"We must beg to differ with a few sanguine
correspondents in regard to their opinion
of Spelin as an improvement. We do not
consider it as such.
We think there is room for improvement,
but we cannot concede that Spelin embodies
the needed changes.
Its boasted simplicity cannot be sustained
by facts. It is cacophonous, not being
comparable in many details with its
predecessor, and we do not believe that it
will meet any success.
It is too late, even if it were an improvement,
to adopt it. A language that has 1,500,000
adherents, and has 32 regularly issued
periodicals devoted to its interests, with
a literature comprising over 1000 different
publications, books, pamphlets, etc., with
hundreds of societies devoted to its
propagation, and hardly a country on the face
of the earth in which it does not count its
followers by thousands, cannot be ousted by
any offshoot or imitation."
-- C. Beale, editor, Volapük magazine, 1889
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