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Volapuk and Zamenhoff

de Alkanadi, 2015-septembro-29

Mesaĝoj: 7

Lingvo: English

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 09:59:49

There is an Esperanto proverb that equates Volapuk with something that is gibberish.

My question is, if Zamenhoff knew about Volapuk, why didn't he just learn and advocate for that language instead of creating a new language.

Miland (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 10:23:20

Zamenhof had actually developed Esperanto (in 1878) in a preliminary form before Schleyer published Volapuk in (1879), though it is true that by the time Zamenhof published the Unua Libro, there had been one or two conventions for Volapuk. The movement declined after the rise of Esperanto.

tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 10:39:28

Also I recall reading something by Claude Piron that said Zamenhof only learned of Volapuk's existence after Esperanto had already been composed. It would have been quite odd for Z to then ditch his project and instead promote an inferior language - one which proved to be doomed by the author's stranglehold over its "property rights".

Alkanadi (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 14:22:29

tommjames:which proved to be doomed by the author's stranglehold over its "property rights".
This seems to kill a lot of constructed languages.

Tempodivalse (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 14:57:00

tommjames:Also I recall reading something by Claude Piron that said Zamenhof only learned of Volapuk's existence after Esperanto had already been composed. It would have been quite odd for Z to then ditch his project and instead promote an inferior language - one which proved to be doomed by the author's stranglehold over its "property rights".
I remember reading from one source that Zamenhof was mildly influenced by features of Volapuk; could anyone confirm or deny this? I do know that there are a lot of similarities between the two - same affix system, regular stress and orthography, etc.

Presumably Zamenhof continued with his project because he felt he could do better than Schleyer - or else he really didn't hear about Volapuk (which I find a little unlikely given its big level of fame for a brief period in the early 1880s).

And yes, Schleyer's biggest mistake was trying to be king of the language. Zamenhof knew that real, living languages don't work that way.

The other reason I think Volapuk failed was that it was simply more difficult than it needed to be - and not very aesthetic, honestly. Though I really like that Volapuk has more cases and no articles. That makes the language much pithier.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-29 18:30:42

Tempodivalse:...and not very aesthetic, honestly...
To me, Volapuk looks artificial to an extent that Esperanto does not. If you put them side by side and asked a random monoglot which was the artificial language and which was the real one (trick question), I imagine they'd point straight at Volapuk with little hesitation and say "that's the fake one right there"*

I think you can get away with believable "foreign country" signage in a movie with Esperanto - which actually has been done - but it wouldn't be as believable if it were in Volapuk. What Vietnamese might have looked like if the Germans had been in Indochina rather than the French; umlauts out the wazoo.

The above, is, naturally, a purely subjective impression on my part.

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* Not understanding the difference between artificiality and fakery, of course, the way that we do.

Miland (Montri la profilon) 2015-septembro-30 07:20:44

tommjames:..I recall reading something by Claude Piron that said Zamenhof only learned of Volapuk's existence after Esperanto had already been composed.
You're right, see section E4 of this article by Piron. Piron also affirms that nothing in Esperanto was taken from Volapuk, which makes sense if Zamenhof knew nothing about it (or heard of it but did not look into it) while he was developing Esperanto.

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