VOLAPUK, an artificial language in vented in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German priest. Schleyer's years of linguistic study as a prepara tion for his task, were spent in examin ing the structure—the mechanism of the important languages of the world. When he had closed his researches in this field, he chose the Aryan family as the general model for his invention. His aim was to produce a language free from all the defects of one of natural growth, with all irregularities and speech peculiarities eliminated. He called his invention Volaptik—"World's Speech." The Roman alphabet was used with the exception of zv and q. To this the letters a, o, and ii were added, making an alphabet of 27 letters. The vowels are sounded as the long vowels in Italian and have but one sound. The consonants are sounded, in the main, as in English. In the com promise made necessary by the purpose of Volapiik each language had to sur render something. French gave up its nasals; German, its gutturals; Italian, its liquids, while all alike gave up their articles and analytic form. Volapiik is a synthetic and inflectional language like Latin. By this means it can ex press thought with great clearness and conciseness. The order of the words in a sentence, however, is of the modern type.
The radicals or root words, form the basis of the language. These are usu ally nouns. About 40 per cent. of these have been taken from English; the rest are from other Aryan languages, chiefly German, Latin, and French. By what
methods the radicals, or root words, were made ready for use and from what source they were taken will now be shown. The general principle determin ing the choice of a root seems to have been brevity, clearness, and ease of utterance. For these reasons the Vola piik word for man is man, a Germanic form, while the word for house is dom, a Latin form. The word for time is tins, from the Rumanian (time) ; for bridegroom, gam from the Greek. These radicals are generally of one syllable and begin and end in a consonant, that the case endings of the nouns and argu ments and personal endings of the verbs may be applied directly to the root.
They are, in the main, formed from ordinary words by three methods: (1) A consonant is substituted for a final vowel or for a difficult consonant. Thus English pay becomes in Volapiik pel; French mar becomes mel. (2) Conso nants and vowels are dropped out alto gether. Thus German ganz becomes gan, Latin pans becomes pan, English state becomes tat, forest becomes fat. (3) The most important syllable is chosen to represent the idea conveyed by the whole word. Thus Latin sapientia becomes sap; French tapis becomes tap, Below is a short table of Volapfik roots from English, German, Latin, and French: Its use, never general, has now almost entirely ceased.