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| H trogen |
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C karbon |
N lasot |
O ksigen |
F ftovr |
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| Na slovl |
Al mlim |
P fosf |
S sorf |
Cl klors |
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| Cr krams |
Mn tnens |
Fe fer |
Co fnabs |
Ni nigl |
Cu kivr |
Zn tsink |
As snik |
Br prorm |
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| Ag silv |
Sn tin |
Sb tvins |
I tlovr |
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| Pt tnint |
Au lor |
Hg kviks |
Pb plomb |
Bi prisn |
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| 07.05.2024 23:58:53 | |||||||||||||||||
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Bolak is a constructed language that was invented by Léon Bollack. The name of the language means both "blue language" and "ingenious creation" in the language itself.
The end of the 19th century
saw the publication of a great number of international language
projects. This was time of great interest in the idea of a world
auxiliary and also a time of great rivalry between competing
proposals. These two facts are surely related. The centenary of
one of the most interesting of these, Léon Bollack's Bolak or
Blue Language, occurs in 1999. This was a mixture of a priori and
a posteriori elements. In the years following its publication it
acquired a following of a sort, and materials were produced for
it in at least French, German, English, Spanish, Italian and
Czech, and it must rank somewhere in the top 20 most significant
attempts at an international auxiliary language. Unfortunately
Bolak has not received the attention its success deserved in
terms of mentions in works dealing with the history of
constructed languages and those commentators who preferred the `naturalism'
of the Euroclones have largely ignored it.
The
centenary of Bolak deserves to be marked however not merely for
its significance. The merits of the language are, as always, a
matter of individual taste, but its author deserves credit for a
number of inventive or even insightful features. One of these is
his division of the language into small words (motules), which
carry the burden of the structural roles, and large words (granmots),
which provide the semantic content. This feature was,
incidentally, one inspiration for my own project, Dunia.
The
name of the language, Bolak, means both `blue language' and `ingenious
creation' in the language itself, and it is, of course, perhaps
immodestly, also named after its author. The choice of name,
however, belies the fact that Bollack, unlike most international
language inventors, was prepared to liquidate his project in
favour of another language. Bollack was prepared to accept the
decision of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International
Auxiliary Language in favour of Ido, having tried, and failed, to
win the support of that body for his own project. For that reason,
if for no other, Léon Bollack and his creation deserve to be
remembered and respected.
