PIE conlangs [was: Re: Weekly vocab #2]

At 5:13 PM +0100 04/09/02, Michael Poxon wrote:
>I liked that book. I occasionally look for it in second-hand bookshops, of
>which there are many in Norwich. Shemspreg? Does it mean "Old language"?
>Sounds as though it should.
No; _shem_ is from PIE *dhghem- 'land, earth; human being' (this from
the AHD of IE Roots; my source for most of the vocabulary). So it's
either 'earth language' or 'human language'; a fortunate ambiguity.
It started out as a mock-IAL, but it began to take on a life of its
own before I stopped working on it. I think I posted some grammatical
bits here.

>My ex-tutor, Dr. DuFeu, was mad keen on PIE and
>I think would have approved. She always had a hankering to recreate the
>whole PIE system!
She would have been disappointed with Shemspreg, then. The grammar is
drastically stripped down and shows a decided tilt towards English.

There are other IE conlangs which depend in varying degrees on the
reconstructions of PIE. I lost track of how many others have tried
this. I remember Tom Wier's Degaspregos fondly; I think the name
Degaspregos is based on the same root as Shemspreg.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                  Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

Man deth swa he byth thonne he mot swa he wile.
'A man does as he is when he can do what he wants.'

- Old English Proverb

Replies