uropic, 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 Central Authority and the language’s loss of official status.

In-World (Fictional Future) 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 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 set of criteria for the language. 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 the language.

The resulting language, officially known as Europic (French Europique, German Europisch, &c), was adopted as an official language of the ECA in 2097. 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 it wasn’t widely spoken. By the 23rd Century, a distinct Romance-flavoured branch had formed in southern and western Europe.

Timeline

• Europic: A language adopted by the ECA in 2097ad.
• Vulgar European (a.k.a. Colloquial or Late Western Europic) (~2250) - 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’ in place of 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 2281, an oppressive regime in southern Europe mandates 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, kri-tri ‘around’ → klitri, sabluklu ‘grain of sand’ → sablukru. This remains a persistent rule in the grammar of the language through Rupesh.
• Rupesh (~3000, 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. But that’s getting a little closer to the novel, which you’re going to have to wait a little longer to read.

Language Goals

In-World (Fictional) Goals

• To create an auxiliary language for the 22nd-century ECA, partly as a measure to combat the influence of English in Europe where it no longer had official status.
• 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, even when it leads to some awkward initial consonants like in Yevropicu.
• 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. palasu ‘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. Roots are source-agnostic, and when recognizable, should not be construed as representing any particular synchronic stage of any language.
• 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 Indo-Iranian, Italic, or Celtic. Still more are derived from Finno-Ugric or other languages, or a combination of any of the above.
• Many etymologies are clear; others are more opaque. 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 ‘trans-mit’) but often unrecognizable if one is unfamiliar with the “trick” (e.g. me-tir-acu ‘con-trac-tion’, mi-kepe ‘inter-cept’).
• The language should have no inflection, including lack of plurals, verb tenses, and the infamous akuzativon that seems to upset people so much when learning Esperanto. Plurals and other grammatical features are indicated (often optionally) with particles.
• 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 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 amo- 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-.) 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.

Overview, Trivia, & Factoids

Phonology & Phonotactics

• The phonology is very simple. Most letters are pronounced as expected.
  • A couple of exceptions: C=ʃ, TC=ʧ, J=ʒ. DJ=ʤ.
• There is a simple five-vowel system.
• Most phonemes should be easily reproduced by most speakers of other European languages.
• R /r/ tends to have localized pronunciation, and nobody even gets mad about it.
• Every word begins with a consonant and ends with a vowel. There are very few clusters allowed.
• Pronouns, determiners, prepositions, conjunctions, and particles can contain a single syllable; all other parts of speech have a minimum of two syllables.
• → More about the Orthography here.
• → More about Phonology here.

Source Material

• The language is largely source-agnostic. Roots are (deliberately) not as easily identifiable as those of, for example, Esperanto.
• There is a formula for calquing classical elements from Latin and Greek.

Nouns

• All nouns end in -U. There is no inflection.
• Plurals are formed with an adjectival particle ya.
• The language is default genderless (even pronouns), but there are affixes if you really need to specify.
• Pronouns:
• Pronouns are considered to be a subset of nouns, and as such, also end in -U.
• Plural pronouns are simply the singular pronouns plus the plural particle. (E.g. tu ‘you’ → tu-ya ‘y’all’)
• The first person pronouns have clusivity (i.e. distinguish “we, including you” from “we, but not you”).
• → More about Nouns here.
• → Chart of Personal Pronouns here.
• → More about Pronouns here.

Verbs

• All verbs end in -E. There is no conjugation.
• Tenses, moods, aspects, &c are formed with adverbial particles.
• Word order is boring old SVO, because European.
• Verbs have a causative particle -de and an inchoative particle -ble.
• → More about Verbs here.

Adjectives

• All adjectives end in -A. (Guess what? There is no inflection.)
• Most adjectives follow their nouns.
• Most adjectives, à la Esperanto, can be made verbs by changing the ending from -A to -E.
• Determiners:
  • Determiners are considered to be a sub-type of adjective which precede their nouns.
  • There are no articles.
  • Numbers:
    • Numerals are considered to be a sub-type of determiner.
• → More about Adjectives here.
• → More about Determiners here.
• → More about Numbers here.
• → Chart of Basic Numbers here.

Adverbs

• Deadjectival adverbs end in -I.
• All other parts of speech (prepositions, conjunctions, particles, &c) are considered a subset of adverbs.
  • Prepositions:
    • Every noun phrase that is not the subject of a verb begins with a preposition.
    • The infamous akuzativon that so annoys anglo learners of Esperanto is replaced by a preposition: na.
  • Particles:
    • Particles are used to indicate tense, aspect, mood, and voice in verbs.
  • Conjunctions:
    • Many conjunctions have both “phrasal” and “clausal” forms.
• → More about Adverbs here.
• → More about Prepositions here.
• → More about Particles here.
• → More about Conjunctions here.