Volapük (; , 'Language of the World', or ) 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;Handbook of Volapük , Charles E. Sprague (1888) at that time the language claimed nearly a million adherents.A History of the English Language, 5th ed. Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable. Ch. I English Present and Future; Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (2002) 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.The Loom of Language F. Bodmer and L. Hogben (eds.) Ch. XI Pioneers of Language Planning; Allen & Unwin Ltd, London (1944)
Volapük still maintains a small userbase to this day, and it has seen a small revival in the 21st century.
History Volapük was first created by Johann Martin Schleyer, who was a Roman Catholic priest. As Schleyer met an old German peasant who could not write to his son due to the linguistic barrier, he was very symphathetic, causing him to decide that there should be a means of international communication. He first created a "National alphabet", which could express the sounds of every language in the world. However, his alphabet system did not gain any recognition, which caused him to develop insomnia. During one sleepless night, he believed that God told him not to despair, and had called him to create an international auxiliary language. Schleyer first published a sketch of Volapük in May 1879 in Sionsharfe, a Catholic poetry magazine of which he was editor. This was followed in 1880 by a full-length book in German. Schleyer himself did not write books on Volapük in other languages, but other authors soon did, such as Comprehensive Volapük Grammar by Alfred A. Post, A Complete Grammar of Volapük by A. K. Linderfelt, and A Handbook of Volapük by Andrew Drummond.
André Cherpillod writes of the third Volapük convention,
Volapük experienced a short period of very high success, spreading first to France, and then elsewhere. At one point there were perhaps up to even one million students of Volapük, but later began to decline.
Decline and absorption by Esperanto The Dutch cryptographer Auguste Kerckhoffs was for a number of years director of the Academy of Volapük, and introduced the movement to several countries. The French Association for the Propagation of Volapük was authorized on 8 April 1886, with A. Lourdelet as president and a central committee that included the deputy Edgar Raoul-Duval. However, tensions arose between Kerckhoffs and others in the Academy, who wanted reforms made to the language, and Schleyer, who insisted strongly on retaining his proprietary rights. This led to schism, with much of the Academy abandoning Schleyer's Volapük in favor of Idiom Neutral and other new constructed language projects. Another reason for the decline of Volapük may have been the rise of Esperanto. By 1890 the movement was in disarray, with violent arguments among the members. Schleyer resigned from the Volapük Academy and created a rival academy. Derived languages such as Nal Bino, Balta, Bopal, Spelin, Dil and Orba were invented and quickly forgotten.
In 1887 the first Esperanto book (Unua Libro) was published. The internal collapse of the Volapük movement led to its gradual replacement by Esperanto, as many of its speakers joined the Esperanto movement which was linguistically simpler, and lacked central control, causing many previous Volapük clubs were converted to being Esperanto clubs. The influence of Volapük was thus a major driver of the initial Esperanto movement, as it set the stage for the widespread usage of constructed languages, though its own usage declined radically.
20th century temporary revival In the 1920s, Arie de Jong, with the consent of the leaders of the small remnant of Volapük speakers, made a revision of Volapük which was published in 1931 (now called Volapük Nulik "New Volapük" as opposed to the Volapük Rigik 'Original Volapük' of Schleyer). This revision was accepted by the few speakers of the language. De Jong simplified the grammar, eliminating some rarely used verb forms, and eliminated some gendered pronouns and gendered verb endings. He also rehabilitated the phoneme and used it to make some morphemes more recognizable. For instance, lömib "rain" became rein. These reforms made the language simpler overall. Volapük enjoyed a brief renewal of popularity in the Netherlands and Germany under de Jong's leadership, but was suppressed (along with other constructed languages) in countries under Nazi rule and never recovered.
Regarding the success of this constructed language, the Spanish scientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal wrote in the first edition of his Tonics of Willingness, in 1898:
However, some years later (1920), in the third edition of the same book, he added the following footnote to the former assertion: "As it was presumable, nowadays -1920-, the brand new Volapük has been forgotten definitively. We forecast the same for Esperanto."
Modern-day use and resurgence
Volapük has experienced a small revival in the 21st century, although often as a hobby language. Large Volapük collections are held by the International Esperanto MuseumCollection for Planned Languages (in German) in Vienna, Austria; the Center for Documentation and Study about the International Language in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; and the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Volapük Collection - American Philosophical Society In 2000 there were an estimated 20 Volapük speakers in the world.
In December 2007 it was reported that the Volapük version of Wikipedia had recently jumped to 15th place among language editions, with more than 112,000 articles. A few months earlier there had been only 797 articles. The massive increase in the size of "Vükiped", bringing it ahead of the Esperanto Wikipedia, was due to an enthusiast who had used a computer program to automatically create geographical articles, many on small villages. The motive was to gain visibility for the language. By March 2013 the Esperanto Wikipedia, with a very active user community, had risen to 176,792 articles, while the Volapük Wikipedia had at that point 119,091 articles. In 2013 and 2014, the Volapük Wikipedia was presented as evidence that the internet is helping revive the Volapük movement, albeit merely as a hobby, devoid of its former internationalist aim. As one of the largest works written in the language over the last century, it has an impact on the development of modern Volapük neologisms, particularly geographical terms.
There has been a continuous Volapük speaker community since Schleyer's time, with an unbroken succession of Cifals (leaders). These were: Johann Martin Schleyer 1879–1912 Albert Sleumer 1912–1948 Arie de Jong (provisionally) 1947–1948, 1951–1957 Jakob Sprenger 1948–1950 Johann Schmidt 1950–1977 Johann Krüger 1977–1983 Brian Bishop 1984–2014 Hermann Philipps 2014–present"Volapuko havas novan Cifal!", La Balta Ondo, May 29, 2014.
Phonology and orthography
The phonology of Volapük is as follows:Sprague (1888) +VowelsFrontBackUnroundedRoundedClose Close-mid ~ Open-mid~ Near-openOpen~ +ConsonantsBilabialAlveolarPostalveolarPalatalVelarGlottalNasal Plosive Affricate ~ ~ Fricative~ ~ Approximant Trill
Additionally, ⟨x⟩ represents the sequence . The letters , , and are pronounced voiced after voiced consonants and unvoiced otherwise.
There are no diphthongs; each vowel letter is pronounced separately. Polysyllabic words are always stressed on the final vowel; for example, "never" is pronounced . Exceptionally, the question clitic "-li" does not shift the stress of the word it attaches to. When words are compounded together, secondary stress is retained on the final syllables of the compounded elements, as long as that does not result in adjacent stressed syllables.
The letters ä, ö, and ü do not have alternative forms such as the ae, oe, and ue of German, but Schleyer proposed alternative forms ꞛ, ꞝ, and ꞟ for them, all of which are part of Unicode since version 7.0 released in June 2014:
Special consonantal letters
The following letters were constructed by the inventor to designate sounds which occasionally occur:
å ħ 𝑙 m̂ n̂ ᶇ ȷ ƈ ſ rr
Linguistic features
Schleyer adapted the vocabulary mostly from English, with a smattering of German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and French. Some words remain readily recognizable for a speaker of one of the source languages, but many others are modified beyond easy recognition, as Schleyer wanted to keep most vocabulary monosyllabic."For example, while it is true that words like vol and pük don't really look like world and speak, but the whole language is not like that. Scores of words are very obvious as what they mean – if, fasilik, gudik/badik, smalik, jerik (pronounced sherík – expensive), bank, bäk (back), deadik". – "What the L!", AUXLANG list posting by Thomas Alexander, 15 November 2005. For instance, vol and pük are derived from the English words world and speak. Although unimportant linguistically, and regardless of the simplicity and consistency of the stress rule, these deformations were greatly mocked by the language's detractors. It seems to have been Schleyer's intention, however, to alter its loan words in such a way that they would be hard to recognise, thus losing their ties to the languages (and, by extension, nations) from which they came. Conversely, Esperanto and Interlingua are commonly criticized as being much easier to learn for Europeans than for those with non-European native languages. However, during the reforms of the language in the 1930s, some of the vocabulary was made more recognizable, particularly with the introduction of the letter r, thus words such as lilöm (rain) and lilädön (to read) became rein and reidön. This also made international words such as dolar (dollar) easier to recognize.
Grammatically, Volapük was highly influenced particularly by German, although it gets rid of the irregular features of German grammar. The reforms of Volapük also however simplified its grammar, and removing grammatical features such as the aorist.
Grammar The grammar is based on that of typical European languages, but with an agglutinative character: grammatical inflections are indicated by stringing together separate affixes for each element of meaning.
Nouns Nouns inflect for case and number, but not for gender.
The following is the declension of the Volapük word "world":
Case Singular PluralNominative vol (world) vols (worlds)Genitive vola (of the world) volas (of the worlds)Dative vole (to the world) voles (to the worlds)Accusative voli (world) volis (worlds)