Volapük

Welcome to the least useful word you’re ever going to find on this blog. The dashing young chap on the left is one Johann Martin Schleyer (1831 – 1912), a Roman Catholic priest from Baden in Germany. He invented an international language – volapük (voll-a-pyuk) around 1879. His reasons for doing so are a matter of dispute. Some sources say it was a conversation he had with a semi-literate parishioner, others suggest he was told By God to do it. If this is true, God must have been having an off day. Quite apart from the Tower of Babel thing, there are surely plenty of languages going around. I’m going to go with the peasant parishioner story.

The idea was to create a truly international language, as is the idea still with Esperanto. The word Volapük comes from two Volapük words vola (of or pertaining to the world) and – you guessed it – pük (language). So far so confusing. The sentence and grammar structures were designed to allow the maximum number of people to learn it. The letter ‘R’ was left out of the first draft to make it easier for Mandarin and Cantonese speakers to pick up. However, as Volapük was based heavily on English (believe it or not – see the example later), there was a heavy European bias to the construction. It was usurped as the best choice for an international language in the 20th century by Esperanto – it being supposedly easier to learn.

The following example is taken from the International Volapük Page. This resource is probably the only one on the Internet which provides a comprehensive introduction to the language, along with dictionaries and other resources. Take a look if you are curious.

Fat obik binom büsidan.
Father my is a businessman.
Vobom in bür nulädik. Nem omik binon Robert.
He works in an office modern. Name his is Robert.
Mot obik binof tidan. Tidof in jul smalik.
Mother my is a teacher. She teaches at a school small.

The reason I introduced this as “the least useful word” is that because Esperanto proved so popular amongst those who were not satisfied with the 6500-odd existing languages, that Volapük now has only an estimated 30 speakers worldwide!