The Aiola language has a long history spanning nearly half a century. It has incorporated many ideas from other natural and constructed languages as well as many ideas from the numerous people who have worked on the project. The language has been developed, tested, and improved, first by extensive discussions among the ARG staff and then by teaching and using the language in a classroom setting.

As the leader of the effort to develop Aiola, this task has been for me truly a 'laborato jyavu ametso', i.e. 'labor of love'. In creating an entire new language with special properties, we have created a beautiful medium by which others can create their own beauty. In addition, building and using a new language provides a very complete satisfaction, physical as well as mental, which is qualitatively different from that produced by most scientific research.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues who have worked so many hours with me on the project during all these years. Because of their many inspired ideas and intelligent constructive criticism the Aiola language is far better than it would have been if I had tried to create the language totally on my own. Language is a social instrument and creating a new good one is properly a social effort.

I will always remember the day at the end of the Aiola Summer Program 2003 when the students put on the play "Alice in Wonderland" in Aiola. Coming after only 200 hours of study, this achievement convinced me that Aiola can express the full range of human thought and emotion, can be mastered in a remarkably brief time, and can indeed become a living language.

If together we build up a community of committed Aiola users, we can extend the same joy and satisfaction which we have experienced in the ARG to the entire world.

Ke vivau Aiola!