Re: Roll Your Own IE language

   Date:         Thu, 8 Apr 1999 20:48:01 -0400
   From: Mathew Willoughby <sidonian@...>

   This site is what you might call a crash course in PIE phonology:

   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/2190/iephon.html

More like an ASCII IPA for the Neogrammarian reconstruction of PIE,
with laryngeals thrown in. I don't think it'll catch on, the current
consensus seems to be that whatever the three consonant series were,
they weren't T D DH. And most people don't like fixing specific
consonant letters for the laryngeals either.

   There was a whole summit about this on the Indo-European
   list.  I believe it's still going on.

Well, right now they're mostly discussing whether -t in absolute final
position might have become -H1, besides the usual Etruscan and/or
Basque connections, "was IE the language of Neolithic agriculture",
single word etymologies, general theory of language change...

Great fun, in short. Anyone can ask Rich Alderson to subscribe them at
indoeuropean-request@xkl.com ; he runs a Nostratic list too, for the
same reason as AUXLANG: to keep the rabid pros and contras apart.

   Highly controversial, this is the "Proto Language" website.
   Although not necessarily a believer, I find the propositions
   fascinating.

   http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/

Patrick Ryan is a crackpot, and he has been one on Usenet for at least
10 years. But he's the insidious sort who is capable of learning which
arguments people see through at once, and is able to making his ideas
seem more plausible. (Plus he actually drops his wilder ideas if there
are good counterarguments).

What he never drops is his basic program: constructing a small conlang
which he calls ProtoWorld, and then 'proving' shared descent of all
natlangs by making up nice little descriptive phrases in the conlang
for various concepts, with lots of consonants, and finding matches in
a lot of languages by throwing away enough of those consonants to get
fits. Nice little game, but he claims it's true and provable.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)