Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month/June 2013

Europanto is a macaronic language concept with a fluid vocabulary from multiple European languages of the user's choice or need. It was conceived in 1996 by Diego Marani (a journalist, author and translator for the European Council of Ministers in Brussels) based on the common practice of word-borrowing usage of many EU languages. Marani used it in response to the perceived dominance of the English language; it is an emulation of the effect that non-native speakers struggling to learn a language typically add words and phrases from their native language to express their meanings clearly.

The main concept of Europanto is that there are no fixed rules — merely a set of suggestions. This means that anybody can start to speak Europanto immediately; on the other hand, it is the speaker's responsibility to draw on an assumed common vocabulary and grammar to communicate.

Marani wrote regular newspaper columns about the language and published a novel using it. As of 2005, he no longer actively promotes it.

The language's name "europanto" is a portmanteau of Europa (the word for Europe in some European languages) and the Greek root πάντ- ("pant-"; in English "all", "whole") and bears an intentional similarity with the name of the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto. Find out more...