Ronald Clark and Wendy Ashby - authors of Glosa

The Authors of Glosa

For a list of publications available from Richmond, press here

The two very active people, who have developed the language, Glosa, and who are now promoting and disseminating it are Ronald Clark and Wendy Ashby. Ronald Clark is the prime author of Glosa, having conceived of the idea in 1972. At that time he was thinking about finding an international language for the global scientific community, and he decided to look into the possibility of using a language based on the classical roots of Greek and Latin. The language "Interglossa," published by Professor Lancelot Hogben in 1943, seemed a good starting point, so Clark visited Hogben to seek permission to continue to develop the Interglossa concept.

This permission was received, and soon Clark was joined by Wendy Ashby in the work of refining Interglossa to make it an easily used, written and spoken medium for the exchange of information between scientists.

Until about 1979 the authors were living in Christchurch in Dorset, where they tried out early formulations of the language using local volunteers to test it. Vocabulary items and the details of sentence formation were developed and revised during this period. By the time Clark and Ashby were ready to publish the first dictionary, they had already moved to Richmond, Middlesex, where they have been, ever since. This location is close to London, where they participate in book exhibitions and language conventions, and meet visiting Glosa-pe.

The authors maintain an active life exchanging correspondence with Glosa users around the world, and publishing the language through the sales of Glosa reading and learning materials. With the aid of enthusiasts in various countries, they are continuing to increase the number of Glosa 1000 dictionary translations into other languages.

Wendy Ashby was invited to attend the National Association for Gifted Children Convention in Atlanta in November, 1993. There, a teacher in a school for gifted children is teaching Glosa to groups of students at his school; some other schools in the area are following his lead.

Here is a copy of a newspaper article about it:-

In July 1994 Wendy Ashby was invited to participate in the special one-day meeting in Brussels - to discus the possiibility of using an Auxiliary Language for the publication of EEC procedings. Ashby demonstrated Glosa, and put the case for the adoption of Glosa as the in-house language for the European Community.

Much of the current work being done in Richmond, is correpondence with people in the Third World, where Glosa is being validated in a broad range of cultural environments. This is known as the "Translingual Project." Volunteers are called for from the developed countries, to assist the authors in this work ... of exchanging correspondence with people from the Third World - using Glosa.

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