by Ivan A. Derzhanski, Journal of Planned Languages, 16th edition, pp. 11-15. Reprinted by permission. Copyright 1992 Ivan A Derzhanski.
"The human race could discard painting, snap the cords of music, disuse scientific research, nay, could even abolish marriage, yet a worse fate would befall were the power of speaking lost. The world dumb!--then it would be time to roll up the elements, burn the atmosphere, and explode Earth into shivering atoms."
I hope that these concluding words of Lips-Kith: A World Language by Joseph Scarisbrick (Crowbridge, 1919) have not frightened the reader too much. He is not suggesting that we are likely to lose our ability to speak. What makes him worry is that we are not using it rationally. We could save an enormous amount of time and effort if we would adopt a single language, a form of Universal speech for the entire population of the planet, one which would reduce the hostility and waste of resources brought forth by language barriers to the point of making all "Socialist conspiracies and syndicalist confederacies" for social betterment unnecessary.
In order to increase the chances of his project to receive universal approval, the author examines the causes for the failure of Volapük, Esperanto, and the Idiom Neutral in this respect. He sees a problem in the fact that they are too artificial, while "[i]n an efficient tongue, sounds echo the sense", and morphemes are not just sequences of sounds associated with meanings in an arbitrary way. Scarisbrick believes this to have been the situation in Proto-World (a term he himself does not use), and the vocabulary of Lips-Kith is the result of his attempt to recover that "natural" root pool. It is made up of two types of "natural" morphemes, called "symbolic" (conventional) and "mimetic" (onomatopoeic).
Symbolic roots "are those which appeal to the intellect": the meaning of the whole is somehow composed of the conventional meanings of the individual sounds. They may contain only what Scarisbrick considers
to be the oldest speech sounds. This includes nine "primitive" consonants:
"s" action, stir
"k" close union, coalition
"p" pointing, projection
"t" touching, without union
"m" mouth
"n" nose
"r" undulations
"l" gliding, sliding by
"w" deflexion, twisting
and five "light" vowels, "i", "e", "a", "o", and "u", pronounced as in Vorlin.
Mimetic roots "are ear-filling, and do not appeal to reason". They include sounds which "proceed from the movements and activities of Nature in rolling wave, sighing wind, the hurricane, simoom, crash of thunder, and also from the animal world with its cries and actions... These sounds primarily were never meant for man at all. Had he never existed the winds would have rocked the trees, kissed the grass, and lashed ocean into foam... The wolf's howl and lion's roar and jackal's snarl would have smote the welkin."
These unhuman sounds turn out to be the "flat" consonants "z", "b", "d", "g", the "modern" consonants "ch", "j", "f", "v", "th" (unvoiced and voiced), "sh", "zh", a number of aspirated consonants, as well as the "heavy" vowels (long vowels or diphthongs), written with macrons:
"ï" as in "pile"
"ë" as in "peel"
"ä" as in "pale"
"ä" (or "äh") as in "father"
"ä" (or "äw") as in "fall"
"ö" as in "bone"
"ü" (also written "oo") as in "rune"
By trying to restore as much as possible of the phonetic system and vocabulary of humanity's common language Scarisbrick strives to avoid another flaw of Volapük et al., namely their parochiality. However, he too ends up including much more Indo-European elements than any others into Lips-Kith, because of the fact that "Indo-European tongues are the only ones which have been analysed" and in fulfilment of the prophecy "that Japhet would be enlarged and occupy the home-tents of Shem, brother Ham being wood-cutter and water-carrier for both". "In the current dispensation, anyway, we have a Japhetic world, and 'tis only reasonable that Japhet's line and language should predominate in World-Speech."
Yet another weakness of the major 19th century projects, according to Scarisbrick, is the complexity of their structure. "Most members of the Adam Eveson firm are very ordinary folk indeed, in the cephalic region, anyway", as he writes, and consequently the language of Single-Speech Earth must be kept as simple as possible, or they won't be able to handle it. This understanding supposedly has guided the design of the grammar of Lips-Kith, which in fact seems, if anything, somewhat more complex than the Esperanto one. But let the reader judge about this.
The personal pronouns have separate subjective, objective, and possessive forms. No explanation is given for the existing variants. As in English, the objective form is the one used with prepositions.
| | subj | obj | poss |
| 1Sg | i | mi | komi |
| 2Sg | e | te | kote |
| 3Sgm | a | sa | kosa |
| 3Sgf | o | so | koso |
| 3Sgn | u | su | kosu |
| 1Pl | i= | mi= | nos komi= | koor, noor, noos, nus |
| 2Pl | e= | te= | pos kote=, poor |
| 3Plm | a= | sa= | tos kosa=, loor |
| 3Plf | o= | so= | tos koso=, loor |
| 3Pln | u= | su= | tos kosu=, loor |
Scarisbrick laments the fact that the duodecimal system, despite its undisputable advantages in comparison with the decimal one, has little chances to be universally established, because "[t]he largest part of
humanity is mentally dense, and obviously meant to hew wood and draw water for those who have brains and character". For want of a better world, he proposes the following names for the ones and tens:
0 nün
1 tün
2 twi
3 tri
4 pes
5 pen
6 sek
7 sep
8 nok
9 nik
10 tek
20 twik
30 trik
40 pesk
50 penk
60 sekt
70 sept
80 nokt
90 nikt
The system is completed by 100 kent, 1,000 mil, and 1,000,000 mur (from the sound of a countless swarm of insects). In compounds the initial consonant of the ones or tens is elided, e.g. 160 kent-ekt; in `600', `800', and `900' the final -k of the coefficient is elided, e.g. 909 ni-kent-ik. Special suffixes are used to form ordinal, adverbial, and distributive numerals: tek-oon-os `11th', kent-ek-is `110 times', se-kent-as `600 each'.
The infinitive of the verb is the bare root. The preterite stem is formed by doubling the final consonant of the root (ett- from et- `eat') or suffixing the initial one if the root ends in a vowel (keuk- from keu- `swell'). The stem may be followed by -n-, indicating passive voice (as a form of negation, one of the basic meanings of the consonant "n" in Lips-Kith), and then either a subjective personal pronoun (for the indicative) or a participle marker (present -amün, past -arün, future -asün). The imperative is formed from the second person present form by appending a -s (the consonant "s" stands for action).
The stem may be preceded by one or more of a large number of auxiliary verbs, which Scarisbrick suggests should be separated from the root in writing by a plus sign: si-sal-kap+ett-i `if I shall have eaten'. Some of them have suppletive forms for the past tense, e.g. skol from sal `shall', koot from ken `can'.
Nouns are divided into three genders, each marked by its own suffix (which, however, is readily omitted): masculine (-ar), feminine (-em), and neuter (-ol). The plural is formed by adding -on after the gender suffix. As there is no formal distinction between nominal and verbal stems, the three nouns formed from each stem could be interpreted as `doer', `doeress', and `deed' or `result of the deed', respectively, although the triples are sometimes rather odd, e.g. mon- `man; woman; apex, summit', pap- `father; mother; food', wes- `settler; virgin; home'.
The adjective is marked by a suffix which expresses the degree of comparison: positive (-ein), comparative (-ain), and superlative (-oin). The adverb is formed from the adjective by infixing a -m- before the superlative suffix (-moin). Why adverbs shouldn't have degrees of comparison, Scarisbrick doesn't say.
There are also two articles, indefinite (ta) and definite (ten/tan).
Lastly, two short texts. (It appears that Scarisbrick has been having problems with his own grammar, as many of the rules are not adhered to in the translations. No conclusions will be drawn from this observation.)
Koor Pater, wes-amün per-an wolk-alon;
Ko-te NOM mak-Es-u TEK-SAK,
Ko-te REK-ol mak-Es-u nar,
Ko-te WOL mak-Es-u pak-narün,
oos per-an wolk-ol swos pok ters-ol;
Too nos nautin-pel pan-ol timos;
Ka slus-e noor keik-olon
oos prut-ï noor keik-aron;
Ka ne teuk nos pen peir-olon,
meen wart nos tau ponar (Tun);
Tan Rek-ol es-amün ko-te;
Tan Krat-ol es-amün ko-te;
Tan Klut-ol es-amün ko-te;
Por A! Por OO!
SEN!
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Our Father (feeder), dwelling beyond cloud-lands;
Thy Name, may it be Most (tenfold) Holy,
Thy Kingdom, may it be near,
Thy Will, may it be accomplished,
as beyond welkin, so on earth;
Give us needful bread daily (time and time again);
And expunge (wash off) Thou our debts
as discharge (set free) we our debtors;
And not lead us into temptations (trials),
but guard us from the evil (One);
The Kingdom being Thine;
The Might being Thine;
The Glory being Thine;
For Aye! For Onward! (Cf. "I am the Alpha and Omega".)
AMEN!
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TIW sël noor kar-ein Rek, Ten geus-oin do pen staur
Tiu spir noor leuk-ein Rek, Pon sa plak-es di+skar,
TIW sël tan Rek! Aye mak a rak!
Stek sa pas weik-imün, Potim ku sël noor lek,
Sil-pas ka klü-arün, Nepotim reup pët brek,
Tiu sür nos rek-asün, Ring-ï kun krat ka wek,
TIW sël tan Rek! TIW sël tan Rek!
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God shield our gracious King, Thy choicest gift in store
Long breathe our lustrous King, On him be pleased to pour (discharge),
God shield the King! Long may he reign.
Send him all-conquering, Ever to guard our law,
Gladsome and widely-famed, Never to reave or break,
Long o'er us yet to reign, Sing (resound) we with heart and voice,
God shield the King! God shield the King!
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