Friday, August 24, 2012

what the internet is good for: Volapük

Have you ever heard of a language called Volapük?

Until today, I never heard of it and though I've heard of it now, I don't really give a damn about it. What I thought was interesting was how this "constructed language" claimed upwards of a million users - Wikipedia.org says "adherents" - in the late 19th Century, declined to about 20-30 by the beginning of this century, and has revived in the last decade, nearly tripling its users, most likely because they can find each other on the internet.

Considering the numbers - that is roughly 90 adherents, it is noted in Wikipedia that there are approximately 119,000 articles in the Volapük Wikipedia, which ranks it 37th.

So what's my point?
That the internet helps preserve things that would otherwise have faded away.

Maybe next time I'll tell you something you didn't know already.

1 comment:

  1. That is an interesting thought that I also agree with. I will, however, count myself as one of the Volapük speakers (though I am not really good at it yet). I've known of this language since I was young!

    ReplyDelete

Can it get more random?