VOLAPUK, vo-15.-peek', a proposed uni versal language invented about 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer, of Constance, Germany. The name means "world-speech,)) being based on English world and speak, and a number of the vocables are modified English words, the total number in the language being about 14,000, some 1,300 being. root-words. In structure the language is simple and extremely regular, and the orthography is entirely phonetic, the words being pronounced as they are written, and vice versa. Its alphabet comprises 27 letters, namely the vowels a, e, o, u, d, ii, and these 17 con sonants, b, p, k, y, g, k, 1, r, m, n, s, j, c, x, s. The vowels are pronounced as in German, the con sonants as in English, except that g is always hard, s is always sharp, c is like and s is equal to ts. There are 10 other consonant signs for sounds peculiar to various languages: there are no silent letters and no diphthongs. About 40 per cent of the root words of Volapidc, which usually are nouns, are from English, the rest are chiefly front Germa.n, French and Latin. In choosing root words the desiderata were brevity, clearness and ease of utterance: every root word consists of one syllable, a vowel be tween two consonant sounds; man is man, dons is house. (Lat. domus), tim is time; and root words are formed from ordinary words either (1) by substituting a consonant for a final vowel: Eng. pay becomes pel, Fr. mer (sea) becomes mel; or (2) consonants and vowels are dropped: Lat. pons (bridge) becomes pon, Eng. state becomes tat; or (3) the most im portant syllable alone is retained: Lat. sapientia (wisdom) becomes sap. Here are some ex amples of root word.s from different languages: From Eng. gift, giv, lady, kid, woman, vom; from Lat. finis (end) comes fin, flumen (river) flints, tensio (stretching) ten. From these root words, which are nearly all nouns, are formed the other parts of speech— verbs, adjectives, adverbs—by proper . prefixes and suffixes.
Nouns have four cases, namely, nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. The nomi native is the unmodified root, for example, vol, world, is in the nominative case. The genitive adds a, vola, of the world; vola, piik, world's speech. The dative and accusative respectively add e and i to the root; vole, to the world, volt, the world (objective case). The pronouns I, thou, he, she, it, are ob, al, om, of and os, and they are declined like nouns; oba, of me, oue, to me; ala, of thee, ale, to thee; and so on. The tenses of verbs, except the present, are formed by prefixing the vowels ii, e, o, and u to the root; thus liifob (lof, love, ob, I) is I love, iilofob, I loved, ellifob, I have loved, ilefob, I had loved, 013106, I shall love, ulofob, I shall have loved; by putting al, thou, om, he, of, she, in the place of ob, I, we get the forms for thou hast loved, he will love, she had loved, etc. By similar devices the various tnoods are indicated, for example, the ending bs added to the present indicative !;ifont, he loves, makes it optative, may he love, hifonios. The passive voice is formed b,y prefixing p or pa. Thus, palbfon, to be loved, pa/ofob, I am loved, palbfob, I was loNed, pelofob, I have been loved, poliifob, I shall be loved, pali.ifob, I shall have been loved. The adjective is the noun with ik suffixed: gull, goodness, guclik, good; yun, youth, yunik, young. The adverb is formed from the adjective by adding 0: gadik, good, gudiko, well. In pronunciation every syllable is long and the accent is always laid on the last syllable of the word. Volapiik was re ceived with great favor immediately after the scheme was published, but later declined. See