Arjâm Vâks

Background

Arjâm Vâks ("speech of the Aryâsas") is an imagined name given to a language constructed by the notable Indo-Europeanist August Schleicher (1821-1868), which is most notable as the original language of the fable Avis Akvâsas ka ("The Sheep and the Horses").

Some justification must be made at the outset for including this language in an encyclopedia of constructed languages. It must be admitted that Schleicher had no intention of creating an artificial language; to the contrary, he believed that he was scientifically reconstructing the original Indo-European languages, ancestral to the languages on which his reconstruction was based. These were Sanskrit, Avestan ("Old Bactrian," in Schleicher's terminology), Greek, Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, Old Irish, Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian in Schleicher's terminology), Lithuanian, and Gothic. It will be observed that of the ten Indo-European branches for which records survive, only six are represented (Indo-Iranian, Hellenic, Italic, Celtic, Balto-Slavic, and Germanic). Hittite and Tocharian were entirely unknown to Schleicher. I am not sure why Armenian and Albanian were not considered; perhaps at the time their positions within the Indo-European family, and their distinctive characteristics, were too poorly known.

At any rate, it was not a deficiency of data that would render Schleicher's reconstruction utterly obsolete within a few decades of his death (the fatal blow would be dealt by the publication of Karl Brugmann's Grundriß, starting in 1886). It was, if anything, a deficiency of method. For Schleicher, though a keen observer and a systematizer of data, was much less scientific than he believed himself to be. His vision of an early Indo-European language, which took very definite form in his mind, reflected a belief that such a language must be phonologically far more simple than its descendant languages, and while morphologically complex, also much more regular than its descendant languages.

There were valid grounds for both beliefs, since languages do gain phonological complexity and morphological irregularity over time. What Schleicher did not consider, however, was that the reverse may be true as well. At any rate, current analyses of Proto-Indo-European show a language that is far more phonologically complex than Schleicher ever guessed, and one in which a great deal of morphological irregularity is present ab initio.

Schleicher's pursuit of an Indo-European ancestral language which fit his preconceptions required him to make many choices: which sounds to consider as subject to specific sound-laws, which to allow to be subject to random variation; which morphological variations to consider as original, and which to be regarded as falling away from an original symmetry of structure. In making these choices he was in part guided by adherence to the notion that Sanskrit and Avestan represented the most primitive recorded Indo-European languages; but he was even more guided by a very personal sense of linguistic æsthetics and elegance.

It is the manifestation of this sense which ultimately makes Schleicher's language more than just an erroneous byway on the path to a more strictly scientific reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European. It is, rather, an artistic endeavor, which is all the more remarkable for never being intended as such, and never perceived as such by its author.

Note on the name of the language

The name Arjâm Vâks appears nowhere in Schleicher's writings, though it is consistent in structure with his ideas about the language. The use of the word Arya (Arja in Schleicher's spelling) as a name for a unified Indo-European people was popularized by Friedrich Max Müller. Schleicher himself may not have agreed with Müller's conclusions; nonetheless, no plausible alternative presents itself, and the name is very characteristic of the time period in which Schleicher created his language. The dismal racial baggage with which the name would ultimately be saddled did not arise until decades after Schleicher's death.

Phonology

Schleicher envisaged a very simple phonology for his language, with a small number of consonants and vowels. In his analysis of vowels he was largely guided by the structure of Proto-Indo-Iranian; for consonants he postulated an even simpler system, perhaps suggested by Greek.

Vowels

Schleicher's vowels show contrasts in height (±high) and backness (±back). There are also two series of short and long diphthongs based on the short vowels; a lengthened a (â) is treated as a diphthong.