Eulingu - a language project for Europe

For my first proper post for the new year, I'll talk 'bout the still-in-development Eulingu.

What is this "Eulingu" you might ask? Well, apart from being a language intended for a European audience, it's also a continuation of ideas from a previous conlang made by the starters of the Eulingu project, called "Duirún" (see the post on the Eulingu blog for more history), and was intended to be made by a community in a sort of open-source mentality rather than by one person. These things might not make it particularly special, and indeed there's limits to how much you can make a conlang open-source (in particular, development is currently closed off to the general public for a bit while ideas are floated and weighed against each other, with the focus on giving a near-finished product rather than expecting the greater community to do all the legwork - compare this to how many open-source programs tend to be made by a small knit group of people, but on release are shared on a much greater scale with anyone interested.)

Eventually, when Eulingu is "ready", the aim is to have the greater community mull over it and help improve it and sharpen it up. In some ways, this doesn't seem quite as exciting as the idea of having 2000 or so people vote on every single feature of a language, but I do believe there are people experimenting with that sort of language creation too! Regardless, the fun thing about Eulingu though is that you can get involved, ultimately.

The language also faces various challenges - Europeans might reject the project, instead favouring a natural language like English, German, or Spanish, or might prefer an alternative project, like Esperanto or Interlingua. Regardless, Eulingu is an attempt to create another project and see what benefits it will have, even in the face of uncertainty. If we were afraid of reinventing the wheel, why do we bother learning other languages or writing poetry or stories and so on? (and why would there be so many different types of wheel available today? ;))

As for the language itself (note, these details might eventually be outdated, if not already):
- Nouns of no gender end in -u, unless they're plural in which case it's "i".
Lingu = language, Lingi = languages

- Verbs use -er, and -et for the passive.
amer, amet = to love, to be loved (-er is the same as French -er)

- Tense is indicated using special copulae.
Estu- = present/am/are/is, Pastu- = past/was/were, Vadu- = future/going to be

- These copulae conjugate using the consonant from the pronouns provided, "mu" (me), "tu" (you), "su" (it, they), "nu" (we).
Estum = I am, Pastut = You were, and so on (Estu etc can be used without an ending in the 3rd person, or it can be "Estus").

- The same pronouns used for conjugating "Estu", "Pastu", etc, can be used in the accusative, possessive, even dative, without major changes, but should be modified with -i to be "mi", "ti", and so on to agree with plural things that are possessed (mi kati = my cats), and o/a for the male and female gender if they are used (mo kato = my male cat).

- Adjectives use -us, but replace the "u" with i/o/a if necessary. Ma kata matras = my maternal cat. Sometimes adjectival sort of phrases can be made using the genitive preposition "d'". There's also "lu" (or li, la, lo, etc) for the definite article, and "un-" for the indefinite article (un, uni, uno, una).
"La kata grandas d'ma patro" = the great female cat belonging to my father.

- Adverbs can be made using "-es" and normally follow the unconjugated verb (-er verbs). Manger rapides = eat quickly.

- Participles can be at this point made out of "er" and "et" using "-u(s)" (or changed for gender/plurality if needed) at the end. "Skriberu" = writer, "un katu ametus" = a loved cat, and so forth.

Currently, spelling is not entirely phonetic when it comes to "g" - at the moment it is being used for both hard and soft roles (pagu = 'pa:dZu, amer = a'me:). These sorts of things will be sorted out later.

Hopefully that's enough to get you interested if you're so inclined. If you are, I urge you to visit the Eulingu blog and Facebook pages for more info, or if you want to get involved. The language will no doubt grow over time, and start to appear differently, so don't lose track of it ;)

Eulingu @ Blogspot
http://eurolanguage.blogspot.com.au/

Eulingu @ Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/groups/eulingu/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eulingu/

Eulingu will most likely have its own site eventually, which will help consolidate things too!

Well, it's been a while

Sorry for anyone with an interest in this blog, I keep forgetting it exists ;) In the coming months though I should be using it a lot more as I try to keep tabs on a number of projects, one being writing, one being conlanging, and one being life in general (that's a project, right?).

All the best for 2012, here's to there being no apocalypses!