Re: OT: Proto-languages as national/international languages

On Tuesday 21 January 2003 12:02 pm, Danny Wier wrote:
> Okay, this idea is probably way too unrealistic and impractical for the
> real world. But I had this "vision" of the not-so-distant future, where
> many of the world's large, multicultural/multiethnic nations, in the spirit
> of democracy and diversity, adopt proto-languages (or proto-language
> vocabularies using the grammar of extant languages).
>
> There has been a Sanskrit movement in India (or at least North India) since
> India became a state, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure the EU (except maybe
> for Greece) has those who want Latin as a common tongue.
>
> So, I was thinking... China could use a reconstructed Old Chinese (or at
> least a known Middle Chinese, like that of the Tang dynasty). Or better
> yet, Proto-Sino-Tibetan, bringing Tibetans and Burmans into the fold. South
> India could use a common Dravidian language, which would be better than
> Classical Tamil (now that Telugu, not Tamil, is the leading Dravidian
> language). Iran, Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan (Baluchistan in
> particular), Tajikistan, and the Kurdish communities of Iraq and Turkey
> could use Proto-Iranian. Grabar, or Classical Armenian, would unite the
> scattered Armenian communities in Istanbul to Jerusalem with the Republic
> of Armenia. And imagine what a Proto-Austronesian could do -- bring
> together Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar, Philippines and various islands
> of the Pacific from New Zealand to Hawaii.
>
> And I can't wait to see a worthy reconstruction of Proto-Amerind. Even
> though Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut won't be involved. A politically sensitive
> issue of course would be a common North Caucasian unity, linking Chechnya
> and Daghestan (in Russia) and Abkhazia (in Georgia); that might create a
> difficulty since 1) North Caucasian may be two or three families, not one,
> and 2) North Caucasians may be Muslim or Christian, and religion plays a
> major part in cultural identity for these Republics.
>
> The United States, very certainly the most linguistically diverse nation on
> the planet, could be served with a Proto-World, but of course that may
> never be discovered; it's not as easy as charting the progress of the
> species of Earth, since languages don't leave fossils. Nostratic would be
> easier, but that would leave out Chinese, Tagalog and Vietnamese while
> including Arabic, Greek, Hungarian and probably Korean and Japanese. Can't
> always get what you want, as the Stones song goes....
I think it's a bit of a supposition that the US is the most linguistically
diverse...Nepal has something like 80 languages, and India more, I think.
Also, proto-World doesn't/hasn't been proven to exist.

> Europe? Latin would be the easiest, but Proto-Indo-European would cover the
> whole EU except the Basque Country, but what if Finland, Hungary and/or
> Estonia joins....
Finland is already a member, and Hungary and Estonia -are- joining.

> This would go completely against the IAL movement, since the intent is not
> to produce a modern, simplified common language, and this would likely be
> aimed much more towards the "educated" rather than the masses. Unless, you
> take the vocabulary of a proto-language and build a simple, regular and
> practical IAL from that. It's been tried with I-E. I'd love to see an
> Afro-Asiatic IAL; that would link Hausa in Nigeria and Dahalo in Tanzania
> with Arabic and Neo-Assyrian in Iraq -- and in the dimension of time,
> ancient Egyptian.
>
> Just some crazy thoughts at 6:00 AM from an insomniac who's been fighting
> the flu and other stuff for a couple weeks now, so there's a good chance
> for delirium.... ~Danny~