Wikipedia articles: accuracy, vandalism, spam and administrators

I have discovered (among tons of anti-spam spam) a mail from a Wikipedian asking for collaboration on the discussion about some controversy regarding an article on Dnghu’s project, about Indo-European language revival – as far as I’ve read, it seems to deal with the question “is Modern Indo-European as Modern Hebrew?” – Even if I wanted to participate, I don’t know what else could I say, that is not already written down in our grammar.

Some months ago I saw that some links were coming from the Wikipedia article “Europaio” – of course, I felt excited … Read the rest “Wikipedia articles: accuracy, vandalism, spam and administrators”

Indo-European language or Indo-European languages?

I’ve recently received an email from a new reader who wanted to share with us “his language”, namely a ‘modernized Indo-European’, which he had been working on for very very long before we began our public work at the Indo-European Revival Association, and which he deems “a more modern version of our Indo-European“.

After telling him he was not the first who show up with such a project (there are at least one or two more out there in the Net), I told him very clearly what our opinion about IE is:

A) There are different schools about how … Read the rest “Indo-European language or Indo-European languages?”

Indo-European Grammar, First Printed Edition, with maps, summary tables, etymologies, PIE phonology and syntax…

Yes, we eventually decided to print some copies of our Indo-European Grammar – with public subsidies, we will be able to release some dozens in this first printed edition.

Our objetive was to translate version 2.x (now near 2.2) into Spanish, German and French, to post news in Modern Indo-European and to begin with the Syntax volume, but now the order has changed.

We plan to publish an improved edition (revised by Indo-European scholars), which will probably be called already version 3.x. We plan to include more information about IE dialects and about Proto-Indo-European syntax, and to make printed copies … Read the rest “Indo-European Grammar, First Printed Edition, with maps, summary tables, etymologies, PIE phonology and syntax…”

More WordPress Translation Plugins: now also Traducteur – Uebersetzer – Traductor – Traduttore – Tradutor – Vertaler

Although unrelated to my usual posts, I thought it interesting to announce here more language pairs for my very simple text-only WordPress translator plugin.

These new plugins don’t support as many language pairs as the English one – due to limitations from Altavista and Tranexp translation engines -, but Google translator is able to translate already-translated-texts from Altavista, so you may find some new languages to translate into in this release.

Translations other than direct ones are indeed not clean, and thus not usually trustworthy; but, it’s the most I could achieve at present. If you have more … Read the rest “More WordPress Translation Plugins: now also Traducteur – Uebersetzer – Traductor – Traduttore – Tradutor – Vertaler”

The ‘Grin Report’ and its pretended support of Esperanto over Indo-European as European Union’s official language

We have received at Indo-European Language Revival Association an email suggesting us learning more about Esperanto, describing its advantages, and especially talking about the Grin Report, an expert study supposedly favoring Esperanto as the only language for the European Union. This mail comes probably from a reader of Spanish newspapers who read about recent news on Indo-European revival, who possibly didn’t read about our proposal, maybe because we use mainly English in our writings and he just can’t speak but Spanish and Esperanto…

I think that specially any study written about linguistic policy – in our … Read the rest “The ‘Grin Report’ and its pretended support of Esperanto over Indo-European as European Union’s official language”

Happy new Indo-European Year!

We are entering a new year, hopefully The first Indo-European Year.

I have been thinking about where we started, and what I thought exactly a year ago that it was going to happen with our Indo-European revival projects. Even though I usually complain a lot about our lack of resources, I shall say that if the coming years are so good as the last, then the language revival is certainly going to succeed.

I am quite happy now looking at the past, and I am usually very pessimistic. I won’t make an extensive report – we will publish … Read the rest “Happy new Indo-European Year!”

The Paneuropean Movement and the European language

We learnt some time ago about the Paneuropean movement in Europe, founded in 1923 by Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi, and we thought we definitely found what we were looking for: a traditional idea of a single Pan-European State, formed by all European democratic states.

At first, we wanted the International Paneuropean Union to get involved in the promotion of the Indo-European language, but there is no easy way to do that. We are a modern private group, and they are a traditional public association; our proposal is completely new and unknown – to the extent that some people are … Read the rest “The Paneuropean Movement and the European language”

Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua,… (2)

I was wondering what could happen if people disagreed with our approaches to Europaio. We have allowed anyone not only to disagree within our frameworks, but also to use our works and names to create their own projects – but for “Dnghu” and “Europaio”, if they completely disagree with our grammar rules. We thought this was the fairest legal position to hold, given that we had to defend our efforts as first-movers in IE revival issues, at the same time guaranteeing everybody the right to create a better project, as nobody should be able to retain rights over the Indo-European … Read the rest “Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua,… (2)”

Perfection in Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua,…

When someone has learnt natural languages different from his or her mother tongue, invented languages appear always to be imperfect when compared to them, as contradictory as it may sound, given that perfection is what their creators try to achieve.

I’ve tried to learn Esperanto at least three times, and always left the grammar or learning method in the first lessons. Its aim of being the world’s only IAL, and its great community of supporters appealed to me. But, the aura of perfection – ‘no irregularities’, ‘perfect corresponding alphabet’, ‘culturally neutral’ ‘mixed vocabulary’,… – that many people try (wrongly) to … Read the rest “Perfection in Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua,…”