THURSDAY, MAY 3, 1888.

VOLAPÜK, PASILINGUA, SPELIN,

LINGUALUMINA.

Volapük or Universal Language. By Alfred Kirchhoff.
(London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1888.)
Key to the Volapük Grammar. By Alfred Kirchhoff.
(London: Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1888.)
Elementar Grammatik zur Weltsprache (Pasilingua).
By P. Steiner. (Berlin: Louis Heuser, 1887.)
Spelin, Eine Allsprache. By G. Bauer. (Agram: Franz
Suppan, 1888.)

we have mentioned four only, called respectively Volapük, Spelin, Pasilingua, and Lingualumina. 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

"IF

F only we had been consulted at the creation of the world, good as the general working of the machine is, how many little improvements might have been introduced!" 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. Volapük seems suggested by the same kind of sentiment. Languages, the adherents of Volapük 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.

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 everyone 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 irregular verbs, for gender as different from sex, for obsolete degrees of comparison, or for any involved syntactical constructions. These ought all to be abolished. Secondly, 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 retrenchment. The inventor of Volapük 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 themselves, as much as possible, to words common to German, French, and English. Volapük draws on several banks, chiefly on English, but it clips its coins fearfully. Thus, its

B

very name, Volapük, is taken from German and English. Vol represents the German Volk, pük the English speech, so that vola-pük means originally folk-speech. In the same manner appetite has been replaced by potit, abundance by bundan, silver by silef, Jew by yudel, house by dom. In many cases these borrowed words have been so much changed that it is difficult to recognize them. Here Pasilingua has a great advantage. All its words remind us of a Teutonic or Romanic prototype, or of English, which has amalgamated these two elements in its dictionary. Volapük often requires a commentary, where Pasilingua allows us to guess with a good chance of success. Thus

murderer, mortamenta, instrument of murder, mortana, poison, mortarea, battle-field, mortitarea, churchyard, mortiblo, mortal, mortablo, fatal, mortoblo, easy to kill, morter, to be dead, mortir, to die, mortar, to kill, mortor, to be killed, &c.

These few extracts will give our readers an idea of what they have to expect from Volapük, Pasilingua, and Spelin. Spelin has nothing to do with spelling. It is derived from lin, the abbreviated stem of lingua. Pe (from Greek pas) means all, s on account of its continuous buzzing sound is used to form collective nouns ; hence s-pe-lin means alllanguage, or Pasilingua.

The study of these systems is by no means without

Where do you live? is in Volapük Kiplace lödens? in Pasilingua Ubi habitirs tüs?

The sentence, Advertisements are to the man of business what steam is to industry, has been rendered in Volapük by Lenunc binoms jafaman otos kelos stem plo dustor; in Pasilingua by Annóncius ers pro tos affäriros qua ta vapora pro ta industriu.

After Volapük has once chosen what may be called its stems, which consist mostly of a consonant, a vowel, and a consonant only, everything else becomes easy enough Thus if fat stands for father, we get a simple declension :

It is clear that there are ever so many ways by which the same result might be obtained, so long as the principle is strictly adhered to that each case shall have but one sign, and that the same sign is to be used in the plural and the singular, while the plural again is indicated by a sign of its own. In Bengali and many other languages the same principle is carried out with considerable consistency. What applies to declension applies to conjugation, to degrees of comparison, and to derivation. All becomes regular, simple, intelligible, whatever set of suffixes, prefixes, or infixes we adopt. Thus, to have is lab in Volapük. Hence :

ideas about the great complexity of language, and show how simple a process grammar really is. If more generally adopted, as Volapük seems likely to be, such a system of writing may become even practically useful, particularly for telegraphic communication. That it could ever supplant our spoken language is out of the question, and Dr. Schleyer, the inventor of Volapük, distinctly disclaims any such intention (“Hauptgedanken," p. 1o, note). One protest only we have to enter before leaving the subject. Nothing could be a greater mistake than to imagine that these clever and amusing experiments have anything in common with Leibniz's conception of a philosophical language. What Leibniz had in his mind may be guessed from the “Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language," by Bishop Wilkins, London, 1668, of which an abstract is given in Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of Language" (vol. ii. p. 50). This is as different from Volapük as the Kriegspiel is from real warfare. For spending a dreary afternoon pleasantly, an experimental study of Volapük, Pasilingua, or Spelin, may safely be recommended. Lingualumina is a more serious matter. It is built on an exhaustive analysis of the notions that have to be expressed, and thus approaches nearer to the ideal which Leibniz had conceived of a perfect and universal language.

BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION.

A Practical Treatise on Bridge Construction: being a Text-book on the Design and Construction of Bridges in Iron and Steel. For the Use of Students, Draughtsmen, and Engineers. By T. Claxton Fidler, M. Inst. C.E. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., 1887.)

THIS

HIS book is principally intended for practical use by engineers and draughtsmen, who are now being called upon to design and construct bridges of unprecedented magnitude, like the Forth Bridge, which the introduction of iron, and latterly more especially of steel, has rendered possible. The execution of these requirements has brought forward a number of new problems to be solved in Statics, and the Elasticity and Strength of Materials, and has invested old problems with an importance which they did not before possess. Evolution in this branch of creation has gone on so rapidly that the Darwinian student of the "survival of the fittest" might turn to this book for striking exemplifications of his theories, which he would find in the classification of