Indo-European : European Union's National Language

It seems that, after some months of public standstill in our websites, people are showing again that they have been working hard backstage. 2012 will be a great year for those willing to learn (Late) Proto-Indo-European as a living language:

1) Mario has published a revision of his work, the Modern Indo-European learning course. He would like to thank readers and contributors, and we would like to remind you that you can collaborate with corrections and additions, by contacting him personally.

2) Fernando is still working on his temptative Syntax of Modern Indo-European. He has been creating a great, thorough and comprehensive work, full of bilingual examples, from the advances we have been able to read. And even though it must be published months later than expected, and possibly still months from now – since he is constantly revising and improving it -, it will certainly be worth the waiting…

3) A member has offered himself to translate the Grammar into French. If you would like to offer him some help, please contact us.

4) As you probably know, more than 3 years ago our account on PayPal was suddenly frozen, after receiving some money from members; it was “provisional”, until we showed “proofs” of our not-for-profit nature (which they hadn’t asked on registration, or for receiving money). Apart from the official documents that we sent them and that should have sufficed (Associations are not-for-profit in Spain, and Dnghu is one of the few that appear on the official National Registry of Associations), we have sent PayPal every possible document requested, and asked for more instructions to open again the account: After hours lost obtaining, scanning and sending every possible stupid “proof” you can imagine (for an account that might receive a maximum of some hundred dollars a year), they haven’t done so – just allowed us temporarily to take away the money received. Because of that, the membership of the Association has been almost impossible for everyone since 2009, and indeed regular payments were stopped, and just an initial fee requested; some recent members haven therefore been allowed to join officially, and to pay after we solve this issue.

After all these months, I have to agree with the people who hate PayPal for their service, and I guess we will have to create an account on Google Checkout or other similar but less known service. As you might infer, the payment for membership was always more a question of barrier to entry (“only those who are really interested in the Association will pay for membership”) than a financing issue for us – since we survive on free work and donations -; but this level of incompetence is unacceptable…

Also, after the improvements of 2012 in the development of the language, we certainly need to start thinking about organizing language courses and “congresses”, as well as other services for interested people. For such events, external payment cannot be just an option to complement donations, and we will need a professional and trustable payment service.

Your Indo-European Association team.

As promised, these are the newest developments of the Dnghu Association:

• The ‘experimental’ sketch for the first (self-)learning course of Modern Indo-European, by Mario Basile, has been published. While still in Alpha (very unstable) version, it is intended to promote and allow for collaboration on a learning course with an Assimil-like format. It will eventually be recorded in audio format, when the official, stable version is published. Such a date is therefore dependent on the collaboration, i.e. additions and corrections, that we receive from readers.
• We have updated Fernando López-Menchero’s Proto-Indo-European lexicon of the Indo-European grammar, version 5.0, releasing the files in PDF formats and revising the data from the automatic dictionary-translator, which is now also available in Latin (for precision of the English meaning) and in German, which contains machine translations of the original English words.
• After some complaints about the corrupted nature of our published version of Pokorny’s Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (due to the addition of doubtful etymologies and cognates), we have taken the original document and processed it for the automatic dictionary-translator software. It is now available as the original German and the translated English versions.
• We have also added Pokorny’s dictionary of Proto-Indo-European roots as WebHelp files for online reference in the original German and in the translated English versions.
• Share and Like buttons for Facebook, Twitter, Google and other social networks and sharing websites have been added to all websites. Even though some of the websites where the buttons appear won’t be interesting to share, for the moment this automatic addition is the easiest and quickest way to add that functionality to the whole website.
• We will probably (temporarily) close the Indo-European languages portal Wiki (as well as the other Wikis in the different languages) for edition, leaving it as is (waiting for future uses), given that only a few people have shown interest in working on it, and that it is constantly being attacked by spam bots and spammers.

Your Indo-European language team.

Because of some complaints about the high price of the new printed edition of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, we have reduced it to the minimum possible for sales in Amazon, as some of you have already noticed, judging from the increase in sales.

The previous price was necessary to include CreateSpace’s traditional distribution service, as already explained, but we have to agree that a 50% increase in price is excessive for a ‘service’ whose conditions and benefits remain mostly unknown to us (and to most publishers in Europe).

Consequently, we will strive to do the promotion and traditional distribution job ourselves, although it will probably remain a book for online sale, because of its continuously developing nature.

Apart from that, we are still adding new formats to read and download this new edition of the grammar: the MOBI format for Kindle and other reading devices is already available, and we are going to release CHM files for download, WebHelp and FlashHelp for online reading soon.

Also, automatic translations of the book will be made available, depending on the time we can dedicate to the task of translating and publishing the translations in different formats.

In the near future, apart from the planned short learning course and the Modern Indo-European syntax, it is also planned to develop a comprehensive dictionary-translator with all available information from the Proto-Indo-European lexicon, and with automatic translations from other languages.

Your Indo-European Team

A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Third Edition, has been published.

After rejecting the first proof from Amazon’s print-on-demand company CreateSpace, the second proof arrived today and it was just fine. The margins remain maybe small for an ideal professional publication, but we deem it useless to fight against a sort of ‘burocracy’ for small publishers, and it would mean more weeks (if not months) to have a book with the margins exactly as pre-defined… For those of you who bought the Second Edition, it shows a slight improvement in margins, though.

EDIT (12 May 2010): We have added Facebook and Twitter buttons to recommend the grammar.

All sales channels available have been selected, including libraries and traditional distribution, and because of that the prize is slightly higher.

Information on the new features of version 5.0 are on the (from now on) official Indo-European Grammar and Dictionary’s blog.

On a different matter, we had to move information from one server to another, and something went wrong; because of that, some files were lost, and some websites have been adapted to the available files. Errors might appear from time to time, until everything is fixed.

Taking this event as an opportunity to improve, a simplification trend has begun, for the websites to have only the latest and most interesting information on the project.

On the Assimil-like course, given the latest unfavorable events and other compromises, it will probably have to wait months, like the specific syntax, planned for the end of the summer.

Enjoy the grammar!

Your Indo-European Team.

Dear members and friends,

Even though we planned to publish the third printed edition of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European (and to have it published online) by this time already, we had to solve some unexpected problems in linguistic aspects, as well as in the final editing and design of the book.

Nevertheless, to compensate for this two-week delay, we will probably publish the grammar in PDF online before it is available as a printed book, so that we can work in the new self-learning course, or in translations of the latest text, as soon as possible. We expect the reconstruction to be far more stable than the previous one, but revisions are indeed still necessary.

Apart from that, and while we wait for the grammar to be published, we are changing the server installation, to be able to work on the websites more efficiently. We have already solved the forum registration problem. Among other things, we want:

– To improve the website accessibility, letting just simple and direct information on Indo-European reconstruction.
– To restrict or fully eliminate Google ads, which are not necessary for the moment to keep the websites functioning.
– To concentrate all linguistic information on one website (indo-european.info), and to simplify the dnghu.org website as the association’s central, as a cultural and social centre.

About older, unanswered mails, we keep receiving some complaints; I (Carlos) am fully responsible for their loss, because of the thousands of spam mails (received over months) I had to manually revise… I apologise for any inconveniences. Please resend unanswered mails to contact@dnghu.org.

Your Indo-European Team.

Dear members and friends,

We have been revising the grammar for 5 intensive weeks already, and probably within 2 weeks we will publish a new full revision of it. While this (probably third printed) edition has been improved to a great extent, there are two aspects we still have to work with:

- Fernando is working on a comprehensive Proto-Indo-European syntax, and it is not expected to be finished before this summer. The available chapters on syntax – mainly related to the older IE languages – have also been corrected and improved, though.

- Mario has proposed an Assimil-like self-learning and introductory course, whose first stub lessons and general schema he has personally worked. Our previous idea was to create a real archaeological and cultural environment for North-West Indo-European, as in the Ancient Greek or Latin Assimils, but his proposal to work with us has changed the original we-do-it-alone view.

To collect in 100 short lessons the language, customs, archaeology, poetry, and culture in general, of some prehistoric European peoples, is a huge enterprise, and we think it might be a good idea to work on the stories collaboratively. Therefore, if any of you know or are interested in these fields, and you feel like collaborating in creating a whole story (or more exactly a lot of short, connected stories), as historically and linguistically accurate as possible, we might include some more people, and maybe collaborate through Google Docs instead of per email, as we are used to. You can contact us at contact@dnghu.org .

- About problems or mistakes of webs, wikis, forums, blogs, translations, etc. this is nowadays a secondary problem. Within weeks we might begin to think about improving and changing them, but for the moment the aim is language, language, language…and culture!

Your Indo-European team.

Dear members, friends and supporters of Dnghu,

We are aware that we have neglected many of you over the last months. This letter is part of our attempt to put this right, informing you of the latest events.

After a long time of dealing with our professional issues, which have completely absorbed our time, partly due to the economic crisis, partly due to some special career compromises, we are already planning to resume work where we left it, beginning in march 2011.

During the last 10 months of standstill, some of you have proposed changes to our texts, or questioned reconstruction issues, while others have suggested improvements to the project’s short- and long-term aims; some did also help us solve common (spam or technical) problems in our websites.

Even though we didn’t answer ANY of you due to the lack of time, please be assured that we did (and do) read your mails and comments, and that we thank you very much for your support, proposals, and criticism. If you really needed a specific answer, please do not hesitate to resend your question after we have renewed the work on Dnghu.

Some members (and board members) have changed works, or have moved, or have been working harder due to the crisis and its effects on personal and family finances, and this has led to the long break.

However, due to the free and public nature of our works, our lack of activity hasn’t prevented many of you from downloading and buying the books, studying the language, and trying to speak it. You are thus helping create a more prepared community for the beginning of the (spoken) IE revival; we are aware of these facts, too, and that gives us another strong reason to renew our efforts as soon as possible.

I myself have been quite busy with practices in some hospital services during my last year at medical school, and for some months already I have been preparing myself for the State Exam for Medical Residents (the so-called “MIR”) in Spain. After taking the exam, I hope to have at least 3 free months before the beginning of hospital work, and I expect to dedicate some of that free time to the project.

Among the most pressing matters, there are some needed corrections and improvements to the Grammar (especially the Syntax) and vocabulary, some additional text translations into MIE, a learning method (Assimil- or Teach Yourself-like), and the long-awaited (and long-requested, by the way) podcasts, or at least some audios to help speakers with IE pronunciation.

As you probably understand, this is a project that began as an economic-revivalist one in 2006 – a theoretical proposal of one language for the EU for practical reasons, shared within the University, which got the attention and recognition of its leading members, and which should have been taken over afterwards – according to the initial plan – by its Faculty of Arts, with research projects on linguistics.

Dnghu has instead gradually become a mainly private, linguistic-revivalist project (with the Association as the accompanying ‘social’ branch of the language revival), which has also changed its “EU-only” initial vision, and in which the linguistic work is now the leading question, that needed (and needs) to be carefully discussed and reviewed by some of us with no direct contact between us, and who have other interests and careers in the daily world…

Thank you for your patience and support,

Best regards,

Carlos Quiles

The date for the new publication of the reference book A Grammar of Modern Indo-European has been postponed until a full revision of the grammar and translated texts is carried out, and the mistakes found are corrected.

This decision has been taken – against previous reports – after a new full revision of the grammar and texts was planned for the next weeks.

As previously explained, extended distribution of the Printed Edition is an important decision which might slow down (and thus condition) the publication of future revisions. A correct revision process takes obviously priority over the extended (traditional) distribution of the book.

We think Easter should be a reasonable date for the new full revision of the grammar and translated texts – the lexicon won’t be extensively revised -, although no exact limit was set. This new revision isn’t expected to mean a relevant change to the Printed Edition, which will still be the Second (Revised) Edition, but it will probably drive the grammar up to version 4.5.

Translations not still assigned, as well as the learning courses and podcasts planned, will consequently be halted (again) until the new stable version is reached.

Your Indo-European language team.

The book A Grammar of Modern Indo-European will be approved for Extended Distribution into thousands of outlets in the U.S., including Bookstores & Online Retailers as well as Libraries & Academic Institutions.

The distribution costs will then be of 26,95$/book, so we will need to put a minimal price of 27$ (probably slightly higher), so that we don’t lose money by selling books through retailers. That means around 7-8$ more than its current retail price at Amazon.

This change will be made after the newest revision is published, with the latest changes and corrections to version 4.15. The revised version will be sent to the editor in the first days of January, and from that moment on the book won’t be available for sale. After the approval of the new version, the new price will apply.

That change in price will also be needed to publish the book in the future in French, Spanish and German, due to the higher costs of traditional distribution channels in Europe, compared to online print-on-demand publications from the U.S.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

We have been asking for collaborative help translating our main work, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Second Edition, since its first edition in 2006. We have always offered our works for free, for everyone to be able to read them, and we want to maintain that policy.

Until now, no full translation has been made, probably because of the instability of our previous releases (versions 1 and 2 were considered alpha, version 3 and pre-version 4 were labeled beta). But today we have a stable work we would like to get translated, so that most Europeans are able to read it in their own languages.

For that reason, we want to offer a little compensation, to cover some of the costs of dedicating time to the project. It is indeed not the deserved payment for such a tough work, but it is free collaboration of our members and friends what we are looking for, trying to compensate them for their contributions in these times of financial crisis, which affect us all.

To date, we can afford paying 100€ for a translation of the first 339 pages of the grammar into German (Hochdeutsch, Germany), French (français standard, France), Spanish (español tradicional, España), or Italian (Standard Italian). According to the Spanish minimal wage for temporary jobs in 2009 (29,56€/day), such a payment would correspond roughly to three and 1/3 days of work, some 12 pages/hour or 100 pages/day.

The compensations will be paid with the earnings from Google Ads in the last year (120$), and then with private donations from our benefactor, Academia Biblos.

Taking into account that many words and tables need not be translated, a translation into the own mother tongue shouldn’t take more than a week of part-time work for someone who has previous knowledge of its content, or at least of linguistics, and proficiency in English.

Apart from the attribution of the translation work inside the book, other benefits can be further discussed, depending on the professionals involved – these include permanent links to the translator’s website, shared benefits of the sales through dnghu.org, etc. Given that a lot of people work for free projects without getting paid, these compensations should be seen as incentives more than actual payments.

Only one professional or team of professionals – of those who apply with enough credentials – will be accepted for each translation job (regarding this compensation, as everyone is free to change and redistribute the book) on a first-come, first-choice basis. You can read more about the profile we are looking for.

Your Indo-European team.