[conlang_learners] IE vs non IE

[Olivier Simon]

Oops ! Excuse me, but there was a technical problem that sent abruptly my unfinished message to the list ! 
 
I wanted to stress the importance of IE languages in the world: spoken by more than half the world population. Semitic, in terms of grammar, is the most related language family; that means that all the languages of international communication, including Arabic, share nearly the same basic features. Some IE primeval roots have remained common to the languages of Europe and of India and Persia. 
 
Maybe, we should ask ourselves the question of knowing which kind of auxlang we want before going forward. Do we tend rather in the direction of natural looking languages, for international communication, or something aprioristic, which is a like a game for the brain ?
 
Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/  

--- On Sun, 6/14/09, Olivier Simon <cafaristeir at yahoo.com> wrote:


From: Olivier Simon <cafaristeir at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [conlang_learners] IE vs non IE
To: conlang_learners at conlang.org
Date: Sunday, June 14, 2009, 5:39 AM







Sellamat Jim !
 
I'd like to recall that IE does not limit itself to Romance and Germanic. Thus Esperanto's vocabulary is, of course, mostly IE since it rests mainly on Romance with some germanic elements, but does not represent the whole of IE languages spoken nowadays. Its grammar is agglutinative, while IE is synthetic. Maybe you meant "something not exclusively Western European". 
IE languages 

--- On Sun, 6/14/09, Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.com> wrote:


From: Jim Henry <jimhenry1973 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [conlang_learners] IE vs non IE
To: conlang_learners at conlang.org
Date: Sunday, June 14, 2009, 5:27 AM


2009/6/14 Dayle Hill <dwhmusic32 at yahoo.co.uk>:
> Sorry, this is a re-send of the same email..had a technical hitch 1st time!

Actually, I got your earlier message on the same subject just fine.
If you got a bounce or error or warning message of some kind after
sending it, could you please forward it to me offlist?

> HI all. I have just joined in so forgive me for being a little ignorant. I
> just wondered why there seems to be a general consensus 'against' IE
> conlangs, or at least conlangs with IE features? Are we looking to learn
> something that has a grammar 'unlike' any natural language, or a conlang
> that has a completely unique lexicon?

I can't speak for everyone on the list, but I think some of us are
(other factors being equal) more inclined to learn a language that's
interestingly different from the language(s) we already know.  Most if
not all of us have an Indo-European language as our native language,
and many of us have previously studied one or more other IE natural
languages, or IE-based conlangs, in the past; so this time out we're
looking for something farther afield.   It's not that we (most of us
at least) have a prejudice against the IE family or specific IE
languages or against the idea of creating IE-based conlangs; it's just
that such languages are too familiar to be appealing in the context of
this kind of project.

For instance, all the natlangs I am anywhere near fluency in are IE
languages, and I've thorougly learnt one conlang with an IE-based
lexicon and approximately IE-like grammar (Esperanto) and studied
several IE-based alternate history conlangs to the level necessary to
translate out of or into them for conlang relays.  In spending the
amount of time and energy on a conlang that this project would
involve, I'd like to work with something non-IE.

-- 
Jim Henry
http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry/
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