The following illustration shows the various gradations of diminutiv and augmentativ words in Volapük :
| luzifil, | wretched little town, |
| smazifil, | little hamlet, |
| zifil, | little town, |
| luzif, | wretched town, |
| smazif, | village, |
| zif, | town, |
| lulezif, | big ugly city, |
| lezif, | city, |
| glezif, | important city, |
| luglezif, | miserable great city, |
| leglezif, | metropolis. |
The endings -ik, -el, -am, are the most common, and almost every radical may assume them. In our vocabulary
we frequently give the radical only or one of these derivativs, leaving the others to be inferred.
From any radical denoting a quality may be formed, by adding ik, an adjectiv attributing that quality, as gud, goodness, gudik, good; jap, sharpness, japik, sharp. Thus dropping ness is equivalent to adding ik, or vice versa. In this case we usually give the adjectiv only, leaving the student to drop the ik and add the ness or we give the noun only, leaving him to drop the ness and add the ik.
Every root has, or may have, an adjectiv form in ik, but there is not always a corresponding English adjectiv. Many adjectivs are entirely lacking in English. We have no such word, for example, as "to-daily," and we use the possessiv
"to-day's newspaper;" but in Volapük, ,,gased adelik." We have "golden" derived from "gold," but have no adjectiv
derived from "iron." But in Volapük ,,golüdik, lelik, silefik," are regularly formed from ,,golüd, lel, silef," and in translating from English we must be careful, to distinguish: in phrases like "silver watch," treating "silver " as an adjectiv ; ,,glok silefik." Whole phrases are also rendered by an adjectiv in ik or an adverb in iko the adjectiv being used if the phrase qualifies a noun, the adverb, if it qualifies a verb.
Many words are used both as nouns and as verbs in Volapük and in English. Thus we speak of a name and to
