THE UNION OF TONGUES.
MORE than one attempt has been made in historic times to repair the mischief brought about by the builders of the Tower of Babel. But it has been reserved to this fortunate generation to witness the most systematic and deliberate attempt to achieve that consummation by the arti- ficial construction of a universal language. It is true that Volapiik* has only been in existence for six years, and that its vocabulary falls short by 87,000 words of the modest total of 100,000 which Professor Kerckhoffs fixes as the minimum of a complete language. But its projectors express the hope that it will not be long before this deficiency is made up. At the present rate of formation-2,1661 words a year—Volapiik will be capable of expressing anything by the year 1920 A.D. As it stands, it is " amply able to suffice for all the needs of inter- national correspondence." Immense activity is shown by its adherents. Nearly two hundred " clubs " are in existence for its propagation " in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and other countries of Europe, as well as in America, Canada, and Asia." Africa, or, as we shall soon call it, Tikop, is at present reprehensibly backward in the great work ; but Father Schleyer, the inventor of Volapiik, is evidently not without hopes of Tikop, holding as he does that Volapiik will become the only language of the world, and that a universal Volapiik literature will blossom forth destined to supplant, supersede, and surpass the master- pieces of Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Cervantes. It is only fair to Professor Harrison, " Sub-Inspector for English in the Naval School of St. Petersburg," who is responsible for the guide before us, to state that he is far less sanguine as to the future of Volapiik. He thinks it is bound to become the great international commercial medium of the world, but beyond that he is not prepared to go. Nay, he declares that the mistaken views of Schleyer and his enthusiastic followers often cause Volapiik " to he laughed at by those who know nothing of its true nature,"—for it is obvious that a language counting thirteen thousand words, and hacked by two hundred clubs, is no laughing matter. Volapiik will not snuff out Shakespeare ; let us set our minds at rest on that point. " A cursory glance at the alphabet and words of the language will show it to be utterly unsuited to music" [e.g., " Li-piiponobs- ov, if iisegolobs-la biifft nakiim omik ?"] ; while as to poetry, two leading principles in Volapiik will always prevent any one who possesses an ear and common-sense, from attempting to write verse in it,"—the two principles being, " firstly, that the accent always falls on the last syllable of a word ; secondly, that a strict and invariable logical construction is required by the grammar. Were this last point not the case, the language would soon become an imitation of German, French, or English, as the case may be." Such a falling-off from the plat- form of universality is almost too painful to contemplate. That there are Volapiikist poets, is obvious from what follows :—" To neglect the correct order of the words and to employ arbitrary accents, as all those who write Volapiik verse do, and must do, is simply to invent another language and to disfigure the one invented by Father Schleyer." Ranker linguistic treason than this can scarcely be conceived. Blank verse, however, con- tinues Professor Harrison, is admissible in Volapiik, the iambus being a natural and prevalent form in that language.
A far more serious danger than this misconception as to the scope of Volapiik is, according to Professor Harrison, the gratuitous introduction and enthusiastic adoption by the German school of a great number of unnecessary and difficult grammatical forms. Professors Kerckhoffs and Harrison have laboured nobly to rid Volapiik from these excrescences. But the task is a herculean one, for the inventor of the language is arrayed against them ; and so large a number of what Pro- fessor Harrison calls " eccentricities " have already been imported, that those who happen to make the acquaintance of Yolapiik through the medium of the German system " will certainly understand nothing without some such guide as that furnished in the present volume. Of this melancholy falling away on the part of the German Volapiikists the author speaks with some warmth, but in the main more in sorrow than in anger. Intestine dissensions are more to be dreaded than the mockery of outsiders, and it is ominous that the Germans and French have ranged themselves on opposite sides on this great question. The rift within the Volapiik lute may spread—who knows ?—and all Yulop, Silop, Melop, Tikop, • Complete Course of Volapiik. Adapt.d from the French of Professor Aug. Herckhoffe by I. Henry H arison. Lend. n : Hachette et Cie. and Talop—in other words, Europe, Asia, America, Africa, and Australia—be embroiled in universal strife.
Turning from such gloomy speculations to the actualities of the Volapiik alphabet, we find that eight vowels and nineteen consonants are admitted by the school of Kerckhoffs, a sorry muster when compared with the imposing array of Father Schleyer, who includes eleven extra letters " in order to repre- sent phonetically in Volapiik all the proper names of all languages." His grammars and newspaper (published at Constance) are accordingly written in a curious compound of German Volapiik and universal alphabet, with the result, according to Professor Harrison, that half of his newspaper is rendered unintelligible. The misguided founder cannot even spell his own name properly in his own language, for the form which he adopts, " Jleyer," is pronounced by Kerckhoffs to he " an unreasonable mixture of two alphabets." Other of his heresies will be exposed later on.
One of the first things that strikes us in connection with Professor Kerckhoffs' alphabet as here represented, is that for his o the sound of o in " note " is given. On this, we would remark that this peculiar English long o sound has no exact correlative in any Continental language. Thus, on the very threshold, the quality of phonetic universality is rudely assailed in deference to English ears. Besides the five vowels as we know them, he has three modified as in German, ii,, 5, ii, the latter sound being indistinguishable to many ears from the i, pronounced ee. For example, many foreigners who are not French will pronounce " vue," vie. The consonants are a, g, j, h, a, y, z, b, d, f, k, 1, in, n, p, r, s, t, v. Of these, c is pronounced as j in " jet," j as sh, and z as ts. There are no diphthongs.
Our hopes as to the perfect regularity of Volapiik are rudely shattered by the announcements that the spelling of words in languages with the Latin alphabet is preserved, and that " some geographical names are arbitrary." Now, an artificial language, ostensibly with the aim of simplifying inter- communion, should be relentlessly regular. Professors Kerckhoffs and Harrison, purists though they are, utter no word of protest in this regard. We next learn that there is only one declension and no gender, but " female beings are distin- guished by the prefix of,"—e.g., blod, `brother;' of-blod, sister.' Father Schleyer, however, who will keep putting spokes in his own wheels, uses another form, ji. On this we give Professor Harrison's comment, with some italics of our own. " Thus, of-tidel is `a lady-teacher,' and ji-tidel `the wife of a teacher.' This is an unnecessary distinction, which becomes very em- barrassing when applied to animals." Arbitrary exceptions are here again observable, for some " female beings," contrary to the rule, have special forms, as von, " a woman." Over their adjectives, too, the Volapiikists are once more at feud. Many insist on adding prefixes indicative of gender, " which is most objectionable." Schiffer admits the comparison of nouns after the Hungarian fashion, and also " allows the ordinal numbers to be declined," a permission which Kerckhoffs resolutely withholds. In the matter of numerals, the forms are creations of the founder not built upon any of the known forms of existing languages. Balsebal is a formidable- looking word ; but it has nothing to do with Beelzebub ; it only means 11. Tam, (= 100) is a word that com- mends itself to the simplest intelligence, but other associa- tions render it hard to accept tumid as the equivalent for " hundredth." Glancing at the pronouns, we see that, consciously or unconsciously, Father Schleyer has borrowed the Turkish kin to express " who ?" As to the verbs, par- ticularly the compound forms, which are painfully synthetic, we would venture to point out what seem to us two radical faults. First, that, as the -stress always falls on the last syllable, the distinction between such closely allied sounds as " " paliifol," " pada " would be obliterated in speech. This is had enough where the forms all belong to the same root ; but it is worse when you have to distinguish between, say, piibon, " to publish," and pubon, " to appear," poton, " to suit," and poton, " to post." Second, it is a blunder not to put the root-syllable first, as in Turkish. Under the head of " Prepositions," we are given several synonyms and contrac- tions which Professor Harrison denounces as "confusing, unnecessary, and arbitrary eccentricities." But on p. 61 we reach the climax of absurdity in the shape of a list of " the principal interjections." When Volapiik reaches its full total of 100,000 words, there will be, doubtless, a full assortment of expletives. At present the most violent is mi/o, the deuce !" Meantime, we are inclined to regard interjections as rather luxuries in commercial correspondence, unless it be that Volapiikist bagmen (tedaduniia-tavol) are unusually emotional. On p. 67 we note three alternatives for expressing "I know that he is to be discharged." Over the forms of the second person of the verb, Professor Harrison admits there is great difficulty, the Germans and French being completely at loggerheads. Desperate complications ensue in the matter of the reciprocal forms, of which evatiikokobs, "we have washed each other," is a good specimen. Schleyer also proposes a mood of possibility with the termination tix, and a categorical imperative with Oz,—e.g., segol-oz, " get out !" Other "useless and awkward" inventions are mentioned by Professor Harrison, culminating in the forms Peaofaura Penoliifum] = " she more loving," and o-lof-ons-ofs-on = " the future love of you women," which he stigmatises as an "agglutinated excentricity." To drink of the well of Volapiik undefiled, it is evident one must shun its now tainted fountain-head, and have recourse to the beverage distilled and filtered by Kerckhoffs.
Under the heading " Lexicology," we are given some in- formation as to the construction of the language.. In regard to roots, the inventor has borrowed largely from various Teutonic and Romance languages, chiefly French and English. The letter r is nearly always replaced by 1, in deference to the difficulty experienced by peoples of the East in pronouncing the former letter. Often a word is Volapiikised by eviscera- tion, e.g., plum, from "compliment," fikul from " difficulty," or by dropping a letter, as pot from "post," and kad from "card." The numerals and a good many pronouns are original. On p. 101 a list of 28 compound words is given with their English equivalents. The Volapiik run to 98, the English to 69 syllables, which would seem to show that economy is not studied by the founders of the new tongue.
Professor Harrison's manual contains a vocabulary of 2,500 words, a few of which may be quoted as speci- mens of the constructive skill and originative genius of Father Schleyer. The word tont, we notice, stands both for "bone " and " bean." Cut means " an ass," and will serve to exemplify the embarrassment alluded to above. Should a costermonger address a she-ass as of-cut or ji-cut ? This is a problem which may be left to the savants of the New Cut
to decide amongst them. Fun signifies " corpse ;" kid, "kiss ;" " scissors ;" and pop, " people." Beg stands for " King," —and here we may add that " God save the Queen ! " in Volapiik is Of-reg liv of-Os ! Man = "vir," men = "homo," and mem = "the people." Many notions are expressed awkwardly enough by negatives,—e.g., "enemy," " cheap," " ease," " ugli- ness," for which the equivalents are neflen, nedelidik, nefikul, nejon. There are a good many words common to European lan- guages which might well have been incorporated as they stood,— e.g.,"bank," "concert." Nothing that we can see has been gained by coining such terms as lebob and konzed. Many of the Volapiik words, however, have a Mesopotamian sweetness about them. Such are pokaglok—i.e.,"pocket-clock,"—" a watch;" linkipam, "a feast ;" and fopiip, " a madhouse." Others, again, recall the coinages of Mr. Lear. Irishmen will find it hard to realise that begob is not one of their favourite devices for " dodging a curse." It is merely Volapiik for I ask." To say " Bo ! " to a goose in Volapiik implies nothing offensive. On the contrary, it signifies " of course, undoubtedly." The English of this manual is often as surprising as the Volapiik for example, we read on p. 84 that jalaf signifies " erustacious," whatever that may mean. Under the category of musical terms, we encounter the words " tierce " and " quarto."
In fine, one does not know whether to feel more impatience with or sorrow for the laborious manufacturers of this gigantic absurdity. Of one thing we are absolutely certain,— that they may be safely left to themselves to demolish their own structure. What between the differences of the inventor and his disciples, and the squabbling of the German and French Volapiikists, they are achieving this end far more rapidly than could be done by any amount of well-aimed ridicule. There is something melancholy in the spectacle of
this misplaced ingenuity; but as to the benevolence of the motive we are profoundly sceptical. We rather trace the
origin of the enterprise to the patriotic disinclination of certain foreigners to recognise the hard fact that the English language is destined, by ultimate force of numbers, to become,
we will not say the language of the world, but at any rate the universal commercial language, and to the consequent desire to substitute for it some neutral and artificial medium.
Previous page
