Universal Language

Universal Language, a language long dreamt of but as yet uninvented, which should serve as a medium of communication throughout the world for commercial purposes, or for educated men, and which should ultimately supersede the existing languages. Such schemes have been suggested or partly worked out by many ingenious theorists, as by Urquhart (q.v.), Dalgarno (q.v.), Bishop Wilkins (q.v.), Leibnitz (in De Arte Combinatoria, sect. 1666), Condorcet (1794), Burja (1818), Stethy (in Lingua Universalis, Vienne, 1825), and Steiner (in Pasilingua, 1886); and for a time was believed by many to have been realised in Volapük (q.v.). Pigeon-English (see Vol. III. p. 195), and the Lingua Franca of the Mediterranean, are partial but spontaneous and actual efforts in the same direction.