Indo-European languages of Europe

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.

The Final Version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 1st Printed Edition, is ready for the Printer, after the Indo-European Revival News.

For more information on this release and the changes made since last version, please go to the Indo-European language Association.

The association has some collaborative websites prepared for volunteers ready to add some translated sections of the book, and also for experts and people interested in IE languages, to add information about the Proto-Indo-European language and its revival as a modern language within the European Union, namely Indo-European (in English), Indo-Europeen (en Français), Indogermanisch (auf Deutsch), indoeuropeo (in italiano), etc.

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I’ve recently received an email from a new reader who wanted to share with us “his language”, namely a ‘modernized Indo-European’, which he had been working on for very very long before we began our public work at the Indo-European Revival Association, and which he deems “a more modern version of our Indo-European“.

After telling him he was not the first who show up with such a project (there are at least one or two more out there in the Net), I told him very clearly what our opinion about IE is:

A) There are different schools about how to reconstruct the Proto-Indo-European language: those who make a main Satem-Centum distinction, those who talk about a very very old Indo-Hittite, those who (like us) distinguish a Graeco-Aryan dialect (or IE IIIa) and a Northern one (or IE IIIb), those who defend the existence of only one ‘original’ a-vowel, later colored, those who defend only 5 original cases (as we did before changing for a 7+1), those who talk about 9 or more laryngeals, and so on.

B) There are indeed different times for the reconstruction: the theory of the 3 main Stages let one reconstruct at least 2 languages (if we don’t take on account the highly hypothetical IE I or Early PIE), namely IE II or Middle PIE - which includes Proto-Anatolian and Pre-IE III -, and IE III or Late PIE, which is the one usually reconstructed. Also one could go still later in time and try to divide the (seemingly) two main dialects, the Northern or European Dialect (also IE IIIb) and the Southern or Graeco-Aryan Dialect (or IE IIIa): the problem with such a further division is that 1) Balto-Slavic dialects seem to be either in the middle of that classification, or at least within IE IIIb but very influenced by IE IIIa (due possibly to different contacts with Scythians, Persians, Greeks, etc.), and that 2) The IE IIIa (and thus Late PIE as a whole) may be better reconstructed than IE IIIb, as the former was attested earlier (in the form of Vedic Sanskrit and Mycenaean).

C) Also, there are many different ways to use a modern language system using an old language. For example, if we had to use Latin as a modern language, we could select different vocabulary (older forms, mediaeval and newer loans), different expressions (older syntax, newer modisms), etc. and there could be lots of schools defending more purism, more tradition, a complete renewal, etc.

If we sum up the aforementioned possibilities, and try to ascertain the number of possible outputs, one could conclude that there is no single Indo-European, but a hundred different combinations:

- Indo-Hittite with 3 laryngeals and without feminine, 5 noun-case declension, with Latin-only alphabet and Satem-Centum distinction in writing, OV syntax.

- Northern Dialect without laryngeals (with an -a), without augment in Aorist, with 8 (or 7+1) nominal cases, with dialectal Conditional and Passive, OV and VO mixed syntax.

- and so on…

Each one could have a different name, say ‘Bokmål’, ‘Nynorsk’, ‘Samnorsk’, ‘Riksmål’ ‘Høgnorsk’, etc., as the different Norwegian ‘languages’ or, better, language systems. But I think everyone would agree that, while the language may differ a lot from one system to another, the language spoken would still be the same, i.e. a very diffuse “Indo-European”, or (following the example above), a very diffuse “Norwegian” language.

There are a hundred different examples about how such internal and external tensions are usually dealt with, as with the unified Basque (Euskara Batua) opposed to its dialectal diversity, or the different Cornish language systems, or the Hebrew revival (with Semitic purists against modern influences), etc., not to talk about the inner and external tensions of ‘normal’ languages like Spanish or French, which are often subjected to “unifying-dividing” efforts - as e.g. the Asturian “language/dialect”, sometimes included as Spanish by Spanish philologists, sometimes not, always trying to include modern dialects like Argentinian, Mexican, etc. along with the ‘traditional’ dialects like Asturian-Leonese or Aragonese; or Francoprovençal with French, or Alemannic within High German (Hochdeutsch), and so on.

In any case, I think, there is a very clear line which separates all those language systems designed (more or less artificially) for a natural language, from artificial languages like Volapük, Solresol or Esperanto, which are inventions not distinguishable from Klingon, Sindarin or any secret language that anyone could have created at home when still a child.

One example I use with sceptics on PIE reconstruction could be mentioned here.

Proto-Indo-European is like the corrupted skeleton of a very old dinosaur: you can discuss whether such skeleton was actually this or that way, pertained to this or that species of dinosaurs, came from this or that hypothetical ancestor, and derived in those other dinosaurs this or that way, etc. You cannot, however, discuss (in a serious conversation) whether they lived with Noah, whether they didn’t exist at all because it’s a divine proof of our faith, or whether, unlike modern animals, they didn’t exist at all because we have no ‘real proof’ about it.

I will not discuss the implications of trying to draw a complete dinosaur from its bones only, as long as you don’t try to discuss the very existence of those bones, or try to compare our reconstruction of that dinosaur with your drawing of a dragon.Maybe your dragon is widely accepted as something useful, or beautiful, or even as something better than our drawing of the possible dinosaur behind those damaged bones; but please, let be serious to some extent, and don’t try to mix the Lord of the Rings or Star Trek with a manual of paleontology. Tolkien’s masterwork might be great, but it’s not ‘better’ or ‘easier’ (or whatever adjective you may apply) than the manual of paleontology; they just move in different dimensions.

As a conclusion, one may expect different modern language systems for Proto-Indo-European - some will be ‘easier’, some ‘purer’, some others ‘more modern’, etc. -, but still the language will be the same. The question is not whether such systems are possible (they obviously are), but whether this or that system is just an improvement made on the linguistic framework that contains the natural language behind it, or instead include random changes that a visionary (like Mr. Zamenhoff) wants to make to the natural skeleton of a language (or languages), hiding it as an improvement in, say, “usability”, “learning time”, “similarity with modern IE”, etc.

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Yes, we eventually decided to print some copies of our Indo-European Grammar - with public subsidies, we will be able to release some dozens in this first printed edition.

Our objetive was to translate version 2.x (now near 2.2) into Spanish, German and French, to post news in Modern Indo-European and to begin with the Syntax volume, but now the order has changed.

We plan to publish an improved edition (revised by Indo-European scholars), which will probably be called already version 3.x. We plan to include more information about IE dialects and about Proto-Indo-European syntax, and to make printed copies of it - it will be called probably A Grammar of Modern Indo-European.

Then we will try to begin publishing news and podcasts and translating texts in Modern Indo-European - it’s already time to begin writing and speaking in Indo-European!

And, if possible, we will dedicate some time before summer to develop a detailed syntax volume - but, as the different Indo-European languages of Europe share a similar syntax (at least an informal one), we don’t deem the use of the purer Proto-Indo-European syntax essential to begin using the language in Europe.

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Yes, here we are again with the same subject!

Not having enough with our ebooks and webs about our project, some Esperantists have written to us emails and even left their thoughts in our forum, still repeating the same reasons we have been hearing for a year, and also complaining about us competing with their ‘languages’! By the way, the forum is there obviously for Indo-Europeanists to collaborate, not for others to promote their inventions, however great they might think they are.

The concept of Modern Indo-European (or Proto-Indo-European language revival) and the concept of the thousand invented languages that are created as international auxiliary languages (like Esperanto) are obviously different, and shouldn’t be confused. I will try to enumerate the most evident differences:

1. Indo-European was a natural language, spoken in a prehistoric community, and has evolved in thousands of dialects, while conlangs are inventions - usually of one man, sometimes with collaborators.
2. Indo-European revival is about Europe, especially the European Union, and its multilingual population uniting under one common country, whilst IALs are about ‘uniting the world in peace’, or some kind of go ahead of a ‘Star Wars-like period‘ of the good people of the world uniting against the ‘Black Empire’, I guess.
3. Reconstructed languages’ revivals have succeeded (as Hebrew) or failed (as Coptic) - sometimes neither one nor the other (as Cornish) -, but artificial languages have never done more than attract hundreds of well-minded idealists.
4. Because of those facts, one could imply that people just don’t like linguistic inventions - however arrogant some individuals may be about their advantages -, as they don’t usually like revolutions that change completely their societies, but, on the contrary, they like the own history and culture - see Basque, Catalan, Breton, Occitan, Welsh, … revivals -, and thus like evolutions which improve society without destroying the own.
5. Indo-European languages have near 3.000 million native speakers, i.e. half the world’s population, and near the other half learn IE languages; Proto-Indo-European has hundreds of thousands of learners, in the form of its old dialects (as Latin, Greek or Sanskrit), as well as a few thousand experts dedicated to its study; Esperanto has a very optimistic estimated (cogh cogh - estimated by who? how? which level of knowledge?- cogh) 1 million speakers.
6. Esperanto is supposedly easier to learn - yes, indeed, as it is very easy to speak. For example, I haven’t learnt Esperanto, but if I wanted to smoke in a meeting of Esperantists, I guess I could ask something like “estas tu lo fairo per mi?”, which would be like “is to you fire for me?“. If you speak (like me) Spanish and English, or maybe French and English, German and French, Polish and Latin, etc. you will understand that - and also something like “ist yu de foc fur mei?”, or maybe “haf du de ignis por mik?”, and a thousand more possible stupid combinations of different common words. However, doesn’t it sound too dumb to let one occulist fabricate a language for you, when you have natural alternatives?
7. Esperanto is “culturally neutral”. Yyyes, well, if you are Chinese or Japanese (or Arab or Iranian or Indian or Indonesian or…), I don’t think you will be able to understand such sentences as easy as we Europeans are; maybe because of that, the main Esperanto associations are founded in Romance-, Germanic- or Slavic-speaking populations. Indo-European, on the contrary, is not based on an individual culture (IE had never a culture of its own), religion, country, territory or even alphabet, but on a shared linguistic ancestor.
8. Some Esperantists say that spoken Indo-European is an invention, as PIE’s oldest syntax (that of Hittite inscriptions and Vedic Sanskrit/Ancient Greek compositions) will not be used for Modern Indo-European, but instead a more modern syntax will substitute it. So, are you Esperantists (and the like geeks) really complaining about Modern Indo-European being artificial, because it uses the Proto-Indo-European language with a modern Indo-European syntax?! I cannot believe it… Just in case you are serious, it is obvious that such ‘distorsions’ of old languages to fit modern needs or uses are in fact very common in language revivals; you only have to look around a little bit (viz. Hebrew, Basque, Breton, Modern Latin, etc.).
9. Some have even said that Esperanto (or Ido, or Volapük) has a “history” of a hundred years trying to bla bla… Wow! A hundred years?! Then I will learn Esperanto! No, really, I guess some of you just don’t know anything about Indo-European when you contact us: Indo-European studies began more than two centuries ago, and Indo-European languages have been spoken for more than 5 thousand years, so what is the point exactly in your inventions having a “history” of some years more or less?
10. Some also say that there are books and films in Esperanto, while IE has none. That’s true, but our project of IE revival exists since March 2006, and we will see how many films and books are written in MIE in a hundred years

I hoped some months ago that the the posts about Esperanto I & II were enough, at least to make Esperantists refrain from trying to convince us (if not to attract their attention to collaborate with us), but I think now that when some people accept an idea, however stupid it may seem now, they just make everything to defend it…

Anyway, I hope you all good luck in your tasks, but please, please, stop making us lose our time with your emails and posts - No, we don’t like inventions, and sorry, but we won’t return to the old alternatives, viz. English, Latin, French, Esperanto or any other old combination.

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We have received at Indo-European Language Revival Association an email suggesting us learning more about Esperanto, describing its advantages, and especially talking about the Grin Report, an expert study supposedly favoring Esperanto as the only language for the European Union. This mail comes probably from a reader of Spanish newspapers who read about recent news on Indo-European revival, who possibly didn’t read about our proposal, maybe because we use mainly English in our writings and he just can’t speak but Spanish and Esperanto…

I think that specially any study written about linguistic policy - in our outside the EU - before 2006 (i.e., before we made our proposal) is indeed not intended to support Esperanto over Indo-European, and that even present-day studies supporting the adoption of Esperanto are not - unless expressly doing so - against Indo-European, but just ignoring our project, thus invalidating almost any future use of it against us.

Here is an extract of the open letter sent to the European Parliament defending the adoption of one language for the EU - when it says Esperanto we will write Indo-European, and the Grin Report and the letter will still be saying the same…

We pay € 17 THOUSAND MILLION each year into the British economy!

Dear Member of Parliament,

October 2005 saw the publication of a particularly interesting report, accessible in French in PDF Format, by the Swiss Professor François Grin.

The most startling conclusion of the report is that, due to the current dominant position of the English language, the United Kingdom gains € 17-18 thousand million each year, which is more than three times the famous British rebate, or 1% of its GNP. In other words, each of the 394 million non-English-speaking citizens of the EU, including those from the poorest new Member States, are subsidising the British economy!

This amount comes from the sale of books and other goods relating to the English language, from the 700.000 people each year who go to Britain to learn English, as well as from the savings that stem from the neglect of foreign-language teaching in British schools. This does not account for all of the languagerelated economic transfers to the United Kingdom but for 75% of them, which the author sees as the fruit of the hegemony of English and not just of the demographic weight of the language itself.

François Grin who is a professor at the University of Geneva and a specialist in the economics of language, has released an extensive dossier in which he analyses the language policy of the European Union. The study was commissioned and published by the French Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école (High Council for School Evaluation) - an independent public body which evaluates and analyses the state of teaching in France.

The report poses the question “What would be the optimum choice for working languages in the European Union?

A more equitable system would save the EU at least € 25 thousand million annually!

The Swiss economist proposes a comparison between three possible scenarios:
1. English as the sole language,
2. multilingualism,
3. Esperanto Indo-European as an internal working language the EU institutions.

The third option, Esperanto Indo-European, comes out as the least expensive and most equitable, but Grin believes it is not currently viable because of the strong prejudices against Esperanto Indo-European based on simple ignorance. He believes, however, that it is strategically possible for a new generation, on two conditions:

• a sustained large-scale information campaign throughout the EU about language inequality and
  Esperanto Indo-European,
• the cooperation of all Member States in the campaign.

This could lead to net annual savings for the EU of approximately € 25 thousand million! “That is directly and manifestly to the advantage of 85% of the population of the 25 states”, Professor Grin claims.

Now do the same with the Grin Report itself and substitute “Esperanto” for Indo-European as the best option, and you will have a natural, democratic, culturally neutral and thus better language alternative for Europe than Esperanto, supported by previous economic and linguistic policy studies which didn’t take our alternative on account because they couldn’t.

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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]