Indo-European languages of Europe

Less than half of the Irish population voted on the Lisbon Treaty, the so-called Constitution of the European Union. In other words: 862,415 votes against and 752,451 in favour, giving a majority of 109,964 against, decided this time the future of nearly 500 million Europeans. Some pro-Europeans are asking now what eurosceptics have often asked before: “Is this what we call democracy?” The ‘No’ has eventually prevailed, while the Lisbon Treaty had been already ratified in 18 EU member states; those ratifications will possibly serve for nothing, more or less like the previous ratifications of the European Constitution after voters in France and the Netherlands rejected it in similar referenda.

The most common sentences heard in EU member states among supporters of the No are “the EU isn’t a democracy“, because “they didn’t inform us about this or that”, or “they are doing things without us“. Even if such slogans are obviously false and demagogic, they are equally repeated by all parties looking for the No; actual reasons behind No-ist groups are, however, quite different, and can usually be summed up into:

• Radical leftists, always asking for a “less capitalist” and “more social” Europe; something like a renewed Warsaw pact?
• Ultraconservatives, who won’t accept anything against their national supremacy concept, be it for racial, cultural, linguistic or historical reasons.
• AND, no matter what ideas behind them, opposition parties just wanting to take the lead of their country or region, using referenda as another way to show popular support, no matter if it affects the rest of us Europeans. If the Government says YES, they’ll look for some reason to say NO.

Of course, they all “win” when the No wins, and ‘the others’, be it ‘capitalism’, or ‘progress’, or the party looking for the Yes, “loose”. Apparently, apart from British and American eurosceptic media and lobbies, European neonazis and communists are also cellebrating the one-million No throughout Europe, even after complaining so much about the “false democracy” the EU represents, what gives a general idea of who actually “loses” in the European Union with this vote, and who actually cared for democracy in Europe and who didn’t…

If Europe had one common language - and I don’t mean a lingua franca like English, or any Esperanto out there - political discussion and regulation debates at European level could be followed by all; if Europe worked as one democracy, were the majority (not individual countries) decided about the future of us all; and if Europe was something less a customs union, and more of a real country, maybe people would bother to go and vote for their future, instead of resting at home letting the different euroscepticisms - or, better, euroegoisms - of their country’s minorities rule.

By the way, I’m not currently for the Yes of a Constitutional treaty that brings us more of the current distribution of the EU budget pie, among the (unofficious) predominant English use in official communications, the (not-so-official) English+German+French rules regarding common translations, and the 25 official languages into which every important communication should be made available; and the thousands of millions of euros spent yearly to support the so-called “multilingualism” policy in the EU in any possible way, with different programmes and investments, whithout directly admitting those costs as part of their language policy. But, that 862,415 Irish supporting Sinn Féin’s or UK businessman (founder and funder of Libertas anti-European lobby campaigns) Declan Ganley’s views decide that the rest of us 490 million Europeans should pay for yet another project of the EU Constitution until it is eventually approved, that’s certainly not the idea I have on how to improve things in the EU…

I don’t like to write about ‘domestic’ problems, so to speak, and I don’t usually do it because I cannot be neutral, but I think this one has transnational implications that go beyond Spain’s language policy - or, better, the language policy of Spain’s Autonomous (i.e. ’slightly less than federal’) Communities - to reach the very language policy of the European Union, because this is what we are getting by the current “be official or die” policy of the Union.

As I’ve written before, the language policy of the European Union, of which language commissioners are always so proud, talking about “multilingualism as an important asset of Europe“, is just a fraud, a disguise of the actual untenable situation that just help create language predators in the Union, politicians looking for more and more European public support for their languages and, consequently, less for the others. How can a language like German (100 million speakers) be officially equal to Maltese (300.000 speakers) before the Union, while languages like Catalan (11 million speakers) or Basque (4 million speakers) aren’t? How can we European citizens pay millions of euros from our budget for translations from and into only some languages (see El Mundo report or its English translation), while others are left undefended by the institutions? How can we tolerate that English be the unofficious actual language of Brussels, or that any country holding the presidency decides to translate documents into English, or English+French, or English+French+Latin according to their will or frame of mind, while the institutions continue to sell this false idea of ‘multilingualism’, for whose supposed implementation our taxes are yearly wasted?

These are the latest news from regional and national language predators looking for their weekly pray: anti-Catalan and pro-Catalan politicians, against or in favour of the opinion of a “small” private airline (expressed by their director), looking to win one individual linguistic battle here, no matter if it affects the whole European language policy system - in fact, no matter if it’s the very consequence of the EU’s language policy system… I have my view on this, indeed, and it refers (as always) to the need of a common, only one official language legally obligatory for all the Union, and then national or regional support for other languages, but I’ll let you judge from the news. I’ll just add that Catalan-speaking communities are already calling for a Boicott on Air Berlin for the company’s attitude towards the regional language of the Balearic Islands, and that the words of the (intended to be) funny cartoon to the right, “saupreussischer Katalanen” is being translated, instead of “damn-Prussian“, a common Bavarian expression, followed by “Catalans”, as “fucking swine Prussian Catalans” in Catalan-speaking journals, to exasperate still more Catalan language defenders…

Edit: I didn’t see there are other comments of the Catalan blogger community, as the early comment of one of Menéame’s creators Ricardo Galli (in Catalan) on this subject, which criticizes the “literal interpretation” - I would say directly willing misinterpretation - some Catalan-speaking journals gave to the cartoon, which he compares to the overreaction of some Muslim media to Muhammad’s cartoons. His comment in English.

This is an automatic translation of one of the first articles on the subject:

“Today Spanish is no longer an official language”, says blunt Joachim Hunold, managing director of Air Berlin in the journal’s editorial Air Berlin Magazine, available to all users of the company during flights. “There are towns in Majorca where children no longer speak Spanish. In schools, Spanish is a foreign language,” he added. With this letter to passengers, Air Berlin, one of the major airlines operating in the Balearics, denounced the situation, according to the airline, suffers Spanish in front of Catalan.

The cartoon with which the editorial accompanies the article has caused more trouble, and it translates “If they come to Bavaria, these damn-Prussian Catalans, they’ll have to speak Bavarian. Damn it!”

It all began when the director general of Linguistic Policy, Margalida Tous, sent Air Berlin and other airlines to destinations in the Balearic Islands, a letter urging them to also use Catalan in their communications with their customers. “I am contacting you to express the interest that the Balearic Islands Government has to ensure proper use of the official languages of the archipelago in the communications company that provides its citizens with Air Berlin who choose to make their journeys,” the letter begins.

“Do we have to give courses in Catalan by law to my employees? And those who fly to Galicia or the Basque Country, who want to turn us into Galician or Basque? is Spanish no longer spoken in Spain?”, Hunold wondered . “The partition of Spain in regional nationalism is actually a return to the medieval mini states. So far I thought we lived in a Europe without borders“, he finishes. The editorial was accompanied with a cartoon which reads in a Bavarian German: “If they come to Bavaria, these damn-Prussian Catalans, they’ll have to speak Bavarian. Damn it!” .

The Balearic Government does not explain the Air Berlin public reply to his request for the company incorporates the use of Catalan. “We regret that a letter made in a constructive spirit has taken this misinterpretation”, say from the general direction of Linguistic Policy. “The president Francesc Antich is concerned about this issue and surprised because there are correct relations with the company. I think that the collaborative spirit of the letter has not played well and he will talk directly with Joachim Hunold to restore the situation”, added.

In fact, the letter urges Air Berlin to “ensure that customer service offered, as personally written documentation, web, instructions to passengers on board, etc., are made in Catalan, just as being made in other languages“. In addition, it offers “the possibility of establishing lines of collaboration to incorporate Catalan in response to the company’s customers”.

Air Berlin insists on the fact that “the director has exercised his freedom of expression”, says Alvaro Middelmann, CEO of Air Berlin in Spain and Portugal. He argues that the conflict between Spanish and Catalan “is a reality” and puts an example that does not want to “implement the third time Spanish in Catalonia”. And states that “Spanish is being discriminated against in certain parts of Spain”. “Air Berlin is a European company, to make it clear, and we must ensure the common language of all Spaniards”. That is why we believe that the introduction of Catalan “would be a wrong comparison with other regions and is inasumible”.

The Department of Linguistic Policy states that at no time “the letter spoke of punishing or compelling, but it offers the collaboration of government to improve service to the company but he recalls that Catalan is the official on the islands and has Baleares many customers. ” The same sources explained that so far no other airline has been in contact with the Balearic government to complain about their linguistic recommendations.

These news came from La Vanguardia, and I read it in Spanish Digg-like site Meneame - you can read people’s comments to the first and second most voted news on the subject.

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For native speakers of most modern Romance languages (apart from some reminiscence of the neuter case), Nordic (Germanic) languages, English, Dutch, or Bulgarian, it is usually considered “difficult” to learn an inflected language like Latin, German or Russian: cases are a priori felt as too strange, too “archaic”, too ‘foreign’ to the own system of expressing ideas. However, for a common German, Baltic, Slavic, Greek speaker, or for non-IE speakers of Basque or Uralic languages (Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian), cases are the only way to express common concepts and ideas, and it was also the common way of expression for speakers of older versions of those very uninflected languages, like Old English, Old Norse or Classical Latin; and their speakers didn’t consider their languages “difficult” …

Therefore, to use different cases is the normal way to express concepts that non-inflected languages express in different ways - i.e. not “more easily”, but “differently”. That’s the point Esperantism has lost in its struggle to convince the world of its “easiness”. In fact, the idea that cases are difficult is so impregnated in Esperantism, that some did create “an old version” [probably deemed "more difficult"] of Esperanto called Arcaicam Esperantom, as a fiction of evolution from an older language…

Thus, among the European population (more than 700 million inhabitants), just around 200 million speak non-inflected languages, while the rest use at least 4 cases to express every possible concept. Within the current EU, more or less half of its speakers speak an inflected language - like German, Polish, Czech, Greek, Lithuanian, Slovenian, or non-IE Hungarian, Finnish, etc. - as their mother tongue.

For example, the literal sentence “I go to-the-house” [not exactly the common expression "I go home" which is expressed differently in each language] would be said in Spanish “voy a-la-casa”, or in French “je vais a-la-maison”, in Italian “vado a-la-casa”, etc. Therefore, in an “easy conlang” for Western European speakers, say in something called Esperanto, a sentence like “io vo a-lo-haus” is apparently “easy”, because the syntactical structure is similar to those non-inflected languages.

NOTE: In fact, there are other interesting concepts behind the use of the obligatory subject before the verb in languages like English or Esperanto, that appears usually in those languages that have reduced the verbal system; therefore, the subject is necessary only in those languages whose verbal inflection becomes too simple to express an idea that must still be expressed some way - more or less like different combinations of prepositions and articles are often needed to substitute the lost nominal inflection, as we discuss here. In those ‘less innovative’ languages that retain a rich verbal system, the subject appears for some reason, as e.g. in Spanish “yo voy a la casa”, which must be expressed differently in innovative languages, using different linguistic resources, like e.g. Eng. “I myself go to the house” (or maybe “it’s me who…“), or French “moi, je vais a la maison”. Is that obligatory subject and ’simplified’ verbal system of Esperanto “easier”, and therefore “better”…? I guess not. It’s just an imitation of French or English that Mr. Zamenhoff deemed “better” for his creation to succeed, given the relevance of those languages (and its speakers’ acceptance) back in 1900…

On the other hand, in German it would be “Ich gehe nach-Haus-e”, in Latin, it is “vado ad-domu-m”; in Polish “idę do-dom-u” etc. The use of declensions, if compared to uninflected languages, is usually made of just a simple change of “preposition+article” -> “declension” - or, in the ‘worst’ case (as it is shown here), by a “preposition+article” -> “preposition+declension”.

To sum up, can some languages be considered “more difficult” than others? Yes, indeed. If seen from a European point of view, some linguistic features are not easy to learn: the Arab writing system, Chinese unending kanjis, Sino-Tibetan or Vietnamese tones, etc. can cause headaches to [adult] speakers willing to learn them… Also, from an English, French or Spanish point of view, learning a language like Esperanto might seem “better” because of its apparent and equivocal “easiness”… But, between (a) all Indo-European speakers learning a non-inflected language like English [or 'easy' Esperanto], or (b) all Indo-European speakers learning an inflected one like Proto-Indo-European?; I guess there is no language “easier” than other, and therefore the “better” option should come from other rational considerations, not just faith in the absurd ramblings of an illuminated Polish ophthalmologist.

Therefore, the question remains still the same: why on earth should any European willing to speak a common language select an invented one (from the thousand “super easy” ones available) than a natural one, like the ancestor of most of their mother tongues, Proto-Indo-European?

Following Mithridates’ latest post and comment on artificial language compared to revived language, I consider it appropriate to share my point of view on this subject. For me, the schematic classification of languages into “natural” and “artificial” could be made more or less as follows, from ‘most natural’ (1) to ‘most artificial’ (20):

NOTE 1: There are 20 categories, as there could be just 4 (living, dead, reconstructed and invented) or 6, or 15, or a million categories corresponding to one language each, based on thorough statistical studies of vocabulary, grammar, ‘prestige’, etc. Thus, 20 is only the number that appeared after I classified the languages I know in some personal, general and more or less straightforward classes; the concept looked for by this classification is to locate where proto-languages (and especially Modern Indo-European or Europe’s PIE) are if compared to natural languages and “conlangs”. It is also possibly the minimum number to show the interesting difference between categories 9 and 10.

NOTE 2: one may or may not agree on languages given as examples of this or that particular category; however, the general concept behind individual categories is what matters. For the term ‘(international) prestige’ as it is used here, I took in part as reference Dutch sociologist Abram de Swaan’s Global Language System concept.

1. Spoken languages - with a continuated history of written use and international prestige - own historical vocabulary and grammar enough to communicate everything: English, German, French, Spanish, etc.
2. Spoken languages - with some (interrupted) history of written use and limited international prestige - enough historical vocabulary to build new necessary terms: Polish, Gaelic, Catalan, Occitan, etc.
3. Spoken languages - with limited historical written use or international prestige - limited vocabulary, clear need of lexical and grammatical borrowings (from 1 or 2) to speak in all situations: Ukrainian, Basque, Sardinian, Saami, etc.
4. Spoken languages with no written use at all - many expressions and vocabulary not available; taken if needed from prestigious languages (1 or 2, rarely 3): many native American and African languages, and generally all so-called dialects (like Scots, Asturian or Piedmontese) not written down before the last century.
5. Dead languages - well attested, with enough history of use and [past] international prestige: Classical Latin, Koine Greek, Classical Sanskrit, etc.
6. Dead languages - some well attested history of use: Archaic Greek, Vedic Sanskrit, Old English, Old French, Old Church Slavonic, etc.
7. Dead languages - not well attested - need for some writing decyphering and/or interpretation: Hittite, Avestan, Old Norse, Gothic, Old Prussian, etc.
8. Dead languages - some writings only - writing decyphering and/or interpretation necessary - partially reconstructed with the help of related languages: Mycenaean, Oscan, Gaulish, Cornish, etc.
9. Hypothetical languages - no writings available - good archaeological knowledge - well reconstructed thanks to attested dialects and related languages: Proto-Germanic, Proto-Indo-Aryan, Proto-Slavic, Proto-Greek, Europe’s Proto-Indo-European, etc.
10. Dead languages - some writings only - difficult writing decyphering and/or interpretation - available data not enough for a trustable reconstruction: Lusitanian, Thracian, Etruscan, Iberian, etc.
11. Hypothetical languages - no writings available - some archaeological knowledge - reconstruction available generally deemed correct by linguists - persistent controversy over reconstructed details: Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Indo-European (III), etc.
12. Hypothetical languages - insufficient linguistic and archaeological [data for a trustable] reconstruction of actual language, speakers and/or time span: Proto-Indo-European (II or “Indo-Hittite”), Proto-Uralic, Proto-Turkic, Proto-Semitic, Proto-Dravidian, etc.
13. Hypothetical languages - no academic consensus over its actual shape, but certainty of existence: Early PIE, Proto-Basque, Proto-Albanian, Proto-Armenian, etc.
14. Corrected languages - strictly based on spoken or dead languages with ‘improvements’: Latino sine flexione, etc.
15. Corrected languages - strictly based on hypothetical languages with ‘improvements’: Sambahsa-Mundialect (a modern PIE with an easier verbal and nominal inflection, borrowed [non-translated] IE vocabulary, etc.).
16. Invented languages - loosely based on a homogeneous group of spoken or dead languages: Germanic IAL (mostly Germanic base), Slovio (based on Slavic languages), Interlingua or Lingua Franca Nova (Romance languages), etc.
17. Invented languages - based on an arbitrary combination (usually deemed “the best” or “the easiest”) of spoken or dead language features: Volapük, Esperanto or Ido (taking mostly European languages); most modern IAL-oriented “conlangs” fit into this category.
18. Invented languages - artistic or fictional ones, based on living or dead languages or group of languages, created following subjective impressions like ‘beauty’ or ‘aggressiveness’ of its sounds or grammatical features: Klingon, Quenya, etc.
19. Invented languages - not based on any known native or hypothetical language, but still human-oriented: philosophical or mathematical languages, Lojban, etc.
20. Invented languages - not human-oriented.

Some additional comments on the language classes: A) There is no single “completely artificial” or “completely natural” language. Even “level 1″ languages, which develop new terms and syntax mostly from their continuated use (and not from outside), have a need for “artificial” or “imported” terms and sentences: like Spanish “hardware”, “software”, “mouse”, “te llamo de vuelta” (a literal translation of Eng. I call you back), or invented terms like “telefonear”, “televisión”, “ordenador/computador”, etc. Even within terms of Latin origin, innovation is often artificially generalized as the standard: as in Spanish “murciélago”, which was in Old Spanish “murciego” (from Lat. mus-caecus, lit. “blind mouse”, “bat”), extended to “murciégalo”, then metathesized to “murciélago”; now, the Royal Spanish Academy Dictionary (which ‘rules over’ the Spanish ‘normative’ or formal language) states that the innovative murciélago is the formal or correct word; usually parents correct children who say “murciégalo”, and the common use of that word is today generally considered a sign of vulgar speech. That is an example of what language regulation artificially adds to seemingly natural languages, just like Classical Latin or Classical Greek norms did impose artificial (or innovative) terms over traditional (i.e. native or more natural) ones. In fact, language regulation in international languages like English, Spanish or Portuguese makes the formal language still more artificial to its speakers, and innovative trends looking for a more natural language emerge: hence the Brasilian push for its own writing rules (and minority calls for being recognized as a different Galician-Portuguese language, like Galician), or US English, Argentinian and Mexican Spanish dialectal proud, expressed in writing and pronunciation, adopting their own standards of formal speech different from the historical one. And even level 20 languages are ultimately based on human perception, so they are necessarily based on nature, and thus never fully artificial, however artificial they might look like… B) About the Classification:

1. Dead languages are considered “less natural” than ‘living’ ones because their testimony is not direct. We know of them (mostly) because of writings, so they cannot be “imitated” when spoken as naturally as when directly heard and learned (and pronunciation and style corrected) by native speakers.
2. Categories 9 and 10 might be interchangeable, depending on who you ask. For me, it’s obvious that a well-reconstructed language is far ‘better’ in the actual shape and knowledge we have from them than dead languages with some inscriptions nobody is able to read and interpret correctly; in that sense, Proto-Germanic is “more natural” than Etruscan, for example…
3. Also, “corrected” languages could be classified exactly after their “non-corrected” counterparts; thus, level 6 for Latino sine flexione - Classical Latin without declensions - or level 10-12 por Sambahsa-Mundialect - as a European or Common PIE with a simplified inflection system. I don’t think that could be considered the most rational (general) classification, though, as a “corrected language” should be deemed less natural than any other native language, and just before invented ones - because there are a thousand possible “corrections”, and it’s impossible to say which ones are “few enough” for a language be considered “still natural”: for me, an arbitrarily and individually “corrected” language is after a hypothetical one (reconstructed through linguistic studies), and just before a partially invented one, and a partially invented one before a fully invented one. Indeed, if there were a thousand particular classes instead of only 20 general ones, some corrected languages could and should be considered more natural than others.

C) It’s important to note that, as when we talk about Greek we have to distinguish between Proto-Greek, Mycenaean, Archaic Greek, Classical Greek, Koine Greek, etc., when we (at Dnghu) talk about Proto-Indo-European, we refer to the non-laryngeal, Northwestern or European Proto-Indo-European (ca. 2500-2000 BCE). The Indo-European language time span known to us is as follows:

1. Indo-European I (also Early PIE, Pre-PIE, Paleo-European, etc.) unknown, mostly hypothesis; evolved into Proto-Indo-European II. [Hypothetical locations proposed for IE Urheimat].
2. Indo-European II (ca. 4000? BC), reconstructed; evolved into Proto-Indo-European III and Hittite. [Map of Kurgan culture]
3. Indo-European III (ca. 3000 BC), well reconstructed; evolved into Europe’s Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Greek and Proto-Armenian (possibly Proto-Graeco-Armenian?). [Archaeological map of Yamna & Maykop Cultures]
4. Europe’s Proto-Indo-European (ca. 2500-2000 BC); evolved into Proto-Germanic, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic, among others. [Archaeological map: expansion of Indo-European peoples]

So, when we talk about “reviving PIE for Europe”, we are talking about reviving European (or Northwestern) Proto-Indo-European, which is easier to reconstruct in its vocabulary and syntax details than the general, common Late PIE. Both are obviously well-reconstructed and quite similar (as Old Italian is quite similar to Latin), but there is often no need to determine the exact phonetic value of this or that general PIE word: we only need its European value, which is logically more straightforward. Thus, in PIE *pHter, it is European (and therefore Modern Indo-European) pater because that’s how laryngeal *H evolved in the Northern dialect, no matter how that laryngeal actually sounded like in the common Proto-Indo-European that was spoken in the steppe (or in Renfrew’s Anatolia) a thousand years earlier, to give an Indo-Iranian pitar… D) Ancient Hebrew probably enters into category 6 (for some maybe 5), and now Modern Hebrew or Israeli fits into category 2 for most people - because there is no continuated language history, and there is (or was) a clear need to borrow “foreign” vocabulary and expressions. That’s similar to what could happen with the European PIE we want to revive, which is in level 9 (or 10), but could be in level 1 if revived - because there is no need for “foreign” vocabulary or expressions to be adapted into PIE, as there are enough Indo-European words and expressions, not only because of the PIE reconstruction, but because of the continuated history of Europe’s Indo-European languages, that allow its modern terms to be ‘translated back’ into PIE… Of course, it could be considered always as a level 2 language, as there will be a need to adapt terms to PIE: like Greek oikonomia to IE woikonomia, etc. BUT, the same need did exist in every Indo-European language, so it’s difficult to classify it (if revived) as 2. Indeed, as Mithridates puts it, both Israeli and MIE could always be considered level 6 and level 9 languages respectively forever, even if they became spoken, but - exactly as it could happen with Esperanto or Ido - once a language is naturally spoken and naturally transmitted from older generations to newer ones - once there is a real generation of native speakers able to twist and shape it, and make it evolve - I think it becomes a more natural one and changes from category; even if we know that its original category was a different one. NOTE: So, for example, in the history of Italic languages: Proto-Italic (category 12-13), then Old Latin, probably within category 7-8, which became Classical Latin (in category 1 in year 1 AD) nowadays in category 4, and then Romance languages (earlier category 2 or 3, while Classical Latin was still the lingua franca), most of them now within modern categories 1-3 About the benefits or social need to choose languages from the upper level, more than the lower level ones, if they are available and it’s possible to use them (like European PIE over Esperanto), it is another question I have dealt (and will deal) with in other posts, and which is indeed a matter of personal opinion, like colours. But, to sum it up, it’s not that I or others might prefer it from a rational point of view; the real question is that people - because of their cultural and anthropological backgrounds, not fully known to us - are apparently prepared to accept language revivals - hopefully then proto-language revivals too, in light of Cornish language revival (from category 8 ) - for cultural, social or political purposes, while there has been no real success stories in invented languages, but for some limited groups of enthusiasts who try to continuously overestimate number of speakers, prestige, use, etc. So, if the objective is to speak a common language in the European Union (and not “to unite the world” or “to speak the easiest language possible” or “to communicate with a lingua franca“, etc.), just like there was a clear objective of speaking a common, unifying language in Israel, maybe the correct answer is to select the most rational common language among those available for us Europeans. We can keep speaking English, or a combination of English-French-German, or any combination of any three EU official languages; but, for me, it’s a common European PIE we can speak as OUR language anywhere in Europe, not just a lingua franca or a combination of them, the best option to be a really united people of Europe.

Rhetoric (Wikipedia) is the art of harnessing reason, emotions and authority, through language, with a view to persuade an audience and, by persuading, to convince this audience to act, to pass judgement or to identify with given values. The word derives from PIE root wer-, ’speak’, as in MIE zero-grade wrdhom, ‘word’, or full-grade werdhom, ‘verb’; from wrētōr ρήτωρ (rhētōr), “orator” [built like e.g. wistōr (<*wid-tor), Gk. ἵστωρ (histōr), "a wise man, one who knows right, a judge" (from which 'history'), from PIE root weid-, 'see, know']; from that noun is adj. wrētorikós, Gk. ρητορικός (rhētorikós), “oratorical, skilled in speaking”, and fem. wrētorikā, GK ρητορική (rhētorikē). According to Plato, rhetoric is the “art of enchanting the soul”.

When related to Proto-Indo-European language revival, as well as in modern scientific research of any discipline, discussions are sometimes interesting in light of historical rhetoric, as they might get really close to some classical (counter-)argumentative resources, however unknown they are to their users…

Sophists taught that every argument could be countered with an opposing argument, that an argument’s effectiveness derived from how “likely” it appeared to the audience (its probability of seeming true), and that any probability argument could be countered with an inverted probability argument. Thus, if it seemed likely that a strong, poor man were guilty of robbing a rich, weak man, the strong poor man could argue, on the contrary, that this very likelihood (that he would be a suspect) makes it unlikely that he committed the crime, since he would most likely be apprehended for the crime. They also taught and were known for their ability to make the weaker (or worse) argument the stronger (or better).

So, for example, if people might generally think that evolution is very likely to have occured, because of the scientifical data available, one only has to say something like “God put those proofs there to confound people and prove their faith“. And, even if there is no single reason to give why that person is entitled to interpret the Bible that way, and to determine what ‘God thought’ when ‘inventing proofs of a false evolution’, in fact there is no need to give rational arguments: this very likelihood of evolution is in itself a proof of how good God is in cheating us…

Statistics was a discipline mostly unknown to sophists, but I’m sure they more or less imagined the typical bell curve that population beliefs and opinions follow. If interpreted the other way round, one could say that the more an idea is believed by people, the more likely is that someone will come along with another, competing one. In fact, that’s natural evolution, too: without that universal trend that life has to differentiate itself from the normal, matter would have never changed and get more and more complicated…

That trend is observed in research, too, as man is obviously another animal and its intelligence another natural feature subjected to the evolutive machinery of nature. That’s why Occam’s razor is never a sufficient argument to end a research field or hypothesis: you have e.g. Gimbutas’ theories (or Renfrew’s, if you like) - even though obviously not completely proven hypothesis -, about some prehistoric speakers being successful in their conquests and migrations through Eurasia, which infers with logic that what happend with Indo-European languages expansion is what has almost always happened in the known history of language expansion, using the most probable extrapolation they can with the facts we know. But you will still find competing hypothesis about an unlikely millennium-long, peaceful spread and mix of languages through and from Europe or Asia, based on some controversial facts and a great part of imagination. And, even if such theories are far away from what can generally be considered rational, they will certainly find supporters; and it’s not bad that such unlikely ideas emerge: science is built up thanks to some of such marginal ideas which eventually prove true; apart from the million ones that prove false and disappear, and some dozens that are sadly able to remain, like homeopathy or Esperanto-like conlanging, as I’ve said before. The same happens with the human body, which went through mutation obtaining lots of advantages, but at the same time dragging some genetic illnesses along…

About Proto-Indo-European research, it’s more or less straightforward which hypothesis and theories are considered generally accepted, and which ones minority views. Nevertheless, that doesn’t prevent renown experts from accepting some marginal hypothesis in some aspects of PIE reconstruction, while keeping the general view on other ones; neither does that prevent renown linguists and philologists to consider Proto-Indo-European, or comparative and historical grammar in general, an absurd work: the ex-Dean of a southern Spanish University, a Latin professor, deems PIE an “invention”; in his words, “from Lat. pater, Gk. pater, and Eng. father, we say there is a language that said what, ‘pater‘? pfff”; he obviously considers “language=written & renown language system”; the problem with that thought is that if PIE becomes spoken (i.e. written too) and renown, just as Old Latin became Classical Latin - instead of disappearing as the other Italic dialects - the whole reasoning is useless; so it’s also useless now. One of the most famous Indo-Europeanists in Spain, F. Adrados (e.g. marginal supporter of Etruscan as an IE language) and Bernabé (e.g. marginal supporter of the Glottalic theory, I think), even if dedicated to Indo-European reconstruction, deemed PIE revival - in some news in Spanish newspaper El Mundo - a “uthopia“, but considered at the same time possible that Greek and Latin (respectively) became EU’s official language: it’s not that they don’t consider speaking PIE impossible, but only that there are “better” alternatives: better, I guess, for Romance or Greek speakers or philologists…

About Proto-Indo-European language revival for Europe, thus, it is difficult to ascertain if it is the most rational choice, as it is to ascertain if liberal thoughts are more rational than conservative ones. I have lived in other countries within the European Union, and have visited other parts of Spain where the spoken language is not Spanish; from that experience, the different attitudes I’ve found are overwhelming: when you speak in English or German anywhere in Europe, the conversation is everything but fluent; also, if you speak English in the UK, German in Germany, French in France, or Czech in Czechia, even mastering quite well the regional language, you’ll never get the same reaction as if a Catalan (from a Catalan-speaking region) speaks Spanish in, say, Galicia (a Galician-Portuguese speaking region), as both use a language (Spanish) common to both of them. That was also the idea behind the first Esperanto out there, probably Volapük, and it has been the idea behind every conlang trying to be THE International Auxiliary Language since then; and none has succeeded. That was also the idea behind Hebrew revival in Israel, for speakers of a hundred different languages living in the same territory: they had other modern, common languages to choose instead of an ancient, partially incomplete, and “difficult” (in Esperantist terms) one, too, and it succeeded.

Latin use in Europe, on the other hand, has been declining ever since the first Romance dialects developed, and had its latest offcial (i.e. legal) use in Europe, apart from the Catholic church, at the beginning of the XX century in Hungary - curiously enough, a non-Indo-European speaking country. Its revival has been proposed a thousand times since then, but has never recovered its prestige, as Germanic-speaking countries have taken the lead in Western Europe, and Slavic-speaking countries in the East. It is hard to explain now why English- or German- or Polish-speaking peoples should learn and speak again the language of the Romans and the Roman Empire, with which they have little history in common…

The rest of known language revivals, like Cornish or Manx, or even e.g. the partial revival (”sociolect”) of Katharevousa Greek, not to talk about the so-called “revivals” - in fact “language revitalizations” - of Basque, Catalan, Breton, Ukrainian, etc. have been just regionally oriented language (or prestige + vocabulary) revivals with cultural or social purposes.

So, is Proto-Indo-European revival a “correct”, or “sufficiently rational” option, given the known facts? As an opinion, it is neither correct nor incorrect, as being “Indo-Europeanist for Europe” is like being leftist or conservative in politics; just like supporting Hebrew revival wasn’t (a hundred years ago) “sufficiently rational” in itself, and controversy over its revival have never ended. But, the reasons behind PIE revival can and should be questioned, as the reasons behind a conlang adoption (i.e. the concepts of “better” and “easier” when applied to language) can and should be critically reviewed. In Proto-Indo-European, it refers - I think - to two main questions:

1) Did Proto-Indo-European exist? i.e. can we confidently consider any proto-language something different from especulation or mere unproven hypothesis? The answer is “it depends”. Proto-Indo-European was probably a language spoken by prehistorical people, as probable as any generally accepted scientific theory we can support without experimental proofs, like theories on the Universe, its creation or development: they might prove wrong in the future, but - following the necessary abstraction and common sense - it’s not difficult to accept most individual premises and facts surrounding them. That migh be said about proto-languages like Proto-Slavic (ca. 1 AD), Proto-Germanic (ca. 1000 BC), Proto-Greek or Proto-Indo-Iranian (ca. 2000 BC) or Proto-Indo-European, especially about its European or North-Western subbranch (ca. 2500-2000 BC); on the other hand, however, about proto-languages like ‘Proto-Eurasiatic’ or ‘Proto-Nostratic’, or ‘Proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian’, or ‘Proto-Thraco-Illyrian’, or ‘Proto-Indo-Uralic’, or ‘Proto-Italo-Celtic’ (or even Proto-Italic), or ‘Proto-Balto-Slavic’, and the hundred other proposed combinations, it is impossible to prove beyond doubt if and when they were languages at all.

2) Is the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction trustable enough to be “revived”? i.e. can we consider it a speakable language, or just a linguistic theoretical approach? Again, it depends, but here mostly mixed with political opinions. In light of Ancient Hebrew - a language that ceased to be spoken 2500 years ago -, “revived” as a modern language introducing thousands of newly coined terms - many of them from Indo-European origin -, to the point that some want to name it “Israeli”, instead of “Hebrew” (as we call MIE “European” or “Europaio” instead of “Indo-European”), I guess the answer is clearly yes, it’s possible: in any possible case, Indo-European languages have a continuated history of more than 4000 years, and modern terms need only (in most cases) a sound-law adjustment to be translated into PIE. Also, in light of the other proto-languages with a high scientifical basis and a similar time span, like Proto-Uralic, Proto-Semitic or Proto-Dravidian, there is no possible comparison with Proto-Indo-European: while PIE is practically a fully reconstructed and well-known language without written texts to ‘confirm’ our knowledge, the rest are just experimental (mainly vocabulary-based) reconstructions. There are, thus, proto-languages and proto-languages, as there are well-known natural dead languages and poorly attested ones; PIE is therefore one of the few ones which might be called today a real, natural language, like Proto-Germanic, Proto-Slavic or Proto-Indo-Aryan.

However, anti-Europeanists (or, better, anti-Indo-Europeanists for the European Union) won’t find it difficult to say a simple “a proto-language is not enough to be revived, as Ancient Hebrew was written down and PIE wasn’t”, thus disguising their sceptic views on the politics behind the project with seemingly rational discussion. While others will also state, in light of our clear confrontation with conlangs, that “proto-language is nothing different from a conlang”, thus disguising their real interest in spreading their personal desire that a proto-language be similar to a conlang. One only has to say: “Classical Latin couldn’t be reconstructed by comparing Spanish, French and Italian” - when, in fact, the question should be something like “could the common, Late Vulgar Latin, be reconstructed with a high degree of confidence, having just the writings of the first mediaeval romance languages?” The answer is probably a simple “yes,and quite well”, until proven the contrary, but by expressing the first doubt one can easily transform the possible-reconstruction argument in an apparently unlikely one; enough to convince those who want to be convinced…

Thus, whereas some people consider PIE a natural language, confidently reconstructed, but impossible to speak today because of political matters, others just consider it another invention, nothing different from Esperanto, while Esperantist talk about it as a “worse” or “more difficult” alternative to it: you could nevertheless find all opinions mixed together when it comes to destructive discussions, as the objective is not to defend an own rational and worked idea, but simply to destroy the appearance (or likelihood, in sophistic terms) of the rival’s idea. Be it anti-Europeanism, anti-Indo-European-reconstrution or anti-everything-else-than-Esperanto, you don’t have to defend your position: just repeat your known anti- cliches, and you’ve “won”. Apparently, at least.

Cicero noted what Greek rhetors already knew before about usual debates, and how arguments should be made and countered so that no idea is left accepted. In that sense, discussions were (and are) generally so unnecessary, that the Socratic Method seems to be still the best philosophical approach to discussions, even those concerning scientifical (i.e. “most probable”) facts: Instead of arriving at answers, non-expert (and often expert) discussion is used to break down the theories others hold, not “to go beyond the axioms and postulates we take for granted” and obtain a better knowledge, as Greek philosophers put it, but just to destroy what others build up.

So, for example, we might get these general rules to counter any argument, even if it’s not only based on opinions, but also on generally accepted facts:

1) Demonstrate the falseness of a part of the rival’s argument; then, infer the falseness of the whole reasoning. For example, let’s say Gimbutas’ view is out-dated, or that we at Dnghu included something considered nowadays ‘wrong’ in our grammar: then PIE revival is also mistaken; nothing more to explain. Or, let’s say that Hebrew revival is not “equal” to a proto-language revival, and that therefore the comparison is ‘false’ - even if comparisons are there to compare similar cases, not “equal” cases, which would be absurd - then, the whole PIE revival project is ‘equivocal’ or ‘absurd’. That’s the view about PIE revival you can find in some comments made on American blogs out there.

2) You can also confirm a part of your rival’s argument, and then, by doing it, carry that argument to its extreme, to the extent that the consequences of it are intolerable, and the paroxism completely distorts your rival’s argument. That’s more or less what I usually do when confronting conlanging as a real option for the European Union, by saying “OK, let’s adopt the ‘better’ and ‘easier’ language: first Esperanto, then the “better” and “easier” Esperanzo, then Lojban, then Pilosofio, then Mazematio, etc. etc. ad infinitum” - so, as a conclusion, one might accept that “better” and “easier” are not actually good reasons to adopt a language; hence the arguments based on “better” and “easier” cliches are opinion, not ratio.

3) The most common now (and then, I guess, in spoken language) is personal discredit, by which you can infer that his argument is also corrupted. That is what some have made when lacking more arguments, calling me personally (and the Indo-European language Association in general ?!) a “racist”, “nazi”, or “KKK-like” group; or trying to discredit me personally by saying I don’t master the English language; or that I misspelled or ‘was wrong’ in reconstructing this or that PIE name or noun; or even just because I am “an amateur”, - thus suggesting we all have to be “language professionals” to propose a trustable PIE revival. A recent example of this is our latest Esperantist visitor, saying I am “close to being racist” because I propose PIE for the EU - thus obviously inviting readers to identify “language=race”, saying that “I propose one language = I propose one race = I am a racist”, and therefore if “I=racist” and “I propose PIE revival” => “PIE=x”. The whole reasoning is nonsense, but he is not the first - and won’t be the last - educated individual to say (and possibly believe) that…

4) The fourth is actually only a minor method derived from the third, used in desperate cases, which consists on taking a sensible, emotional example of the consequences of the generalization of the rival’s argument, to demonstrate the moral baseness of the one who defends it; then, if he is discredited, his argument is corrupted, too [see point 3]… That is what some desperate people do when saying that PIE revival for the EU is “bad” (or “worse”) for non-IE-language-speakers like Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, Basque or Maltese peoples. In fact, anyone who had taken a look at our website, or had made a quick search about me, would have found that I began this project of PIE revival to defend European languages (at least minority languages, as national or official languages are already well protected) against the European Union’s English officious imperium and English-German-French official triumvirate. Also, if we left PIE revival, only some languages (the official, i.e. national ones, 25 today) would get EU support, while the rest just die out or resist with some regional or private support. With Modern Indo-European, on the other hand, there will only be one official language supported by the European Union, and the rest really equal in front of each other and the Union, be it English, Maltese, Basque, Saami or Piedmontese. Nowadays, English is the language spoken in institutions, Maltese has an official status before the EU, while Saami is official in its country, Basque is only official in its territory, and Piedmontese, Asturian, Breton, and the majority of EU regional languages are only privately and locally defended. Nevertheless, one only has to say “supporting Indo-European is what Nazis did, PIE revival is racist and wants to destroy non-Indo-European peoples and cultures”; and, there you are: nothing proven, nothing reasoned, but the simplest and most efficient FUD you can find to counter the thousand arguments in favour of this revival project.

However unnecessary and unfruitful it might seem, I still discuss - or even directly look for debate -, because I get a benefit of such long, active pauses from my study, unlike those tiny passive TV- or radio-pauses I insert between study hours, especially in these stressful exam periods. Indeed I can find something to discuss in any website at any time, but I’m generally interested in debating these language political options. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to understand why some people get mad (at me, the project, or even the association or the whole world), when in fact taking part on any discussion is freely accepted by all of us, and it’s me who put new ideas and proposals on the table, and the others who just have to criticize them…

Something valuable for life I learned from psychology (possibly the only thing…) is about Chomsky’s reaction on Skinner’s comments: my professor (close to Freudian psychoanalysis), who told us the story - I hope I got it well, I cannot find it out there - thought it was Skinner who “won” the debate, by answering to Chomsky’s criticism, who in turn had criticized Skinner’s work, Verbal Behaviour, for his “scientistic”, not scientific, concept of the human mind. In fact, the younger Chomsky had just applied science to psychology (a need that psychology still has), simplifying the understanding of mind with a strict cognitive view, and criticizing some traditional views that psychologists accepted as ‘normal’. Skinner and those who followed his behavioural school of thought overreacted, mostly based on the belief that Chomsky’s reasons were against their lives and professional options, when in fact reason and opinion are in different planes. Chomsky, instead of entering the flame (yes, trolling existed back in the 60’s) did nothing. When asked years later, about why he didn’t reply as expected to all that criticism, he just said: “they missed the point”; he said what he had to say, criticized what he wanted, proposed an alternative, and left the discussion. And still, even by not answering, cognitive revolution provoked a shift in American psychology between the 1950s through the 1970s from being primarily behavioral to being primarily cognitive.

If you want to debate about opinions - be it PIE revival, Europeanism, general politics, Star Trek or the sex of angels -, entering into unending criticisms and personal attacks, that’s OK; but you should do it if and when you want, as I only do it because I obtain something beneficial, having a good time, laughing a little bit, relaxing from study, thinking about interesting reasons that might appear for or against my views or ideas, etc. And you should do it to get something in (re)turn, be it that same stress relief I (and most people) get, or other personal or professional benefits whatsoever. If not, if maybe you are getting more stressed trying to “convince” me or others, to “make us change our minds” with great one-minute ‘reasons’, by discussing directly your opinions as if they were ‘true‘, then you are clearly “missing the point” (using Chomsky’s words) with these discussions, and - as our latest Esperantist commenter (Mr. Janoski) puts it - “losing your time”, “trying to understand” something…