Hi Jim,

Before I get to your note, were you ever a tutor in
the 10 lesson Esperanto course?

Next question.  You said that if I jumped into
Volapük with both feet that you'd resubscribe to
the mailing list.  I think it's fair to say I've
jumped in with both feet.  Are you ready to come
back to the list?

> de Jong would have done better to reduce the vowel
> inventory further than add an l/r distinction. But
> that would have required more extensive changes to
> the tense/aspect inflection.

More vowels and a full array of consonants means more
possible 1 and 2 syllable words which start and end
with consontants.  One of Schleyer's reasons that Vp
is better than Eo is that the words are shorter.  In
this regard, de Jong made Volapük better if you look
at this one reason in isolation.

One aspect about learning Volapük which I've been
really enjoying is that I've been finding that I've
had a number of misconceptions about the language.
For example, while it is true that words like vol
and pük don't really look like world and speak, but
the whole language is not like that.  Scores of words
are very obvious as what they mean - if, fasilik,
gudik/badik, smalik, jerik (pronounced sxerik' -
expensive), bank, bäk (back), deadik.

I also like that Volapük has a clear and consistent
way for handling unassimilated words like names.
(I wish Esperanto had something like that.)

Of course, if I end up learning Volapük well, I
won't know how to translate "that's Greek to me" into
Esperanto, since nobody is promoting Volapük as a
world language today, Esperantists have no qualms
over using it as the butt of jokes like "mi ne
komprenas - cxu vi eble parolas Volapukon?" for
"it's Greek to me."

It wasn't always like that, though. As I was looking
into the reform project of 1894, I read something from
Zamenhof ... from 1892, as I recall, in which he
announced that he wasn't going to go ahead with his
plan for a series of articles comparing Esperanto to
Volapük since Volapük was clearly on the way out by
then.  Recently, however (as much as you can believe
anything you read on the Internet) I found out that
as late as 1895, Schleyer wasn't willing to return
the favor.  (This brings me to your question...)

Schleyer's 30 reasons that Volapük is better than
Esperanto (in German: Ueber die Pfuscher-Sprache
des Pseudo-Esperanto) is in the files section of the
Volapük list.  One or two of them are the same sorts
of things which we still hear on the Auxlang list
today. Many of them, however, leave me thinking that
he had less than ideal sources for learning about
Esperanto, or that due to other demands on his time,
he never gave it an honest investigation.

A few examples:

His 4th reason is that he doesn't like the many
"word-dividing-lines" in Esperanto and lists
"libr'óten'antó" as an example.  I'm mildly suspicious
that the accents on the O's are a byproduct of putting
the document on-line.  I suspect it is meant to be
"libr'o'ten'ant'o".  Somehow he didn't understand that
this was a way of explaining the language.  One could
just as easily write buk'i'kip'an (or whatever) for
Volapük.

Schleyer was troubled by consonent clusters in
Esperanto (his 9th reason), including ngrn, mbrjn,
mpjn, and ndschjn as found in the words fingrn,
membrjn, schtrumpjn, orandschjn.  I'm troubled by
them too, but this isn't Esperanto.

Number 22 -- in Esperanto, you might think that a
plural noun is a verb because they both end in I or J.
It is true that around this same time (according to
what Zamenhof wrote about it) there was an important
basic book (I recall that it was a German textbook on
Esperanto, although the only reference I can find at
the time <pvz 1893-03> says only that it's in "kelkaj
lernolibroj" and that the error is common among
Germans) which said basically that I and J are
prounounced the same.  Perhaps Schleyer was learning
Esperanto from this book.

A few of his reasons tickled my funny bone in
different ways.

His second reason tied in with a joke I've been
making about Volapük.  Schleyer says Vp is better
because it's shorter than Eo.  Perhaps so, but I've
thinking lately that by the time you get done
shouting "stebedolös!" (=wait!), the person you're
calling to will be long gone.

His 12th reason: Esperänto is nö goöd becäuse
it döesn't häve äny ümläüts, and as a result is
monotonous, hard, and boring.

His 25th reason: "Die Endung -um wird im Esp.
erklärt als ein "Suffix von verschiedener Bedeutung".
Was aber eigentlich damit bezweckt werden soll, wird
nicht angegeben. - Solcher Unklarheiten würde sich Vp.
wirklich schämen."  This is funny to me because Mattos
describes Volapük as having several different forms of
the -um suffix.  Half of Volapük's vocabulary seems to
be made up of um-words, with -äd -ät -od -ot and
others having at best a vague "umeca" meaning. Nothing
against that system (in fact, it's find of fun), but
why couldn't Schleyer see that these are all just a
bunch of -um's?

The 13th reason was not a surprise for me, since
Zamenhof made mention of it in his writings around
1894.  A volapükist had said to Zamenhof that since
the -as, -is, and -os are on an unaccented syllable
in Esperanto, they are hard to catch.  Having read
this before starting to learn Volapük, I was of
course very surprised to find that Volapük marks tense
on the unaccented FIRST syllable.

Finally, among the 30 reasons is the whole letter R
thing.  It makes one wonder what Schleyer would think
about the form of his language in use today - since
it now includes this horrible letter.  As I said in
my last message, I have long thought that the
giggles concerning Schleyer's decision to exclude R
from were just silly.  I was surprised to find out
that in a way, reformer Arie de Jong was a co-giggler
and added the R back to the language.

To be fair to Arie de Jong, in his explanation of
why he reformed the language, he argues somewhat
convincingly that what he did was to continue some
changes which Schleyer had been working on anyway.
It was the intention at the time that this reformed
Volapük would be the one language at the time (1931)
which had any chance of becoming THE world language.
(Since Schleyer listed "the letter R" together with
"consonant clusters", there were still 30 reasons to
prefer Vp to Eo.)  Only later did "preservation" and
"historical interest" become the main thrust of the
Volapük movement.  This, of course, raises the
question of what it is one should be preserving and
which is of greater historical interest - original
Volapük or the modern version.

Amike salutas,
Thomas/Tomaso ALEXANDER.
www.NightinGael.Net
---Anything below this line is not from Thomas ---


	
		
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