Bolak is a constructed language that was invented by Léon Bollack

Léon Bollack

Léon Bollack was a rich French trader who created The Blue Language or Bolak in 1899. After a few years, he joined the Ido movement; it is possible that the blue color of the Ido flag was his proposal. He uttered the phrase: "It seems to me that both the Esperanto and Volapük poets are worth only...

. The name of the language means both `blue language' and `ingenious creation' in the language itself.

History

Bollack wrote three books on this language. In 1899, the first work on this language, "La Langue Bleue Bolak: langue internationale pratique", was published. In 1900, he wrote "Abridged Grammar of the Blue Language". In 1902, "Premier vocabulaire de la langue bleue Bolak" was written by Bollack

Bollack caught the attention of H.G. Wells, who wrote in A Modern Utopia

A Modern Utopia

A Modern Utopia is a work of fiction by H. G. Wells.* H. G. Wells's proposal for social reform was the formation of a world state, a concept that increasingly occupied him throughout the remainder of his life...

:

The language of Utopia will no doubt be one and indivisible; all mankind will, in the measure of their individual differences in quality, be brought into the same phase, into a common resonance of thought, but the language they will speak will still be a living tongue, an animated system of imperfections, which every individual man will infinitesimally modify. Through the universal freedom of exchange and movement, the developing change in its general spirit will be a world-wide change; that is the quality of its universality. I fancy it will be a coalesced language, a synthesis of many. Such a language as English is a coalesced language; it is a coalescence of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French and Scholar's Latin, welded into one speech more ample and more powerful and beautiful than either. The Utopian tongue might well present a more spacious coalescence, and hold in the frame of such an uninflected or slightly inflected idiom as English already presents, a profuse vocabulary into which have been cast a dozen once separate tongues, superposed and then welded together through bilingual and trilingual compromises. [Footnote: Vide an excellent article, La Langue Française en l'an 2003, par Leon Bollack, in La Revue, 15 Juillet, 1903.] In the past ingenious men have speculated on the inquiry, “Which language will survive?” The question was badly put. I think now that this wedding and survival of several in a common offspring is a far more probable thing.

Despite the attention of Wells and money invested by Bollack, the language gained no adherents, and Bollack went on to support Ido

Ido

Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...

, according to Otto Jespersen

Otto Jespersen

Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin...

, writing in 1912 in The History of our Language:

The inventors of language systems had been invited to attend either in person or by representative to defend their systems. This offer was availed of by Dr. Nicolas (Spokil

Spokil

Spokil is a constructed language, created by the Frenchman Adolphe Nicolas.During the 1880s, the most popular international auxiliary language was undeniably Volapük. However, after a brief period of overwhelming success, rivalry on the part of the more practical and less complicated Esperanto led...

), Mr. Spitzer (Parla) and Mr. Bollack (La langue bleue); moreover Dr. Zamenhof

L. L. Zamenhof

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof December 15, 1859 – April 14, 1917) was the inventor of Esperanto, the most successful constructed language designed for international communication.-Cultural background:...

 got himself represented by Mr. de Beaufront

Louis de Beaufront

Marquis Louis de Beaufront was a major influence in the development of Ido, an international auxiliary language. Beaufront was initially an advocate of Esperanto and was largely responsible for its early diffusion in western Europe as well as one of its first French proponents.Much of Beaufront's...

, who had been propagating Esperanto for many years; and almost as representative of Neutral came Mr. Monseur, professor of comparative philology in Brussels: yet his plea had the character less of a positive defence of Neutral than of a zealous and expert insistence on the weaknesses of Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

. Of the discussions with those outside the committee two episodes deserve special mention: Dr. Nicolas emphasised as an advantage of his system founded on "a priori" principles, that it was constructed in accordance with a firm grasp of the laws of mnemonics and therefore was especially easy to remember. Yet he was almost offended when I wished to begin examining him about his own dictionary, and so it appeared that he could not remember the words which he himself had made. Mr. Bollack in a very elegant discourse presented his Langue bleue for the diffusion of which he had devoted a great deal of money; he ended by declaring that although he wished naturally that his language should be adopted, he would nevertheless accept the verdict of the committee of experts if it went otherwise; this promise he has kept loyally by being now an eminent member of the Ido

Ido

Ido is a constructed language created with the goal of becoming a universal second language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds as a language easier to learn than ethnic languages...

 organization in Paris.

Alphabet and pronunciation

Bolak uses a modified Latin alphabet

Latin alphabet

The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

 with 19 letters:

A, B, Ч, D, E, F, G, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V.

Ч is taken from the Cyrillic alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet

The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...

 and has the sound of English ch. Other letters are pronounced as in French.

Grammar

Bolak is a mixed language, whose grammar is mostly a priori

A priori (languages)

An a priori language is any constructed language whose vocabulary is not based on existing languages, unlike a posteriori constructed languages. Examples of a priori languages include Ro, Solresol, Mirad, Klingon, and Na'vi...

 while the word stock is a posteriori

A posteriori (languages)

An "a posteriori language" , according to Louis Couturat, is any constructed language whose elements are borrowed or based on existing languages, as opposed to the a priori languages....

. It is also an agglutinate language, much like Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

 but while Esperanto uses agglutination mainly logically, Bolak uses it mainly emotionally.

Examples

The Lord's Prayer

Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

:

Nea per ev seri in sil!

Vea nom ey santigui! Vea regu ey komi!

Vea vil ey makui in sil, so il greo!

The numbers 1-10:

ven, dov, ter, far, kel, gab, yep, lok, nif, dis.

Ak vop sfermed pro spes maned, if om pobl to pobl, ne ei mnoka pfo an am lane.

What an immense advantage for mankind, if from people to people we could communicate through the same language.

External links

• Bolak Manual on Langmaker.com
• Bolak Grammar on Archive.org