International Language, Past, Present & Future / With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar

by Walter John Clark

Volapük

O Fat obas, kel binol in süls, paisaludomöz nem ola! Kömomöd monargän ola! Jenomöz vil olik, äs in sül, i su tal! Bodi obsik vädeliki givolös obes adelo! E pardolös obes debis obsik, äs id obs aipardobs debeles obas. E no obis nindukolös in tentadi; sod aidalivolös obis de bad. Jenosöd!

Idiom Neutral¹

Nostr patr kel es in sieli! Ke votr nom es sanktifiked; ke votr regnia veni; ke votr volu es fasied, kuale in siel, tale et su ter. Dona sidiurne a noi nostr pan omnidiurnik; e pardona (a) noi nostr debiti, kuale et noi pardon a nostr debtatori; e no induka noi in tentasion, ma librifika noi da it mal.

¹There are two forms of Idiom Neutral,—one called "pure," authorized by the academy; the other used in the paper Idei International.

Esperanto

Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo, sankta estu via nomo; venu regeco via; estu volo via, kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero. Panon nian ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ; kaj pardonu al ni ŝuldojn niajn, kiel ni ankaŭ pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj; kaj ne konduku nin en tenton, sed liberigu nin de la malbono.

Comparing Volapük with Idiom Neutral, even this brief specimen is enough to show the main line of improvement. The framers of the latter had realized the fact that the vocabulary is the first and paramount consideration for an artificial language. It is hopeless to expect people to learn strings of words of arbitrary formation and like nothing they ever saw. Accordingly Idiom Neutral borrows its vocabulary from natural speech, and thereby abandons a regularity which may be theoretically more perfect, but which by arbitrary disfigurement of familiar words overreaches itself, and does more harm than good.

It is very instructive to note that a body of international language specialists were brought little by little to adopt an almost exclusively Romance vocabulary, and this in spite of the fact that they started from Volapük, whose vocabulary is constructed on quite other lines. In other points their language suffers from being too exclusively inspired by Volapükist principles, so that their recognition of the necessity of an a posteriori vocabulary is the more convincing.