Indo-European languages & 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…

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A recent comment on the post about the so-called Grin Report – which explained the benefits of having one common language for Europe -, gives (unintentionally, I guess) still more reasons to support a natural language like Proto-Indo-European over Esperanto and similar inventions:

Le meilleur est l’ennemi du bien, ‘The best is the enemy of the good’; Ever since Ido tried to ‘improve’ on Esperanto, many other constructed languages have come along, but none has achieved anything near to what Esperanto has accomplished

I agree. No artificial (‘constructed’) language has achieved what Esperanto has, and no conlang is “better” than Esperanto, because “better” in conlangs is indeed enemy of “good”, as it happens partly in social networks, both ’systems’ (to call the thousand Esperantos something) based on concepts of “popularity ranking” and supposed “number of followers/supporters”: the more popular your system is, the more attention you will be able to attract – no matter how stupid it might be from a logical point of view, it is all a question of ‘relevance’…

In Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, on the other hand, “better” is indeed better than “good”, as a better reconstruction brings the language we want to speak nearer to how it was actually spoken 4.500 years ago by Proto-Indo-Europeans.

The difference between them, to put it easy, is that some of you might say “we are going to call the sun ’suno’ in Esperanto”, while others could say “we are going to call the sun ’soleil’ in Ido”, and so on and on, for ever and ever. The sun had only one name (maybe two) in Proto-Indo-European, and most (old) dialects show its derived term; but they might also show derivations from different original variants, or the original form might be still obscure. That’s why we need to improve our knowledge in Indo-European dialects and Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, just in case we need to replace the (now) common PIE reconstructed *sāwel with a different root, say *sōwl, or a source near to Gmc. zero-grade *sulnos, etc., because of a different Vedic Sanskrit or Tocharian attested word… In any case, we are saying “sun” as Proto-Indo-Europeans did, but it might be more correct to use a variant deemed nearer to the original PIE language, instead of what we use today. Therefore, better is better than good; but just good is also all right in PIE reconstruction for a modern Indo-European language of Europe.

I guess one has to undergo some kind of difficult abstraction to understand this, as many Esperantists don’t seem to get the point: maybe they aren’t always opened to stop speaking (or, better, stop defending) their ‘language’, while at the same time trying others to begin learning it. I can understand the Esperantist reticence to dismiss their wrongly-directed past efforts and hopes, but the time and work already wasted learning or supporting Esperanto won’t be recovered. They still have, though, the opportunity to make good use of their time and wish of a common language for Europe in the future: they only have to take the right decision, not taking on account past mistakes.

there are more than 30,000 book titles in Esperanto! And Esperanto has been around for more than 120 years! Most of the other attempts at a constructed language have fallen by the wayside.

I agree too. Every single conlang apart from Esperanto has failed. And I should add Esperanto has obviously failed as an international language, as you cannot seriously call “international” a ‘language’ that is spoken by some dozens of people in an ‘International Esperanto Convention’ once a year… I am sure more people are able to speak ‘languages’ like Sindarin or Klingon in a regional Lord of the Rings or Star Trek convention anywhere in the world, than Esperantists actually do speak Esperanto in their yearly ‘International Conventions’.

Anyway, entering in your “great numbers” argument, if that code called Esperanto was created in some hours by an illuminated ophtalmologist a 120 years ago, I don’t see how it can compete with a natural language like Proto-Indo-European, derived from an older prehistoric language, spoken for centuries, older than the oldest civilizations of Europe, derived into a thousand dialects still spoken today, and which has been studied and its reconstruction improved by expert linguists for more than 200 years.

To compare ‘number of book titles’, please do a quick search with Google and Google Scholar to see how many scientific research papers and books have been written about Proto-Indo-European, and how many centres and universities have professors teaching Proto-Indo-European to thousands of students each year, and then we can compare the same numbers about your inventions – you can even compare it with the whole number of papers and books which deal with all conlangs, not only Esperanto, if you want…

Also, if Esperanto is (in your words) the most successful conlang in history, and if, after 120 years of being such a great success, there are only (supposedly) 30.000 book titles – you can see I accept your inflated numbers, I don’t care anymore about veracity in Esperantist inventions, it would be a total nonsense to drive the discussion to your imaginary world of ‘facts’ about your ‘language’ – and (supposedly) some thousands of speakers in the world – while Proto-Indo-European, whose revival as a spoken language hasn’t been proposed until two years ago, has already more publications and actual speakers, most of them expert linguistis and philologists.

So I don’t get your point on the advantages of learning Esperanto at all: maybe you Esperantists are still working on a ‘language’ that only you Esperantists want to learn to be able to speak with each other only, like some kind of a secret, super-dooper code only you understand – but, indeed, so easy that you cannot expect to speak without being understood by others… If so, maybe it’s time for some of you practical Europeans to get rid of this ‘art’ called conlanging, if your aim is really to speak a common European (or even international) language, and begin thinking about learning and speaking a common, natural language like Proto-Indo-European, that cannot be “substituted” by other ‘language’ inventions, however ‘better’ or ‘easier’ they might be considered by their fans…

A similar fate awaits Indo-European, which, in its attempt to be more “naturalistic,” has actually become more difficult to learn, with its four conjugations of the verb, for example.

First of all, we never said it is easy, as, in fact, Indo-European is far more difficult than Esperanto and other wrongly-called ‘languages’ formed by simple invented rules+vocabulary, you are right – my nephew says “pa” and “ma” when she wants something: English is more difficult than her ‘language’, so should I write my post in it, and create a group to promote it, only because she and other kids think a “ma & pa” language code is enough to be called ‘language’ and to communicate everything they want to others…?

Following your argument, I have to say Indo-European could probably be considered more difficult than other real, natural languages like English or French. However, you miss two very important points, showing you – like many Esperantists which repeat such perennial equivocal arguments until exhaustion – strive to see the project as “just another Esperanto”, thus perpetuating your mistakes and misconceptions about language and peoples, and possibly the mistakes and misconceptions of others who might read your ‘reasons’:

1) There is no such “attempt to be more naturalistic“: Proto-Indo-European was a natural, spoken language, and it evolved into different dialects, which are the ancestors of modern Indo-European languages. We want to revive an old language, not to create a conlang; to put it easy for you again, we want to speak a real language, not to decide how we will call the sun, or how we will say sentences like “excuse me, can you speak Esperanto?”, that is, if we will prefer “escuso mi, cano tu spik Esperanto?” or an ‘easier’ or ‘better’ (?!) “pardoni me, poti ju parlo Esperanto?“, discussing which one of the thousand possible combinations of sounds is “easier”, or “more beautiful”, or “better”, or (to sum up) which one sounds less stupid for the future learner…

2) The fact that one language is considered ‘more difficult’ than other is in no way an obstacle to speak a language: that’s an important point you Esperantists miss the whole time, ever since the creation of your artificial monster. People began to speak Hebrew again – a modern version of the old, death language called Hebrew – because they wanted, even though your Polish idol was already promoting the “easy Esperanto” as the international language of the future at that very time. People throughout the world have said a big NO to seriously speaking absurd inventions like Volapük or Esperanto in the past 120 years because that’s people’s will. And people will decide if and when they want to speak Indo-European, no matter how “easy” or “difficult” it might be for them or for you.

The difference between Esperantists and Indo-Europeanists, I guess, is that you can spend your time learning how the grandmother of most modern languages was (and mother of some Classical languages, like Sanskrit, Latin or Greek), trying to speak nearly as Proto-Indo-Europeans spoke, waiting to see if the Indo-European language revival has success in the European Union – and knowing that, if it doesn’t succeed, you will still be far better of for learning any modern Indo-European language -; or you can get stuck in your wrong ideas about your ‘party’ or ‘group’ being “right” in trying to speak the ‘best language in the world’ or ‘the easiest language‘, learning a mix of grammatical rules + words that one man or a group of people have imagined they can call ‘language’…

But don’t be afraid, these reasons won’t convince most of you Esperantists and ambitious IAL-conlangs searchers; most of you will keep insisting in speaking your successful creations, that’s normal and people will always have a reason to speak Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Latino sine flexione, and any other ‘historical’ self-made one-minute crap they can find or create: This is a) partly due to Zamenhof’s sad marketing success in convincing other people to call his creation a “language”, and b) partly due to the fact that people necessarily follow the Universal Law of Persistence of Error, and no matter how absurd their old positions might reveal themselves after some time, there will always be a reason to follow the mistaken idea, because of e.g. ‘history’, ‘tradition’, ‘proud’, ‘group pressure’, etc. or the uttermost direct and voluntary ignorance.

If this Universal Law happened and happens with the latest and best peer-reviewed scientifical papers, and I see it everyday in the newest editions of important books on Biochemistry or Physiology, what can we expect from those who share an extravagant idea – the splendid ‘conlanging aiming to achieve the “perfect IAL”‘ idea – which is for Linguistics, if compared to Medicine, like a bad version of homeopathy…?

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I’ve added some new pairs which seem to work well – but for the Thai version, which gives usually an error message.

Catalan and Polish languages are now translated automatically, as there is no need to copy and paste the text. New languages include Danish, Persian, Ukrainian, Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Hebrew, as well as experimental Latin and Esperanto options.

Remember you can ask for a translator that works with any language pair included in the English one, although some non-English alternatives include very (very) bad translations.

The Spanish version has been changed to include the Spanish-Catalan language pair, offered by Gencat.

The problem of non-English languages into other languages from InterTrans remains unsolved, as, when it deals with UTF-8, the output shows wrong character processing. If you have any idea on how to correct this (not including the changing of the character set…), please share!

Thanks to all for your comments and posts.

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Popularity: 17% [?]

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.

Technorati Tags: traducción, translation, Spanish, English, German, French, Italian, español, inglés, alemán, francés, italiano, français, allemand, italien, espagnol, Deutsch, Französisch, Englisch, Spanisch, Italienisch, Indo-European, Indo-European Grammar, Europaio, Dnghu, grammar, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European phonology, Indo-European morphology, Indo-European syntax, Indo-European grammar, Indogermanisch, Indo-européen, indoeuropeo, Indo-Europees, Indoeuropejski, Indo-Europeu, indoeuropeiska, Urindogermanisch, Sprache, langue, proto-indo-europeen, protoindoeuropeo, praindoeuropejski, fonologia, morfologia, morphologie, phonologie, sintaxis, grammatica, gramatica, latin, griego, sánskrito, germánico, celta, itálico, micénico, céltico, indoiranio, indoario, iranio, persa, báltico, eslavo, baltoeslavo, lusitano, frigio, celtíbero, ebook, Proto-Indo-European language, Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European grammar, Proto-Indo-European phonology, Proto-Indo-European morphology, Proto-Indo-European syntax, Europe, Europa, European Union, Europäische Union, Union européenne, Unión Europea, Unione europea, Uniao Europeia, europäisch, europeiska, europea, europeo, europeen

Popularity: 19% [?]

The two introductory sections of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, the main work of the Indo-European Revival Association, has been translated into Spanish as Gramática del indoeuropeo moderno.

The book is, as always, licensed under GFDL – CC-by-sa, so that everyone can copy, redistribute, modify, etc. the work and indeed translate it into any possible language, and then edit and/or publish it.

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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Popularity: 8% [?]

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.

Technorati Tags: Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European grammar, grammar, syntax, phonology, morphology, PIE grammar, Proto-Indo-European grammar, Proto-Indo-European morphology, Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, Indo-European etymology, Indo-European book, indoeuropeo, gramatica indoeuropea, etimologia, sintaxis, fonologia, morfologia, protoindoeuropeo, lengua indoeuropea, lingua indoeuropea, ebook, libro, reference, referencia, enciclopedia, europaio, Indo-Europees, Indo-Europese, Indogermanisch, Indoeuropäisch, Indogermanische Sprache, Sprache, Urindogermanisch, Urindogermanische Sprache, Indo-européen, Indo-euroéenne, langue, langue Indo-européenne, Indo-Europeu, indo-europeia, proto-indo-européen, proto-indo-européenne, indoeuropejski, praindoeuropejski, indoeuropeisk, indoeuropeiska, protoindoeuropeiska, indoevropejsk, indoevropejska, Europa, Europe, European Union, Union Europea, Union européenne, Unione europea, Europäisch, Europäische Union, Unia, Unie, Evropa, Evropske, Europeisk, Europeiska, Latin, Greek, griego, Griechisch, traduction, translation, traduccion, traduzione, Spanish, English, español, inglés, italiano, Italian, Nederlands, inglese, français, French, France, UK, España, Spain, Inglaterra, Reino Unido, United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Deutschland, Deutsch, francés, italien, allemand, portugues, Portugal, Belgie, Belique, Swiss, Sweiz, Svizza, Italia, Polska, Polski, Czech, Russian, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Solresol, Latina, Latine, Lojban

Popularity: 15% [?]

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.

Technorati Tags: Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European grammar, grammar, syntax, phonology, morphology, PIE grammar, Proto-Indo-European grammar, Proto-Indo-European morphology, Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, Indo-European etymology, Indo-European book, indoeuropeo, gramatica indoeuropea, etimologia, sintaxis, fonologia, morfologia, protoindoeuropeo, lengua indoeuropea, lingua indoeuropea, ebook, libro, reference, referencia, enciclopedia, europaio, Indo-Europees, Indo-Europese, Indogermanisch, Indoeuropäisch, Indogermanische Sprache, Sprache, Urindogermanisch, Urindogermanische Sprache, Indo-européen, Indo-euroéenne, langue, langue Indo-européenne, Indo-Europeu, indo-europeia, proto-indo-européen, proto-indo-européenne, indoeuropejski, praindoeuropejski, indoeuropeisk, indoeuropeiska, protoindoeuropeiska, indoevropejsk, indoevropejska, Europa, Europe, European Union, Union Europea, Union européenne, Unione europea, Europäisch, Europäische Union, Unia, Unie, Evropa, Evropske, Europeisk, Europeiska, Latin, Greek, griego, Griechisch, traduction, translation, traduccion, traduzione, Spanish, English, español, inglés, italiano, Italian, Nederlands, inglese, français, French, France, UK, España, Spain, Inglaterra, Reino Unido, United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Deutschland, Deutsch, francés, italien, allemand, portugues, Portugal, Belgie, Belique, Swiss, Sweiz, Svizza, Italia, Polska, Polski, Czech, Russian, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Lojban

Popularity: 11% [?]

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.

Technorati Tags: Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Lojban, conlang, language, constructed language, artificial language, linguistics, international auxiliary language, IAL, Proto-Indo-European language, Indo-European studies, Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European, Europe, European Union, Esperantist, Volapük, language revival

Popularity: 12% [?]