Re: CHAT: EU allumettes (was: Re: THEORY/CHAT: Talmy, Jackendoff and Matchboxes

And wrote:

"Were the EU to mandate that we all learn a new language, let it at least be
a language designed to be incapable of ambiguity (-- no such language
exists, but us conlangers would, I expect, be happy to oblige by designing
one). It would criminal to squander, by selecting Esperanto, the
opportunities afforded by a new common language.

"If all that is required were a language that was understood by as many as
possible, then there'd be no need for Esperanto: English would be far
superior a choice. But it in fact is important that Estonian, Breton,
Romagnolo and Catalan should be on matchboxes, so as to protect endangered
cultural entities from oppression by the hegemony of the major languages. (I
do realize that nonnational languages have at best a second-class status,
but that is odious.)"

I agree. It's very unfortunate.

For vocabulary, a computer program could be designed to pick random words
from a list. So for example, there would be a list of all EU languages'
words for 'dog', and the program randomly selects one of the words. (We'll
have to decide on a phonology too... Syllables should be (C)V(C),
IMO--Slavic consonant clusters are very difficult to pronounce.)

For grammar, what's needed is a sort of basic "EU grammar"--a list of
concepts, rules, etc. that many European languages have.

This'll take a huge amount of work... we'll need to recruit lots of
polyglots, and get a list of basic concepts (the ULD maybe?) for
translation. And linguists could design an optimal grammar.

Anyone interested in maybe trying this?

Trebor.

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