Volant

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

in heraldry, a term meaning flying. VOLAPÜK, an artificial language invented in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a German priest. Schleyer's years of linguistic study as a preparation for his task, were spent in examining the structure the mechanism of the important languages of the world. When he had closed his researches in this field, he chose the Aryan family as the general model for his invention. His aim was to produce a language free from all the defects of one of natural growth, with all irregularities and speech peculiarities eliminated. He called his invention Volapük-"World's Speech." The Roman alphabet was VOLAPÜK used with the exception of w and q. To this the letters ä, ö, and ü were added, making an alphabet of 27 letters. fug The vowels are sounded as the long vowels in Italian and have but one sound. The consonants are sounded, in the main, as in English. In the compromise made necessary by the purpose of Volapük each language had to surrender something. French gave up its nasals; German, its gutturals; Italian, its liquids, while all alike gave up their articles and analytic form. Volapük is a synthetic and inflectional language like Latin. By this means it can express thought with great clearness and conciseness. The order of the words in a sentence, however, is of the modern type. The radicals or root words, form the basis of the language. These are usually nouns. About 40 per cent. of these have been taken from English; the rest are from other Aryan languages, chiefly German, Latin, and French. By what methods the radicals, or root words, were made ready for use and from what source they were taken will now be shown. The general principle determining the choice of a root seems to have been brevity, clearness, and ease of utterance. For these reasons the Volapük word for man is man, a Germanic form, while the word for house is dom, a Latin form. The word for time is tim, from the Rumanian (timp); for bridegroom, gam from the Greek. These radicals are generally of one syllable and begin and end in a consonant, that the case endings of the nouns and arguments and personal endings of the verbs may be applied directly to the root. They are, in the main, formed from ordinary words by three methods: (1) A consonant is substituted for a final vowel or for a difficult consonant. Thus English pay becomes in Volapük pel; French mer becomes mel. (2) Conso- Cons nants and vowels are dropped out altogether. Thus German ganz becomes gan, Latin pons becomes pon, English state becomes tat, forest becomes fat. (3) The most important syllable is chosen to represent the idea conveyed by the whole word. Thus Latin sapientia becomes sap; French tapis becomes tap, Below is a short table of Volapük roots from English, German, Latin, and French: English German. giv gift bin being kom arrival. fel field. lady. läd wire. fad pen pen. gan goose. (the) saying. ket chain. sag correspondence spod silence. stil stone. ston nad needle. vom woman world. vol Latin. French. duk guide. mat- marriage mel sea. fin end. fight. pom fruit flum river. tap - carpet. king. tuv - discovery. reg taking. sum ten stretching. Its use, never general, has now almost entirely ceased.