I don’t agree with you when you call The Order of Malta the smallest European State

Yes, it was indeed more about writing an appealing title than a legal definition of the Order; I think historically they could (and want to) be seen as some kind of a “Government in exile” since they lost their last territory many years ago. In any case, I didn’t want to write a sentence like “a European sovereign subject of international law” in the title, so I decided to describe it later in the text. Given that it certainly is an anomaly under international law, I guess we have to use some freedom when trying to describe it in less words; and “State” seemed (and seems) to me more appropriate than “association” or “organization”, which fits more (following your example) the International Committee of the Red Cross.

I know Spaniards are more reluctant when the matter is about to call the inhabitants of Gibraltar a “people”

I guess it depends on who you ask. For me – and I guess for most of us – Gibraltar is a British territory with a people, it’s nonsense to deny it. Although for historical and (mainly) strategic reasons, many Spaniards – as most citizens in the same situation, I guess – don’t like to have a dominion of a distant foreign country in the backyard… Such distrust will end when (and if) the European Union becomes something more than a big customs union, hopefully mediated by the adoption of Modern Indo-European

Excuse me Carlos, but I don’t agree with you when you call The Order of Malta the smallest European State. A state must possess three constitutive elements: a governement, a territory and a population. The Order has neither a territorium (embassies are at most a “functional” territory, not a true one) nor a true population (only members of an association; I know Spaniards are more reluctant when the matter is about to call the inhabitants of Gibraltar a “people”!). The Order is only a direct subject of international law; if we’d follow your reasoning, then the International Committee of the Red Cross should be called a state too!
Nevertheless, it is really a good news that the new grand Master kindly accepted the grammar (to which I contributed for a very little bit….)!
I avail myself of this opportunity to tell to “Indo-Europeanists” that I have ended on my blog the compilation of the lexical data of sambahsa into a French-sambahsa dictionary. It represents the “best of” of my searches since more than three years. On the contrary to Europaio, sambahsa accepts a lot of loanwords. But the IE elements still represents the core of the lexicon (may be half the everyday vocabulary), so it shows that IE can at least serve as a basis for a modern language. Sambahsa could perhaps be used as a gateway to Europaio…
And thanks for your on-line English-IE dictionary, which helps me sometimes to complete Sambahsa (last example: sleubric for “slippery”).

Khauris nawehrg!

Olivier Simon
Ph.D in public international law.