Essex Civil Servant, Brian Bishop, Has Been Elected As The First Ever President Of The Volapük Centre

Resources for those interested in Volapük, a constructed international language.

Anglia TV reporter Stephen Cole knocks on a front door, and Brian Bishop greets him in the international constructed language Volapük. From his home at Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, Mr Bishop is President of the Volapük Centre offering resources and information for those interested in the language. It still attracts interest and a small number of speakers, although superseded by Esperanto. Engraving of Johann Martin Schleyer, the German priest who created the language from 1879 because he saw that many of the world’s problems arose because people could not understand one another. Display of printed materials from the period of around 1889 when Volapük was briefly in fashion for around 20 years, known to around a million people and adopted by Chinese merchants, and used in poems and songs. Mr Bishop describes himself as a “linguistic conservationist”. A woman plays piano as Mr Bishop sings the Volapük anthem, accompanied by Stephen Cole providing the lyrics in English. This video was made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Volapük; Languages; International languages; Constructed languages

Background Information

Volapük language was created 1879/80 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. The Volapük Centre (Volapük: Zänabür Volapüka) was an organization, notably managed by Brian R. Bishop in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, which served as a hub for the study and promotion of Volapük. It offered resources including courses and dictionaries.