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.
Wêsrom âsum!
Sell aghyern!
Excuse me Carlos, but I don’t agree with you when you call The Order of Malta the smallest European State. A state must possess three constitutive elements: a governement, a territory and a population. The Order has neither a territorium (embassies are at most a “functional” territory, not a true one) nor a true population (only members of an association; I know Spaniards are more reluctant when the matter is about to call the inhabitants of Gibraltar a “people”!). The Order is only a direct subject of international law; if we’d follow your reasoning, then the International Committee of the Red Cross should be called a state too!
Nevertheless, it is really a good news that the new grand Master kindly accepted the grammar (to which I contributed for a very little bit….)!
I avail myself of this opportunity to tell to “Indo-Europeanists” that I have ended on my blog the compilation of the lexical data of sambahsa into a French-sambahsa dictionary. It represents the “best of” of my searches since more than three years. On the contrary to Europaio, sambahsa accepts a lot of loanwords. But the IE elements still represents the core of the lexicon (may be half the everyday vocabulary), so it shows that IE can at least serve as a basis for a modern language. Sambahsa could perhaps be used as a gateway to Europaio…
And thanks for your on-line English-IE dictionary, which helps me sometimes to complete Sambahsa (last example: sleubric for “slippery”).
Khauris nawehrg!
Olivier Simon
Ph.D in public international law.
@Olivier:
Yes, it was indeed more about writing an appealing title than a legal definition of the Order; I think historically they could (and want to) be seen as some kind of a “Government in exile” since they lost their last territory many years ago. In any case, I didn’t want to write a sentence like “a European sovereign subject of international law” in the title, so I decided to describe it later in the text. Given that it certainly is an anomaly under international law, I guess we have to use some freedom when trying to describe it in less words; and “State” seemed (and seems) to me more appropriate than “association” or “organization”, which fits more (following your example) the International Committee of the Red Cross.
I guess it depends on who you ask. For me – and I guess for most of us – Gibraltar is a British territory with a people, it’s nonsense to deny it. Although for historical and (mainly) strategic reasons, many Spaniards – as most citizens in the same situation, I guess – don’t like to have a dominion of a distant foreign country in the backyard… Such distrust will end when (and if) the European Union becomes something more than a big customs union, hopefully mediated by the adoption of Modern Indo-European 😉
Perfect