uropic (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, 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 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 the 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, kri-tri ‘around’ → klitri, sabluklu ‘grain of sand’ → sabruklu. This remains a persistent rule in the grammar of the language through Iropich.
• Unstressed vowels are often deleted.
• Initial y, w, and h are sometimes elided, thereby allowing some words to begin with vowels.
• 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. But that’s getting a little closer to the novel, which you’re going to have to wait a little longer to read.
• Initially written in Vulgar European, in which all of the ship’s technology was written, but an overzealous spelling reform took hold in the latter half of their journey and a new hyper-corrected writing system was put in place.
• 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.

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 (other than names) 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. 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’).
• While most roots are independent, there are some “associated” roots where a letter may be changed or added to convey a different shade of meaning. (Professional language creators at the time decried this as lazy and unprofessional, and perhaps they were correct.) For example, nazu ‘nose’ and nazlu ‘nostril’, or kamyu ‘shirt’ and tamyu ‘T-shirt’.
• 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.

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 optional 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.