Indo-European : European Union’s National Language

The title states the three main reports this week:

1) We are currently adding some new resources, not only on the Proto-Indo-European language and about its reconstruction, but also on other old Indo-European dialects, to help students of Indo-European languages get free online resources more easily. For example, we added yesterday Monier’s (Public Domain) Sanskrit Dictionary in PDF.

2) About the public subsidies the Association is applying for, we have also requested some financial help to take part in some European education and language fairs this year. We want to promote the project, the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, and indeed the common culture and linguistic heritage of the majority of Europeans, and the Internet cannot be the only way to do so if we want to succeed in our Indo-European language revival project.

3) We are experiencing some bandwidth problems, due to the unexpected number of visits - from little more than 5.000 visits a month since December, we got more than 12.000 visits on April and May, and around 50.000 visits in June. We haven’t still promoted the website among university students, but seeing our difficulties in keeping a good upload rate for all visitors, we will wait (at least) until August to begin a wider promotion. Meanwhile, we’d like to see those who already know it discuss the possible changes to be made this summer, about every possible aspect of the Associatin and its work.

We expect to get a better connexion soon, hopefully thanks to private donations. If the visitors’ rate keep increasing as in the past months, we’ll have to begin thinking about using Google adsense (or other ads’ company) and hire some more professional expertise, though, because normal donations and friends’ work won’t be able to cope with our needs.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

The latest version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 1st Printed Edition, has been released after some minor corrections (now version 3.15):

- The printed design has been improved

- The frontpage slightly modified

- Minor syntax, translation, and corrections have been applied to all chapters.

Thanks to all of you for your corrections and comments. The Final Version is due for next week, after the editor and the printer have agreed on the final changes. The frontpage is being adjusted to vector images (with Adobe Illlustrator), and the final text for print will be corrected for b/w digital print with Acrobat and Distiller.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

The latest version of A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 1st Printed Edition, has been released after some major corrections (now version 3.10):

- The printed design has been improved, the frontpage modified and the PDF size adjusted to the real size of the printed edition (22×17cm)

- The Notes show more accurate reconstructions of modern IE (mainly Anglo-Latin) words.

- Minor syntax, translation, and corrections have been applied to all chapters.

- The Noun Declension system has been adapted to a more Graeco-Latin scheme (i.e., the First declension is equivalent to Latin a or first declension, and to the Greek alpha-declension, and so on).

- The chapter on verbs has been slightly improved.

- The Appendix on Phonology, especially on the palatovelars’ question, has been corrected. The syntax Appendix improved.

Thanks to all of you for your corrections and comments. We hope to keep publishing minor corrections and newer major versions with your inestimable help.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

Almost 2 months after the public release of version 2.00, a new major version 3.00 has been published, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, 1st Edition, with its own ISBN and Legal Deposit.

Unlike the more informal v.2.00, firstly called Europaio:A Brief Grammar of the European Language, Vol. I, 1st Revised Edition, and then 2nd. Edition/A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, this release has been prepared with an expert in Indo-European linguistics and will have a printed edition, B&W paperback, with a size of app. ISO B5, with a cost of 20€ before VAT. The first 100 copies printed will be donated to different European libraries, and the editor will offer the ebook to download for free from its website, too.

The following major changes have been made:

- The writing system has been symplified to the older v.1.00 one (i.e., without Satem-Centum distinction), and the reasons for such a decision are explained in the First (Phonetic) Appendix.

- The first chapter has been completely revised to include other Indo-European dialects of Europe and their main linguistic and/or archaeological features.

- Minor syntax, translation, and corrections of MIE forms have been applied to all chapters.

- The Noun (hence also Adjective and Pronoun) Declension system has been finally left as a complete 8-case one, giving the most common reconstructions for it, as well as notes about the usual dialectal differences.

- The chapter on verbs and especially the Modern Indo-European conjugation system have been completely rewriten thanks to Prof. Dr. López-Menchero, who has made two divisions, the first into two main conjugation groups (Athematic and Thematic) and another, more complex one into 8 Thematic and 4 Athematic subgroups, giving thus twelve different groups of verbs (with a general group of ‘irregulars), therefore helping IE being still more difficult to learn

- As Modern Indo-European syntactic details are difficult to ascertain nowadays - at least to be able to write a second thorough volume - we decided to include an Appendix on Proto-Indo-European syntax, which follows mainly Lehman’s findings with subsequent corrections from newer manuals (viz. Friedrich, Mendoza, Beekes, Ramat, etc.).

- The etymological notes have been written at the end of the book, instead of in the middle of the chapters. This style correction is a great improvement for the printed book, but in turn causes problems for the correct use of internal links. All bookmarks will have to be corrected one by one; we will try to correct it completely for the next minor release.

- As expected, only an English version has been finished. We hope this edition is correct enough to be able to work some months on translating the book into (at least) French, German, Italian and Spanish, without having to substitute them for newer corrected versions…

Thanks to all of you for your corrections and comments.We hope to keep publishing minor corrections and newer major versions with your inestimable help.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

Until recently, we didn’t deem it useful to print our material (but for ISBN and Legal Deposit issues), as our grammar was very simple and the information contained was freely copied and redistributed.

However, as our regional community is interested in offering copies of our grammar in their Public Libraries, and they’ve offered some public means to print the material, we are going to make another major release, possibly named 3.0.

Major changes will include, thanks to the help of some specialized readers (mostly scholars from Spain):

1. Major corrections of obviously wrong reconstructions (especially from Greek and Latin), and adding of different possible reconstructions.
2. Vowels and Laryngeals’ question (only to show how the oldest IE phonetic sounded like)
3. Thorough explanation of IE dialects when possible, and that chapter left for the end of the book.
4. Occlusives: palatovelars are excluded (again) from the writing system, and the reasons explained.
5. Changes in noun declension and in its classification into different numbers, now trying to follow the Latin one
6. A thorough revision of verbal inflection.
7. Corrections of mistakes in English and other languages
8. Syntax: Instead of waiting for a new big second volume, we will try to include all known common features of the oldest dialects of PIE into a small chapter.
9. Formal issues: Notes are left for another independent (and cheaper) volume in black and white, ordered by Note number and also with PIE roots ordered alphabetically, to facilitate look up of etymologies and MIE words while reading the main book.

That book will be available first as a printed copy (some 500 pages) and possibly some time thereafter in PDF for download, and it will still have a CC-by-sa and GFDL licence. We plan to order some 50 copies, but if we receive more individual orders we will order some more - we don’t plan to earn money with this, though, so the price will be more or less that offered by the public editor.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

The Dnghu Association, with the collaboration of the University and some high schools within the region of Extremadura, has elaborated a project to promote the teaching of a more general subject in the high school, “Indo-European languages of Europe”, to substitute the current general subjects of “Latin”, “Greek” and/or “Classic Culture”, in 10th and/or 11th Spanish school years.

Such a subject should obviously still include Classic Languages and Culture, but also an approach to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language and its dialects, especially those of Europe, viz. Germanic, Celtic, Baltic, Slavic, Greek and Albanian, as well as an introduction to the features of Indo-Iranian and Armenian.

Our first pilot experience is planned for next semester, and for the moment two schools and some University professors have agreed to participate. We want to study especially the differences in knowledge as to European languages and culture, between the students who follow the course and those who don’t, to prepare a thorough research to be sent to the Spanish Ministry of Culture, to the European Union and to Switzerland if - as expected - students who have received the lessons on Indo-European show a greater linguistic comprehension and knowledge of European cultures.

The deadline for us to send the project is next week, just in case you have some changes you want us to make in the general idea - no details will be published for the moment, though.

If you want to participate with us in this experience, either for your school or other public or private institution, or maybe as a (paid or voluntary) professor, please send us your request to oinion@dnghu.org. We will probably accept such changes made until September 2007.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

To all of you well-minded Esperantists and the rest of artificial languages’ supporters:

First of all, thank you for your interest in Proto-Indo-European language revival. We appreciate your critics, whether constructive or (as usual) just annoying mails. To answer you all (we won’t do it individually),

• No, we are sorry, but we didn’t unite at Dnghu to support languages different than Proto-Indo-European or other natural Indo-European languages or dialects.
• No, we don’t think your games/experiments are usable, or fit, or even languages in the strictest sense, no matter the great critics/success/support/number of speakers/history/etc. you think it has or had.
• Either yes, we knew about your great inventions, or no, we didn’t, but anyway we are not interested in learning or supporting them, however great you think they are.
• You can read more about the usual questions emailed or posted to Dnghu about linguistic inventions in the Indo-European language blog by a co-founder.

Dnghu was created and works to discuss, talk, administer, give support, etc. to the widest variety of (Proto-)Indo-European studies possible, with the main objective of supporting PIE revival for the European Union, in the form of a Modern language. Please, don’t think we haven’t considered your old alternatives before trying to accomplish such a difficult and ungrateful task.

We are here to gather people to work together on our aim, not to convince you one by one about the advantages of reviving PIE.

Yours sincerely,

Your Indo-European Language Team.

P.D. - Obviously, how Wikipedia, Digg or other collaborative websites classify (or write about) Proto-Indo-European or its revival is not necessarily what we actually are or are doing: You shouldn’t trust any content outside dnghu.org without reading what We say we are doing in our association.

At least three new main releases have been made since our last report:

1. Modern Indo-European Grammar, Vol. I (Morphology), version 2.10, already published as Full Second Edition. We will see how the volume on MIE Syntax is written and revised from now on.
2. Proto-Indo-European Etymological Dictionary by Julius Pokorny (originally Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch), revised and formatted as tagged PDF for quick reference.
3. Proto-Indo-European language revival for the EU, our Foundation Project of 2006, revised as a European Association project for 2007.

All publications are made under a dual Free/Libre licence Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v. 3.0 and GNU Free Documentation License v.2.

For more on minor version changes on this and other common works, please refer (and suscribe) to our Indo-European language resources’ blog.

Your Indo-European Language Team.

Here it is, Modern Indo-European Grammar Version 2.0, a large file (around 4Mb) to download from our servers or from external file servers.

Because of the recent news about our project in the Spanish media (El Mundo and Spanish Television News “La 2 Noticias”), and the growing interest in the project, we have decided to release now what we had already fixed, instead of waiting till the rest of the grammar was properly revised (especially the verbal system).

As the licence is now GFDL/CC-by-sa, it is not really important whether the grammar is completely correct, as anyone can now copy, improve and redistribute it freely.

Also, we will keep publishing minor revisions (beginning from version 2.0), and hopefully make another major release together with Volume II, Syntax, before this summer.

Thanks to all our readers and contributors.

Enjoy!

Your Indo-European Language Team.

Due to some delays in the (re)writing of the new Modern Indo-European Grammar, the Dnghu Association has decided to follow the next schedule:

1st. Publishing of the first revised edition of Modern Indo-European Grammar, Vol. I, Writing System, Phonology and Morphology. Probably in the next week or two, we still have some formatting pending. (If you are new to our project, go on and read the old one; you will love the change…)

2nd. Try to be more open to newcomers, firstly by answering past mails: sorry to those of you who e-mailed us in the last month, we just had too many tasks - the opening of another Biblos centre, the University, moving the Association headquarters and servers, our jobs,…

3d. Revise and improve the web schemes, e.g. avoiding the excesive use of “Europaio” instead of Modern Indo-European (or simply Indo-European), focusing on simple webs to collaborate united (and not scattering efforts), uniting europaiom-sindhueuropaiom web pages into a single portal for common MIE resources in different languages, building an encyclopedic portal in Indo-European, changing Dnghu’s FAQ to adapt it to new developments, etc.

4th. Try to follow a good pace in posting news in Modern Indo-European, also in podcast if possible, to help with our “teaching and learning” objective, and with a more precise syntax (v.i.)

5th. Publishing of Modern Indo-European Grammar, Vol. II, Syntax. This is a huge work, and we hope to get some specialized help; we’ll wait to see if it’s better to publish it in small parts - to discuss openly the final output - or (as with Vol. I) in major releases.

To date, we can’t know the timetable for such a roadmap, but with some work (and your help), we think we could finish them before this summer.

Thank you all for the last Indo-European year. Happy anniversary (the gift still to come)!

Your Indo-European Language Team.