Indo-European languages of Europe

I’ve recently read in some forums about Indo-European revival being a “new IAL” with ‘no chances against Esperanto‘.

The objective of Europaio is - and was - never to substitute Esperanto or to undermine the Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, etc. communities. We are very respectful of the long tradition of IALs in building worldwide communities around international, ‘neutral’ languages, for our society to become more democratic, more jointly liable, or whatever those groups may seek.

However, things should always be clear to everyone when comparing Indo-European with such languages:

• Esperanto is an artifcial language invented by one man, as there are hundreds of them. Europaio (as a modern Indo-European) is a unique, natural, reconstructed language.
• Esperanto hasn’t been ever spoken but for some erudite meetings. Indo-European was spoken by a prehistoric community, and its dialects are now spoken by half the world’s population; also, many classical language students in European Universities have attended (Proto-)Indo-European courses as obligatory subjects to obtain their degrees.
• Esperanto’s aim a century ago was to be spoken as the only IAL; some are still waiting. Europaio’s not-so-ambitious aim is to become the EU’s common language, to help further integration into a single country; we haven’t even begun to promote it, and our idea is quickly dismissed by some.
• Esperanto’s clones - or, better, Volapük clones - are infinite, and the newer are supposedly better than the older ones. Indo-European (or better late PIE) was and is only one, although different approaches can be made to its writing and syntax system - as with any other natural language.
• Esperanto was made by a conlang fan, as all other constructed languages. We don’t see Indo-European revival as a cultural experiment, or as a personal hobby - we rely, in fact, on more than two centuries of IE studies; we think Europaio will match the European linguistic needs for real cohesion, and will mean an overwhelming social, economic, educational and political integration movement if it succeeds. We are far from considering all this a game or a hobby.

The first motto we thought about to promote Europaio some months ago was “Europaio’s not another Esperanto!” (like “GNU’s not Unix!”), but I personally disliked it because it seemed to undermine the efforts of whole communities of well-minded conlang-supporters; it was eventually discarded because (surprisingly) many people hadn’t ever heard about Esperanto, so misunderstandings based on linking artificial languages with Europaio weren’t so likely as we firstly thought.

Now I cannot make a Google search for “Europaio” without finding it related to other five-or-ten-minute-grammar’s conlangs, and without reading some comments criticizing our lack of support for our ‘not-so-powerful conlang’, and I just cannot believe that such comments come mainly from conlangers and others who haven’t even read our project.

We are not politically involved, as we wanted to represent an apolitical (indeed Pro-European) linguistic movement, but this kind of initial reactions are making us seriously reflect on becoming politically active at a European level, whether as a provisional platform, as an association or even as a EU-only political party.

I hope those communities realize that what we are doing is trying to unite locally to act globally, and not vice-versa, and thus we are not confronted, but just acting in two very different levels. We have certainly proposed an IAL project (Sindhueuropaiom), just as some of them have proposed Esperanto as EU’s language, but both proposals are mainly theoretical and probably out of each other’s scope.

Our Europaio proposal is as real as the EU, and theirs as utopic as a worldwide (private) agreement over adopting a one-man’s language. No matter how big and strong their historic communities are, these facts will not change; they can accept it and maybe collaborate with us or others in IE revival - or just stay aside -, or they can foolishly try to undermine our efforts, thus unnecessarily confronting two very different worlds.

[By the way, we usually compare - and criticize - Esperanto and other conlangs, as we do with English, English-French, English-French-German, Multilingualism and Latin, because they all have been proposed for EU's future language policy. Europaio is not really opposed to any of those languages, though, unless they compete for the role of EU's main language]

I was thinking about the conversation I am going to have with the person responsible of a University Department of Classical Languages. And all of a sudden the most obvious question I could face arose: why? A simple question deserves a simple and clear answer, and I wanted it written down here, too; so I came to the main implicit reasons hypothesis under which we work:

1. The uprising and fall of civilizations is a random event, which depends on too many factors to be completely ascertained by any academic discipline.
2. The more powerful a country is (and the richer its citizens), the greater its scientific and cultural investments and achievements.
3. At any given time and community, the language used as lingua franca is the one spoken by the most powerful (or influential) Nation, as others struggle to catch up with its knowledge.

You may believe that English is accepted as the main lingua franca today because it is easier or prettier than other important languages (say Chinese or German). You may also be one of those who think that it was because of some important values the Brittish Empire had and exported (say Constitution or liberalism) that English-speaking countries (especially the US) were to lead today, while others - as Latin or Arab countries - lack those values; such values would have been related, then, not only to wealth and modernization, but also to some English underlying democratic substrate.

Now, think about the same past role of languages like Greek, Latin or French - or even Chinese, Persian, Arabian, Russian or German in its surrounding territories -; if you still believe that, then you probably won’t see the point in adopting Europaio as our common language in the EU and Indo-European as the world’s main language - I certainly wouldn’t.