Re: Ethnologue

Christophe wrote:

> > What strikes me as even odder is its inclusion - at all - of
> > "Europanto."  Ethnologue says it's spoken in "European Union
> > buildings" in Brussels "for use among members of the European
> > Union."  Wasn't Europanto a parody and not meant to be serious?
> >
>
> Well, the "creator" of Europanto claims that this language has been born
> naturally by people of different European languages having to work
together in
> the European Union buildings, so it's not completely wrong. Although the
> Ethnologue seems to have taken it a bit *too* seriously for what it really
> is :)) .
Diego Marani, the creator of Europanto, works as a translator
(Dutch->Italian and Finnish->Italian, IIRC) for the EU in Brussels. He's
also written a couple of interesting books, two novels about languages, to
be precise: "Nuova grammatica finlandese" and "L'ultimo dei Vostiachi", both
about Finno-Ugric languages and people. I read the latter, and I found it
good. A classmate of mine is definitely in love with that book;-) Worth
reading, if you understand Italian and/or can find a translation.

Luca