Talk:Langue nouvelle

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Influence on other projects[edit]

Nice article, I admit I had never heard of this project. One question though: the sentence "It is likely that it influenced Volapuk, Esperanto, and other language projects of the 19th century" strikes me as a somewhat bold claim. Are there any sources out there to substantiate it? —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 08:19, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's from the WP-eo article, where it's tagged for sourcing, but at Esperanto etymology we do have a comment from Otto Jespersen that the vowel ablaut of Esperanto was not original to Zamenhof, but dates back to Faiguet. — kwami (talk) 08:23, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting and certainly worth mentioning in the article, but IMO it's not a strong case for any influence. Vowel ablaut in Volapük and Esperanto may just as well be attributed to coindicence, especially since the idea is not exactly far-fetched. If we don't even know that Zamenhof and Schleyer were familiar with this project at all, I don't think it would be wise to suggest any direct influence. —IJzeren Jan Uszkiełtu? 09:15, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Jesperson was suggesting an influence, if not directly then perhaps through intermediate projects. Faiguet published his sketch in the most famous encyclopedia of the era, so it wasn't as obscure then as it is now. — kwami (talk) 10:32, 20 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]