Comparing words
I want to make sure people who I use Interlingua with understand me. After all, not all Interlingua words are present in all Romance languages. The only Romance language I've studied is French, so I need to increase my general Romance awareness to be able to communicate more effectively.
So, I spend time comparing both the words and grammar of Interlingua to Romance languages. My most common tools are ChatGPT (an AI tool), DeepL (a translator that offers alternatives) and Wiktionary (an online dictionary which includes etymology).
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Today, I considered the words "cercar" (to search) and "trovar" (to find). I asked ChatGPT to list those words and a synonym for both in the following: Interlingua, eight Romance languages and Latin.
| Language | To search #1 | To search #2 | To find #1 | To find #2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interlingua | cercar | recercar | trovar | discoperir |
| Italian | cercare | ricercare | trovare | scoprire |
| Spanish | buscar | indagar | encontrar | hallar |
| Portuguese | buscar | procurar | encontrar | achar |
| French | chercher | fouiller | trouver | découvrir |
| Romanian | căuta | investiga | găsi | descoperi |
| Catalan | cercar | escorcollar | trobar | descobrir |
| Galician | buscar | procurar | atopar | achar |
| Occitan | cercar | recercar | trobar | descobrir |
| Latin | quaerere | investigare | invenire | reperire |
ChatGPT's helpful note: "The synonyms are generally close in meaning but may have more specific or nuanced usage (e.g., "scoprire" in Italian = "to discover")."
An English speaker can quickly spot words that look like (re)search, procure, investigate and query as well as "trove" (cf. "treasure trove"), encounter and discover. Of the Big Three (my nickname for the languages with highest Interlingua intelligibility), all the listed Italian words are served well by Interlingua while the same is true for none of the Spanish or Portuguese words. So, I asked ChatGPT to give me two more synonyms:
| Language | To search #3 | To search #4 | To find #3 | To find #4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Interlingua | inquirir | investigar | incontrar | reperir |
| Spanish | rastrear | escudriñar | descubrir | dar con |
| Portuguese | investigar | vasculhar | descobrir | deparar |
Thus, with Interlingua's "discoperir", I'm able to access "descubrir/descrobrir" even though it's not the first word for "to find" in Spanish/Portuguese. The same goes for "investigar", which is the same in Interlingua and Portuguese. However, none of the four Interlingua and Spanish words for "to find" match, so I tried to look for synonyms with DeepL, but all I got was "busco" (I really tried to game it, as you can see):
| English | Spanish |
|---|---|
| I'm searching for information. | Busco información. |
| I'm searching for the bus station. | Busco la estación de autobuses. |
| I'm searching for you. | Te busco a ti. |
| I'm searching for a meaning. | Busco un significado. |
| I'm on a search for X. | Estoy buscando X. |
| Please look it up for me. | Por favor, búscamelo. |
| I'm on a hunt for new shoes. | Busco zapatos nuevos. |
Even with DeepL's alternative translation feature I couldn't find a word that would match with Interlingua. So, I looked up the etymologies of the Interlingua words for "to find" on Wiktionary to see if they'd reveal a connection to Spanish. What I learned was:
- "cercar" comes from Late Latin "circāre", which means "to traverse, go about"; Spanish does have "cercar" but it's come to mean "to corral, fence off"
- "recercar" – ditto for the first part; in Spanish it means "to surround"
- "inquirir" comes from Latin "inquīrere"; in Spanish it means "inquire" or "investigate", but in Old Spanish it means "to search"!
- "investigar" comes from Latin "investīgāre"; and also Spanish uses "investigar" for "to investigate, research"!
- Bonus #1: the Spanish word "escudriñar" from above comes from Latin "scrūtārī", which is also where English "to scrutinize" comes from
- Bonus #2: the English word "inquier" is related to the Spanish and Portuguese word "querer", which means "to desire, want; to love".
Of course, in reality, Romance speakers surely have enough linguistic awareness to understand what a basic verb like "cerca" means in context—in a sentence like "I'm looking for a café" I couldn't even use "investigar" despite all my efforts above. And, in reality, if "cerca" wouldn't seem to work with a Spanish speaker, I could always say "I want to drink a coffee, can you recommend a café? Where can I find a café? Is there a café nearby?"
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So, that's what I worked on today. ChatGPT isn't yet consistently good enough for me to directly ask it to map related Interlingua and Romance words, but that's alright, because I like to toy around and see how expressions behave in DeepL and I enjoy surfing through the layers of etymologies on Wiktionary.