Welcome to ~ Kömaglidö ele

VOLAPOKE

Robert’s Volapük Page ~ Volapükapad de Robert

There’s a comprehensive list of Volapük links here, which includes a bi-directional dictionary and courses for revised Volapük by Ralph Midgley, a good overview of the language by Ed Robertson, a history of the language by Don Harlow, and the Vükiped (Wikipedia).

· VERY QUICK INTRODUCTION

Volapük (literally, “world’s language”) was created by Johann Martin Schleyer in 1879/80. It was the first ever international auxiliary language (IAL, or auxlang), pre-dating Esperanto, and at its zenith near the end of the 19^th century it had an estimated quarter of a million speakers. It was successfully revised in 1930 by Arie de Jong.

On this blog-like page, I set the language out as I’ve found it, and give my thoughts and opinions along the way. Let me make it clear that what follows is a personal exposition and interpretation of the language, so should not be taken as definitive. Furthermore, even though it might look like it, I’m not seriously advocating any changes to the accepted revised version of the language; there’ll probably never be an auxlang that satisfies all the people all the time, and I understand that for a given one to operate, most of the speakers must give it a little slack.

· PHONOLOGY ETC.

There are nineteen consonants, shown in this table with their IPA/X-SAMPA values:

b	c	d	f	g	h	j	k	l	m
b	tS	d	f	g	h	S	k	l	m
n	p	r	s	t	v	x	y	z	*
n	p	r	s	t	v	ks	j	ts

*I wouldn’t mind seeing w added here.

The fricatives c,j,s,x,z may all be voiced, i.e. realised as /dZ, Z, z, gz, dz/ respectively.

Every English website you go to gives you a different take on the vowels of Volapük! I think this uncertainty stems from the fact that they’re European in nature, and so are difficult to “translate” into English. Anyway, here’s how I anglicise them.

There are eight of them, namely: a ä e i o ö u ü (i.e. the German set; alt + 132,148,129 for the diereses). I see them as having “long” and “short” versions (roughly corresponding to their stressed and unstressed instances respectively), which I now set out (again, in X-SAMPA for “received pronunciation”). Note that in their “official” forms they only have one version each.

Vowel	a	ä	e	i	o	ö	u	ü
Officially	a	E	e	i	o	2	u	y
Long	A:	E@	eI	i:	O:	3:	u:	y
Short/Alternative	{	E	E	I	@U, Q	@	U

I use the first alternative o before other vowels and at the end of words.

When two or more vowels follow each other, they’re sounded separately, maybe with a little slurring. Two borderline-exceptional cases are –ao (an adverbial suffix), which I find myself pronouncing /aU/, and ai (always), which I find myself pronouncing /aI/.

When some vowels are followed by a y, you get a diphthong. For example the pronoun oy (one) is pronounced /OI/.

The primary stress falls on the last syllable (not including those in marked suffixes), and every-other preceding syllable takes a secondary stress; in other words, the pattern is: …-ó)(o-ó)-(o-ó)-(o-Ó). This is a sensible approach, but I think it would be greatly improved if case endings were de-stressed like the marked suffixes, because as things stand, when you move a word from the nominative into another case (or vice versa), the whole pattern shifts, e.g. [%vol.a.“pyk] (Volapük) becomes [vol.%a.pyk.“i] (Volapüki).

The letters are “named” in the following way: vowels as themselves, consonants as themselves + e. The alphabet is thus recited a ä be ce de e fe …

Bonus: Graphs showing the letter-frequencies [1] [2] [3]

· NOUNS

Every noun in Volapük has a stem, which starts and ends with a consonant. The language is non-isolating, meaning that the major noun roles are indicated by endings or particles, not by their positions in the sentence. In particular, six cases are thus indicated (the first by elimination), and any plurality is indicated by then adding an s (just like in English) giving the following simple paradigm (studan = student):

Case	Singular	Plural
Nominative	Studan	Studans
Accusative	Studani	Studanis
Genitive	Studana	Studanas
Dative	Studane	Studanes
Predicative	Studanu	Studanus
Vocative	O studan!	O studans!

Here’s a dense sentence showing the main five cases in use (note the German speech marks – the default, but not compulsory, choice for Volapük):

“The student^A gave the teacher^D the dog’s^C dinner^B, Dave.^E”

„Studan^A ägivom fidedi^B doga^C tidane^D, o Dave!^E“

Genitives always follow the nouns they modify (cf. the situation with adjectives). Because of the explicit case markings, the above sentence, if divided into (i) subject, (ii) verb, (iii) direct object & possessor, (iv) indirect object, and (v) person addressed, can be rearranged into any of the 16 possible orderings with absolutely no change in meaning. In practise, though, people tend to stick to SVO in Volapük.

Analogously to the English choice of a possessive adjective or the preposition “of” (England’s Queen/the Queen of England), Volapük offers the choice of either using the genitive, or the preposition de (from, of) with the nominative, to express the genitive idea. (Point of information: for a place of origin, the preposition di is used, not de.) These two are also used to express the partitive idea, as in “I want some of that” and “I’ve read three of his books.” The partitive can be expressed with se (out of) as well. I tend to use the genitive for possession and se for partition, the latter so as not to create a false sense of possession.

Unlike the English genitive, the Volapük one is only ever adjectival, never pronominal (i.e. it can’t stand alone). To get round this, you can use a pronoun with the genitive for nouns, and possessive adjectives as nouns for the pronouns. By way of example, “the woman’s (thing)” = on(s) voma, and “hers” = ofik(s). (I once suggested that the article il or the ending –ay could be introduced here for this purpose, but I doubt they ever will…)

Prepositions always govern the nominative case.

The dative and the predicative are used specifically to complete transitive verbs: the former when there’s an indirect object, the latter when there’s an additional direct object. It’s important, especially for English speakers, to understand exactly what these are; my own initial misunderstandings in this regard – which took the combined efforts of no less a duo than Ralph Midgley and Brian Bishop to help rectify! – led me to erroneously believe that the dative –e was “a piece of excess baggage.”

The predicative case, for use with factitive verbs, is equivalent to the Latin “predicate accusative,” and is quite rare. An example sentence where you’d use it is: “they elected him president” – “him” is the direct object (in –i), and “president” is the complement (in –u).

· ARTICLES, ADJECTIVES, AND ADVERBS

There are no “native” definite or indefinite articles in Volapük, which I believe is the case for over half the world’s natural languages. There is, however, a general article for anything that isn’t a Volapük word, el, which precedes its words and takes all and any affixes for them on their behalf (so they needn’t be modified in any way themselves). If the word is male or female, el takes a gender prefix – hi or ji respectively – giving hiel and jiel. (Note that they don’t read as Mr and Ms, which are söl and läd resp.) These three articles are very common in real-world Volapük texts.

To emphasise the singularity of a noun, you can use the number bal (one), very much like you would in English (e.g. “I ate one slice of toast,” as opposed to, “I ate a slice of toast”).

The adjectives of Volapük end with the suffix –ik (with the exception of a few special ones, such as the demonstratives), and their natural position is after their nouns. When in this natural position, they’re invariant, but when they’re moved (to the front, or with copulae) they must agree with their noun – that is, they must adopt any case and number endings it may have. This rule is an ingenious way to avoid unnecessary agreement whilst at the same time allowing variable word order. There is, however, one (unlikely) situation where it becomes problematic: when the subject noun directly follows another noun, e.g.

“The old man rides the horse” à “the horse the old man rides” (an unorthodox ordering!)

„Jevodi bäldik man monitom.“

Here, the adjective bäldik (old, elderly) follows jevod (horse) but also precedes and agrees with man, so we cannot say with certainty which of the two nouns it modifies. Changing the rules of the language to prevent rare ambiguities like this would be excessively drastic; the common sense solution in these situations is to not use this particular word order in the first place.

When there’s more than one adjective, they form an orderly list, where any separation by commas or e(d) (and) is optional. A neat word that’s worth mentioning here is the alternative “and” ä(d), which extends the range of a modifying word, as shown in the example below.

“Very dark and very dry bread.”

„Bod vemo dagik e vemo sägik“ (6 words) or „bod vemo dagik ä sägik“ (5 words)

Comparative and superlative adjectives are formed by the addition of the suffixes –um and –ün respectively. The preposition for unequal comparisons is ka (than), the one for equal comparisons is äs (as), and for the superlative you can use se (out of), de (of, from), or the genitive. Clause comparisons of the form “the more/less… the more/less…” can be made with the prepositions plü (the more) and läs (the less).

The two principle demonstrative adjectives are at (this, these) and et (that, those). Others include it (—self, as in “I myself quite like it”), ot (the same), and ut (what/which, as in “I know which films you saw”): a nice little alphabetical group.

Adjectives that aren’t linked to any nouns are considered nouns themselves (e.g. “the blues beat the reds 2-0”), and in this role they take noun endings, such as –an if they represent people.

Adverbs are formed from other words by the addition of the suffix –o, and can modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. For verbs, they usually follow them; for adjectives with nouns, they’re placed in between the two, which is a very sound way of distinguishing them from verb-modifiers; and for other adverbs, they always go in front. Additionally, adverbs that contain the ideas of towards and away-from can be made with the modified suffixes –io and –ao respectively; e.g. “I threw the apple towards the garden” = äjedob podi gadio (lit. “gardenwards”). The origin of these suffixes will become clear in the prepositions section.

Sometimes, you have a choice between –o and –iko. The (subtle) difference between them is that the former indicates generality or habituality, whereas the latter indicates progression, repetition, or particularity.

Here are some common and important adverbs. Like the common conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections given later, in order for them to be short, many of them are irregularly formed, or primitive (i.e. their last letters don’t signify anything).

Always	ai	Perhaps	ba	Also	i(d)	Here	is	Never	neai	Yet	nog
Now	nu	*More	plu	Then	täno	There	us	Very	vemo	Already	ya

*The adjectives of extent, pluik (more) and nepluik (less), are derived from this root.

The last thing I want to talk about in this section is the issue of the location of adjectives. It seems arbitrary, but I think there’s a subtle difference between the choices. When they precede their nouns, the listener/reader holds them in his head, and then, when the noun arrives, he quickly “assembles” it in his mind. When they follow their nouns, the listener starts with the basic noun in his mind, and as they adjectives come in, he modifies it accordingly. If there are lots of adjectives, then in the former regime the danger is that because there are so many, the listener will have to run over them a second time after the noun has come, to make sure he’s taken them all into account. In the latter regime, because the noun is built up in an ongoing manner, this problem doesn’t arise. For this reason, it’s arguably better to put adjectives after nouns – and this from a native English speaker!

• PRONOUNS

Here’s a table of the principle subject pronouns:

I	ob	We	obs
You (sing.)	ol	You (pl.)	ols
He	om	They (masc.)	oms
She	of	They (fem.)	ofs
It (neut.)	on	They (mixed/neut.)	ons
One	oy	-	-
It (abs.)	os	-	-

The plural ones are simply the singular one with the familiar s suffix, and the masculine, feminine, and neutral third-person ones are unforgettable once you realise where they came from. The unpluralisability of os isn’t accidental: it’s a very abstract pronoun that’s used for things like the weather and the passive voice, which are singular by nature.

The reflexive pronoun – for the third person(s) only – is ok (as in, he shot himself), and the reciprocative pronoun is od (as in, they loathe each other). Interestingly, because the reflexive will always have a subject associated with it, meaning it could (hypothetically) always be given in the singular, and because the reciprocative will always be plural, it would’ve been possible to have them as the same word! But this would’ve been a bit confusing, so it’s fine as it is.

I like the idea of having exclusive and inclusive first-person plural pronouns, and so too it seems did de Jong, who introduced a latter – ogs (you and I/we) – as part of his celebrated revision (the singular version, og, meant “you or I”). It never caught on, however, so the two forms are still rolled into one (obs) as is the case with “we” in many natural languages.

There is a polite second-person pronoun, or(s), which is practically never used.

The relative pronoun (that, which, who) is kel. It comes after a comma, like in German – ditto for the conjunction das (that).

The personal possessive pronouns are formed by adding the adjectival –ik to the relevant pronoun, and then handling this adjective like a noun, so for example: “I want yours” = vilob oliki. These adjectives, when in their adjectival role, can be used in place of the genitive, but I prefer the genitive in that instance, as I feel it’s more indicative of possession (the adjectives feel more indicative of quality). There’s no way to form possessive pronouns from nouns, so instead you must use the genitive with a pronoun; e.g. “I want the man’s” = vilob uti mana.

All of these pronouns – including kel – display the case and number of what they represent. The pluralised subject pronouns are pluralized versions of their singular counterparts, so when they occupy other cases, they take the case suffix before the plural one, as per usual, giving “us” = obis, “them” (mixed) = onis, etc.

Here are some useful substantival and indefinite pronouns:

ek	Someone/anyone	al	Everything	alan	Everyone
nek	No one	an	Some (things)	anan	Some (people)
bos	Something/anything	som	Such/such a thing	soman	Such a person
nos	Nothing	öm	Some such thing	öman	Some person

The ones in the leftmost column are of fixed number. Note that the ones in the rightmost column are simply those from the middle column with the personal agent ending (-an) added to them.

Adding the –os suffix to the demonstrative adjectives creates (very) abstract pronouns; etos = that, etc.

• VERBS

There’s been a lot of talk of the complexity and long-windedness of Volapük verbs. This must surely be in reference to classical Volapük, because the system in the revised version is perfectly reasonable and straightforward! Judge for yourself, bearing in mind the amount of information that needs to be communicated in any verb system.

Like the nouns, the verbs have a stem, which is itself either the abstract noun that describes the process of the verb, or the physical noun for the object or thing that the verb is about. To form the infinitive, you add the suffix –ön, and to form a participle, you add –öl. By way of example, distuk = destruction; distukön = to destroy; and distuköl = destroying (present active).

Verbs conjugate according to subject, tense, passivity, and mood. To conjugate a verb, you start by working out the person and number of the subject(s), and suffixing the relevant pronoun to the stem. For example, binön = “to be,” so “I am” = bin + ob = binob, etc. All the pronouns you need for this bit are in the first table in the previous section.

Next, you do the tense. There are eight of them in Volapük, and they’re indicated by the addition of a single-vowel prefix. Here they are, with examples from “to wait”:

Future in past	ö-	I was to wait, I was to be waiting
Future perfect in past	ü-	I was to have waited, I was to have been waiting
Pluperfect	i-	I had waited, I’d been waiting
Definite past	ä-	I waited, I was waiting
Present perfect	e-	I have waited, I’ve been waiting
Present	(a-)	I wait, I’m waiting
Future	o-	I will wait, I will be waiting
Future perfect	u-	I will have waited, I will have been waiting

Note the relationship between the regular o- and u- and their dieresised (dotted) counterparts.

At this point, the verb is still active; to make it passive, add the prefix p– (making sure, for the present tense, to have added the otherwise optional a–). The agent for the passive (if there is one) follows the preposition fa (by), thus: “I’m hunting a goose” = yagob gani and “I’m being hunted by a goose!” = payagob fa gan!

It’s worth saying at this point that participles and infinitives can occupy any tense and be active or passive, so when you form a participle, make sure it represents what you want it to represent.

The last major thing to deal with is the mood. There are six of them, and they’re indicated by additional suffixes (additional to the subject ones already on the stem, that is), namely:

Indicative	-
Conditional	-öv
Imperative	-öd
Optative	-ös
Interrogative	--li
Subjunctive	--la

The imperative and the optative are command forms, with the former being strong and the latter mild, even half-hearted. Remember that, like the other moods, they always include a subject: the person(s) to whom the command is intended. Note that they will always contain at least three syllables – a drawback in my view, because certain commands should be snappy one-syllable words (duck, stop, run, etc).