PREFACE.
TO enter upon the study of an international language in an intelligent manner some knowledge of the history of the attempts to create an international language is indispensable. A few of the most important historical data will therefore be briefly presented here. For a more thorough information reference is made to the excellent work on the subject by Dr. L. Couturat and Dr. L. Leau: Histoire de la Langue Universelle, a volume of nearly 600 pages treating historically and critically all artificial languages devised until about 1903.
The history of artificial international languages dates back nearly 300 years. During this period about 250 idioms have been constructed. They reveal a gradual evolution from crude linguistic devices, hardly deserving the name language, in the beginning, to more or less perfect languages in recent times, the later systems, as a rule, surpassing the earlier ones in quality.
From the beginning of this period to our times the problem of an artificial international language has occupied, to a greater or lesser degree, the minds of some of the greatest thinkers and scholars. Among them are to be mentioned Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Voltaire, Alex. v. Humboldt, J. v. Grimm, A. M. Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Ernest Naville, W. Forster, H. Schuchardt, W. Ostwald, Otto Jespersen, etc.
Of all artificial languages Volapük and Esperanto have gained the widest publicity. It is impossible to establish which of the two had the larger number of adherents, for the reports in this respect are entirely unreliable.
Volapük was devised by the German priest Schleyer of Konstanz, Baden, and published in 1880. It spread rapidly in all civilized countries and flourished until 1889, Then it
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