Concept
Volapük
Overview
Volapük (English: ; Volapük: [volaˈpyk], 'Language of the World', or lit. 'World Speak') is a constructed language created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Notable as the first major constructed international auxiliary language, it primarily drew from Germanic languages. Its grammar is inspired largely by German, although it was heavily regularized by Schleyer, while its lexicon is rooted mostly in English, with additional influence from German, the Romance languages, and Russian. Despite some roots remaining recognizable, many words were altered beyond recognition, as Schleyer sought to make most of the vocabulary monosyllabic.
Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (Friedrichshafen), 1887 (Munich) and 1889 (Paris). The first two conventions used German, and the last conference used only Volapük. By 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages; at that time the language claimed nearly a million adherents. Volapük experienced a small revival in the 1930s due to Arie de Jong's reforms of the language, which became called Volapük nulik. This form simplified the language and became the commonly accepted form of it. Volapük was largely displaced between the late 19th and early 20th century by Esperanto, as many Volapükists switched to Esperanto due to the internal conflicts within the Volapükist movement.
Volapük still maintains a small userbase to this day, and it has seen a small revival in the 21st century.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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This process of composition is sometimes found in its incipient stage—a stage in which the component words are temporarily united to signify some unnamed object, and do not (from lack of frequent use) permanently cohere. But in the majority of inferior languages, the process of “agglutination,” as it is called, has gone far enough to produce considerable stability in the compound words: there is a manifest…
Herbert Spencer, First Principles
States what Volapük is.
Writing seems to have consisted originally of pictures, which gradually became conventionalized, coming in time to represent syllables, and finally letters on the telephone principle of "T for Tommy." But it would seem that writing nowhere began as an attempt to represent speech it began as a direct pictorial representation of what was to be expressed. The essence of language lies, not in the use of this or that…
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
States what Volapük is.
How much the beauty of any expression depends upon its conciseness, is well known to those who have any experience in composition. Secondly, this simplification of the principles of languages renders them less agreeable to the ear. The variety of termination in the Greek and Latin, occasioned by their declensions and conjugations, gives a sweetness to their language altogether unknown to ours, and a variety unknown…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Volapük is.
Related ideas
- French language
- Germany
- German language
- Grammar
- Grammatical tense
- Grammatical gender
- Morpheme
- Munich
- Netherlands
- Phoneme
- Paris
- Russian language
- Switzerland
- Spanish language
- Austria
- American Philosophical Society
- Adjective
- Vienna
- France
- Catholic Church
- Latin script
- English language
- Europe
- Esperanto
Place in the tradition
Part of Alphabetical order.