EUROPAEA

EUROPAEAS LINGUAS PROJEKTUS

AVE!

That's how we say "hi" in European.

Welcome to the European Language Project (ELP), an out-of-the box, creative and original approach to Europe's linguistic problems.

AVE!

Bonvenitus/a a Europaeu Linguas Projektu (ELP), innovativus, kreativus et originalis attemptus a solvit Europas linguas problemas.

Important notice: The material hereunder reflects the current state of development of the language.

These rules can and - most likely - will change based on further developments. So check back regularly for fresh updates!

CONTENTS Kontenus

#1 Short introduction breva introdukcio

#2 Phonology & alphabet fonologia et alfabeta

#3 Basic syntax & word order basikus syntaxis et verbum ordenis

#4 Articles & determiners artikuli et determinatores

#5 Grammatical genders & number grammatikales sexi et numeri

#6 Morphology (cases in the singular) morfologia (kasi in singulario)

#7 Examples exampli

#8 Phrase book frasem librus

#9 Glossary glossaria

- Important notice! importanta notifikacio!

#1 SHORT INTRODUCTION Breva introdukcio

Most of Europe's countries are built on shared national identities based on common history, experience and - most of all - a shared national language. This makes the current notion of creating a shared European identity without having a shared European language as well, a bit silly.

I have created European as a creative solution to this problem.

The fact that you are here means that you are at least interested in some form of European cooperation. The "European Movement" denotes a broad group of people who share a common desire for more European independence, autonomy and cooperation, or even European unity in the form a single European "federation". Politics aside, and regardless of how far your own personal sense of "Europeanness" goes, one of the biggest hurdles for the European Movement is our lack of a single European means of communication. Europaea is an experiment in "creative linguistics" intended to see if we can solve this problem by creating a new lingua franca for Europe.

The point of this experiment is to find out if it is possible to create a workable lingua franca for Europe. The aim is to show that we can solve the "European language question" (i.e. how can we build a united Europe without a common but non-threatening language of trade, politics, science and so on?) by using our creativity and our European ingenuity. Decades of limited, bureaucratic E.U.-style problem-solving has so far not resulted in an effective solution, so we need to think creatively and beyond the obvious answers. The European Language Project is an attempt to find a creative answer to this question: A common secondary trade tongue that is acceptable and useable for all Europeans, without ever being any threat to any of Europe's existing languages.

European is in essence an "updated" version of Latin, which has been adapted to fit to the "General European" tendencies and conventions, as well as expanded with influences from most, if not all European languages. This makes it very different from its parent language, Latin.

In a nutshell: European is a constructed language, meant to function as a culturally neutral, yet characteristically European, non-threatening supplementary trade tongue. In other words: A language of trade, politics and science, which allows Europeans of various linguistic backgrounds to freely communicate with one another without having to rely on a means of communication (i.e.: a language) which is associated with any one single country or culture, but which belongs to the entire European continent.

This language is largely based on Latin, but supplemented with many elements from other European languages, including (but not limited to): Greek, the Baltic languages, Dutch and German, Italian, the Slavic languages, Finnish, and more ... However, European borrows heavily from several language groups: Its vocabulary is largely Latin (in adapted "Greek" spelling), and its grammar is largely a mixture of Latin, Greek, Slavic, Baltic and (to some extend) Germanic and Finnic, while its phonology is largely based on the Romance and Slavic languages, especially since the fairly simple vowel inventories of these languages makes pronunciation as unambiguous as possible. For that same reason, for instance, I have chosen to replace Latin /c/ (where pronounced |k|) with /k/. So banca becomes banka.

More than that: Europaea is designed to provide a naturalistic alternative to "artificial" looking constructed languages, specifically Esperanto (which has been proposed as the only other realistic choice for a culturally neutral lingua franca for a united Europe). To achieve this, I have created Europaea to look and sound as a natural language, but without many of its unpredictable exceptions. This regularity, coupled with its clearly Indo-European morphology, should make the language still easier to learn and reproduce with confidence than a "real" natural language. Nevertheless, the fact that European is (like so many European languages, including Latin) a fusional language (i.e. a language that changes the shapes of its words to indicate different grammatical/semantic functions) does make the language more difficult to master than the highly analytical constructed languages of the abstract variety, such as extremely regularized Esperanto. Nevertheless, European's complexity is of a level that should pose no problem for anyone who is familiar with any of Europe's natural languages, all of which have retained some kind of conjugation and declension, although speakers of the Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugrian languages or Greek should find it especially easy to get to grips with the inherent logical system of Europaea.

Most importantly, however, European is supposed to be useful and enjoyable, like a kind of linguistic sandbox where you can play around with the language without having to be afraid that you might break something. So, I, as its developer, hope you enjoy!

- Erik

# 2 Phonology & Alphabet fonologia & alfabeta

European uses an alphabet of 26 unaccented letters. These are the same letters as the English alphabet.

European uses the Latin alphabet, as follows:

a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z

Vowels are always pronounced as separate sounds. The only exception to this is the letter i. Which is pronounced as an English Y (ipa: /j/) when preceding or following another vowel, in a system similar to Polish. If a an i needs to be pronounced as a separate letter, it is spelled ï, with a diaraesis, or trema. 

Example: Partïa [part'i:a] ~ party, but bestia [b'estja] ~ beast, animal

In addition to the 26 letters of the alphabet, there are also two ligatures. Ideally these should be written as one symbol, but can also be written as two separate letters representing 1 sound. These are: ae & oe.

AE represents the sound /aj/, which is similar to the pronunciation of English I or aye.

OE representes the sound /oe/ or /Y/, which is similar to the French oe ligature, or to the pronunciation of English worse or purse.

European uses an alphabet of 26 unaccented letters. These are the same letters as the English alphabet. The letter Q however, is never used in any native words.

Beyond the regular alphabet, Europea uses a number of dipthongs and tripthongs, as follows:

ae

ei

eu

oe

ch

ng

nk

sh

An important note on correct pronunciation of European:

Europea is a constructed auxiliary language intended to facilitate free communication and cooperation between Europeans. This means that there is no such thing as a “classical” or “hypercorrect” pronunciation – as long as you can make yourself understood, you’ll be okay. This also means that pronunciations can vary between speakers. Nevertheless: A uniform pronunciation aids understandability. So as long as you try to keep as close as possible to the recommended standard pronunciation above, you should be easily understood.

# 3 Basic syntax & word order basiskus syntaxis et verbum ordenis

The basic word-order of European is Subject – Verb – Object.

Like the majority of modern European languages, this makes European an “SVO language”.

Example: Samus mange oranges ~ Sam eats oranges.

Example: Homus lerna dixit Europaeu ~ The man is learning how to speak European.

Predicative adjectives precede their nouns, and adverbs precede their adjective.

Example: Ego videm multe albu domu ~ I see a/the very white house.

# 4 Articles & determiners artikuli et determinatores

Like Latin, or Finnish and Estonian, or the Slavic and Baltic languages, Europaea uses neither definite nor indefinite articles.

For example: Verbus “femina” designa duo “una femina” si “illa femina”

~ “The word “femina” means both “one/a woman” as well as “that/the woman”

Note: The words unus/una (one) and illus/illa (that) and his/ha (this) can be used as ad-hoc definite/indefinite articles when required. When they are not absolutely necessary, however, these articles are simply left out.

# 5 Grammatical genders & numbers grammatikales sexi et numeri

Both Latin and the Slavic languages possess 3 broad genders: Feminine, masculine and neutre. Most European languages possess either 2, 3, 4 or no genders - depending on how you want to count them. It is a fact, however, that all European languages (expect English and Hungarian) know the concept of grammatical gender. Because this is such a quintessentially European characteristic, Europea also knowns grammatical gender.

To keep it easy, Europea knows only 2 genders: Masculine & feminine. This is similar to the Romance and Baltic langauges.

Masculine nouns & adjectives can be recognised by the fact that their singular forms end in -s.

Feminine nouns & adjectives can be recognised by the fact that their singular forms end in a vowel: -a or -e/-i.

Warning: It is important to realise that grammatical gender and real, biological gender are not necessarily the same. In some cases, men can be referred to by feminine nouns (example: barrista.) and women can be referred to by masculine nouns (example: moderatoris ~ a/the moderator). To keep things straight, though, if a words has both a masculine and a feminine form, the proper form should be used to refer to the proper person. Example: Is est presidentus, sed ella est presidente

~ he is the (masculine) president, but she is the (feminine) president.

# 6 Morphology (cases in singular) morfologia (kasi in singulario)

Like its parent language Latin, Europe declines its nouns and adjectives into cases that indicate grammatical functions and relationships within a sentence.

European has 6 cases. These look different according to their underlying gender (masculine/feminine) and number (singular/plural). These cases are:

#1 Nominative - marks the subject of a sentence. Can be translated as "the/a".

Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -(u)s for masculine words and -a/-e for feminine words.

#2 Accusative - marks the direct object of a sentence. Can be translated as "the/a".

Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -u or -i for both masculine and feminine words.

#3 Dative - marks the indirect object of a sentence. Can be translated as "to/for/at".

Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -(u)m for masculine words and -ae for feminine words.

#4 Genitive - indicates a possessive relationship between words, i.e. that one word belongs to another. Can be translated as "of". Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -o or -es for masculine words and -as or -es for feminine words. Note that the genitive always precedes the noun or phrase that belongs to it. Example: Viri auto / Viro auto - the man's car.

#5 Locative - marks a location or place, or preposition. Can be translated as "in/at".

Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -e for masculine words and -ae for feminine words.

#6 Vocative - marks a direct address or approach to someone or something. Can be translated as "o" or "hey, you!". A classic example: Et tu, Brute? - "And you, Brutus?" where "Brutus" is vocative case because Caesar addresses him personally. Typical identifiers of this case are words ending in -e for masculine words and -a for feminine words.

Like its parent language Latin, Europe declines its nouns and adjectives into cases that indicate grammatical functions and relationships within a sentence.

# 6 EXAMPLES exampli (*)

Europaea est basata su Latinae, sed neest Latina! - In English: "European is based on Latin, but isn't Latin!

Europaea est idioma kreerata funkcionerat ki linguae francae is Europaeas Unitates.

- European is a language created to function as the lingua franca of European Unity."

Omnes homines sunt nati libri et equales in dignitate et direcïes. Sunt investati ku mense et konsiencie et aktarant in fraternitates spirite*.

In English: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and will/should act in a spirit of brotherhood"*.

(* these examples are samples of the current state of development of the language. They can and may change based on further developments.)

Important Notice importanta notifikacio:

I only just started to add info & I update this page daily. So please check back later.

Erik Schrama's

European Language Project

Eriko Schramas Europaeas Linguas Projektus

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