Brief report on the Proto-Indo-European language revival presentation in Toulouse, in the ‘Forom des Langues et Cultures du Monde’

The difficulty of inflexions is overrated. Modern Indian ones? You mean they also want to revitalize Sanskrit (which isn’t dead yet)?

@Bob : “Once you start down the ‘let’s make this super easy to learn’ road there’s no turning back”
I hope you are wrong. If not, my discussions with well-minded Esperantists – willing to speak a common language in Europe and a ‘neutral’ lingua franca in the rest of the world, and therefore potential PIE revival supporters – are useless 🙁 . I myself bought a Esperanto learning book, so it’s not impossible to have an objective and change your mind depending on facts, just like political ideas: one might get less radical and more opened to alternatives with time and reasoning… I think there is a difference between the idea or option called Esperantism, and the “language” used to carry out that objective, Esperanto.

We cannot discuss which language is “best” in general, if English, Spanish, Hindi, PIE or Volapük. BUT, Esperantists (and other conlangers) base their support to some creations (Esperanto or other conlangs) because of concepts like “easiness” or “neutrality”: if those supposedly objective reasons are rejected, reasonable Esperantists – consistent with their ideas – could change their minds and start supporting PIE revival. Debates about those reasons help attract visitors willing to know more about Esperanto’s supposed “advantages”, and others eager to know alternative language policies for the European Union. Therefore, debating reasons behind artificial IALs are interesting for us nowadays, from any point of view. About the rest of them language hooligans, not ready to hear counterarguments … we are not interested in them anyway 😉

@quendidil : “Modern Indian ones?” No, it’s just “Indian”, sorry – I should have written “Indian and Modern Hebrew” instead of “Modern Hebrew and Indian”… However, I don’t know what “Indian” exactly refers to; that’s how Prof. Feraud reported it. I was tempted to change it to “the Sanskrit” or “the Hindi stand” in particular – because it was probably either one or the other -, but in his words it was “the Indian” one. I guess he referred in any possible case to a language stand related directly or indirectly to Sanskrit, and thus (as you say) aware of the continuated efforts to speak it today, and of its relationship with Indo-European languages in general and with Proto-Indo-European in particular.

@urza: Thank you.

I don’t understand why you’re using aspirated plosives instead of fricatives

It’s a question of :

a) Common use. You can find it written that way for Proto-Germanic in many printed dictionaries; so, for example, you have the online data at Reference or Etymonline.

b) Easier comparison. Many sounds, like /s/, /q/, /gh/, etc. probably sounded differently, but had the same original evolution. I’m not quite sure, but isn’t it a commonly accepted evolution of Germanic /h/ coming from /kh/, i.e. that PIE /k/ -> Proto-Gmc. /kh/ -> Gmc. dialects /h/ ? I could be wrong, and it maybe evolved directly as PIE /k/ -> Gmc. /h/, but it’s anyway still better for comparison to represent it that way.

That’s more or less what I’ve done in the Armenian version (writing an older -kh- for /k’/, older -th- for /t’/, etc.), for example, however incorrect that might be from a strict linguistic point of view… I shall correct it in future versions, though, or maybe explain these orthographic solutions with footnotes.