I was writing today about Ro, a language constructed by the Rev. Edward Powell Foster in the early 20th century. You can read his 1913 manifesto, Ru Ro, online.
It starts:
Friends — I mean the entire world — I have a message for you. It is on a subject of interest to every one, whether President, King, Queen, Kaiser, Czar, Mikado, Shah, prince, peasant, subject,citizen, learned or unlearned, rich or poor, in Europe, Asia, Africa, America or the islands of the sea. Who am I, you may ask, who calls upon the whole world for attention.
And continues:
Friends have offered the suggestion that I let men who have plenty of money and plenty of time work out the language problem. I am surely not standing in their way, nor trying to hinder them. Why do they not carry out the work? There are multimil- lionaires in the United States who can hire clerks by the regiment. Why do they not set men to snatch the oratorical crown from the brow of Demosthenes? Why not employ painters who can make the master- pieces of Raphael look like daubs? Why not engage operators to outwizard Edison in handling electricity? Why ? Because they cannot. Neither can they pick up at random stenographers or typewriters who will dash off to order a new language, complete in all de- tails, and superior to English, or German, or French, or Spanish, or Russian, or Italian. But the world language is coming. That means that somebody must make it.
Never heard of Ro, but I love his attitude.