Posted on 03/11/2010 8:30:02 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Nicolas Sarkozy left interpreters befuddled at an environment conference in Paris when he came up with a word that is almost as rare as a nine-euro note.
The French president, complaining about negotiations leading up to last December's UN climate summit, said world leaders had been handed a draft text "similar to volapük."
Even native French speakers were stumped by this one, and some at first thought he said "vol a Buc", or "flight to Buc," a small and obscure town near Paris that has no airport.
Better-versed minds prevailed, and it turned out not only that Mr Sarkozy was making a nod to history and his hero. Volapük is a language invented in the late 19th century by a German Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, who dreamt of creating a universal means of communication. His idea never really took flight and other international languages, such as Esperanto, emerged as more successful candidates. In French, "to speak volapük" was once used to denote gibberish or gobbledegook, but it was last used in any major context at a press conference in 1962 by General de Gaulle, who is revered by Mr Sarkozy.
Fewer than two dozen people in the world these days are believed to speak volapük, but they are still optimistic that their language can survive.
According to the Volapük website "Volapük lifon nog, ab no dabinon plu muf gretik yelas büätik. Too pük dalabon nog slopanis on a. Äbinon yufapük bev|netik primik ad dalabvn noganükami calöfik." It translates as: "Volapük is living still, but there is no longer the great movement of former years. Nevertheless the language still has its supporters."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
What Sarkozy said sure was a lot more classy and intellectual than “ gets all wee-weed up”...
obtient toutes les mauvaises herbes wee-up
Someone —— RULES!
Cheers!
Nearly dead language ping.
The high point came in 1887, when there were enough Volapukists to found the Kadem bevünetik volapüka. (The name means not "flying vomit", as you might suspect, but "world speech"). Its main drawback - apart from being almost impossible to learn - was that it was really, really ugly.
Anyway, the "Kadem" later changed its mind about the world language, and became the Akademi Internasional de Lingu Universal. Later still, it became the Academia pro Interlingua, so who says that our species never evolves?
No prizes for guessing where I would cast my vote for a common second language.
AHHH! Just in time to hit the rack. Merci beaucoup!
Thanks Jet Jaguar!
*** FRENCH POLITICS AND CULTURE PING LIST *** FREEPMAIL ME IF YOU WANT TO JOIN ***
Sarko is really,really, smart. He knows exactly how to get people talking about what he says.
yitbos
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