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Flags of Ido

Flagi di Ido

by António Martins, 05 June 1999

Background
Current flag
Previous design

See also:

Flags of constructed languages

Background

With approx. 5000 speakers, Ido is nowadays one of maybe six or seven “living artificial languages”. Esperantists usually regard to Ido with mixed emmotions: on one hand, this language has closer links to Esperanto itself, having been derived from it (although this is felt to be negative for some) — in fact quite a lot of artificial languages were developped based in Esperanto, but Ido is the only “living” one. Historical reasons related to the official presentantion of Ido in a 1907 interlinguistics conference (where the three Esperanto delegates secretely presented (their) new language instead!) caused until recently (and even now) some dislike in Esperanto speakers towards Ido-related affairs.

In short, it can be said that Ido is a French-flavoured version of Esperanto (although there are a lot of other differences), being French in 1907 the world’s lingua franca, more or less like english since WWII till today. The fact that by 1910 those who had “changed sides” to Ido were about 30% of the Esperantist “intellectuals” and not more than 5% of the “regular speakers” is significant, along with that the Ido movement has not, to best of knowledge, grown noticeably ever since.

António Martins, 04 Jun 1999

Current flag

According to Rodríguez [rod97], the motto was later changed to "LINGUO INTERNACIONA UNIVERSALA" («International Universal Language»), and three of the star’s points were reduced, the longer alternating with the shorter, one longer pointing upwards. It’s sometimes said that the six pointed star stands for an “upgrade” of Esperanto’s five pointed star, but I have no solid support for this on — only, as said, the origin of the language and it’s own name present it as an “offspring” of Esperanto…
António Martins, 04 Jun 1999

Previous design

by António Martins, 04 Jun 199900

The six pointed star was used for the first time in 1907 in a seal like device. According to Rodríguez [rod97], this star had the word "Ido" in blue letters, was equalpointed and layed on a blue circle, around which a white ring read "LINGUO INTERNACIONA DI LA DELEGITARO" (meaning «International language of the delegation», refering to the interlinguistics conference mentioned above). I dont know if the earlier version was used on flags. My source shows the typeface to be the one I used, Arial Rounded (or very similar). I made the letters black to conform the refered image found on the web.
António Martins, 04 Jun 1999