Many may be familiar with the intriguing legacy of Esperanto, but it was not in fact the world's first deliberately constructed language. That honor goes to Volapuk, the creation of German priest Johan Schleyer. As with other constructed languages, the inspiration for Volapuk came in the form of an idealistic vision for world peace and common human understanding through the use of a shared tongue. To be sure, the advantage of a constructed language such as Esperanto or Volapuk is that it sets the comprehension bar at an even albeit unnavigable level for all; a new form of babble is equally strange to every populace. Sadly, Volapuk didn't have the same public relations team behind it as Esperanto, yet there are still about twenty or thirty speakers of it. Which may be more than native Manx speakers or owners of Beta players. Who knows.
1 comment:
Volapuk was also certainly not the world's first constructed language. There were many before it, most of them no longer famous. An interesting example is Solresol, based on musical tones, proposed several decades before Volapuk. But the history of constructed international languages goes back centuries. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language#History for example.
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