International Language Part 13

But, after all, it had a human side:

"... Three and fourtiethly, as its interjections are more numerous, so are they more emphatical in their respective expression of pa.s.sions, than that part of speech is in any other language whatsoever.

"... Eight and fourtiethly, of all languages this is the most compendious in complement, and consequently fittest for Courtiers and Ladies."

Sir Thomas seems to have been a bit of a man of the world too.

"... Fiftiethly, no language in matter of Prayer and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns to Almighty G.o.d is able, for conciseness of expression to compare with it; and therefore, of all other, the most fit for the use of Churchmen and spirits inclined to devotion."

This "therefore," with its direct deduction from "conciseness of expression," recalls the lady patroness who chose her inc.u.mbents for being fast over prayers. She said she could always pick out a parson who read service daily by his time for the Sunday service.

Sir Thomas is perhaps over-sanguine to a modern taste when he concludes:

"Besides the sixty and six advantages above all other languages, I might have couched thrice as many more of no less consideration than the aforesaid, but that these same will suffice to sharpen the longing of the generous Reader after the intrinsecal and most researched secrets of the new Grammar and Lexicon which I am to evulge."

IV

HISTORY OF VOLAPuK-A WARNING

Volapuk is the invention of a "white night." Those who know their _Alice in Wonderland_ will perhaps involuntarily conjure up the picture of the kindly and fantastic White Knight, riding about on a horse covered with mousetraps and other strange caparisons, which he introduced to all and sundry with the unfailing remark, "It's my own invention." Scoffers will not be slow to find in Volapuk and the White Knight's inventions a common characteristic-their fantasticness. Perhaps there really is some a.n.a.logy in the fact that both inventors had to mount their hobby-horses and ride errant through sundry lands, thrusting their creations on an unwilling world. But the particular kind of white night of which Volapuk was born is the _nuit blanche_, literally = "white night," but idiomatically = "night of insomnia."

On the night of March 31, 1879, the good Roman Catholic Bishop Schleyer, cure of Litzelstetten, near Constance, could not get to sleep. From his over-active brain, charged with a knowledge of more than fifty languages, sprang the world-speech, as Athene sprang fully armed from the brain of Zeus. At any rate, this is the legend of the origin of Volapuk.

As for the name, an Englishman will hardly appreciate the fact that the word "Volapuk" is derived from the two English words "world" and "speech." This transformation of "world" into _vol_ and "speech" into _puk_ is a good ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which Volapuk is based on English, and suggests at once a criticism of that all-important point in an artificial language, the vocabulary. It is too arbitrary.

Published in 1880, Volapuk spread first in South Germany, and then in France, where its chief apostle was M. Kerckhoffs, modern-language master in the princ.i.p.al school of commerce in Paris. He founded a society for its propagation, which soon numbered among its members several well-known men of science and letters. The great Magasins du Printemps-a sort of French Whiteley's, and familiar to all who have shopped in Paris-started a cla.s.s, attended by over a hundred of its employees; and altogether fourteen different cla.s.ses were opened in Paris, and the pupils were of a good stamp.

Progress was extraordinarily rapid in other European countries, and by 1889, only nine years after the publication of Volapuk, there were 283 Volapuk societies, distributed throughout Europe, America, and the British Colonies. Instruction books were published in twenty-five languages, including Volapuk itself; numerous newspapers, in and about Volapuk, sprang up all over the world; the number of Volapukists was estimated at a million. This extraordinarily rapid success is very striking, and seems to afford proof that there is a widely felt want for an international language. Three Volapuk congresses were held, of which the third, held in Paris in 1889, with proceedings entirely in Volapuk, was the most important.

The rapid decline of Volapuk is even more instructive than its sensational rise. The congress of Paris marked its zenith: hopes ran high, and success seemed a.s.sured. Within two years it was practically dead. No more congresses were held, the partisans dwindled away, the local clubs dissolved, the newspapers failed, and the whole movement came to an end. There only remained a new academy founded by Bishop Schleyer, and here and there a group of the faithful.[1]

[1]A Volapuk journal still appears in Graz, Stiria-_Volapukabled lezenodik_. The editor has just (March 1907) retired, and the veteran Bishop Schleyer, now seventy-five years old, is taking up the editorship again.

The chief reason of this failure was internal dissension. First arose the question of principle: Should Volapuk aim at being a literary language, capable of expressing all the finer shades of thought and feeling? or should it confine itself to being a practical means of business communication?

Bishop Schleyer claimed for his invention an equal rank among the literary languages of the world. The practical party, headed by M.

Kerckhoffs, wished to keep it utilitarian and practical. With the object of increasing its utility, they proposed certain changes in the language; and thus there arose, in the second place, differences of opinion as to fundamental points of structure, such as the nature and origin of the roots to be adopted. Vital questions were thus reopened, and the whole language was thrown back into the melting-pot.

The first congress was held at Friedrichshafen in August 1884, and was attended almost exclusively by Germans. The second congress, Munich, August 1887, brought together over 200 Volapukists from different countries. A professor of geology from Halle University was elected president, and an International Academy of Volapuk was founded.

Then the trouble began. M. Kerckhoffs was unanimously elected director of the academy, and Bishop Schleyer was made grand-master (_cifal_) for life. Questions arose as to the duties of the academy and the respective powers of the inventor of the language and the academicians.

M. Kerckhoffs was all along the guiding spirit on the side of the academy. He was in the main supported by the Volapuk world, though there seems to have been some tendency, at any rate at first, on the part of the Germans to back the bishop. It is impossible to go into details of the points at issue. Suffice it to say, that eventually the director of the academy carried a resolution giving the inventor three votes to every one of ordinary members in all academy divisions, but refusing him the right of veto, which he claimed. The bishop replied by a threat to depose M. Kerckhoffs from the directorship, which of course he could not make good. The const.i.tution of the academy was only binding inasmuch as it had been drawn up and adopted by the const.i.tuent members, and it gave no such powers to the inventor.

So here was a very pretty quarrel as to the ownership of Volapuk.

The bishop said it belonged to him, as he had invented it: he was its father. The academy said it belonged to the public, who had a right to amend it in the common interest. This child, which had newly opened its eyes and smiled upon the world, and upon which the world was then smiling back-was it a son domiciled in its father's house and fully _in patria potestate_? or a ward in the guardianship of its chief promoters? or an orphan foundling, to be boarded out on the scattered-home system at the public expense, and to be brought up to be useful to the community at large? A vexed question of paternity; and the worst of it was, there was no international court competent to try the case.

Meantime the congress of 1889 at Paris came on. Volapuk was booming everywhere. Left to itself, it flourished like a green bay-tree. This meeting was to set an official seal upon its success; and governments, convinced by this thing done openly in the _ville lumiere_, would accept the _fait accompli_ and introduce it into their schools.

Thirteen countries sent representatives, including Turkey and China.

The great Kerckhoffs was elected president. The proceedings were in Volapuk. The foundling's future was canva.s.sed in terms of himself by a cosmopolitan board of guardians, who did not yet know what he was.

Rather a Gilbertian situation. Trying a higher flight, we may say, in Platonic phrase, that Volapuk seemed to be about midway between being and not-being. It is a far cry from Gilbert _via_ Plato to Mr. Kipling, but perhaps Volapuk, at this juncture, may be most aptly described as a "sort of a giddy harumphrodite," if not "a devil an' a ostrich an' a orphan-child in one."

Business done: The congress discusses.

The congress pa.s.sed a resolution that there should be drawn up "a simple normal grammar, from which all useless rules should be excluded," and proceeded to adopt a final const.i.tution for the Volapuk Academy.

Article 15 says: "The decisions of the academy must be at once submitted to the inventor. If the inventor has not within thirty days protested against the decisions, they are valid. Decisions not approved by the inventor are referred back to the academy, and are valid if carried by a two-thirds majority."

The bishop held out for his right of absolute veto, as his episcopal fellows and their colleagues are doing "in another place" in England.

The conflict presents some a.n.a.logy with other graver const.i.tutional matters, involving discussion of the respective merits of absolute and suspensive veto, and may therefore have some interest at present, apart from its great importance in any scheme for an international language.

The upshot was that dissensions broke out within the academy. The director, unable to carry a complete scheme of reformed grammar, resigned (1891), and the academy, whose business it was to arrange the next congress and keep the movement going, never convened a fourth congress. Several academicians set to work on new artificial languages of their own; and what was left of the Academy of Volapuk, under a new director, M. Rosenberger, a St. Petersburg railway engineer, elected 1893, subsequently turned its attention to working out a new language, to which was given the name Idiom Neutral (see next chapter).

It is interesting to note that, when Volapuk was nearing its high-water mark, the American Philosophical Society appointed a committee (October 1887) to inquire into its scientific value.

This committee reported in November 1887. The report states that the creation of an international language is in conformity with the general tendency of modern civilization, and is not merely desirable, but _will certainly be realized._ It goes on to reject Volapuk as the solution of the problem, as being on the whole retrogade in tendency.

It is too arbitrary in construction, and not international enough in vocabulary; nor does it correspond to the general trend of development of language, which is away from a synthetic grammar (inflection by means of terminations, as in Latin and Greek) and towards an a.n.a.lytic one (inflection by termination replaced by prepositions and auxiliaries).

But the committee was so fully convinced of the importance of an international language, that it proposed to the Philosophical Society that it should invite all the learned societies of the world to co-operate in the production of a universal language. A resolution embodying this recommendation was adopted by the society, and the invitations were sent out. About twenty societies accepted-among them the University of Edinburgh. The Scots again!

The London Philological Society commissioned Mr. Ellis to investigate the subject, and upon his report declined to co-operate. Mr. Ellis was a believer in Volapuk, and furthermore did not agree with the American Philosophical Society's conclusion that an international language ought to be founded on an Indo-Germanic (Aryan) basis. In this Mr. Ellis was almost certainly wrong, as subsequent experience is tending to show. The j.a.panese, among others, are taking up Esperanto with enthusiasm, find it easy, and make no difficulty about its Aryan basis. But, apart from linguistic considerations, Mr. Ellis's practical reasoning was certainly sound. It was to this effect: The main thing is to adopt a language that is already in wide use and shown to be adequate. Alterations bring dissension; by sticking to what we have already got, imperfections and all, strife is avoided, and the thing is at once reduced to practice.

This was a wise counsel, and applies to-day with double force to the present holder of the field, Esperanto, which is besides, in the opinion of experts, a better language than Volapuk, and far easier to acquire.

However, on the question of technical merits, the American Philosophical Society was probably right, as against the London Philological Society represented by Mr. Ellis. And the proof is that Volapuk died-primarily, indeed, of dissensions among its partisans, but of dissensions superinduced on inherent defects of principle. That this is true may be seen from the subsequent history of the Volapuk movement. This is briefly narrated in the next chapter, under the name of Idiom Neutral.

V

HISTORY OF IDIOM NEUTRAL

We saw above that M. Kerckhoffs was succeeded in the directorship of the Volapuk Academy, 1893, by M. Rosenberger, of St. Petersburg. During his term of office the academy continued its work of amending and improving the language. The method of procedure was as follows: The director elaborated proposals, which he embodied in circulars and sent round from time to time to his fellow-academicians. They voted "Yes" or "No," so that the language, when finished, was approved by them all, and was the joint product of the academy; but it was, in its new form, to a great extent, the work of the director. At the end of his term of office it was practically complete. It had undergone a complete transformation, and was now called Idiom Neutral.

In 1898 M. Rosenberger was succeeded by Rev. A.F. Holmes, of Macedon, New York State. The members of the academy vary from time to time, and include (or have included since 1898) natives of America, Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Russia.

Dictionaries of Idiom Neutral have been published in English (in America), German, and Dutch; but the language hardly seems to be in use except among the members of the academy. These do not meet, but carry on their business by means of circulars, drawn up, of course, in Neutral. There are at present only four groups of Neutralists-those of St. Petersburg, Nuremberg, Brussels, and San Antonio, Texas. The famous linguistic club of Nuremberg is remarkable for having gone through the evolution from Volapuk to Idiom Neutral _via_ Esperanto! Besides these four groups, there are isolated Neutralists in certain towns in Great Britain. The academy seems still to have some points to settle, and the work of propaganda has hardly yet begun.

A paper published in Brussels, under the name of _Idei International_, seems to represent the ideas of scattered Neutralists, and of some partisans of other schemes based on Romance vocabulary. These languages resemble each other greatly, and some sanguine spirits dream that they may be fused together into the ultimate international language. A few even hope for an amalgamation with Esperanto, through the medium of a reformed type of Esperanto, which approximates more nearly to these newer schemes, its vocabulary being, like theirs, almost entirely Romance. A series of modifications was published tentatively by Dr. Zamenhof himself in 1894, but was suppressed from practical considerations, having regard to the fate that overtook Volapuk, when once it fell into the hands of reformers. The so-called reforms never represented the real ideas of Zamenhof, and were rather in the nature of reluctant concessions to the weaker brethren. They were never introduced.

The reader may be interested to compare for himself specimens of Volapuk, Idiom Neutral (its lineal descendant), and Esperanto. This Esperanto is the only one in use, most Esperantists having never even heard of the reform project, which was at once dropped, before the language had entered upon its present cosmopolitan extension. The following versions of the Lord's Prayer are taken from MM. Couturat and Leau's _History_, as are the facts in the above narratives, with the exception of the latest details:

VOLAPuK

O Fat obas, kel binol in suls, paisaludomoz nem ola! Komomod monargan ola! Jenomoz vil olik, as in sul, i su tal! Bodi obsik vadeliki givolos obes adelo! E pardolos obes debis obsik, as id obs aipardobs debeles obas. E no obis nindukolos in tentadi; sod aidalivolos obis de bad.

Jenosod!