Hallo conlangers!

On Wednesday 25 May 2011 20:50:13, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:

> --- Jörg Rhiemeier skrzypszy:
> > > > Euroclones could more accurately be described (decried?)
> > > > as "variations on the same theme" or "different expressions
> > > > of the same idea".
> 
> Depends a bit on how you define "euroclone", but yes, I agree.

As far as I can tell, the term is not precisely defined, but
broadly refers to a conlang (not necessarily an auxlang) that
complies with a "Standard Average European" typological profile
(as I have laid out, basically following the work of linguist
Martin Haspelmath, on the following page:

http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/sae.html

).  A euroclone is usually the result of a lack of awareness
of the diversity of the world's languages; many conlangers just
know a handful of major European languages, and take those
languages' typological profile for granted.  Of course, being
a euroclone is not necessarily a bad thing for a conlang (see

http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/euroclones.html

); for instance, a European regional auxlang or a fictional
European language have valid reasons for being euroclones.
An example would be my artlang Roman Germanech, a Germanic-
influenced Romance language spoken in Germany (in the League
of Lost Languages); in this case I consciously chose a
"euroclone" design because it made sense that way; there
simply is no way how a Romance language undergoing similar
sound change as German, and spoken in western central
Europe, could end up being anything else than a Standard
Average European language.

> > Indeed.  Someone (I have forgotten who) once remarked that
> > most of the major IALs - Esperanto, Ido, Occidental, Novial,
> > Interlingua - are similar enough to be mutually intelligible
> > to some degree.  I don't know how much truth there is in it,
> > but they are certainly very similar to each other - variations
> > on the same theme.
> 
> I think that depends very much on how you define "language". Lexically they
> are similar indeed, grammatically Esperanto is very different from the
> more naturalist ones.

Sure.  Occidental and Interlingua are basically streamlined
Romance languages; Esperanto and Ido have a mostly Romance
wordstock but an a priori grammar which distills the essence
of the Standard Average European language type into a simple
agglutinating morphology; Novial is somewhere halfway between
these two groups.  I indeed have doubts against the claim that
all those languages are mutually intelligible.

>       I've never been particularly interested in any of
> these languages and never studied them either, but I can tell you for sure
> that I can follow texts in Interlingua and Occidental without any
> problems, while an Esperanto text gives me not more than a very raw
> impression of what it is about.

I am also not particularly interested in those auxlangs;
the idea of an artificial international language is nothing
I subscribe to, and those languages don't really do anything
interesting, though some show good linguistic craftsmanship.
I am much more interested in naturalistic artlangs which
show some "exotic" features; it tells a lot that my work on
Roman Germanech is stalled, which is simply because that
language is so bland and colourless.  All those euroclone
IALs are just foreign languages to me; Oc and Ie are a bit
easier to penetrate due to my (meagre) knowledge of Latin,
French and Spanish, while Eo and Io are somewhat more
difficult to understand.

> > > Try this sentence:
> > > "V pajio ci hatj, lrid cga coig pegayx pe bamb ak cop pbagt."
> 
> Yuck!

Looks horrible, yes, but I have been told that Babm uses
the Latin alphabet as a kind of syllabary, so it doesn't
sound the way it looks.  (And as Ray has said, it is not
a euroclone.)
 
> > Sometimes, though, the word "Euroclone" is used with the wider meaning
> > 'conlang with a grammatical structure that conforms to Standard
> > Average European patterns', and I don't know whether Babm conforms
> > to them.
> 
> "Euroclone" is not really a clearly defined concept. It doesn't really play
> a role in any serious classification scheme, and it has a clearly negative
> connotation for most people. I understand it as "a would-be world language
> that is almost exclusively based on West European material". But then,
> I've also seen Folkspraak, Brithenig, Wenedyk etc. being called
> euroclones, which rather proves how problematic the term really is.

Yes, it is not very useful for classificatory purposes, and
mainly used to characterize a conlang (usually an auxlang,
but it has been used for artlangs as well) as "boring".
From a more objective viewpoint, the SAE linguistic type
is just one out of many, and there is little reason to
single it out that way.

> > But yes, we are getting dangerously close to AUXLANG territory
> > here.
> 
> In my understanding, there's no problem with discussing auxlangs in
> linguistic terms at all, as long as we avoid auxlang advocacy and texts of
> the "e-o sux, x-q rulez" type. Let's not make the gap between people
> interested in auxlangs and people interested in artlangs bigger than
> necessary...

Concurred.  So far, nothing has been said in this thread that
got even close to auxlang advocacy, except that some members
have expressed their disinterest in auxlangs.

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