Volapük (; , 'Language of the World', or lit. 'World Speak') is a

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

created in 1879 and 1880 by

Johann Martin Schleyer Johann Martin Schleyer (; 18 July 183116 August 1912) was a German Priesthood in the Catholic Church, Catholic priest who invented the constructed language Volapük. His official name was "Martin Schleyer"; he added the name "Johann" (in honor o ...

, a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

priest in

Baden Baden (; ) is a historical territory in southern Germany. In earlier times it was considered to be on both sides of the Upper Rhine, but since the Napoleonic Wars, it has been considered only East of the Rhine. History The margraves of Ba ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, who believed that

God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...

told him to create an international language. Notable as the first major constructed international auxiliary language, the grammar comes from

European languages There are over 250 languages indigenous to Europe, and most belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. The three larges ...

and the vocabulary mostly from English (with some German and French). However, the roots are often distorted beyond recognition. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (

Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''K ...

), 1887 (

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) and 1889 (

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

). The first two conventions used

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

, and the last conference used only Volapük. By 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages;Handbook of Volapük
, Charles E. Sprague (1888) at that time the language claimed nearly a million adherents. Volapük was largely displaced between the late 19th and early 20th century by

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

History

Schleyer first published a sketch of Volapük in May 1879 in ''Sionsharfe'', a Catholic poetry magazine of which he was editor. This was followed in 1880 by a full-length book in German. Schleyer himself did not write books on Volapük in other languages, but other authors soon did. André Cherpillod writes of the third Volapük convention, The

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

Auguste Kerckhoffs Auguste Kerckhoffs (19 January 1835 – 9 August 1903) was a Dutch linguist and cryptographer in the late 19th century. Biography Kerckhoffs was born in Nuth, the Netherlands, as Jean Guillaume Auguste Victor François Hubert Kerckhoffs, ...

was for a number of years Director of the Academy of Volapük, and introduced the movement to several countries. The French Association for the Propagation of Volapük was authorized on 8 April 1886, with A. Lourdelet as president and a central committee that included the deputy

Edgar Raoul-Duval Edgar Raoul-Duval (9 April 1832 – 10 February 1887) was a French magistrate and politician who was Representative of Seine-Inférieure and then twice Deputy of Eure. He had right-wing views, and for most of his career he was a Bonapartist. He w ...

. However, tensions arose between Kerckhoffs and others in the Academy, who wanted reforms made to the language, and Schleyer, who insisted strongly on retaining his proprietary rights. This led to schism, with much of the Academy abandoning Schleyer's Volapük in favor of

Idiom Neutral Idiom Neutral is an international auxiliary language, published in 1902 by the International Academy of the Universal Language () under the leadership of Waldemar Rosenberger, a St. Petersburg engineer. History The Academy had its origin a ...

and other new constructed language projects. Another reason for the decline of Volapük may have been the rise of

. In 1887 the first Esperanto book ('' Unua Libro'') was published. Many Volapük clubs became Esperanto clubs. By 1890 the movement was in disarray, with violent arguments among the members. Schleyer resigned from the Volapük Academy and created a rival academy. Derived languages such as Nal Bino, Balta, Bopal, Spelin, Dil and Orba were invented and quickly forgotten. In the 1920s,

Arie de Jong Arie de Jong (; October 18, 1865, Jakarta, Dutch East Indies – October 12, 1958, Putten, Netherlands) was a Dutch enthusiast and reformer of the constructed language Volapük by Johann Martin Schleyer, with whose help the Volapük movement gain ...

, with the consent of the leaders of the small remnant of Volapük speakers, made a revision of Volapük which was published in 1931 (now called ''Volapük Nulik'' "New Volapük" as opposed to the Volapük Rigik 'Original Volapük' of Schleyer). This revision was accepted by the few speakers of the language. De Jong simplified the grammar, eliminating some rarely used verb forms, and eliminated some gendered pronouns and gendered verb endings. He also rehabilitated the

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

and used it to make some morphemes more recognizable. For instance, ''lömib'' "rain" became ''rein''. Volapük enjoyed a brief renewal of popularity in the Netherlands and Germany under de Jong's leadership, but was suppressed (along with other constructed languages) in countries under Nazi rule and never recovered. Regarding the success of this constructed language, the Spanish scientist

Santiago Ramón y Cajal Santiago Ramón y Cajal (; 1 May 1852 – 17 October 1934) was a Spanish neuroscientist, pathologist, and histologist specializing in neuroanatomy, and the central nervous system. He and Camillo Golgi received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or M ...

wrote in the first edition of his ''Tonics of Willingness'', in 1898: However, some years later (1920), in the third edition of the same book, he added the following footnote to the former assertion: "As it was presumable, nowadays -1920-, the brand new Volapük has been forgotten definitively. We forecast the same for Esperanto." Large Volapük collections are held by the International Esperanto Museum in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

; the Center for Documentation and Study about the International Language in La Chaux-de-Fonds,

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

; and the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

. In 2000 there were an estimated 20 Volapük speakers in the world. In December 2007 it was reported that the Volapük version of Wikipedia had recently jumped to 15th place among language editions, with more than 112,000 articles. A few months earlier there had been only 797 articles. The massive increase in the size of "Vükiped", bringing it ahead of the Esperanto Wikipedia, was due to an enthusiast who had used a computer program to automatically create geographical articles, many on small villages. The motive was to gain visibility for the language. By March 2013 the Esperanto Wikipedia, with a very active user community, had risen to 176,792 articles, while the Volapük Wikipedia had at that point 119,091 articles. There has been a continuous Volapük speaker community since Schleyer's time, with an unbroken succession of ''

Cifal The CIFAL Global Network is part of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The Network comprises 25 International Training Centres (CIFALs) and aims to serve as a platform for capacity-building of government authorities ...

s'' (leaders). These were: #

1879–1912 # Albert Sleumer 1912–1948 #

(provisionally) 1947–1948, 1951–1957 #

Jakob Sprenger Jakob Sprenger (24 July 1884 – 7 May 1945) was a Nazi Party official and politician who was the Party's ''Gauleiter'' of Hesse-Nassau South from 1927 to 1933 and Gau Hesse-Nassau from 1933 to 1945. He was also the ''Reichsstatthalter'' (Rei ...

1948–1950 # Johann Schmidt 1950–1977 # Johann Krüger 1977–1983 # Brian Bishop 1984–2014 #

Hermann Philipps Hermann or Herrmann may refer to: * Hermann (name), list of people with this name * Arminius, chieftain of the Germanic Cherusci tribe in the 1st century, known as Hermann in the German language * Éditions Hermann, French publisher * Hermann, Mis ...

2014–present

Orthography and phonology

The phonology of Volapük is as follows: Additionally, ⟨x⟩ represents the sequence //. The letters C, J, S and Z are pronounced voiced after voiced consonants and unvoiced otherwise. There are no diphthongs; each vowel letter is pronounced separately. The letters ''ä'', ''ö'', and ''ü'' do not have alternative forms such as the ''ae'', ''oe'', and ''ue'' of

, but Schleyer proposed alternate forms ''ꞛ'', ''ꞝ'', and ''ꞟ'' for them, all of which are part of

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

since version 7.0 released in June 2014: * * * * * * Unicode U+A79A.svg Unicode U+A79B.svg Unicode U+A79C.svg Unicode U+A79D.svg Unicode U+A79E.svg Unicode U+A79F.svg

Special consonantal letters

The following letters were constructed by the inventor to designate sounds which occasionally occur: * Å // * Ħ // * L // * M̂ // * N̂ // * Ŋ // * J // * Ƈ // * ſ // * Rr //

Letter ''r''

Modern Volapük has minimal ''l–r'' pairs such as ''rel'' "religion" versus ''lel'' "iron".

Stress

Polysyllabic words are always stressed on the final vowel; for example, ''neai'' "never" is pronounced . Exceptionally, the question clitic "-li" does not shift the stress of the word it attaches to. When words are compounded together, secondary stress is retained on the final syllables of the compounded elements, as long as that doesn't result in adjacent stressed syllables.

Vocabulary

Schleyer adapted the

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

mostly from English, with a smattering of

and French. Some words remain readily recognizable for a speaker of one of the source languages, but many others are modified beyond easy recognition."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 sherík – expensive), bank, bäk (back), deadik". �
"What the L!"
AUXLANG list posting by Thomas Alexander, 15 November 2005. For instance, ''vol'' and ''pük'' are derived from the English words ''world'' and ''speak''. Although unimportant linguistically, and regardless of the simplicity and consistency of the stress rule, these deformations were greatly mocked by the language's detractors. It seems to have been Schleyer's intention, however, to alter its loan words in such a way that they would be hard to recognise, thus losing their ties to the languages (and, by extension, nations) from which they came. Conversely,

and

Interlingua Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...

are commonly criticized as being much easier to learn for

European European, or Europeans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe and other West ...

s than for those with non-European native languages.

Grammar

The

grammar In linguistics, grammar is the set of rules for how a natural language is structured, as demonstrated by its speakers or writers. Grammar rules may concern the use of clauses, phrases, and words. The term may also refer to the study of such rul ...

is based on that of typical European languages, but with an

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...

character: grammatical inflections are indicated by stringing together separate

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. The main two categories are Morphological derivation, derivational and inflectional affixes. Derivational affixes, such as ''un-'', ''-ation' ...

es for each element of meaning.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for case and number, but not for gender. The following is the declension of the Volapük word ''vol'' "world": As in

, the Volapük noun has four cases:

nominative In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

and

accusative In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...

. In compound words, the first part of the compound is usually separated from the second by the genitive termination ''-a'', e.g. ''Vola-pük'', "of-world language": "language of the world". However, the other case endings (''-e'' dative, ''-i'' accusative) are sometimes used if applicable, or the roots may be agglutinated in the nominative, with no separating vowel.

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

s, formed by the suffix ''-ik'', normally follow the noun they qualify. They do not agree with the noun in number and case in that position, but they do if they precede the noun, are separated from it by intervening words, or stand alone.

Adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a determiner, a clause, a preposition, or a sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or level of certainty by ...

s are formed by suffixing ''-o'', either to the root or to the adjectival ''-ik'' (''gudik'' "good", ''gudiko'' "well"); they normally follow the verb or adjective they modify.

Pronouns

The pronouns begin with ''o-.'' In the singular, they are ''ob'' "I", ''ol'' "

thou The word ''thou'' () is a second-person singular pronoun in English. It is now largely archaic, having been replaced in most contexts by the word '' you'', although it remains in use in parts of Northern England and in Scots (). ''Thou' ...

", ''om'' "he/it", ''of'' "she", ''os'' (impersonal), ''on'' "one", ''ok'' "oneself". They are pluralized with ''-s'': ''obs'' "we", ''ols'' "ye", ''oms'' "they". The possessive may be formed with either the genitive ''-a'' or with adjectival ''-ik'': ''oba'' or ''obik'' "my". Prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are also formed from noun roots by appending appropriate suffixes. In later, reformed Volapük, ''om'' was narrowed down to males only, whereas ''on'' got the meaning of 'it' as well as impersonal 'they'.

Verbs

The

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

carries a fine degree of detail, with

morpheme A morpheme is any of the smallest meaningful constituents within a linguistic expression and particularly within a word. Many words are themselves standalone morphemes, while other words contain multiple morphemes; in linguistic terminology, this ...

s marking tense, aspect,

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound produ ...

person A person (: people or persons, depending on context) is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations suc ...

number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

and (in the third person) the subject's

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

. However, many of these categories are optional, and a verb can stand in an unmarked state. A Volapük verb can be conjugated in 1,584 ways (including infinitives and reflexives). ;Person For the simple present, the pronouns are suffixed to the verb stem: :''binob'' I am, ''binol'' thou art, etc. The present passive takes the prefix ''pa-'': :''palöfons'' they are loved. ;Tense, aspect, and voice The three tenses in the

indicative A realis mood ( abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact; in other words, to express what the speaker considers to be a known state of affairs, as in declarative sentence Dec ...

, and the three

perfect Perfect commonly refers to: * Perfection; completeness, and excellence * Perfect (grammar), a grammatical category in some languages Perfect may also refer to: Film and television * ''Perfect'' (1985 film), a romantic drama * ''Perfect'' (20 ...

aspects, each take a characteristic vowel prefix: The present-tense prefix is omitted in the active voice, so: :''binob'' I am, ''äbinol'' you were, ''ebinom'' he has been, ''ibinof'' she had been, ''obinos'' it will be, ''ubinon'' one will have been. These are seen as being more distant from the present tense the further the vowel is from in

vowel space A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

, and they can be used with temporal words to indicate distance in the past or future. For example, from ''del'' 'day', :''adelo'' today, ''odelo'' tomorrow, ''udelo'' the day after tomorrow, ''ädelo'' yesterday, ''edelo'' the day before yesterday, ''idelo'' three days ago. The

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or ''patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...

is formed with ''p-'', and here the ''a'' is required for the present tense: :''palöfob'' I am loved, ''pälogol'' you were seen, ''pologobs'' we will be seen. ;Infinitive mood The infinitive is formed with the suffix ''-ön''. It can be combined with tense/aspect prefixes: :''Logön'' to see, ''elogön'' to have seen. ;Interrogative mood Yes–no questions are indicated with the particle ''li'': :''Pälogom-li'' was he seen? The hyphen indicates that the syllable ''li'' does not take stress. It occurs before the verb to avoid a sequence of three consonants or a double el: ''li-pälogol? li-binoms?'' ;Participles and the habitual aspect Participles, both active and passive, are formed in ''-öl'': :''Logöl'' seeing, ''elogöl'' having seen, ''ologöl'' being about to see, ''palogöl'' seen (being seen), ''pelogöl'' seen (having been seen), ''pologöl'' about to be seen. ''Binob penöl'' is literally 'I am writing', though ''penob'' is also used. For "I write" as habitual action, the

habitual aspect In linguistics, the aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in a given action, event, or state. As its name suggests, the habitual aspect (abbreviated ), not to be confused with iterative aspect ...

is used. This is formed by adding ''-i-'' after the tense prefix, and here again the present-tense ''a-'' is required. The forms are thus active ''ai-, äi-, ei-, ii-, oi-, ui-,'' passive ''pai-, päi-, pei-, pii-, poi-, pui-.'' All are pronounced as two syllables. :''Aifidob bodi'' I eat bread (as a daily occurrence), ''äipenob penedis'' I used to write letters. With temporal words, :''aidelo'' daily (at the present time) ;The imperative moods The imperative ''-öd'' follows the person suffix: :''Gololöd!'' Go! (to one person), ''gololsöd!'' go! (to more than one person)

Optative The optative mood ( or ; abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope regarding a given action. It is a superset of the cohortative mood and is closely related to the subjunctive mood but is distinct from the desiderative ...

''-ös'' is used for courteous requests, and

jussive The jussive (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting (within a subjunctive framework). English verbs are not marked for this mood. The mood is similar to the '' cohortative'' mood, which typically a ...

''-öz'' an emphatic command. ;Conditional mood Conditionals are formed with ''-la'' for the

protasis In drama, a protasis is the introductory part of a play, usually its first act. The term was coined by the fourth-century Roman grammarian Aelius Donatus. He defined a play as being made up of three separate parts, the other two being epitasis an ...

(''if''-clause) and ''-öv'' for the apodosis (''then''-clause): : ''If äbinob-la liegik, äbinoböv givik'' – if I were rich I would be generous. : ''Ibinomöv givik, if ibinom-la liegik'' – he would have been generous if he had been rich. Note that the tense changes as well, so that in the first example the past tense is used even though the present tense is intended. Like the question particle, the ''-la'' is written with a hyphen to indicate that it is not stressed in speech. ;Potential mood A

potential mood In linguistics, irrealis moods (abbreviated ) are the main set of grammatical moods that indicate that a certain situation or action is not known to have happened at the moment the speaker is talking. This contrasts with the realis moods. They ar ...

is formed with ''-öx'': :''Pelomöx'' he might pay. ;Reflexive verbs Reflexive forms are made from the active voice and the pronoun ''ok'': :''Vatükob'' I wash, ''vatükobok'' (or ''vatükob obi'') I wash myself. In the third person, the periphrastic form of ''vatükomok'' (he washes himself) must use the reflexive pronoun, ''vatükom oki'', as ''vatükom omi'' would mean "he washes him (someone else)". The plural ''-s'' may precede or follow the reflexive, as the speaker chooses: :''vatükomoks'' or ''vatükomsok'' they wash themselves. Here there is a meaningful distinction between joining the pronoun to the verb, and inflecting it independently: :''Löfobsok'' we love ourselves, ''löfobs obis'' we love each other. ;Gerundive The

gerundive In Latin grammar, a gerundive () is a verb form that functions as a verbal adjective. In Classical Latin, the gerundive has the same form as the gerund, but is distinct from the present active participle. In Late Latin, the differences were lar ...

arguments are active ''ö-'', passive ''pö-''.

Examples

The Lord's Prayer

Usage as common noun

The word ''Volapük'' or a variation thereof means "nonsense, gibberish" in certain languages, such as Danish '' volapyk'' and

'' volapukaĵo''.Burger, Harald, et al. ''Phraseologie.'' . In Russian, the term ''Volapuk encoding'' refers to writing Cyrillic letters with the Latin alphabet based on what they look like, for example writing instead of волапюк.

References

External links

* The Volapük-language Wikipedia's page on Volapük
A Volapük portal, with links to grammar, vocabulary, exercises etc

Description and history of the Volapük Academy

Summaries

Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who worked in foreign-language pedagogy, historical phonetics, and other areas, but is best known for his description of the grammar of the English language. Ste ...

's pro

Novial Novial is an international auxiliary language (IAL) created by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen in 1928. It was designed to facilitate human communication between speakers of different native languages. The name of the language is a blend of the ...

''An International Language'' (1928) *
Volapuk
at the Conlang Atlas of Language Structures.

Tutorials

(Follow the 'next' link at the foot of each page for each succeeding lesson...)

Handbooks, grammars and dictionaries

Ralph Midgley's web-page - grammar, lessons, vocabulary, examples

Malgranda gramatiko de Volapuko per Esperanto
by the ex-''Cifal'' Brian Bishop (2015) - Volapük Nulik
Volapük to English dictionary

English to Volapük dictionary

Charles Sprague's Grammar of Volapük, 1888

Fictional treatments

* . Reprinted 201
(Amazon)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Volapuk 1879 introductions Constructed languages Endangered languages Agglutinative languages International auxiliary languages introduced in the 1880s Languages attested from the 1870s