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European Languages Spoken

COMPARISON SHOWING THE SUPERIOR RAPID GROWTH OF THE ENGLISH TONGUE. Number of Persons Spoken by Proportion of the Whole.

Number of Persons Spoken by Proportion of the Whole.

Languages.

Languages. 1801. 1883. 1801. 1883.

English, 30,521,000 99,861,000 12.9 27.1 Portuguese French, 31,448,000 47,818,000 19.6 13.0 Russian, German, 30,318,000 68,826,000 18.4 18.6 Italian, 15,074,000 29,873,000 9.2 8.1 Spanish, 26,194,000 40,835,000 16.0 11.4 7,480,000 12,810,000 5.0 3.5 30,770,000 66,725,000 18.9 18.3 Total, 161,805,000 366,748,000 100.0 Volapük, the new "universal language," is the invention of a German Catholic priest, Rev. Johann Martin Schleyer, of Constance, in Baden. He published his system in 1879. On account of its extreme simplicity-its grammar contains no artificial genders, a single conjugation, and no irregular verbs-Volapük is very easily acquired, and large numbers of educated people are learning it all over the continent of Europe. The Volapük dictionary now contains 14,000, words, while any imaginable new word may be easily formed by composition. All difficulties of pronunciation and spelling are avoided. No sound is employed which is not common the world over, every word is accented on the last syllable, and the orthography is strictly phonetic.

States and Territories.