Indo-European : European Union’s National Language

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.

These are the latest developments at Dnghu:

• Our main work, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Second Edition, has been sold as printed book through Amazon 45 times since the 16th of October (plus one copy of the earlier 4.1 version), what makes it quite a successful start, compared to the first edition of the grammar. We expect the number of books sold to decrease probably to 20 each month, given that some of the books initially sold correspond to updates of those who owned the first edition. The number is not related to the (much higher) number of readers (or downloaders), but is a good indicator of real interest in the grammar.
• Three books will be sent to members who bough the first edition of the grammar, thanks to the money earned during the last 30 days with the second edition. Another copy will be sent to an editor for its promotion among bookshops.
• The new bank account of the Dnghu Association has been created at the BBVA. We hope to get less problems with PayPal thanks to that change.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

The latest version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, version 4, Second Printed Edition, was published online some days ago, and its printed edition has been approved, so that it is available for purchase at Amazon.

We will try to provide members with the second printed edition of the grammar, to replace their previous versions at no cost. This will be made at a slow pace, using the benefits obtained with the sale of the second edition, i.e. ≈1$/copy for Amazon, ≈5$/copy for CreateSpace.

Dnghu has obtained – as it was previously announced – the official registration (and registration ID) from the Spanish Registry of Associations, at the Spanish Interior Ministry.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

These are the latest developments at Dnghu:

• A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, Second Edition, is prepared for its publication as a printed book, and we are awaiting the arrival of the proof copy to accept it and let it be sold at Amazon, probably within the next days. We wanted to offer immediately the final version for download, even though not all links might work. It is a full revision of the previous version (Pre-Version 4), itself a full revision of the previous one (Version 3), it has 824 pages of information concerning Proto-Indo-European reconstruction and the Modern Indo-European language, and it enters a stable version of the language system, after more than 3 years of improvements to the first version of the grammar. That’s what we have been doing during the last months, if you wondered why we didn’t publish new reports. Just in case you have been following the development of the Second Printed Edition at CreateSpace, it was ready for publication on the 1st of September, but the lexicon included was improved and we needed to rewrite the sections affected by that change. We hope to update the full website (not only the English translation) in the near future, to add the newest edition of our main resource. As always, we will thank any criticisms and suggestions of changes to the grammar.
• We hired a new DSL connection, moved the location of our web server, and later installed our OpenSuse configuration on a new dedicated server (HP Proliant) purchased for the Association by our sponsor, Academia Biblos. We apologize to all visitors that might have experienced (and that might experience) some problems since the 21st of September, but we are still working on it. We expect to double the previous bandwidth and general performance of the Association’s web services.
• The Association is going to have its official inscription (and inscription number) within the next days. As you might know, that was promised by the Spanish Interior Ministry more than a year ago, but it seems that this time – after 5 attempts – is for real. No more excuses about ‘the name not being Spanish’ and the like.
• After the newest developments regarding MIE and the Association, we will improve all sections in our website accordingly, including the homepage, texts translated into Indo-European, the Proto-Indo-European Lexicon, the resources, etc. In the meantime, the Second Edition of the grammar should be enough to see the most recent linguistic developments concerning the modern language system.
• The “Indo-European Network” concept has been cancelled. It was conceived as a network (or ring) of associations and organizations related to Europe or the Indo-European language and culture. We abandoned it due to the lack of support of enough number of organizations. We thank them for their support.

And that’s all for now. A lot of changes ahead, though.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

The Association opened itself for international membership a year ago. Before its first birthday forces the first subscribers to pay one more year, we have decided to turn ordinary subscription fees to zero, and to make the standard payment the only type of subscription, following the example of other international non-profit organizations.

The decision is based on two main reasons:

1. The Association was firstly conceived as a regional one. Members have subscribed from different European countries, expecting to find an international organization. The strength of such an international Association is based on the number of members who can collaborate with each other in the different regions and countries, and this is difficult to achieve with a 15€/year obligatory fee.
2. Subscriptions have been based on the benefits of membership, which have changed over time because they were excessively optimistic, especially regarding the benefits of “academic courses”, “conferences” and “meetings”, which haven’t been held. It isn’t fair that early members pay more for benefits and events that will be held in the future, and it could make them abandon the Association expecting a better future value of the subscription fee.

We have therefore left just a standard unique 15€ fee as obligatory, because the 7€ unwaged/student fee isn’t rational anymore. Nevertheless, those subscribers who made use of that discount will be automatically turned into standard members. We didn’t consider leaving a lower standard fee to avoid the membership of unresponsible people attracted by low prices.

Also, given that the Association will (hopefully) become a strong organization in number of willing members, the linguistic aspect will need the collaboration of the old concept of the “Europaiom Consortium of experts”, which is now the Proto-Indo-European Language Foundation (Eur. Dnghu Bhudhnós). Its internal and external organization rules will be written down in the Association Wiki.

Other development of February was the inclusion of ads in all public wikis, to help cover the monthly expenses of the Association.

Your Indo-European language team.

These are the latest changes and projects of the Association:

1. After debating the possibility of opening free international membership for all, restricting actual membership (with voting rights) just for local people – to compel foreigners to develop their own Indo-European language revival organizations in the different countries, instead of relying in our tiny Association for the whole European Union – we eventually decided to maintain the statu quo, letting foreigners become members, and offering new ways to make proposals and vote them online, to elect and become eligible to the Association board, so that we can grow as a real European Association; indeed without losing the hope of seeing more local and regional associations being created elsewhere to promote and support PIE revival… For that purpose we installed a Wiki, accessible from the homepage, opened for all.

2. We installed the OpenID extension for all the Wiki websites and the WordPress blogs used at Dnghu for news, latest reports, personal bloggin, etc. This way, instead of looking for a common database registration of new users, we hope to offer everybody the possibility to collaborate everywhere at Dnghu’s website without a need to register, not even once if the user has already an OpenID account.

3. We offer now translations of the Latest Reports section into 7 more languages: German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Polish. Indeed they are still only automatic translations, as we lack the necessary team to work with translations, but with these WordPress blogs and with OpenID we hope to get more contributions to improve the translated news.

4. We are also preparing two more language projects, aimed at improving the current European Union’s language policy: Languages World to offer an improved World language collaborative compendium, which should include proto-languages as well, to improve current compendia like the Ethnologue; and PrÅ«siskan, a Wiki to work on the revival of the Old Prussian language. For now they are just ideas, we hope to get them working soon.

Your Indo-European language team.

Newest developments of the Association:

1. Our webservers didn’t function correctly until the 20th of July, probably since June – i.e. just the period we couldn’t take care of them – due to some new configuration of the DSL by Spanish main telecom Telefonica, or, according to them, because of the “wrong installation / reparation by the technical service” last year, which was actually made by their official service . Apparently, then, we have to withstand technical problems of our Internet devices once a year…
2. The new webmail accounts are already working using Google’s Gmail. That means some relief for our servers, and an easier administration of the accounts. There is also an email list for (allowed) subscribers at leizda@dnghu.org. The first member blog has been created at the dnghu.org domain, too. All those options are still only opened for members, but we hope to be offering them for simple registered users in the near future. You can begin requesting them right now, though.
3. After the failure of Orkut’s group, probably due to the limited success it has in countries different from Brazil and India, a new group has been created in Facebook, in the hope that it becomes a popular social network in Europe. More than a way to communicate between members, it should be a forum to spread and discuss the project with those interested in it.
4. Some more grammars have been donated to European public and university libraries. New additions might be followed, as always, from the library donations page. There are some 170 books already, and hopefully we’ll be sending some 20 more to libraries related to the European Union (in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) in the next weeks. After that, more copies of the printed edition will probably be needed to continue this donation campaign, or else stopped for some time.
5. The Association is represented by the French Chauvet Cave Bear logo, because it represents the oldest tradition/history of Central Europe and therefore its original, prehistorical inhabitants. We eventually selected a symbol to represent the language (and therefore projects like Europaiom), the Danish solvogn or “sunwagon“, because that is probably the oldest representation we have of what are (and were) common symbols of those who spoke Europe’s Indo-European in the latest PIE community in Northern Europe until ca. 4.000 years ago: the horse and the wheel, or, better, the horse and the wagon. The solvogn (of ca. 1800-1600 BC) was most probably made within an already differentiated Proto-Germanic community, but is nevertheless representative of the common ancient Indo-European language and culture of Europe. It therefore represents the purity looked for with the modern language system in relation to the prehistorical European language we try to revive at Dnghu.

Your Indo-European Language Association Team.

Fra’ Matthew Festing, the new Prince and Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta), a Catholic order based in Rome, considered a sovereign subject of international law – hence the smallest European state – has received information regarding our Proto-Indo-European language revival project and a copy of our grammar.

We contacted the recently elected Grand Master in the hope that PIE revival be supported by the Order, because it could be another way to help unite Europeans under our common values and culture, being easier for them to take such ‘linguistic policy’ decisions than for any other European state, as it cannot directly affect their citizens. If any measures are adopted, it would nevertheless be meaningful for Europe and the European Union. The Grand Master accepted the present and said he was “delighted to have it” and the he “would read it with interest”.

We are grateful for his polite answer and encouragement.

Your Indo-European Language Association Team.

The Forum des Langues du Monde, organized by the Carrefour Culturel Arnaud-Bernard since 1993, is the most important language fair of Toulouse, and one of the best known in southern France.

It shows the diversity of languages spoken in the region of Midi-Pyrénées – with a territory larger than 8 EU member states -, from Occitan to Indonesian, as they are found in Toulouse metropolitan area, which (with 1.117.000 inhabitants in 2007) is the fifth-largest in France and the fastest growing in Europe.

Its main objective is therefore to entertain people and make them think about the relationship between language and society: thus, popular entertainment events and high level debates will be offered at the same time in the public square, and opened to all visitors.

On Sunday 1st June, in the Place du Capitole, stands will present more than 120 languages, represented by more than 80 associations and individuals interested in sharing their knowledge. A professor responsible for the Russian language stand, and recent member of the Indo-European Language Association, will also share information about the Proto-Indo-European language revival project for the European Union.

We believe it is a great oportunity for those interested in joining Proto-Indo-European revival to contact nearby colleagues, and to cooperate and create a permanent, self-governing PIE revival group in France; and maybe also in other countries, given the international projection of Toulouse.

You can download the official programme (PDF) in the website of the Carrefour Culturel Arnaud-Bernard.

You can also read the Language Fair Programme in French:

Samedi 31 mai de 17h à  25h : Capitada !

La Capitada (“la réussite”, en occitan) est une sorte d’hommage à  la Place Jamaa el Fna de Marrakech : elle rassemble des artistes en tous genres, anonymes, qui viennent librement animer la place publique par leurs talents.
La place du Capitole accueillera des conteurs, chanteurs, musiciens, poètes, conférenciers, magiciens, slammeurs, rappeurs, danseurs, cirqueurs, blagueurs, théâtreurs, marionnetistes,”¦, tous réunis pour exprimer à  travers la pluralité culturelle la convivialité toulousaine.

Dimanche 1er juin de 10h à  20h : Forom des Langues du Monde

Sur la place du Capitole, des stands présenteront plus de 120 langues parlées à  Toulouse, représentées par plus de 80 associations.
Beaucoup d’animations sont au programme : ateliers de calligraphie (arabe, tibétaine, chinoise, persane, coréenne, japonaise,”¦), initiation à  l’alphabet cyrillique, déchiffrage des caractères cunéiformes, ateliers d’écriture sur table d’argile, chants populaires et polyphoniques, danses (capoeïra du Brésil, moringue de la Réunion, folklore andorran, danses mahoraises,”¦), expositions visuelles bulgares, art du Bonsaï du Japon,”¦ et beaucoup d’autres surprises tout au long de la journée.

Au-delà  des langues, la pensée du monde

Cette année, le Forom des Langues du Monde fera l’objet d’un débat sur la proposition de Déclaration Universelle des Devoirs envers les Langues et le Langage. Des juristes viendront donner leur point de vue sur l’intérêt juridique de ce texte, formulé par Henri Meschonnic.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

These are the latest developments of the Dnghu Association:

1. We have opened formally the possibility to participate in the authoring of the second edition of the book A Grammar of Modern Indo-European. We’ve added new download links, and the whole Word file might be downloaded as DOCX (original) and DOC format, and the book cover is available in Photoshop PSD format, both files in the latest available version.

2. Because of the interest in the printed version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, we have arranged a bookstore with Amazon, to let visitors choose among those books we deem interesting for Proto-Indo-European and Indo-European studies. This way, we recommend the books and at the same time obtain a percentage of Amazon’s earnings.

We have also added a tiny Ad link on Dnghu’s main websites, following our 2008 policy of recovering some money spent in non-associate visitors with Google ads.

Your Indo-European Language Team.