



A WEEKLY ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



" To the solid ground 

 Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye. ' 



-Wordsworth. 



THURSDAY, MAY 3, ii 



VOLAPUK, PASILINGUA, SPELIN, 

 LING UAL UMINA. 



Volapiik or Universal Language. By Alfred Kirchhoff. 



(London : Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1888.) 

 Key to the Volapiik Grammar. By Alfred Kirchhoff. 



(London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1888.) 

 Eletnentar Grammatik zur Weltsprache (Pas/lingua). 



By P. Steiner. (Berlin : Louis Heuser, 1887.) 

 Spelin, Eine Allsprache. By G. Bauer. (Agram : Franz 



Suppan, 1888.) 

 Lingualumina, or Language of Light. By F. W. Dyer. 



(London: Industrial Press, 1875.) 



"TF only we had been consulted at the creation of the 

 J- world, good as the general working of the machine 

 is, how many little improvements might have been intro- 

 duced ! " This remark, not meant to be irreverent, is 

 often heard when people suffer from toothache either at 

 the arrival or at the departure of their molars, or when a 

 sudden frost sets in and destroys the blossoms on all the 

 fruit-trees in their garden. Volapiik seems suggested 

 by the same kind of sentiment. Languages, the adher- 

 ents of Volapiik seem to say, are all wonderful machines, 

 but, if we could only have been consulted by the original 

 framers of human speech, how many little irregularities 

 might have been eliminated, how much might the whole 

 working of the machine have been simplified, and what 

 a saving of fuel might have been effected if instead of a 

 thousand of these linguistic machines, each having its own 

 gauge, there had been one engine only, taking us from 

 Fireland to Iceland without any change of carriages. 



Those who lament the imperfections of human speech 

 may claim, however, this advantage over the grumblers at 

 the world at large, that they are quite prepared to produce 

 a better article. Again and again has the world been 

 presented, not only with new alphabets and new systems 

 of spelling, but with brand-new languages. Of late, 

 however, there has been quite a good measure of them 

 pressed down and running over. At the head of our article 

 Vol. xxxviii.— No. 966. 



we have mentioned four only, called respectively Vola- 

 piik, Spelin, Pasilingua, and Lingualumtna. But there 

 have been several more proposals for a universal language 

 sent to us lately from various quarters of the world, all 

 equally ingenious, though we are sorry we cannot disinter 

 them from beneath that mighty cairn of pamphlets which 

 is growing up from week to week in our library. 



All these proposals have one thing in common. They 

 start from a fact which cannot be disputed, that life is too 

 short to learn more than four or five languages well, and 

 that it is perfectly wicked to write books on scientific 

 subjects in any language but English, French, German, 

 or Latin. They then go off into raptures about the days 

 when "the whole earth was of one language and one 

 speech," and they even appeal to prophecy that it has 

 been promised " that a pure language will be turned to 

 the people, that they may all call upon the name of the 

 Lord, to serve him with one consent." 



And how is that prophecy to be fulfilled ? Here the 

 answers begin to vary a little. Some people say, Let every- 

 one learn English, and the problem is solved at once. So it 

 would be, so perhaps it will be, when the leopard shall lie 

 down with the kid. But till that comes to pass different 

 kinds of compromise are suggested. First of all, as to 

 grammar, there is no excuse for any irregular nouns or irre- 

 gular verbs, for gender as different from sex, for obsolete 

 degrees of comparison, or for any involved syntactical con- 

 structions. These ought all to be abolished. SecondIy> 

 as to the dictionary, it is quite clear that if 15,000 words 

 sufficed for Shakespeare, a dictionary of 250,000, like the 

 English dictionary now being published by the University 

 of Oxford, is the most fearful extravagance ever known. 

 Here all inventors of a new language insist on retrench- 

 ment. The inventor of Volapiik was satisfied at first with a 

 dictionary of 10,000 words, but we are now promised a 

 new one of 20,000. 



There is a great difference of opinion, however, when 

 the question arises from what source these words ought to 

 be derived. Some draw their words at random from a 

 number of the best-known languages, others confine them- 

 selves, as much as possible, to words common to German, 

 French, and English. Volapiik draws on several banks, 

 chiefly on English, but it clips its coins fearfully. Thus, its 



B 



