Volapük

Supporters of languages planned for international communication, like Esperanto, often claim that these languages are less complex and therefore easy to learn as compared to natural languages. To what extent does this claim have empirical support? In this contribution, planned languages will be presented from the perspective of learnability. In particular, the question of language complexity will be addressed. Almost all planned languages show a high degree of morphological regularity, obtained by a drastic reduction of allomorphy and suppletion. While these morphological traits can help learners acquire the basics of the planned language more easily as compared to standard natural languages, other factors should be taken into account in order to assess the learnability of these languages, in particular their sociolinguistic status.

International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) are languages consciously planned for enabling communication between speakers having different native tongues on an equal footing. They are the most developed area of interlinguistics, the science of languages that are constructed or planned on purpose. The term “auxiliary” refers to the fact that IALs are intended to be used as second languages only. In general, IALs are supported by people who are dissatisfied of the use of national languages – like English or French – in international settings, so they promote the use of a ‘neutral’ tool. For IAL supporters, ‘neutral’ means that they are not bound to any specific ethnicity. The most successful IAL ever is Esperanto, which succeeded to gather a community of practice without substantial interruption, for over a century. Today, IALs live a new Spring thanks to the internet, especially social media and Wikipedia, which give them new visibility to the general public.

VOLAPÜK  IN ‘LOVE IN THE CRIMEA’ AS A TRANSLATION ISSUE

Citation (formatted-apa)
Szczerbowski, T. (1998). Volapük w „Miłości na Krymie” a przekład. W: M. Filipowicz‐Rudek, J. Konieczna‐Twardzikowa, U. Kropiwiec (red.), Między oryginałem a przekładem. Literatura polska w przekładzie (s. 83–93). Kraków: Księgarnia Akademicka.

Künstliche Sprachen im Rahmen einer computergestützten lexikostatistischen Untersuchung 1 1. Vorüberlegungen Um die Ähnlichkeit zweier Sprachen feststellen und vergleichen zu können, existieren bislang mehrere unterschiedliche Ansätze und ausgebaute Projekte. Während viele Jahre zuvor noch statistisch schwer nachweisbare Maßstäbe bzw. schlecht reproduzierbare Methoden angelegt und genutzt wurden, wie etwa die gegenseitige Verständlichkeit (Interintelligibilität) oder die bloße subjektive Einschätzung eines einzelnen Sprachforschers, wurden mit der Zeit zunehmend objektivere Methoden gefordert. Ansätze dazu gab es bereits im frühen 19. Jahrhundert. In den 50er und 60er Jahren des 20. Jahrhunderts entwickelte der Linguist Morris Swadesh ein Verfahren zum Sprachvergleich anhand von normierten Wortlisten. Durch die Entwicklung des Computers konnten die statistischen Berechnungen in einem Bruchteil der Zeit abgewickelt werden, was die Arbeit erheblich erleichterte und die Möglichkeit erlaubte, mehr Daten zu vergleichen, als von Hand berechnet werden könnten. Auch die Zugänglichkeit zu Sprachdaten hat sich in dieser Zeit erhöht. Seit 2007 beschäftigt sich ein internationales linguistisches Projekt, ASJP (Automated Similiarity Judgment Program) mit dem Thema und versucht, durch automatisierte Berechnungen die phonetisch-lexikalischen Distanzen aller Sprachen der Welt untereinander zu vergleichen, um so objektive Aussagen über die phonetisch-lexikalische Ähnlichkeiten in einer bestimmten Stichprobe des Vokabulars zweier oder mehrerer Sprachen zu treffen und andere Daten und Analysen extrapolieren zu lassen. Ähnliche Projekte, allerdings in leicht anderer Ausführung und kleinerem Umfang, sind auch von Oswalt (1970), Villemin (1983), Nakhleh et al. (2005) und anderen umgesetzt worden, zum Teil für einzelne Sprachfamilien. Die Darstellung der Ähnlichkeiten erfolgt in numerischen Werten für jedes Sprachpaar, kann aber als Baumdiagramm grafisch dargestellt werden. Die entstehenden Baumdiagramme ähneln vom Aufbau her stark den genetischen Bäumen, die in der historischen Sprachwissenschaft oft für Sprachverwandtschaften aufgestellt werden. Die vom ASJP-1 Mein Dank gilt Sebastian Sauppe, Søren Wichmann und Helen Geyer für wertvolle Korrekturen, Anmerkungen und Hinweise zu dieser Arbeit.

By invitation of the Fine Arts Department, Barcelona-based linguist and esperantist Rubén Fernández Asensio will work for one day with students from any Sandberg department with any language background.
Throughout the Sandberg Institute, English is the most spoken language among students and staff with different mother tongues, not only in social situations but also in lectures and instructive classes. Arguably this type of English, full of jargon from the academic and art world, is shaping the way we think about ourselves and our practices.
Fine Arts tutor Nicoline van Harskamp wants to test the impact of this `Lingua Franca English' by learning and putting to use an alternative international language, namely Esperanto. It was designed by L.L. Zamenhoff in 1887 as ­ says Wikipedia ­ "an easy-to-learn, politically neutral language that would transcend nationality and foster peace and international understanding between people with different languages." With 2 million speakers, Esperanto is by far the most widely used constructed language that ever existed.
It has an easy-to-learn, regular grammar. But its structure opens a lot of options for the `elusiveness' that so marks our `art English'. Esperanto also allows for the formation of new words and a range of interpretation possibilities.
Rubén Fernández Asensio has been teaching both general linguistics and Esperanto for many years. For the purpose of his visit he has familiarized himself with the concept of International Art English (see also the links below). He will speak about the history of international languages, including that of Esperanto, after which he will give a short introduction to Esperanto. In the afternoon, Asensio will help us work out Esperanto versions of terms that we often use in `art English'.

Today, the word Esperanto is linked to a failed attempt of an artificial language to become the global lingua franca. In stark contrast, there is also a success story. Among the hundreds of proposed international languages in history (Eco 1995), Esperanto is the only one that has survived the death of its creator and is still alive (Okrent 2008). In fact, this year marks the centenary of Ludwik Zamenhof‘s death (1859-1917), the creator of Esperanto. For this reason, Unesco honours his memory in 2017. Already in 1954 this institution noted the results attained by the Esperanto movement in the field of international intellectual relations and the rapprochement of the peoples of the world, recognizing that these results corresponded with its aims and ideals. Far from being a marginal topic, Esperanto played a relevant role in crucial discussions on literature (Sutton 2008), science (Gordin 2015), the so- called Jewish question (Schor 2016), the democratisation of totalitarian regimes (Lins 2016 and 2017) or the possibilities of peace in international relations (Alcalde and Salguero forthcoming).
The aim of this session is to analyse the Esperanto movement, both from a historical and a sociological perspective. Theoretical and empirical proposals will be considered, both comparative researches and (local and) national case studies. Potential historical topics include the relationship of the Esperanto movement with related movements (such as the peace movement), as well as the different proposals made by intellectuals and social activists on its behalf in their areas of expertise. Sociological approaches could tackle its political opportunities in the digital age, its resources and repertoire of contention, its collective identity or its impact on different dimensions. As Garvía (2015) has shown, in the battle of languages that took place at the beginning of the 20th century, the reasons for Esperanto’s victory lied in the movements’ organizational strategies and the ideology of its leadership. In fact, compared to other social movements’ leaders, here the role of the language creator was essential. His ideas were framed in a way that helped to mobilize followers, collect resources, and outline an organizational strategy based on participatory decision-making. For this reason, papers focusing on particular figures of the movement, including (but not necessarily) Zamenhof, are also welcomed.

L’esperanto, llengua internacional creada com a instrument neutral de comunicació, es va iniciar el 1887 amb la publicació a Varsòvia de la primera gramàtica. Signava el text el Dr. Esperanto, pseudònim de Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, un oculista amb vocació per les llengües i per l’entesa dels pobles. El 14 d’abril de 2017 es commemora el centenari de la mort de Zamenhof i el CRAI Biblioteca de Lletres presenta, amb motiu de l’efemèride, una mostra bibliogràfica organitzada gràcies a la col·laboració amb l’Associació Catalana d’Esperanto. Omplen les vitrines exteriors i interiors de la biblioteca documents que formen part del llegat editorial de cent trenta anys de publicació en esperanto, des de les obres de Zamenhof, diccionaris i llibres juvenils il·lustrats, passant per un ampli ventall de literatura original i traduïda.

Время от времени на земле или на какой-то ее части возникают семиотические кризисы "семотрясения", которые сопровождаются обостренным вниманием общества к языку и другим знаковым системам, в частности, созданием новых знаковых систем, экспериментами над ними, созданием новых литературных языков. В XVII веке в пивных и маленьких ресторанчиках Англии образованная молодежь говорила о новых искусственных языках, а в третьей четверти XIX в. образованное население Европы овладевало воляпюком и эсперанто, различными философскими языками и кодами. Пик успешных семиотических начинаний приходится на 1879 г. В этом году была опубликована первая статья Бен Иегуды о возрождении иврита, в этом году патер Шлейер издал первую статью о своем воляпюке, годом раньше был создан первый вариант эсперанто и в этом же году Готтлоб Фреге издал свой знаменитый  Begriffsschrift, формальный язык чистого смысла, давший начало символической логике. До сих пор это совпадение оставалось незамеченным. На наш взгляд, оно знаменует глубокие тектонические сдвиги в накоплении и эксплуатации знаний, собранных человечеством и существующих только в знаковой форме, и требует серьезного осмысления и изучения.

The turn of the 20th century witnessed a unprecedented mania for constructed languages. Born out of the utopian ideals of a motley assemblage of philosophers, artists, poets, and scientists, these languages reflect the virtues and vices of their age in their designs. Their developers aimed at nothing less than the unification of all humanity by substituting a linguistic unity for a fractious diversity, but the sources they employed in constructing their projects reflect their limited perspectives with regard to that diversity of languages and of the peoples they would unite. The men who participated in the vast and collective project of designing a world language were some of the foremost intellectuals and most sophisticated scholars of their time, but the failure of these projects reflects their fundamental naiveté.

Unial (also known as Universal) was one such project. Unial was first introduced as "Pan-Roman" in 1903 by Dr. Heinrich Molenaar (1870–1965), a German philosopher, poet, and language teacher. Molenaar, who was a lifelong social activist and committed pacifist, believed that the search for an international auxiliary language was redundant, as all of the languages of Europe and the European colonial empires shared a common scientific vocabulary ultimately derived from Latin and Greek. Unial represents Molenaar's attempt to impose an easily acquired schematic grammar upon this vocabulary.

This grammar, now available for the first time since 1920, has been enlarged significantly with a new introduction situating it in the context of other international auxiliary language projects and outlining Molenaar's philosophy of auxiliary language design.