Talk:Volapük

Wikipedia articles and number of speakers
Why are there so many Volapük Wikipedia articles if there are only 20 speakers? Surely the number 20 is wrong?
 * It can happen with a few very active Volapük speakers that have created an incredible amount of stubs (you can see that most of those articles are incredibly short). --JorisvS (talk) 08:54, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Latin which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 00:44, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Body of text/literature
There's quite a lot of literature in Esperanto, both original and translated. Now Volapük's popularity was quite ephemeral, but has any literature in it been published? Probably yes, and if so, I think the article should mention that. Steinbach (talk) 15:33, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a library at s:mul:Main_Page/Volapük. —Justin ( koavf ) ❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:41, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I'm not sure if and how this much (or little) literature should have its place in the article, but the latter seems to be in need of a revamp anyway, since people assigned it B and C classes. Steinbach (talk) 21:50, 18 October 2016 (UTC)

Quotes by Santiago Ramón y Cajal
Either Ramón y Cajal himself wrote his book in English (in which case it was dreadful, in places verging on the incomprehensible), or else it has been translated here from some other language (and the translation suffers from the same problems). Even the title of the cited work contains the non-existent English word 'Advices' ('advice' has no plural form in English, so this is an overliteral translation from Spanish 'consejos' or French 'conseils').188.230.248.85 (talk) 12:27, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Conflict between English and Danish Wikipedia articles
The Danish article mentions as a possible reason for the decline of Volapük "Esperantos fremkomst i 1887. Det er dog en tvivlsom forklaring, for selv om esperanto er langt lettere at lære, var der næsten ingen volapük-foreninger der nåede at skifte til esperanto" ("The rise of Esperanto in 1887. However, this is a dubious explanation, for even if Esperanto is far easier to learn, there were almost no Volapük clubs that managed to switch to Esperanto"). But the English article says more or less the opposite: "Another reason for the decline of Volapük may have been the rise of Esperanto. In 1887 the first Esperanto book (Unua Libro) was published. Many Volapük clubs became Esperanto clubs." Both statements can't be true, but I've no idea which one of them is. I've put a similar comment on the Talk page for the Danish article. There may of course be similar conflicts with other language versions of the article - it all depends on who copied whom! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.127.210.95 (talk) 14:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Given that the Danish article has no sources and the English page does (at least in support of this claim) cite a reference, I think it would be fair to say that the Danish article has no real reason to continue claiming this. I'm going to remove this claim form the article for the sake of consistency. Jwarlock (talk) 14:31, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

the letter /r/
Volapük DID have the letter r long before de Jong's reform. It is true that Schleyer for some reason changed original r to l in many roots (Engl. red > Vol. ledik), but even the Schleyer's Volapük had many roots with r (rät "riddle", reg "king", rel "religion" etc.) Sprague's grammar (1888) treats /r/ as a normal part of the Volapük phonological system. The minimal pair rel "religion" - lel "iron" existed even in the Schleyer's Volapük. --147.251.100.189 (talk) 12:42, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Phoneme Chart
There should be an IPA pronunciation chart in place of the alphabetically ordered chart; like every other language article on this website.63.210.22.26 (talk) 15:37, 25 December 2018 (UTC)

Cifal cross-references
Most of the Cifal links have no articles on the English Wikipedia but there are articles on the Volapuk one. However,where people who only have articles in other languages can be piped to other-language articles on Deaths in 2019 with double brace,"ill",pipe,name,pipe,language code,double brace,that doesn't seem to work here...trying with Johann Schmidt leads to the English disambiguation page for the name rather than the only Volapuk article by that name? There should be some way of pointing readers to corresponding articles.12.144.5.2 (talk) 16:16, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

"User:Ambush Commander~enwiki/Mover" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect User:Ambush Commander~enwiki/Mover. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 22 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Soumya-8974 talk contribs subpages 06:24, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Trivial references
Can we get that limerick out of the article? It's not that relevant for the general history of the language. along with it, we should also remove the statement that the umlauts were "subject to ridicule". That's a very anglocentric remark; moreover, they haven't been ridiculed or criticised quite as much as the circumflexes in Esperanto. Steinbach (talk) 10:37, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Can we get a better source for number of speakers?
The source listed is over 21 years old, and considering the small number of speakers, the actual number of speakers may be wildly different now. Maybe we can get in touch with the new calif "Hermann Philipps" since the current source was listed by the last one? Blua viro (talk) 22:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Inconstancies with the inspiration for the language
In the article for Johann Martin Schleyer it says "According to his own report, the idea of an international language arose out of a conversation he had with one of his parishioners, a semi-literate German peasant whose son had emigrated to America and could no longer be reached by mail because the United States Postal Service could not read the father's handwriting."

But, the article on Volapük it says "Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an international language." 38.126.102.199 (talk) 18:17, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Update on this subject: Recently user:Finnusertop has added a citation needed to the section of text mentioning Schleyer's dream. I am currently in the process of trying to find a pre-2002 source (When the information was added) that supports this claim. It should be noted that the origin on Johann Martin Schleyer is cited. DervotNum4 (talk) 16:11, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Turns out the citation on Johann Martin Schleyer the information I needed DervotNum4 (talk) 16:16, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, almost. does not quite say "in a dream". – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:21, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair point, I've changed the text to match this for now DervotNum4 (talk) 22:48, 18 June 2024 (UTC)