Europic

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Europic (natively, Yevropicu /ˌjevroˈpiʃu/), also known as Eulingo (or jocularly as Fauxperanto), is a constructed auxiliary language consisting of mostly Indo-European roots, commissioned by the European Central Authority (ECA) near the end of the 21st century. It is mainly isolating and analytic, and contains many specific contrasts to Esperanto, though the two are not entirely dissimilar. The language became widely spoken in the 22nd and 23rd centuries, and many variants emerged after the collapse of the ECA and the language’s loss of official status. It is the direct ancestor of Iropich, later known as Proto-Human, ancestor of Rupesh, the language spoken by most humans on Selagró after the Terran Diaspora.

In-World (Fictional) History

In post-Brexit Europe, English remained an official language only in Ireland and Malta. By the end of the 21st century, English was lingua non grata on mainland Europe. The European Central Authority (ECA) explored various standards and auxiliary languages to try to buffer the influence of English in Europe, including adopting Esperanto as an official language, but various criticisms of the world’s only truly successful auxiliary language led them to reject this option. Eventually it was decided that no extant auxiliary languages were sufficient to promote European unity and culture, and a language was commissioned with a strict set of criteria. The contract was awarded to amateur conlanger and armchair linguist Syd Chrysanthi, who worked on the project for nearly seven years before presenting his final draft to the Deployment Committee: a joyless bunch of bureaucrats who had no real understanding of or appreciation for language.


The resulting language, officially known as Europic (French Europique, German Europisch, Italian Europese, Greek Εὐρωπικά, &c), was adopted as an official language of the ECA in 2097ᴀᴅ. It was eagerly learned, but quickly began to develop dialects reflective of the various Sprachbunds where it was spoken, particularly after the fall of the ECA in the mid-23rd century.

Descendants

Europic remained in use for official purposes for some time, much like Latin two millennia earlier, but by the 23rd Century, a distinct Romance-flavoured branch had formed in southern and western Europe.

Timeline

  • Europic (endonym: Yevropicu): A language adopted by the ECA in 2097ᴀᴅ.
  • Vulgar European (a.k.a. Colloquial or Late Western Europic) (endonym: Ivropicu (from ~2250ᴀᴅ; official start 2281ᴀᴅ) - a Romance-influenced dialect of Europic emerges in southern and western Europe.
    • Borrowing of some Romance features, e.g. shifting the meaning of la from a demonstrative to a genuine definite article, pronoun-incorporation on verbs recreating “conjugations,” and a number of Common-Romance borrowings (e.g. bona ‘good’ for brana; matru, patru ‘mother, father’ for vatrinu, vatrotcu; fratu ‘brother’ for bratotcu, &c.)
    • Changes to numbers: Numbers begin to follow nouns like adjectives, and shift away from their determiner roles. “Counting numbers” emerge as a distinct set apart from adjectival forms. In 2281ᴀᴅ, the Principality of Rivaria, an oppressive regime in southern Europe, mandated a dozenal number system (along with updated metric, time-keeping, and calendar systems).
    • In writing and for most purposes, Vulgar European is treated as “Colloquial Europic;” that is, it is still written with the same orthography and style as if it were Europic, but with occasional spelling or morphology changes where applicable. It is analogous to Late Latin, or to writing in dialect in English.
    • Phonologically, the most significant feature of this period was a change to the pronunciation of the “Postalveolar Consonants,” which became non-sibilant palatals: ⟨dj⟩ [ʤ → ɟʝ], ⟨j⟩ [ʒ → ʝ], ⟨tc⟩ [ʧ → cç], ⟨c⟩ [ʃ → ç].
    • A liquid dissimilation rule (an areal feature) also becomes apparent in certain words, e.g. drapru ‘cloth’ → draplu, kritri ‘around’ → krikli, sabluklu ‘grain of sand’ → sabruklu. This remains a persistent rule in the grammar of the language through Iropich.
    • Unstressed vowels are often deleted.
  • Iropich (a.k.a. Proto-Human) (~3000ᴀᴅ, Diaspora Era) - spoken by humans on the arcships. Known by later generations as “Proto-Human,” for although knowledge of Europic and other European languages still existed, as far as the human descendants of the arcships were aware, these were ancestors of all remaining humans in the galaxy.
    • Characterized by several phonological changes:
      • Loss of nearly all unstressed word-final vowels; as a result most words have final stress.
      • Palatalization of consonants before front vowels in many environments, especially word-finally.
      • “Darkening” of consonants before back vowels in certain environments (a blanket term for various sound changes, including n → ŋ, l → ɮ, r → ʀ, t → θ, g → ɣ, and many others.
      • Long vowels emerge through various processes.
      • Umlaut appears in various forms, usually only in stressed root vowels.
  • Rupesh (a.k.a. Arxippian) (~3500ᴀᴅ, Post-collisionem) - spoken by descendants of the humans whose arcship crashed on Selagró. But that’s getting a little too close to the novel, which you’re going to have to wait a little longer to read.
    • Simplification of the complex phonology of Iropich.
      • Many “oblique” consonants merge, e.g. ɸ,f → f, β,v → v, ɟ,ɣ → ɣ, ʂ,ɕ → ʃ, ʐ,ʑ → ʒ.
      • Additional forms of umlaut appear.
      • The palatalization and “darkening” in Iropich is no longer productive. Palatalized front consonants are depalatalized. (Actually, they were never really palatalized to begin with, but Iropich was described by an overzealous trainee field linguist who way overcomplicated the language and was responsible for its janky orthography.)
      • Because of… space reasons I won’t give away here… the speakers of Rupesh reinvented their writing system, essentially from scratch, seizing the opportunity to de-jankify the overly-complicated orthography of Iropich, and adding many additional characters to the alphabet.
  • NameTBD (a.k.a. Classical PlanetXian) (~4000ᴀᴅ)
  • NameTBD2 (a.k.a. Modern PlanetXian) (~4500ᴀᴅ)

Language Goals

In-World (Fictional) Goals

  • To create an auxiliary language for the 22nd-century European Union (later signed on by the United Nations and several world governments), partly as a measure to combat the influence of English on traditional European languages.
  • While ease of pronunciation is a factor, there is an inherent assumption that anyone speaking another European language should have no trouble with the phonology, and Europic’s phonology is objectively simpler than that of Esperanto.
    • All words begin with a consonant and end with a vowel. No initial vowels are permitted in the phonotactics. This was a conscious choice intended to minimize the need for sandhi when adding affixes to word boundaries.
    • Monosyllabic words are reserved for pronouns, particles, determiners, prepositions, and conjunctions. There is also a small set of monosyllabic verbs.
    • All “basic” roots are composed of a single syllable, plus a vowel ending . Polysyllabic roots are tell-tale borrowings, e.g. palas-u ‘palace’.
  • Regular derivation from Latinate languages in order to facilitate word recognition by certain groups is not a goal of this language. There should be no expectation that vocabulary be derived from Latin, Greek, or other common sources, though much of it may be recognizable.
    • Many terms are created ad hoc, a priori, or derived directly from one or more contemporary languages. Others are derived from Proto-Indo-European or sub-families such as Proto-Indo-Iranian, Proto-Italic, or Proto-Celtic. Still more are derived from Proto-Finno-Ugric or other languages, or a combination of any of the above.
    • Many etymologies are clear; others are more opaque. No etymology was provided as part of the commissioning of the language: Any mysterious etymologies likely died with their creator, and any implied etymology is based on the best guesses of later scholars.
    • There is a deliberate “formula” for converting Greek and Latin compounds that are common to most European languages, resulting in words that are often very similar (e.g. de-grade ‘de-grade’ or tra-mete ‘transmit’) but often unrecognizable if one is unfamiliar with the “trick” (e.g. me-tir-acu ‘con-trac-tion’, mi-ke ‘inter-cept’).
  • The language should have no inflection, including lack of plurals, verb tenses, and the infamous akuzativon. Plurals and other grammatical features are indicated (often optionally) with particles. Pronouns feature a reduced form of the plural particle.
  • The language’s creator, Syd Chrysanthi, (perhaps erroneously) believed that a true auxiliary language should combine vocabulary elements of many different sources, but where Esperanto has disparate-looking words from varying backgrounds (e.g. amo ‘love’, from various Romance languages; baldaŭ ‘soon’, from German; birdo ‘bird’, from English), Europic regularly fuses words of different origins into Frankenwords like lyamu ‘love’ (presumably from Romance am- and Slavic ľubъ- and/or Germanic lub-/leub-), tahi ‘soon’ (possibly from French tôt, Estonian [pe]agi, Lithuanian [grei]tai, with other influences likely), and tcelu ‘bird’ (likely from Latin [au]cella or Italian [uc]cello, but with influence from Slavic ptič-, Germanic fugl- or flugl-, and others). Esperanto has a few examples of this sort of melding as well, such as ŝtono ‘stone’ from English stone and German Stein (/ʃtajn/), but it is not usual. In other instances, he seems to have “split the difference” between similar terms by choosing an ad hoc third option, e.g. bargu ‘beard’, or goltu ‘pain’, the g of each word being a voiced plosive alternative to b and d in Latinate barb- and Germanic bard-, or in Italic dol(or)- and Slavic bol-. (The final t in goltu is likely a nod to the final RC of the Germanic root smart- or hurt-.)
    Another example of third-option generation is kwembe ‘to hang’, taking the Romance root pend- and the Germanic root hang-: p and h are both close to kw (and p often derives from kw in Indo-European languages - compare words for ‘5’ quint- and pent-), and the velar + voiced plosive endings ng and nd are complemented by the only other option in that series:, mb. Finally and famously, the word pumbru ‘room (of a building)’ seems to have been made up of elements of Germanic temr (Zimmer, timber) and Italic camr (camera, chambre): The initial t and k were countered with their complement p; The root vowel u may have been a contrast to temr’s i/e and Italic’s a, or it was possibly just borrowed from Germanic rūm (i.e. room); the final mbr cluster is common to descendants of both Germanic and Italic, and the presence of b may have been further bolstered by, for example, Estonian tuba.
    Unfortunately, Chrysanthi (deliberately) did not publish the etymologies of the Europic lexicon, thinking that it may lead to unnecessary and unproductive debate over how much content from each extant European language was present, so the source of individual words remains mostly speculative.

Real-World Goals

  • To avoid the usual pitfalls and criticisms of Esperanto to create a proto-language from which to derive the human languages used in a novel; particularly those spoken on the Arcships and subsequently on Selagró.
  • I am not actually a proponent of auxiliary languages, and I am skeptical about their benefits over other natural and constructed languages. However, even though I am not on board with the mission of auxlangs more broadly, I did set out to make this a good one – whatever “good” means in this context (which is debatable and subjective).

Phonology

Consonants

  Labial Coronal Palatal Dorsal
Stop p · b
/p/ · /b/ 		t · d
/t/ · /d/ 		  k · g
/k/ · /ɡ/
Affricate     tc · dj
/ʧ/ · /ʤ/ 		 
Fricative f · v
/f/ · /v/ 		s · z
/s/ · /z/ 		c · j
/ʃ/ · /ʒ/ 		h
/x/
Nasal m
/m/ 		n
/n/ 		  (n)
/ŋ/
Lateral   l
/l/ 		   
Tap/Trill   r
/r/ 		   
Approximant w
/w/ 		  y
/j/ 		 

The consonants are common to most European languages, though exact articulation of certain forms may vary from region to region. For example, the palatal sibilants (actually post-alveolars, ideally) are often realized as actual palatals in parts of Eastern Europe, while in the Nordic countries they may be closer to a retroflex. Similarly, the rhotic consonant (R), as in most languages, can have different realizations from region to region and even from town to town.

Vowels

  Front Back
High i
/i/ · 		u
· /u/
Mid e
/e/ · 		o
· /o/
Low a
/a/ ·

The vowels are rather simplistic: a classic five-vowel system. There is no distinction of vowel length, and no nasalization. There are no diphthongs or syllabic consonants.

Phonotactics

Onsets

All words must have a C onset. A standard root is (s)CVC, (s)CRVC, (s)CVRC, (s)CVCR, or (s)CVSC, where (s) can only be followed by p, t, or k; where R is a glide or liquid (r, l, y, w); and where S is a sonorant (r, l, y, w, m, n). The maximum root is CCVSCR, e.g. vringl-. The following is a comprehensive list of all licit word-initial onsets:

  +∅ +l +r +w +y s+
p p pl pr   py sp
t t   tr tw   st
k k kl kr kw ky sk
b b bl br bw by  
d d   dr dw    
g g gl gr gw gy  
tc tc          
dj dj          
f f fl fr   fy  
s s     sw    
c c          
h h     hw hy  
v v vl vr      
z z          
j j¹          
m m     mw my  
n n     nw ny  
l l     lw ly  
r r          
w w         (sw)
y y          

¹ Initial ⟨j⟩ only occurs as an onset for suffixes to convert them into standalone words, e.g. -anglu ‘-Vgon’ → janglu ‘polygon’.

Nuclei

All vowels must be separated by a C; i.e., there are no sequential vowels and no diphthongs.

“Medials” (Word-Internal Consonants)

Medial (intervocalic) consonants can be:

  +∅ +l l+ +r r+ +w +y N+ N+l N+r N+w s+ c+ s+r
p p pl lp pr rp   py mp mpl mpr   sp    
t t   lt tr rt tw   nt   ntr   st ct str¹
k k kl lk kr rk kw ky nk nkl nkr nkw sk ck skr¹
b b bl lb br rb bw by mb mbl mbr        
d d   ld dr rd dw   nd   ndr        
g g gl lg gr rg gw gy ng ngl ngr ngw      
tc tc   ltc   rtc     ntc            
dj dj   ldj   rdj     ndj            
f f fl lf fr rf   fy              
s s sl ls   rs sw   ns            
c c   lc   rc                  
h h hl lh hr rh hw hy              
v v vl lv vr rv vw vy              
z z zl lz   rz zw   nz            
j j   lj   rj                  
m m         mw my         sm    
n n         nw ny         sn    
l l         lw ly              
r r         rw ry              
w w         (rw)           (sw)    
y y   (ly)   (ry)     (ny)            

¹ /str/ and /skr/ are not part of the original phonology of Europic. They are another tell-tale sign of borrowing, appearing first in Late Western Europic (a.k.a. Vulgar European).

Codas

No consonantal codas are permitted in Europic.

Phones & Allophones

For the most part, and by design, most phonemes in the language are identical to their actual phonetic realization. However, as with any language, there is some slight variation.

Allophones (Intra-Dialectal Variation)

  • /r/ - [r] → [ɾ] / C[+dnt]___. That is to say, /r/ is tapped ([ɾ]) rather than trilled ([r]) after a dental consonant, which, within the phonotactics of the language, is limited to the clusters /tr/ [tɾ] and /dr/ [dɾ].
  • /n/ - [n] → [ŋ] / ___C[+vlr]. This is to say, /n/ is velarized ([ŋ]) before a velar consonant i.e. [ŋɡ], [ŋk]. (This is such a common allophone among European languages that /ŋ/ is included here as a phoneme, though a more scrutinous analysis would probably show that it is not.)

Inter-Dialectal Variation

  • In most Southern and Western dialects, the non-sibilant alveolar consonants (/t, d, n, l/) are dental ([t̪, d̪, n̪, l̪]).
  • In Northern and Western dialects spoken in Germanic-prominent areas, syllable-initial stop consonants (/p, t, k/) are aspirated ([pʰ, tʰ, kʰ]).
  • The rhotic consonant (/r/) has many pronunciations from region to region. It is most commonly trilled or tapped (as above), but in some of the Francophone and Germanic areas, it is commonly more of a uvular trill ([ʀ]) or fricative ([ʁ]). In some areas of north-western Europe, it may even become approximant ([ɹ]) before another consonant.
  • Vulgar European - a dialect of the language spoken after 2250 ᴀᴅ - has both the dental and aspirated consonants as above, and the phonotactics are a bit looser:
    • Onsets are no longer required (some words can start with vowels, e.g. ite ‘go’ from earlier yite)
    • Vowels don’t require a consonant boundary (e.g. dua, tria ‘2, 3’ from earlier duwa, triya)
    • Some diphthongs emerge (mainly /uj/ and /aj/, e.g. mui ‘we’ from mu-ya, mai ‘our’ from ma-ya)
    • Some new consonant clusters emerge, e.g. /str/ vostri ‘eastward’

Compounding Strategies

Ideally, any good auxiliary language should have no compounding strategy beyond combining elements together to form larger words with no changes to said elements. For the most part, this is true of Europic, but Chrysanthi had an eye for aesthetic as well, and he did insist on some minor sandhi variations for the sake of euphony. Specifically:

  • The final -u of noun elements becomes -o when followed by another element, e.g.:
  • The final -i of multisyllabic¹ adverb elements becomes -e when followed by another element, e.g.:
  • Although a grammatical function rather than a phonetic one, I would also include here that the final -u of noun elements becomes -a when followed by another noun element, but in essence it is being converted into an adjective. These types of constructions are usually hyphenated. (La Memetatu has flip-flopped on the issue of hyphenation a number of times over the years. Chrysanthi originally proposed that all complete elements in compounds be hyphenated.) E.g.:

¹ Note that this does not apply to monosyllabic particles or prepositions ending with -i, so for example, mi ‘between’ + kepe ‘get’ → mi-kepe ‘to intercept’, not **me-kepe ‘to conceive’.

Stress & Tone

Stress falls on the penultimate syllable of polysyllabic words, or on the only syllable of monosyllabic words. Most monosyllabic prepositions, particles, and conjunctions are not stressed.

Europic is not tonal.

Orthography & Romanization

Rom IPA Description Example Pronunciation
a a [ä] Like A in fAther. vaka ‘bovine’ /ˈva.ka/
b b Like B in Boot. bufu ‘toad’ /ˈbu.fu/
c ʃ Like SH in SHoe. capu ‘sheep’ /ˈʃa.pu/
d d Like D in dog. deka ‘ten’ /ˈde.ka/
dj ʤ Like J in Joke. djentu ‘person’ /ˈʤen.tu/
e e [e̞] Like AY in dAY. megla ‘large’ /ˈmeg.la/
f f Like F in Fool. fuku ‘fire’ /ˈfu.ku/
g ɡ Like G in Get (never as in Gel). gatu ‘cat’ /ˈɡa.tu/
h x Like CH in Scottish loCH. tahi ‘soon’ /ˈta.xi/
i i Like EE in sEEn. tci-la ‘this’ /ˈʧi.la/
j ʒ Like S in uSual. muja ‘much’ /ˈmu.ʒa/
k k Like C in Cat. kindu ‘child’ /ˈkin.du/
l l Like L in Light. lingu ‘language’ /ˈliŋ.ɡu/
m m Like M in Moon. miru ‘ant’ /ˈmi.ru/
n n Like N in Now. niku ‘grandchild’ /ˈni.ku/
n [ŋ] Before G, like NG in fiNGer.
Before K, like NK in thiNKer. 		blanka ‘white’ /ˈblaŋ.ka/
o o [o̞] Like O in nOpe. nova ‘new’ /ˈno.va/
p p Like P in Peel. penta ‘five’ /ˈpen.ta/
r r Like R in Spanish Rojo. roda ‘red’ /ˈro.da/
s s Like S in Sign. solu ‘sun’ /ˈso.lu/
t t Like T in Tank. tablu ‘table’ /ˈtab.lu/
tc ʧ Like CH in CHeese. tcelu ‘bird’ /ˈʧce.lu/
u u Like OO in fOOd. vunklu ‘auncle’ /ˈvuŋ.klu/
v v Like V in Voice. vatru ‘parent’ /ˈva.tru/
w w Like W in Went. wovu ‘egg’ /ˈwo.vu/
y j Like Y in Yellow. yite ‘go’ /ˈji.te/
z z Like Z in Zebra. zebru ‘zebra’ /ˈze.bru/

Punctuation and Other Paraphonetic Notation

Punctuation for the most part is unremarkable, and tends to follow the conventions of the linguistic areas in which it is used. (For example, you’ll get a lot more commas from native German speakers, and they tend to use „wonky quotation marks“ ; Francophones tend to leave a space before any punctuation other than commas and periods, and they use their own « wonky quotation marks ».) Chrysanthi never mentioned punctuation in his final draft of the language (with the glaring exception of hyphens, which are covered in a later section), but there are (mostly ignored) standards and guidelines put forth by the Memetatu.

Morphology

Adjectives

All adjectives in Europic take the ending -a. However, unlike Esperanto, adjectives do not decline for case and number, and numerals and determiners are treated as other adjectives. The main difference between determiners and the rest of the adjective class is that determiners always precede the noun they modify, while other adjectives follow it.

Determiners

Determiners include demonstratives and other adjectives which identify or distinguish a referent without describing or modifying it. The primary determiners in most languages are the articles (“the,” “a,” “an,” “some”) but Europic (deliberately) lacks both definite and indefinite articles. Numbers and possessives may also be considered determiners, as can all of the adjectival correlatives. The main determiners are:

Possessives

Possessive pronouns make up a small subset of determiners. They are formed by applying the adjective ending to the pronoun consonant stem:

mu I ma my
tu you ta your
ru he, she ra his, her
su it sa its
mu-tu you & I ma-ta our
mu-tu-ya you all & I ma-ta-ya our
mu-ya we ma-ya our
tu-ya yethren ta-ya alla’y’all’s’
ru-ya they ra-ya their
su-ya they, those sa-ya their

Numbers

As adjectives, numbers always end in -a. The "teen" numbers are optionally composed as compounds comprised of deka followed by the second number, or in the usual manner of higher numbers. Higher numbers are rendered by reading the numbers in order written. (E.g. 123 = yuna-duwa-triya.) When a number ends in a single 0 (zero), it is read as deka; a final 00 is read as kenta, a final 000 as mila, and so on. (E.g. 890 = voka-nuva-deka, 8900 = voka-nuva-kenta.) Higher numbers beginning with 1 (yuna) may eliminate the word yuna. (E.g. 100 = yuna-kenta or simply kenta, cf. English 100 = one hundred or a hundred.)

# 1# 2# #0 #00 #000
0 nula 10 deka 20 duwa-deka 10 deka 100 kenta 1000 mila
1 yuna 11 deka-yuna or yuna-yuna 21 duwa-yuna 10 (yuna-)deka 100 (yuna-)kenta 1000 (yuna-)mila
2 duwa 12 deka-duwa or yuna-duwa 22 duwa-duwa 20 duwa-deka 200 duwa-kenta 2000 duwa-mila
3 triya 13 deka-triya or yuna-triya 23 duwa-triya 30 triya-deka 300 triya-kenta 3000 triya-mila
4 tcera 14 deka-tcera or yuna-tcera 24 duwa-tcera 40 tcera-deka 400 tcera-kenta 4000 tcera-mila
5 penta 15 deka-penta or yuna-penta 25 duwa-penta 50 penta-deka 500 penta-kenta 5000 penta-mila
6 seca 16 deka-seca or yuna-seca 26 duwa-seca 60 seca-deka 600 seca-kenta 6000 seca-mila
7 siba 17 deka-siba or yuna-siba 27 duwa-siba 70 siba-deka 700 siba-kenta 7000 siba-mila
8 voka 18 deka-voka or yuna-voka 28 duwa-voka 80 voka-deka 800 voka-kenta 8000 voka-mila
9 nuva 19 deka-nuva or yuna-nuva 29 duwa-nuva 90 nuva-deka 900 nuva-kenta 9000 nuva-mila

E.g.:

There are some nuances, though. Many numbers have multiple forms (such as the “teens” shown above), which freely toggle between digits and multiples without ambiguity, but higher numbers can be more restrictive. For example, 210 must be rendered as duwa-kenta-deka or duwa-yuna-deka, as duwa-deka means 20. (The same is true for the “-10” of all hundreds.) It could also be rendered as duwa-yuna-nula, but using nula as a spoken number outside of very technical language is as awkward as using zero in a compound number in Ancient English, with one exception: The “ones” of the hundreds are usually preceded by kenta, e.g. 108 = kenta-nula-voka or yuna-nula-voka or indeed even yuna-kenta-voka.

Exponents
  1. 1 yuna
  2. 10 deka
  3. 100 kenta
  4. 1,000 mila
  5. 10,000 deka-mila
  6. 100,000 kenta-mila
  7. 1,000,000 mega
  8. 1,000,000,000 giga
Modification of Numbers

Numbers are easily expanded with various affixes.

Duodecimal Number

It should be noted that the original release of Europic used a decimal number system (as did all other languages of Europe at the time). In 2281ᴀᴅ, some thirty years after the fall of the ECA, the Europic-speaking Principality of Rivaria implemented a change to duodecimal (dozenal) number including revisions to the metric and calendar systems. This text deals exclusively with the pre-dozenal numbers; for more information on the dozenal system, see A Grammar of the Vulgar European Language by this author.

Correlatives

Correlatives are not a proper part of speech, but the term, which came into heavy use with the advent of Esperanto, is useful to describe a set of pronouns, determiners, adjectives, and adverbs made up of pronoun-like elements. They often exist in natural languages in incomplete sets (e.g. where, there, here but when, then, now.) A hallmark of auxiliary languages is that they usually have a complete set of correlatives. (Still, even Esperanto has nun, for example, instead of **tiam-ĉi). Anyway, I thought they made a nice bridge here between the adjectives and the pronouns.

Qualitative
Correlatives 		Interrogative
kwa- 		Deixis
la- 		General
swa- 		Alternative
dra- 		Equative
spa-
Determiner
-a 		kwa
‘what’ 		la
‘the’ 		swa
‘some’ 		dra
‘another’ 		spa
‘the same’
Animate
-ru 		kwaru
‘who’ 		laru
‘the one’ 		swaru
‘someone’ 		draru
‘someone else’ 		sparu
‘the same person’
Inanimate
-su 		kwasu
‘what’ 		lasu
‘that’ 		swasu
‘something’ 		drasu
‘something else’ 		spasu
‘the same thing’
Local
-ro 		kwaro
‘where’ 		laro
‘there’ 		swaro
‘somewhere’ 		draro
‘elsewhere’ 		sparo
‘the same place’
Temporal
-no 		kwano
‘when’ 		lano
‘then’ 		swano
‘sometimes’ 		drano
‘elsewhen’ 		spano
‘the same time, simultaneously’
Manneral
-le 		kwamo
‘how’ 		lamo
‘thus’ 		swamo
‘somehow’ 		dramo
‘another way’ 		spamo
‘the same way’
Quantal Determiner
-nta 		kwanta
‘how much’ 		lanta
‘this much’ 		swanta
‘some’ 		dranta
‘another amount’ 		spanta
‘the same amount’
Quantal Pronoun
-ntu 		kwantu
‘how much of it’ 		lantu
‘that much of it’ 		swantu
‘some of it’ 		drantu
‘another amount of it’ 		spantu
‘the same amount of it’
Quanto-Temporal
-ntano 		kwantano
‘how long’ 		lantano
‘this long’ 		swantano
‘indefinitely’ 		drantano
‘another amount of time’ 		spantano
‘the same amount of time’
Causal
-yo 		kwayo
‘why’ 		layo
‘therefore’ 		swayo
‘for some reason’ 		drayo
‘for some other reason’ 		spayo
‘for the same reason’
Qualitative Determiner
-ya 		kwaya
‘what kind’ 		laya
‘that kind of, such’ 		swaya
‘some kind of’ 		draya
‘another kind of’ 		spaya
‘the same kind of’
Qualitative Animate Pronoun
-yaru 		kwayaru
‘what kind of person’ 		layaru
‘such a person’ 		swayaru
‘some kind of person’ 		drayaru
‘another kind of person’ 		spayaru
‘the same kind of person’
Qualitative Inanimate Pronoun
-yasu 		kwayasu
‘what kind of thing’ 		layasu
‘such a thing’ 		swayasu
‘some kind of thing’ 		drayasu
‘another kind of thing’ 		spayasu
‘the same kind of thing’
Quantitative
Correlatives¹ 		Negative
na- 		Paucal
fla- 		Quantal
nwa- 		Multal
gra- 		Universal
pa-
Determiner
-a 		na
‘no’ 		fla
‘few, little’ 		nwa
‘some’ 		gra
‘much, many’ 		pa
‘all, every’
Animate
-ru 		naru
‘no one’ 		flaru
‘few (people)’ 		nwaru
‘some (people)’ 		graru
‘many (people)’ 		paru
‘everyone’
Inanimate
-su 		nasu
‘nothing’ 		flasu
‘few things, little’ 		nwasu
‘some things’ 		grasu
‘many things, much’ 		pasu
‘everything, all’
Local
-ro 		naro
‘nowhere 		flaro
‘few places’ 		nwaro
‘some places’ 		graro
‘many places’ 		paro
‘everywhere’
Temporal
-no 		nano
‘never’ 		flano
‘rarely’ 		nwano
‘occasionally’ 		grano
‘often’ 		pano
‘always’
Manneral
-le 		namo
‘no way’ 		flamo
‘few ways’ 		nwamo
‘some ways’ 		gramo
‘many ways’ 		pamo
‘every way’
Quantal Determiner
-nta 		nanta
‘none’ 		flanta
‘little, few’ 		nwanta
‘some’ 		granta
‘much, many, a lot of’ 		panta
‘all’
Quantal Pronoun
-ntu 		nantu
‘none of it’ 		flantu
‘a little bit’ 		nwantu
‘some (of it)’ 		grantu
‘a lot’ 		pantu
‘all of it’
Quanto-Temporal
-nta 		nantano
‘in no time, instantly’ 		flantano
‘a short time, for a moment’ 		nwantano
‘some time, for a bit’ 		grantano
‘a long time, for a while’ 		pantano
‘forever, eternally’
Causal
-yo 		nayo
‘for no reason’ 		flayo
‘for little reason’ 		nwayo
‘for some reasons’ 		grayo
‘for many reasons’ 		payo
‘for every reason’
Qualitative Determiner
-ya 		naya
‘no kind of’ 		flaya
‘few kinds of’ 		nwaya
‘some kinds of’ 		graya
‘many kinds of’ 		paya
‘every kind of’
Qualitative Animate Pronoun
-yaru 		nayaru
‘no kind of person’ 		flayaru
‘few kinds of people’ 		nwayaru
‘some kinds of people’ 		grayaru
‘many kinds of people’ 		payaru
‘every kind of person’
Qualitative Inanimate Pronoun
-yasu 		nayasu
‘no kind of thing’ 		flayasu
‘few kinds of things’ 		nwayasu
‘some kinds of things’ 		grayasu
‘many kinds of things’ 		payasu
‘every kind of thing’

Disambiguation

Many of the correlatives are fairly straightforward once you understand the pattern; however, there are some terms which may require additional explanation:

  • Swa vs. nwa: In English, these both translate to ‘some’, but the swa-correlatives refer to ‘some’ meaning ‘generic’, ‘random’, or ‘unspecified’, while the nwa-correlatives mean ‘some’ as in ‘a few’, ‘a bit’, ‘an average amount’ - somewhere between fla' ‘few’ and gra ‘many’. The general quantal determiner swanta is more or less synonymous with nwa and nwanta, but adds an element of uncertainty.
  • The quantitative correlatives - na, fla, nwa, gra, and pa - are synonymous with their quantal determiners - nanta, flanta, nwanta, granta, and panta, respectively. There is no semantic difference between them.
  • Fla and poka are synonymous for the most part, but fla is a determiner which precedes the noun, while poka is a generic adjective that follows it.
  • As above, gra and muja are synonymous, except that gra is a determiner which precedes the noun, while muja is a generic adjective that follows it.
  • The spa-correlatives have a default meaning of ‘same’, but this translation has the specific meaning of ‘exact same, identical, self-same’, whereas the adjective stema translates the sense of ‘same’ meaning a copy that is similar or identical. (Cf. German: spa ‘dasselbe’ vs. stema ‘das Gleiche’.)

Correlative Particles

A number of particles can be used in conjunction with the correlatives to extend their meaning. They are usually deployed as prefixes.

  • a ‘-’s’ Not really a particle, the final -u of any pronoun (not limited to the correlatives above) can be changed to -a to make it possessive, e.g. draru ‘someone else’, nasu ‘nothing’, nwaru ‘some people’ → drara ‘someone else’s’, nasa ‘nothing’s’, nwara ‘some people’s’
  • du ‘continuous’ Modifies a correlative to describe a continuous, unceasing state, e.g. pano ‘always’ → du-pano ‘constantly’. Contrasts with ku ‘over and over’. (“Will that humming never end?”)
  • go ‘future, next’ Modifies a temporal adverb to specify that it occurs in the future, e.g. lano ‘then’ → go-lano ‘then (in the future)’
  • ke ‘which’ Converts an interrogative (a “kwa-correlative”) into a relative conjunction, e.g. Su kwaro ste? ‘Where is it?’ → Su ste ke-kwaro tu le mete na su. ‘It is where you put it.’
  • ku ‘iterative’ Modifies a correlative to describe repetition, e.g. pano ‘always’ → ku-pano ‘repeated in perpetuity’. Contrasts with du ‘continuously’. (“Will that hammering never end?”)
  • la ‘-wise, -like’ Modifies an adverb to create an adjective, e.g. spano ‘at the same time’ → spano-la ‘simultaneous’. (Note that -la is used here as a suffix. It is unrelated to the correlative la.)
  • le ‘past, yester-’ Modifies a temporal adverb to specify that it occurs in the past, e.g. nano ‘never’ → le-nano ‘never (before)’. (Compare go-nano ‘never (from now on)’.)
  • li ‘there’ Converts a deictic (a “la-correlative”) into a distal, e.g. Mu vule na li-lasu ‘I want that one’ (cf. French cette chose vs. cette chose-là.)
  • lu ‘thing related to’ This is the nominal form of la, above. In addition to operating on adverbs, it is most commonly used as a suffix for a possessive pronoun to convert it into a substantive (e.g. mu ‘I’ → ma ‘my’ → ma-lu ‘mine’). In the case of the correlatives, this applies mainly to those compounded with -ru or -su, e.g. kwaru ‘who’, lasu ‘that (thing)’, payaru ‘every kind of person’ → kwara-lu ‘whose’, lasa-lu ‘that thing’s’, payara-lu ‘every kind of person’s’.
  • ni ‘any’ Converts a general (a “swa-correlative”) into an elective, e.g. Swaru ste laro. ‘Someone is there.’ → Laru sigole pe se ni-swaru! ‘It could be anyone!’
  • tci ‘here’ Converts a deictic (a “la-correlative”) into a proximal, e.g. Mu vule na tci-lasu ‘I want this one’ (cf. French celui vs. celui-ci.)

Modification of Correlatives

The Europic correlatives are a closed class, which is to say that the grammar of the language prevents any modification to them aside from what can be done with the particles above. (Other closed sets include pronouns and determiners.)

The primary way – and the sole “correct” way, at least according to the Memetatu – is by creating compounds with the particles listed above. These often have synonyms derived separately as nouns and adjectives. E.g.:

Some minor modification became possible in Vulgar European; -lu was often eliminated and certain correlatives were repurposed as nouns or their forms appended to create nuance and meaning where necessary. The following lexemes are not part of canonical vocabulary, and are not generally acceptable in formal writing in the 22nd century, but language just keeps on existing whether or not you want it to.

Substantives

Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns have no distinction for gender, but they are the only substantive which has a requisite plural form. There is an animation distinction in the third person. The first person plural has both inclusive and exclusive forms. The possessive of each pronoun is simply the adjectival form of the pronoun, though unlike most adjectives, the possessives are determiners, which precede the noun (phrase) they modify.

Though recommended usage is to hyphenate the pronouns, this is a little more relaxed in practice than the other compounds, especially for the longer forms, like ma-ta-ya-lu ~ mataya-lu ~ matayalu.

Sing. Psn Poss. Prn. Plur. Psn Poss. Prn.
mu 1sg. ma ma-lu mu-ya 1pl. excl. ma-ya ma-ya-lu
mu-tu 1+2sg. ma-ta ma-ta-lu mu-tu-ya 1pl. incl. ma-ta-ya ma-ta-ya-lu
tu 2sg. ta ta-lu tu-ya 2pl. ta-ya ta-ya-lu
ru 3sg. anim. ra ra-lu ru-ya 3pl. anim. ra-ya ra-ya-lu
su 3sg. inan. sa sa-lu su-ya 3pl. inan. sa-ya sa-ya-lu
Possessive Pronouns

The possessive determiners (‘my’, ‘your’, ‘their’, &c) can be converted to pronouns (‘mine’, ‘yours’, ‘theirs’, &c) with the addition of the pronominal suffix -lu, e.g. ta ‘your’, ta-lu ‘yours’.

Indefinite Pronouns

Many of the most common indefinite pronouns can be found as part of the Correlatives. The third person personal pronouns ru and su are frequently compounded to form indefinite pronouns ‘-one’ and ‘-thing’.

Nouns

There is not a lot to be said about nouns. Nouns all take the ending -u.

Plurals and Other Non-Singular Number

Nouns do not have a lexical plural form. Grammatical number can be ignored most of the time, but when it is necessary to indicate plurality, the particle ya can be used. Ya usually comes at the end of the noun phrase, after any (other) adjectives, if present. Ya cannot be used in combination with numbers or other “number words” such as fla ‘few’ or granta ‘many’.

In addition to ya, there are a few useful suffixes which can indicate plurality. For large collections of things, -ombu is often used (e.g. daru ‘tree’ → darombu ‘forest’).

Smaller sets, usually having a pre-defined number or order of objects, can be signified by -evlu (e.g. mandjilu ‘utencil’ → mandjilevlu ‘set of silverware’). This includes groups of people in groups of pre-determined number, such as sports teams, orchestras, boards of directors, and so on.

There is also a sort of dual, -opru, usually used to describe body parts that come in pairs or sets, for when it is important to distinguish, for example ma manku ‘my hand’ from ma mankopru ‘my hands ~ my two hands’. While -opru is generally thought of as a dual, it can also apply to specific sets, especially with anatomical groupings, such as dentopru ‘(set of) teeth’ or kaplopru ‘(head of) hair’.

Another collective suffix, -erdu, usually refers to groups of animals, such as herds, flocks, schools, or any of a thousand other species-specific nonsense collectives of which English is so fond (e.g. vaku ‘cow’ → vakerdu ‘herd of cattle’, tcelu ‘bird’ → tcelerdu ‘flock of birds’), but can also refer to other medium-sized groups of non-specific number (between a jopru and a jombu) such as a fleet of vehicles (veklerdu) or boats (barkerdu), or to groups of people (e.g. djenterdu ‘crowd’).

Forming the Possessive

The possessive of nouns is formed by bluntly converting them to an adjective by replacing the final -u with -a. As with other adjectives (below), possessives follow the noun they modify. Many possessives can also be constructed by using the preposition de. This is optional with most constructions, but necessary where there is an adjective already modifying the possessive noun (as with the crying child, below).

Verbs

All “peripheral” verb functions, commonly lumped together under the label of “tense,” are indicated by particles which precede the finite verb, i.e. the verb that is being carried out by the associated pronoun or noun (phrase) subject. Tenses (past, future), aspects (perfect, habitual, inceptive, cessative, progressive, &c), moods (subjunctive, conditional), and other verbal particles may combine to create a wide range of nuance.

Tense

Aspect

There are eight basic aspects, and they can be compounded with each other, with the tenses, and with the moods. (NB: In compounds, aspects always precede tenses and follow mood and voice particles.) The basic aspects are:

Mood

There are five basic moods, and they can be compounded with the tenses and aspects, but not with other moods. (Mood particles always precede aspect and tense.) The basic moods are:

  • ∅ (unmarked) - indicative, “I do”
  • si - subjunctive, “that I do”
  • ba - conditional, “would do”
  • The fourth mood is imperative, which has a slightly different construction. Instead of a particle indicating a command, which may waste valuable time in a crisis, the imperative is formed by reversing the verb and the subject pronoun and joining them with a hyphen. This has the additional effect of changing the position of the stress in the verb.
  • The final mood is the prohibitive (a.k.a. the negative imperative – “Don’t verb!”) which has a construction similar to the imperative. There are a few ways to form the prohibitive, but the most common is as a regular imperative with the verb ne ‘don’t’ followed by an infinitive. (This is a little bit like the verb peidio in Welsh, or the Chinese prohibitive particle 別.)

Voice

There are four basic voices:

  • ∅ (unmarked) - active, “do”
  • ga - passive, “is done”
    • Klebru ga mandjoke (pe mu).
      • ‘(The) bread is eaten (by me).’
    • NB: When an agent is specified in a passive phrase (usually with “by” in English), it is introduced by the preposition pe.
  • ki - reflexive, “do to oneself/-selves”
  • dri - reciprocal, “do to each other”
    • Mu-ya dri klore.
      • ‘We hear each other.’
    • N.B.: Many European languages conflate the reciprocal (which can only be used with a plural subject) with the reflexive. For instance, French Nous nous entendons or German Wir hören uns could mean either ‘We hear each other’ or ‘We hear ourselves.’

Polarity (Negative & Interrogative)

The final category of verb functions is that of polarity, and while I can say a bunch of important-sounding words about it, it is very simply forming the negative and interrogative. Verbs are negated with the particle ne. Sentences are made interrogative with the particle kwa.

  • ∅ (unmarked) - positive, “do”
  • ne - negative, “do not”
    • Mu ne mandjoke na klebru.
      • ‘I do not eat bread.’
    • NB: Ne is always closest to the verb, preceded by any other particles..
  • kwa - interrogative, “is it that…?”
  • kwa … ne - negative interrogative, “isn’t it that…?”

Compound Tenses

Most of the tenses, aspects, moods, voices, and polarities mentioned above can be compounded to create a myriad of senses. Here is a small sample:

These are just some common examples; there are dozens of possibilities, and many are redundant or unused, but there is a strict order that must be observed when compounding them.

  1. The negative particle (ne) always falls closest to the verb.
  2. The tenses come next.
    1. Past follows present when both are used (go-le, never **le-go)
  3. Tenses are preceded by aspect, which in turn is preceded by mood.
    1. There is not a set order within the tenses and aspects, but there are conventions, e.g. ha-sta is very common, but **sta-ha is never used.
  4. The voice particles are mutually exclusive, so they can never be combined with each other (see what I did there?), but they always come before mood, aspect, and tense.
  5. The interrogative particle kwa always occurs at the beginning of its clause.

Short-form Verbs

There are several verbs which consist solely of an onset and the verbal ending -e. These are all very frequent or important verbs, and often auxiliary verbs. The verbs ne ‘don’t’ and fye ‘stop’ are the only short-form verbs which do not have a long form. Many short-form verbs later became adverbial particles in Europic’s daughter languages. (E.g. Mu pe nave ‘I can swim’ → Iropich Pê nav-emj [POT swim-1SG].)

While designed to be flexible as to whether one uses the short or long forms of these verbs, there are some conventions to note:

  • The short form is usually used in compounds after a full word, while the long form is used after a prefix, e.g.
  • The full form is almost always used before any suffixes, e.g. (The most common excpetion to this is de~derte, which frequently makes use of suffixes like -dantu ‘maker’ or -dacu ‘action’.)
  • Prefixes of more than one syllable tend to take a short form, e.g. notre-ye ‘to enter’, rojo-ge ‘to arm’, vigre-we ‘to throw away’ instead of notre-yite, rojo-gane, or vigre-verpe. (In colloquial speech, terms suffixed with -ye are even further simplified: notre-ye ‘to enter’, vigre-ye ‘to leave’, katre-ye ‘to exit’, pode-ye ‘to walk’ → notre, vigre, katre, pode. These would later become standard in Vulgar European.)

NB: Classical calques always use the long forms of verbs even if a short form is available. This may sometimes contradict the above, or create doublets, e.g. trans-it ‘go through’ has a native form of tratre-ye and a calqued form of tra-yite.

Adverbs

Most adverbs end in -i but this is not as consistent as other parts of speech: This mainly applies to deadjectival adverbs (those derived from adjectives).

Prepositions

Prepositions are considered a sub-type of adverb. All prepositions have a C(C)V structure, but they may end with any vowel. Here are a few old standards.

  • bi ‘at, by’
  • bo ‘about’
  • bro ‘related to’
  • byu ‘beyond’
  • da ‘to, towards’
  • de ‘of’
  • dji ‘until’
  • du ‘during’
  • flo ‘across, facing’
  • fo ‘source of’
  • fra ‘from’
  • go ‘after’
  • gre ‘throughout’
  • ka ‘out(side) of’
  • ko ‘because of’
  • kri ‘around’
  • le ‘before’
  • lo ‘along’
  • me ‘with’
  • mi ‘between’
  • na ‘(accusative)’
  • no ‘in’
  • nya ‘without’
  • pe ‘via, by’
  • pi ‘above’
  • pra ‘among’
  • pro ‘for’
  • se ‘since’
  • so ‘below’
  • sti ‘instead of’
  • ti ‘behind’
  • to ‘against’
  • tra ‘through’
  • va ‘in front of’
  • vi ‘touching’

Many prepositions can be modified by the suffix -tri to differentiate an active meaning from their default static. This suffix is roughly equivalent to Esperanto’s use of the akuzativo with certain prepositions, or in some cases, the English suffix -ward(s). While it mainly applies to prepositions, -tri can also be affixed to certain nouns. Some other prepositions can be compounded to create additional meanings or nuance. (NB: When prepositions with -tri are compounded with nouns or verbs, the hyphen before -tri is dropped and placed between the prepositional compound and the following word, and -tri is softened to -tre, e.g. no-tri + yite → notre-yite ‘to enter’.) Here are some of the most common prepositional compounds:

Directional prepositions additionally have various other suffixes which can help to hone their intended meaning. You’re already familiar with the adjectival -la of the correlatives and the nominalizing -lu of the pronouns: These can also be used with many prepositions to create adjective and noun formations based on their directionality. The suffix -vi (itself a pronoun meaning ‘touching’ or ‘on’) can transform a preposition from proximal (“next to”) to pertingent (“touching”). Some of these affixes can also be combined. The following is a non-exhaustive list of prepositional derivations:

Particles

“Particle” is a very vague term, even moreso than “adverb”—already the proverbial junk drawer of the parts of speech. Most particles indicate verbal tenses, aspects, and moods, though a few may modify other parts of speech. (The particle ya, for instance, is probably better classified as an adjective, but here it is—whaddya gonna do about it?) The verbal particles have already been discussed in Verbs, above; some other particles include:

  • ke ‘which’ (Creates a relative conjunction from a kwa-correlative.)
  • li ‘there’ (Indicates distal deixis.)
  • na (Indicates a direct object. Really a preposition.)
  • ni ‘any’ (Creates an elective from a swa-correlative.)
  • tci ‘here’ (Indicates proximal deixis.)
  • ya ‘-(e)s’ (Indicates the plural. May be considered an adjective. Never used with a number.)

Conjunctions

The final category of “Can it be another adverb?” is the conjunction. Perhaps also particles, these are set aside because they always occur at the beginning of a clause. Many of the conjunctions are the old standards we know and love - “and, or, but, if…” - but, being an auxiliary language, there are also a number of specialized conjunctions among these. In particular, Chrysanthi made use of several “logic gates” for the conjunctions, so, for example, there are different words to translate ‘or’ where both of the elements that it joins can be true - dro (‘and/or’ ~ ‘x or y or both’) compared to ‘or’ where those elements are mutually exclusive - dwa (‘or’ ~ ‘x or y but not both’).

Most conjunctions by default are phrasal - that is, they join two elements within a single clause (klebru wa brumblu ‘bread and butter’, pe teru dwa pe maru ‘by land or by sea’), but they can be made clausal with the addition of the affix -ke. Clausal conjunctions separate two complete clauses: Those minimally containing a verb (Ruya le mandjoke na klebru wa brumblu, wa-ke le bevoke na vinu. ‘They ate bread and butter and drank wine.”)

In addition to converting phrasal conjunctions to clausal ones, -ke can also be used to form a number of conjunctions from prepositions, e.g. compare dji la martu ‘until the morning’ to dji-ke ru vekable ‘until he wakes up’.

  • be ‘but’
  • brola-ke ‘in other words’
  • dji-ke ‘until’
  • dro ‘and/or (phrasal)’
  • dro-ke ‘and/or (clausal)’
  • du-ke ‘while, as’
  • dwa ‘xor (phrasal)’
  • dwa-ke ‘xor (clausal)’
  • go-ke ‘after’
  • gro-ke ‘despite that’
  • ke ‘that (subordinate)’
  • ke-kwo ‘as, like, that’
  • ko-ke ‘because of that’
  • kwa ‘whether, if’
  • kwasi ‘as if, like, as though’
  • layo ‘because’
  • le-ke ‘before’
  • nwe ‘and not, but not’
  • nyu ‘nor, neither (phrasal)’
  • nyu-ke ‘nor, neither (clausal)’
  • pro-ke ‘in order to’
  • wa ‘and, also (phrasal)’
  • wa-ke ‘and, also (clausal)’
  • ye ‘if

Syntax

Word Orders and Alignments

Typology

The basic word order is SVO, though this is flexible because the order of the clause-internal phrases is so strict. Since the direct object role is marked by a preposition (na), the direct object is treated as a prepositional phrase, though in clauses with multiple PPs, na-phrases usually come last.

Noun Phrases

The standard order of most noun phrases is:

  1. Preposition
  2. Determiner
  3. Numeral
  4. Noun
  5. Adjective (phrase)
  6. Plural Marker
  7. Genitive (phrase)
  8. Relative (clause)

For example: ‘He went with those three ugly men from John’s village who stole my brother’s dog.’

Ru le yite me li-la triya vorju burta (ya) fra viliku Djana…
S V 1 2 3 4 5 (6) 1 4 7
ru le yite me li-la triya vorju burta (ya¹) fra vil-iku Djan-a
3sg.ani pst go cmt dst-dem 3 man ugly (pl) from town-dim John-poss
He went with those three ugly men from village John’s
He went with those three ugly men from John’s village…
…ke-kwaru frastare na kanu de ma bratotcu.
8 (S) V 1 4 1 2 4
ke-kwa-ru le fraste na kanu de² ma brat-otcu
rel-inter-person pst steal acc dog poss 1sg.poss sibling-msc
who stole dog of my brother
…who stole my brother’s dog.

¹ Normally it is not permissible to use ya with a number, but it may be used optionally (usually for emphasis) if separated from the noun by at least one adjective.
² Here the possessive phrase is rendered with de because the possessive-cum-adjective structure is mainly used with a single word or name. If the phrase had been “...the child’s dog,” it would usually be rendered as na kanu kinda, but the extra word ma ‘my’ causes it to default to the de-construction. Na kanu ma-bratotca and na kanu de kindu are not wrong, just less common. (Note, too, that there is a special hyphenated construction when you “adjectivize” a noun with a determiner.)

Adjective Phrases

The standard order of most adjective phrases is:

  1. Determiner
  2. Number
  3. Noun
  4. Adverb of degree (modifying the adjective)
  5. Adjective

For example: ‘That is a very good cat.’

Li-laru se gatu muji brava.
S V 3 4 5
Li-la-ru se gatu muji brava
dst-dex-3ani cop cat aug good
That (one) is cat very good
That is a very good (well-behaved) cat.

Verb Phrases (Clauses)

The standard order of most verb phrases is:

  1. Conjunction
  2. Subject
  3. Adverbs (other than particles and negatives)
  4. Particles
    1. Voice (ga, dri)
    2. Mood (si, ba)
    3. Aspect (ha, sta, gi)
    4. Tense (go, le)
    5. Negative Marker (ne)
  5. Verb
  6. Prepositional Phrases (other than direct and indirect objects)
  7. Indirect Object
  8. Direct Object (with na)

Identity Clauses

Identity clauses are those that use a copula (“to be”) to join a noun or pronoun to another noun that identifies it. These may seem “backwards” in Europic: Their structure is similar to the construction in Welsh, for example. Rather than “I am a writer,” the phrase would normally be rendered as “Writer am I” (Welsh: Awdur ydw i).

In the case where one element is a pronoun and the other is a noun, the noun usually comes first. If the pronoun is expletive, it may be dropped entirely.

When both elements are pronouns, particularly when one is expletive, the first may be dropped entirely.

Identity clauses usually require se ‘to be’ as a copula, but there are a few other verbs which sometimes use this structure which lacks a direct object, such as hete ‘to be named’ or ble ‘to become’.

Polar Questions

Polar questions (also known as yes-no questions, binary questions, or boolean question) are formed by adding the particle kwa to the beginning of a clause. (While there is no great English translation for this word, it is directly equivalent to Esperanto ĉu, Japanese ね, or Chinese 嗎. If you really wanted to translate this word directly into English, you might think of it as ‘is it the case that’. It is also directly comparable to the French phrase est-ce que.) The word order within the clause does not change as it does in many European languages. E.g.

Wh-Questions

In most European languages, Wh–Questions (yeah, sorry, that’s just what they’re called; I hate it too) are formed with an interrogative word, such as ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’, &c – those words that in Europic begin with kwa- – and these words generally appear at the beginning of the clause. In Europic, however, pronominal interrogatives (those question words ending in -u) may appear at the beginning of the clause for emphasis, but normally they occur after the verb, particularly in clauses where they are the object of the verb. Where the interrogative is adverbial (when, how, where, how much) they precede the verb as other adverbs. The following are the unmarked (normal) orders for each type of question:

Pronominal Interrogative as Copular Subject

The pronominal interrogatives consist of those question words which act as pronouns, which is an irksomely roundabout way to describe them. More specifically, words like ‘who’ or ‘what’ which refer back to a noun. Even more specifically, these are any of the kwa-correlatives which end in -u. As specifically as I am willing to get in this space, they may be any of the following interrogatives: kwaru ‘who’, kwasu ‘what’ kwantu ‘how many/much (of it)’, kwayaru ‘what kind of person’ and kwayasu ‘what kind of thing’.

When a pronominal interrogative is used as the subject of an identity clause, they follow the verb (usually se).

Pronominal Interrogative as Subject with Object

When a pronominal interrogative serves as the subject of a sentence in which there is a direct object, it takes the primary (subject) position, i.e. it comes at the beginning of the clause, before the verb.

Pronominal Interrogative as Object

When a pronominal interrogative serves as the object of a sentence (direct or indirect – which is irrelevant, because there’s not really such a thing as a direct object in Europic), it follows the verb and is preceded by a preposition.

  • What are you doing? Tu derte na kwasu? (“You do (acc.) what-thing?”)
  • How many are you taking? Tu yite na kwantu? (“You go with how-many?”)
Adverbial Interrogative

Adverbial interrogatives are those question words which are neither pronouns nor determiners; they pose questions that ask about time, location, motivation, or manner. Specifically, they are the interrogatives ending in -o: kwaro ‘where’, kwano ‘when’, kwamo ‘how’, kwayo ‘why’, and kwantano ‘how long’. Adverbial interrogatives tend to immediately precede the main verb of the clause.

Adjectival Interrogative

Finally, adjectival interrogatives are simply determiners that are interrogative in nature. They are always accompanied by a noun or noun phrase and they stick with their noun, wherever that happens to fall in the clause. Adjectival interrogatives consist of kwa ‘which’, kwanta ‘how much, how many’, and kwaya ‘what kind of’.

  • How many children do you have? Tu he na kwanta filu? (“You have (acc.) how-many child(ren)?”)
  • Which person said that? Kwa djentu ledike na lasu? (“Which person did say (acc.) that-thing?”)
  • What kind of animal is it? Kwaya djuru se? (“What-kind-of animal is [that/it]?”)

Commands

There are two main types of imperatives: Positive and Negative. Both are formed by appending the pronoun (with a hyphen) to the end of the verb. In the case of the negative imperative (a.k.a. the prohibitive), that verb is usually ne ‘don’t’, followed by an infinitive verb. (See also the Imperative Mood.)

Comparison

The comparative and superlative forms of adjectives and adverbs are achieved with the use of suffixes:

  • -oz- forms the comparative, equivalent to ‘more’ or ‘-er’.
  • -ist- forms the superlative, equivalent to ‘most’ or ‘-est’.

For example:

The superlative does not take the definite determiner as it does in many languages, as definiteness is implied in the construction, but as the determiner la became more of a true article and less of a neutral demonstrative, it became common to include it in colloquial Europic.

Two nouns being compared are joined by the preposition kwo ‘than’.

The comparative forms can often be found in inchoative verbs (usually suffixed with -ble). In most familiar languages, the comparative is implied in the inchoative (e.g. ‘to heat up’ ≅ ‘to become hot-ter’), but there is a more subtle distinction possible in Europic where kald-able ‘to become hot’ is not quite synonymous with kald-oz-able ‘to become hotter’.

Vocabulary

Sources, Derivation, & Maintenance

Obviously an auxiliary language, upon deployment, will not contain every term of art or specialized vocabulary, and new words and concepts are appearing all the time, so many new terms need to be added to the lexicon in order for the language to be useful. In the case of Europic, the original Deployment Committee morphed into a sort of ad hoc authority for the language (thereafter known as Memetatu Yevropica: The Committee for the Europic Language, or often just “La Memetatu”), maintaining a public dictionary database and carefully curating new additions to the language to account for phonotactics, repair strategies, and adherence to the language’s principals. However, after the fall of the ECA in the mid-24th century, the language was no longer regulated and grew organically very quickly.

That being said, the Committee used Chrysanthi’s original rules for word development as a guide for increasing vocabulary where necessary. Chrysanthi deliberately concealed much of his process for creating vocabulary, believing that having clear etymologies for the lexicon could lead to an unproductive attempt to compare percentages of source languages. However, many words have very clear origins. Chrysanthi’s general process, while undocumented, seems to have followed these guidelines for derivation:

  1. If there is a common theme throughout multiple European languages that fits Europic phonology, use it. E.g. Romance, Celtic trist- ‘sad’ → trista. (Usually these are borrowings from Latin or Greek that have propagated across the continent.)
  2. If there is a clear root, but it begins with a vowel, choose an initial consonant (or cluster) from a parallel source: E.g. Romance -am- ‘love’ + Germanic/Slavic liub-' → lyam-.
  3. If there are two clear roots and one is already used by Esperanto, use the other. E.g. Eo. hundo, bovo, ŝnuro → Eu. kanu, vaku, kordu.
  4. If there is a clear root, but it is larger than one syllable, condense it if possible. If it contains illicit consonant clusters, adjust according to the language’s repair strategy. E.g.: pastinak- ‘parsnips’ → stanku.

Classical Calques

Instead of shoveling “universal” common borrowings directly into the language, there is a sort of formula by which Latin and Greek roots and affixes can be parsed and reassembled. Often, this results in very similar, familiar words, but equally often the resulting word bears no resemblance to the common terms we know and love.

Prefixes
Roots
Suffixes

¹ NB: -ismu is calqued from -ism only for ideologies for (pro) something (e.g. pacifism, nationalism, fascism). An ideology against something must be prefixed with to- (e.g. to-velismu ‘ageism’, to-(pela)klarvismu ‘racism’). To- also calques anti- or counter/contra- in terms like anti-semitism or counter-terrorism. So terms like ‘anti-racism’ take an additional prefix of flo- ‘in opposition’ to avoid reduplicating the prefix, e.g. flo-to-klarvismu ‘anti-racism’. But that is beyond the scope of calques at this point.

Note that some of these calques are more “performative” than accurate. In Latin and Greek, there are often superfluous affixes that don’t contribute directly to the meaning of the word (for example, many words ending in -tion could be calqued directly to a noun rather than adding the abstract -acu suffix, but it is kept anyway for recognition purposes. Furthermore, some of the calque “blocks” don’t translate their Europic meaning directly; for example, de- does not faithfully translate de, e.g. ‘de-scend’→de-cende: de here would be more accurately translated with so-tri, though non-calque form sotre-cende exists as a synonym. Another oblique match-up is pro, which is often better translated as va-tri ‘forward’, though va only occurs in calques as an equivalent of ante.

Hyphenation

While it plays only a minor role in the overall structure of the language, hyphenation in Europic has a storied and contentious history, and prescriptive usage never entirely aligned with best practices.

In Chrysanthi’s original proposal of Europic, he argued not only that every morpheme of every word should be separated by hyphens, but also that all elements of every phrase should be joined by them as well. The result was a bit reminiscent of the transcription of Hittite, known to be one of his interests, which probably inspired the idea. Adverbs and particles were joined to their verbs, and noun phrases were completely connected from preposition through adjective to plural particle. For example, consider the following common phrase: ‘Emilio used to go to France to buy green kazoos for her.’

Chrysanthi: Milyu stu-le-yite da-Frangal-iyu pro-ke budje na-zumba-su-grena-ya we-ru.
Memetatu: Milyu stu-le yite da Frangaliyu pro-ke budje na zumbasu grena ya we ru.
(Vulgar European: Milyu stule ite da Frangaliu proke budje na zumbasui grenai weru.)
(Iropich: Milj da Thrangli steuljitj preokj veorh na sumbaosh grene beuqj. [miʎ də θraŋɡˈli stɛʊ̯ˈʎiʨ prɛʊ̯kɕ vɛʊ̮ʀ nə sumˈbɔʂ ˈɡrene bɛʊ̯ɣʲ])


While this kind of hyphenation served to nicely bracket many of the phrases in a way that may have simplified learning the grammar, the Memetatu opted to avoid hyphenating suffixes, prepositions, and particles that followed a main term, resulting in the stress of all words being completely predictable. (Chrysanthi fought hard for the inclusion of hyphens after prepositions, but it was struck down on the basis that this would change the stress of sequences where prepositions preceded pronouns, e.g. na mù, vs. nà-mu. The first version released by the Memetatu, however, still hyphenated most morphemes, including all elements of compounds.

A spelling reform in 2101ᴀᴅ removed more hyphens, offering the opinion that when multiple words are compounded, the hyphens should be removed from the most closely associated terms (which is essentially how people had been using them anyway). For example, in the adverbial particles: go-le ‘would’ → ha-gole ‘would have’ (formerly ha-go-le). The hyphen between go and le is removed, because they are more closely related: They are both tenses, while ha is an aspect.

A general guideline was issued that a word should contain a maximum of one hyphen, with very few exceptions where further compounding was impractical or ambiguous, e.g.:

Kinship Terms

In standard European fashion, Europic reflects a typical Inuit-type kinship system with no differentiation between maternal and paternal lines. Its structure is such that all familial relationships by default are non-gendered, but gender can be specified if necessary with the endings -in- ‘female’ and -otc- ‘male’. The basic familial terms are:

Gen. Direct Line Indirect Line
+3 le-nonu ‘great-grandparent’  
+2 nonu ‘grandparent’ le-vunklu ‘great-auncle’
+1 vatru ‘parent’ vunklu ‘auncle’
0 bratu ‘sibling’ kuzu ‘cousin’
-1 filu ‘child’ nefu ‘nibling’
-2 niku ‘grandchild’ go-nefu ‘grand-nibling’
-3 go-niku ‘great-grandchild’  

(I use the awkward but slightly less cumbersome non-gendered terms nibling for ‘niece or nephew’ and auncle for ‘aunt or uncle’ – I know, I hate it too, but sometimes you just have to accept the least horrible options. Child here should be understood as ‘son or daughter’ rather than any random small human.)

There are two distinct types of marriage relationships: The term swekru is compounded to refer to relatives of one’s spouse, while compounds with camu refer to the spouse of one’s relative. In many languages, these terms are conflated, but this allows the distinction between, for example, brata-swekru ‘brother-in-law, the brother of one’s spouse’ and brata-camu ‘brother-in-law, the spouse of one’s brother’. The latter construction is also used to compound “step-”relationships, such as vatra-caminu ‘father’s wife’, i.e. “step-mother.”

There are root terms for all direct relationships from grandchildren to grandparents. Further terms can be indicated with prefixes such as go- ‘great, future generations’ and le- ‘great, past generations’, e.g. go-niku ‘great-grandchild’ vs. le-nonu ‘great-grandparent’.

Lexicon

Phrasebook

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