In discussing to-day the development of artificial languages, I assume a basic acquaintance with their less important features so that we may be able to analyze more fully the latest developments in this field.
The growth of the international language movement has been accidental rather than planned, a development in which each system was based on, and remained the sole product of, the ability of its inventor and his collaborators. In fact we may say that the problem has been treated as an art rather than a science. That was inevitably so and will remain so until the subject becomes one for academic study and experiment, in which the premises of the creators of artificial languages can be tested in an objective and disinterested manner.
To-day I shall endeavour to show that the study of language-making has thrown new light on language in general; and further, I shall endeavour to show that the growth and progress of language overlaps with language-making at a certain point. In fact, I believe that language-making is not an activity moving in a vacuum but merely the anticipation of linguistic development of our ethnic languages on a new level, and I therefore propose to call it interlinguistics, that is, the study of international language. That this study has certain implications for linguistics I shall attempt to show.