Glosa, an International Auxiliary Language

Index: The Language Glosa - Learning- and Textmaterial - Links - Glosa Mailing-List - Glosa Organisation.

... and to the words.

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The Language Glosa

Glosa is an international auxiliary language (auxlang), that was developed by Lancelot Hogben (as Interglossa, GB, 1943), Ronald Clark and Wendy Ashby (GB, 1972-1992). An auxlang is an artificial language that should help the communication between speakers of different native languages and so be a supplement to the national languages.

There are hundreds of drafts for such languages. Glosa is the most advanced one of the type that linguists call isolating. That means, that in Glosa there are no inflections. Words remain always in their original form, no matter what function they actually have in the sentence. A conventional grammar is missing. Although Glosa is a full language. Grammatical functions are taken over by some operator words and the word order (syntax). This disposition brings Glosa relationship with many languages around the world: east-Asiatic languages like Chinese, Creolean languages from Africa, pidgin languages and with reservation the most important natural language - English.
(In my personal opinion this way is not only interesting, but also the best for an auxlang.)

A Glosa word represents an idea, but no part of speech. The same word can function as a verb, noun, adjective or preposition within reason. The Glosa words are taken from Latin and Greek. So they are known to many people by foreign words or by the Roman languages. A limitated vocabulary (Glosa 1000 or Centra Glosa), easy to learn for beginners, should satisfy for all day situations. For higher demands (science, art, poetry) an extension (Glosa 6000 or Mega Glosa) is available.

The pronounciation is simple and regular. Its model was Italian and it is similar to German. Glosa is written with the Latin alphabet without special characters, there are no double vowels or consonants.

Learning- and Textmaterial

• "18 Steps to Fluency in Euro-Glosa" (190 kB HTML + 143 kB GIF = 333 kB)
  The official description of Glosa in the form of a childrens's school book and at the same time the best way to learn Glosa. A German and a Russian translation is available.
• Glosa Basic Reference (122 kB)
  A Glosa starting kit.    Contents: short description Glosa, "grammar", operator words, rules, pronounciation, orthography, examples, vocabulary English-Glosa and Glosa-English.
  (Also available in German translation "Grundwissen Glosa").
• "Glosa Internet Dictionary" (GID) Glosa-English (261 kB)
  (also as plain ASCII-file glen.txt and a "Core"-version of preferable words) and
  Englisch-Glosa (287 kB) (or engl.txt and "Core" ).
  The most comprehensive Glosa dictionary.
• GID-Index (with further Glosa-dictionaries and information about them and the Glosa words)
• A Glosa grammar (a draft by Robin Gaskell. Also available in Russian.)
• A Glosa grammar (notes by Carmelo Mico Ranibakt, when he was learning Glosa.)
• Seminar 1 about Glosa's word order (syntax)
  (Also available a translation into German. Nearly identical is the text "word order". )
• Seminar 2 about verbs in Glosa (and in German Seminar 2)
• Writing Hints
• introduction to Glosa in French
  
• introduction to Glosa in Spanish
  
• Short information in other languages (Dutch, French, Hungarian, Russian).
• A little computer program, that helps to translate from and into Glosa.
   
• A Texts's Collection
  Texts stolen from other Glosa websites (see links below) put together in one file, some pictures, some German supplement. Contains also photos of the Glosa inventors.
• Sample texts Glosa-Spanish parallel
• "Pusi Glosa Kristo-Bibli" (some Bible texts)
• Bhagavad Gita (small part of a central text of Hinduism in Glosa)
• Bahá'i Texts (some texts to the Bahá'i religion, English and Glosa parallel)
• L'élixir du Révérend Père Gaucher (by Alphonse Daudet, in French and Glosa)
• Qo akti? (a "video installation" by the Netherlands artist Mathilde ter Heijne. Description of the project, a critique and the script. Partly English, German, Glosa.)
• Listening Samples (in MP3-files. Sorry, a very low sound quality, so giving only a rude impression.)
• Justi (a newspaper/newsletter in Esperanto and Glosa)
   
• list of printed publications

External Links

• Daniel A. Alegrett Salazar (from Venezuela. Information in Spanish)
• Paul O. Bartlett (Unfortunately this site has been removed.)
• Charles Ganson ( Comparison list with Ido and Glosa words and a CGI-script, that helps translating Ido or Glosa into English.)
• Robin Gaskell (from Australia)
• Walter G. Green III (article by an US-American Professor for disaster management, a glossary and notes to it)
• Liu Haitao (a Professor from China. Info in Chinese)
• Rick Harrison (Excerpt of the "Interglossa" book, the forerunner of Glosa)
• Richard Kennaway (Artificial languages in common)
• Martinovitsné Kutas Ilona or Ilona Kutas (from Hungary. A short story translated into Glosa and many other languages. 5.3 MB.)
• Christopher Marshall (a composer from New Zealand describing his choir project in Niuspi, a variant of Glosa)
• William Patterson (from the USA, with a program for vocabulary learning in JavaScript.)
• Kevin Smith (Glosa information, his word lists and a description of his programming work in Glosa. This site will probably be removed soon, so if the link is dead, please click here to see a copy.)
• worldsocialism.org (The British socialist party provides a text translated by Wendy Ashby.)

Glosa Mailing-List

There is a yahoo-group for Glosa: groups.yahoo.com/group/glosalist. You are welcome to register and take part. Messages can be either in English about Glosa or in Glosa about any subject.

Glosa Organisation

Behind this "Organisation" there is only the Glosa author Wendy Ashby, after Ron Clark died in June of 2000. You can write to her also in German. The address is

Glosa Education Organization
P. O. Box 18
Richmond
Surrey TW9 2GE
England

Glosa author Wendy Ashby wrote about this website: "... Mega gratia de tu auxi difusi Glosa - tu puta-me pagina es fo stimula! Id sti memo mi de u proto-tem mi pa vide Glosa - id es ta facili e habe mega pote pro munda paci e kon-ergo. ...".

Marcel Springer, http://www.glosa.org/, last modified September 29th, 2004.

(E-mail: . Please send only plain ASCII messages about Glosa without attachments. Thanks. - Personal homepage with imprint, older statistics/webcounting.)