposition is not repeated after the compound verb.
This makes it possible to refer to indirect objects with nominal passive participles.

The Esperanto construction in which a preposition precedes a noun which takes the accusative -n becomes the Intero construction in which en- is prefixed to the preposition. The noun still follows the preposition.

Vocabulary Reform

Adopt these Ido affixes:

affix	meaning
-atr	like, similar to, -ish
-ed	the full of, amount corresponding to
-eri	establishment where something is made or done
-if	to produce, generate, secrete
-ik	sick of, suffering from
-iv	able to, capable of
para-	warding off
-pec	a part or piece which is not the smallest possible

Expand the correlatives and related words like this:

Intero word	meaning	notes
kiao	kind/sort	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kialo	reason	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kiamo	time	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kieo	place/location	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kielo	manner	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kieno	direction	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kieso	owner	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kioo	thing	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kiomo	amount	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
kiuo	person	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
a	the _ kind of	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
al	because	The Esperanto ĉar becomes the Intero al. The Esperanto al becomes the Intero en.
am	at (time)	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
e	in (place)	The Esperanto en becomes the Intero e.
el	by (instrumental)	This is an addition to the vocabulary. The Esperanto el becomes the Intero de.
en	to (place)	The Esperanto al becomes the Intero en. The Esperanto en becomes the Intero e.
es	of (possession)	This is an addition to the vocabulary. Note that it does not completely replace the Esperanto de. The word de is still used in descriptions, e.g. bildo de Johano means "picture of John" which does not indicate that John owns the picture, but only that he is in it.
o	a/an	This is an addition to the vocabulary. The use of this word is optional because it is not a necessary deviation from Esperanto.
om	of (quantity)	The Esperanto da becomes the Intero om. Note that om reverses the syntax of da, e.g. the Esperanto dekduo da libroj becomes the Intero libroy om dekduo.
u	the	The Esperanto la becomes the Intero u.
alia	another kind	This is an addition to the vocabulary. The Esperanto alia becomes the Intero aliu.
alial	another reason	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
aliam	another time	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
alie	another place	This is an addition to the vocabulary. The Esperanto alie becomes the Intero aliel.
aliel	another manner	The Esperanto alie becomes the Intero aliel.
alien	another direction	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
alies	another's	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
aliom	another amount	This is an addition to the vocabulary.
aliu	another	The Esperanto alia becomes the Intero aliu. The Esperanto alio becomes the Intero aliu only when alio refers to a person.

Note each of the original correlatives now has a long form, for example:

tial = al tiu kialo
kien = en kiu kieno
iom = om iu kiomo

Here are the rest of the vocabulary changes:

The Esperanto unu is replaced by the Intero un.
The Esperanto knedi is replaced by the Intero nedi.
The Esperanto knuto is replaced by the Intero nuto.
The Esperanto gnejso is replaced by the Intero neyso.
The Esperanto gnomo is replaced by the Intero ganomo.
The Esperanto gnomono is replaced by the Intero ganomono.
The Esperanto gnuo is replaced by the Intero nuo.
The Esperanto cimo is replaced by the Intero vanco.
The Esperanto lino is replaced by the Intero leno.
The Esperanto lasta may be used or may be replaced by the Intero maluna.
The Esperanto knabo is replaced by infano.
The Esperanto knali is replaced by eksplodigi.
The Esperanto knari is replaced by grinti.
The Esperanto celi is replaced by peni or direti.

That's it. See a sample text.

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Last Updated: 2009-05-02

The author, Marq Thompson, wished the content of this website to be uncopyrighted after his death.