Europe’s Indo-European Languages

This is part of the news appeared in a regional Spanish newspaper, Hoy (”Today”):

When talking about the Indo-European revival project, the article states that:

(…) Indo-European is a natural language (spoken in a prehistoric community, the Proto-Indo-European one), whilst Esperanto is a language invented by a Polish oculist. Furthermore, Indo-European is a culturally neutral language for the European Union, as (unlike English) it doesn’t imply the prevalence of one country over the others. Besides it is - like Latin - a language already known by professors and students of philology.

And, about Second Life itself, and the possibilities of its virtual world:

After virtual sex, interactive education is the second attractive of Second Life for newcomers. You can give a lecture, present a project or attend classes in University. Because of that, the Dnghu Association uses the virtual world to promote its project.

Even though the article is more about Second Life and virtual world opportunities, it is good news that Indo-European revival appears again in the news.

By the way, we are currently planning the specific shedule for Indo-European language conferences and/or classes in the virtual world, and we will post them in our Google Calendar and in our reports.

Technorati Tags: Indo-European, Indo-European language, European, Europe, Second Life, University, Education, language, Indo-European languages, Esperanto, Latin, English, European Union, Periodico Hoy, Extremadura, virtual, virtual world, class, Badajoz, philology, Semanal, XL Semanal

We have received some (polite) complaints in-world about our too obvious ads - as we use our avatars, Karlos and Mayte Mayo, to promote the Dnghu Group with a big box (with a simple donations and title script) in our heads.

We try not to enter private compounds, like Casinos, Sex Clubs and that sort of businesses, but sometimes we just teleport to some populated locations, without knowing what is there, and entry is obviously let free to get more visitors…

It is true that our way of promoting Indo-European language revival and asking for donations is too simple, and can also be unpolite sometimes, but it is our only possibility in-world. As far as we know, if you want to earn L$ in Second Life, either you work for all day long dancing, washing, painting or whatever, or you buy them with real $. In any case, this mainly commercial system - unlike free virtual places like the Internet - implies the need of having enough money (like US or Canada universities) to buy or rent land and professionals to build objects and places using Linden scripting.

Under our point of view:
- Registering with Second Life is free
- Living in-world is free
- We want donations in L$ to build an in-world community for Education, so our objective is in line with Linden Labs’ aim of widening the scope of possibilities of their virtual world
- Everybody can ban people from entering their private properties
- In public places, everybody is entitled to do everything - from going naked and asking unpolite sexual questions, to advertise their Casinos or - like us - advertise their non-profit organizations and asking for donations.
- Also, when necessary, every business owner can always tell us to stop advertising our non-profit organization within their territories.

So, I think there is no need to worry about the complaints received, but, if somebody from Linden knows a rule against our actions, please contact the Group and we will look for other promotion possibilities.

Btw., we have received 4L$ in (4 donations in) 1 day 6L$ in (6 donations in) 2 days. Not too bad

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Secondlife, virtual, virtual world, Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-European language, language, language revival

Yes, it’s true. We have decided at DNGHU to use a new channel to achieve our aims: we will use the popular virtual world of Linden Labs, Second Life.

It is very difficult to build up an international community - and even a European one - to support our common objective of developing, teaching and learning, and promoting Indo-European as EU’s main language, and as the future International Auxiliary Language, if we only have regional support in a town of southwestern Spain.

However, new technologies - like virtual worlds - can help us build communities easily and quickly enough to obtain better results: we believe that, if we make good use of the opportunities that such a parallel world offers, there is no limit in what we will be able to do.

As always, we want to rely on free software and community work; but, Linden’s world is unfortunately not free. They rely on a strong commercial strategy, and L$ are necessary for almost everything “in-world”, as money is necessary in the real world. We hope to get a group of experienced users (or avatars) willing to help us in every possible aspect, from donations (to buy land) to object scripting, and even willing teachers and experienced virtual educators to collaborate with.

For those of you already registered and willing to join us, you can find Carlos Quiles’ avatar (Karlos Mayo) usually on Campus in idle times; you can also get there by typing on your navigator secondlife://Campus/154/140/28/

Feel free to contact us at secondlife@dnghu.org

Technorati Tags: Second Life, secondlife, Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European, virtual, virtual community, virtual world, avatar, Linden, Linden Labs, in-world, IAL, language, teaching, learning, EU, Europe, European Union, world, lingua franca