Glosa (auxiliary language)

Glosa is an international auxiliary language. Glosa is an isolating language, which means that words never change form, and spelling is completely regular and phonetic.
As an isolating language, there are no inflections, so that words always remain in their dictionary form, no matter what function they have in the sentence. As a result, grammatical functions, when not clear from the context, are taken over by a small number of operator words and by the use of word order (syntax).
Glosa takes most of its vocabulary from Greek and Latin roots, seen by the authors as international in a sense by their usage in science.
History.
Glosa is based on an older draft auxiliary language from 1943 called Interglossa, which was developed by Lancerot Hogben in 1943.
Ron Clark discovered Interglossa in 1960. He joined Hogben to develop the language. Wendy Ashby joined them in 1972. After Hogben's death in 1975, Ron and Wendy made many changes in the language and they renamed it Glosa.
In 1979, they tested the language with volunteers from the city they were living in. Also, the first dictionary was published.
Since 1987, the NGO Glosa Education Organisation (GEO) promotes the language. Its official website was created in 1996 by Paul O. Bartlett. Later, Marcel Springer became the person in charge of it.
In 2021, a wiki in Glosa was created by Vicente Costalago.
Grammar.
Alphabet and spelling.
Glosa spelling is completely regular and phonetic: one spelling always represents one sound, and one sound is always represented by one spelling. With the sole exception of "SC" which represents the sound (as “sh” in "short"), every letter just represents one sound, and vice versa. Glosa is written with the Latin letters.
Word classes.
Glosa contains two major groups of words:
Primitives.
Primitives are the small number of basic function words present in most languages—these allow us to describe the relationships between the major ideas we bring across. These are basically prepositions and conjunctions, such as: de [of], e [and], pre [before], supra [above], sub [under; below; lower; beneath; lesser; somewhat].
Substantives.
Substantives here are the group of words that represents the more complex things, actions and descriptions (sometimes usable for all three) present in a language, such as: via [road], kurso [run], hedo [happy], vide [see], celera [swift], tako [fast; quick; prompt; hurry; rate; speed]; oku [eye]. Please note that many of these words have many meanings, based on how they are used in a sentence (verb, adjective, etc.), for example: ""oku" can mean "eye", "optical", "see (look)", "perceive (with the eyes)", or "to peep"".
Parts of speech.
Glosa words can often serve as more than one part of speech. Thus part of speech is a role that the word plays in a sentence, not a property of a word.
Personal pronouns.
The reflexive pronoun ”oneself” is se, the reciprocal pronoun alelo means ”each other”, and the emphatic auto is used for “self, own“.
Verbs.
Most words can act as verbs, depending on their places in the sentence (usually in the middle).
"Prior word" here means a word used immediately before the verb of the sentence or clause in order to show its tense. For example:
Adjectives.
Adjectives, like the rest of the language do not change. They are generally placed before the word that they modify.
To create "opposites", one just places "no-" as a prefix to the adjective. It is the equivalent of some of the uses on in- or un- in English.
Question and answer words.
In addition to the above, there is the prefix/beginning "singu-" (each), and the suffixes/endings "-numera" (amount/number), "-speci" (quality/kind of) and "-kron" (time), which can be used in the same way as the above.
"Qo horo?" can also be used for “What time?” or “What is the time?”.
Demonstratives.
The basic demonstratives are:
The demonstratives can also be used in the same way as the words in the table above: "u-ci mode, u-la mode" (thus; in this way, in that way), "u-ci ka, u-la ka" (for this cause, for that cause), "u-ci te" (with this intention), etc.
For “this time”, there's also "nu" (now), and for “that much/that many”, you can say "tanto"; for “that kind” "talo".
To change a phrase into a question, "qe" is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
Numbers.
The numbers from 0–10 are: "ze, mo, bi, tri, tet, pen, six, seti, ok, nona, deka". For 0, 4, 5, 7 and 8 (ze, tet, pen, seti, ok), there's also the longer forms "zero, tetra, penta, septi" and "okto". Higher numbers are formed by combining the numerals in the number, and in some cases by proper names:
Note that some use "centi", the older form of "hekto", for “hundred”. "Centi" is now used as “hundredth” in accordance with the ISO standard usage.
When numbers are placed before the noun, they are cardinal; when they are placed after the noun, they are ordinal:
"Mo", "bi" and "tri" also means single, double and triple, respectively.
Sample.
The following is the Lord's Prayer in Glosa, compared with Interglossa, Frater and English versions, respectively: