Good deal, Will, I’m all up for that.
That would be a dream come true!
OK, well, I downloaded their Grammar and have been taking a look at it. It’s an interesting read, regardless of what you may think of the reasonableness of the project. I must say, since Esperanto has been accused of being “too complicated” for retaining an accusative marker (always “-n”,) I’m skeptical of the prospects of a European interlanguage with 8 cases, 3 numbers, and a congeries of weird and wonderful declensions, but this is the kind of insane proposal that it’s hard not to like!
The introductory matter is disappointing in a way. I thought Marija Gimbutas’ Kurgan theory of Indo-European origins was surely dead by now, but it’s given pride of place (first mention, anyway) while Colin Renfrew’s theory that Indo-European spread out of a homeland in eastern Anatolia, bringing agriculture with it, much more slowly and much earlier than previously suspected, is given very short shrift. I think it’s time to leave those ax-wielding barbarians so beloved of 19th century scholars behind.
The section on phonology was also something of a surprise. I haven’t read anything in this area for a while, but I was hoping that sanity might have returned in recent years. I mean, really: 3 (or is it 4, or is it 9?) “laryngeal” consonants that have all disappeared from all the daughter languages, and for none of which do we have any idea of their value? In reconstructing any other proto-language notions like this would be laughed to scorn. Whatever it was, Proto-Indo-European was a human language, and had to be spoken by humans!
Just my two cents, but thanks, Annis, for finding this and bringing it to our attention.