Eesti NOES gpl 
1888. ] 11 [Volapiik. 
Beginning with its phonetics we find that he has retained the impure 
German modified vowels &, 6, ti, the French j (dsch), as well as the 
aspirated f or rough breathing. He has eight vowels and nineteen 
consonants where five vowels and sixteen consonants should suffice ; 
elsewhere he extends his alphabet to thirty-seven letters. He also in- 
troduces various diacritical marks indicating accent, tones, vocal 
inflection and quantity, all of which we consider needless and obstruc- 
tive. Double consonants are numerous, and the Volapiik is both 
written and printed with underscoring and italic letters, necessary to 
facilitate its comprehension.* 
The lexicography is based largely on the English, about 40 per cent 
of the words being taken from that tongue, with phonetic modifica- 
tions. These modifications do not regard the other Aryan languages, 
and various sounds of the Volapiik alphabet could not be pronounced 
by a member of any Aryan nation without special oral teaching. This 
we regard as a fatal defect. 
Moreover, many words are manufactured from entirely new radicals, 
capriciously, or even fantastically formed, and this we condemn. 
The article is omitted, which is well; but the nouns are inflected 
through a genitive, dative and accusative case, and a plural number. 
The signs of these cases are respectively a, e, t, and of the plural s. 
Diminutives, comparatives and superlatives are formed by prefixes 
and suffixes, and on the same plan adverbs are formed from adjectives, 
and adjectivesfrom nouns. Thus, silef, silver ; silefik, silvery ; silefikiim, 
more silvery; silefikiin, most silvery ; silefiko, silverly. It will be ob- 
served that while this process is not dissimilar to that once frequent 
in the Aryan stock, it is not analogous to that which the evolution of 
that stock indicates as its perfected form. 
In the conjugation the subject follows the verb, bin—ob, I am 3 where 
bin=am, ob=I. This we object to as contrary to the logical arrange- 
ment of the proposition. We are surprised to see the German third 
person plural (Sie) retained by the author as a ‘courteous’ form. It 
should be the first duty of a universal language to reject such national 
solecisms. 
The tense is indicated by prefixes, a, e, 7, for the imperfect, perfect, 
and pluperfect active, o and u for the two futures. 
The passive voice has the prefix p, the subjunctive by the suffix la, 
the optative and imperative by the suffix 6s, the infinitive by the suffix 
én. Abstracts are formed by adding al, as mon, money ; monal, love 
of money, avarice. These suffixes are to be placed in fixed relations to 
the root, and hence often become infixes. 
The excessive multiplication of forms lends to Volaptik an appear- 
ance totally un-Aryan. The verbal theme is modified by sixteen suf- 
* These remarks are based upon the seventh edition of Schleyer’s Mittlere Grammatik 
der Universalsprache Volapiik (Konstanz, 1887). 
