Indo-European : European Union’s National Language

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.

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.

Following the initial release date previously announced, the main collaborative textbook published by the Association, A Grammar of Modern Indo-European, has entered a pre-version 4 stage, heading for its second printed edition.

Appart from the expected changes in MIE concept (viz. EIE, PIH, etc.) and the correction of errors and ommissions, the structure has been revised and new sections added, thanks to the unending contributions of Fernando López-Menchero. Among them, a “Indo-European in Use” section and a phonetical transcription of common vocabulary from English into Indo-European, with Latin meaning for clarification.

The Pre-Version has been published as another revision of the first printed edition (v. 3.85), to allow more contributions and corrections until this (fourth) full revision of the grammar is finished. Publication of the second printed edition is due before the end of this year.

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.

The latest changes in the Association:

1. We decided to change our Indo-European Language Association domain name language policy, from a standard of “.eu” domains and translated terms written as is in the language, we want to offer a more unified writing, thus using almost only “.org” and names without dashes – but for indo-european.eu, which was the only available, and indoeuropeo.eu in Italian, because the .org is reserved for the Spanish version. At the same time, we hired some more domain names in Danish, Czech, Lithuanian, Latvian or Slovenian.

2. Our main aim was – and still is- to revive Europe’s Indo-European as the national language of the European Union, not the common Late PIE, because of the difficulties in reconstructing it with sufficient confidence. However, given that:

1. Speakers of languages derived from Proto-Germanic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Slavic and Proto-Baltic are not the only ones interested in reviving Proto-Indo-European in one of its dialects.
2. Reviving Late PIE phonology with exactitude is still as impossible as in Saussure’s time.
3. As with Proto-European (or Europe’s Indo-European), we know the shape of those Proto-Indo-European dialects that existed ca. 2500 BC.
4. All reconstructed PIE dialects are different to some extent only, especially in phonology, but very similar in morphology and syntax,.

We want to offer the possibility of using all the reconstructible PIE dialects as of 2500 BC (see a map), i.e. Proto-European or Europe’s Indo-European (IE IIIb); Proto-Indo-Iranian or Proto-Aryan and Proto-Greek (both IE IIIa); and Proto-Anatolian, a dialect of IE II; as well as discussing the theoretical aspects of Proto-Indo-European reconstruction. All of these projects have a Wiki dedicated to discuss its reconstruction and the modern shape the language should have today (europeanlanguage.org, aryanlanguage.org, helleniclanguage.org, anatolianlanguage.org and protoindoeuropean.org), and another Wiki dedicated to its experimental use, as a kind of Wikipedia-Wikisource-Wikinews (europaiom.org, arijam.org, hellenika.org, anatali.org, respectively).

3. We have consequently closed or rearranged the websites dedicated to write in Europe’s Indo-European: they will be concentrated in that website mentioned above, europaiom.org. Only the Indo-European etymological Wiki dictionary will remain.

With those changes we expect to concentrate efforts, attract more collaboration and spend less.

Your Indo-European language 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.

Just as Prof. Feraud, from the Russian stand in the Forum des Langues de Toulouse, describes the event yesterday, with the public reaction to the presentation of the Proto-Indo-European language revival project:

There was a good attendance to the Language Forum, maybe in the thousands. Some hundreds of leaflets have been distributed among visitors – see an example of 4 leaflets in A4 size.

We’ve got in touch with many language associations and groups with variable reactions:

• Complaints about the complexitiy of Proto-Indo-European declensions by some speakers of non-inflected languages.
• Polite and positive reception by most other stand representatives of European languages.
• Very good understanding of the bases of the project especially by the Indian and the Modern Hebrew ones, because of evident reasons.
• Future collaborations with another Language Association and a European institution of Toulouse are forseeable, thanks to the contacts made.
• AND, some critics also from the Esperanto stand: “the language for the European Union already exists, it is Esperanto…”

Your Indo-European Language 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.