Volapük, Pasilingua, Spelin, Lingualumina

Abstract

“IF 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 guage, there had been one engine only, taking us from Fireland to Iceland without any change of carriages.

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.)

Lingualumina, or Language of Light.

By F. W. Dyer. (London: Industrial Press, 1875.)