In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [48]
One particularly productive multiple offender was Elias Molee, the author of American Language (1888), Pure Saxon English (1890), Tutonish (1902), Niu Teutonish (1906), Altuto-nish (1911), Alteutonik (1915), Dynamic Language (1921), and Toito Spike (1923). Molee was born in Muskego, Wisconsin, to recently arrived Norwegian immigrant parents. In his autobiography, molee's wandering (written without capital letters, which he considered “cruel, non-ethical, non-artistic, and non-scientific”), he describes an idyllic childhood spent listening to tales of Norse mythology in his family's log cabin, eating “good pancakes with milk in e dough n much egg n butter in it,” and roaming the fields picking fresh berries, plums, and nuts with the local children. Most of the neighboring families were Norwegian, but there were also quite a few Germans, as well as one or two English-speaking American households. As the children played, they developed their own little dialect, which they used to communicate with one another: “1 day we caught hold of 1 or 2 english words from henry n mary adams, at another time, 1 or 2 words from otto n emma shumaker in low german, sometimes they learned 1, 2, or 3 words from e tveite or e molee children in norwegian, as e norwegian n german children were e most numerous, e new union language leaned largely toward e teutonic side with very few latin words.” They called their language “tutitu” and even used it to act as interpreters between their parents.
Molee later attended Luther College in Iowa and studied languages at Albion Academy and the University of Wisconsin. He did not like having to study Latin and Greek, and resented the way their influence made English more difficult than it needed to be. He once read a sermon and didn't understand the word “cacophonous.” He “felt chagrined and humbled to think that after graduating at an American Academy and after having studied so as to speak and enjoy several languages, after having learned considerable Latin and a little Greek, yet I could not understand so popular a production as a sermon.” As far as he was concerned, English had ceased to be a great language with the Norman Conquest. Why couldn't it be more like the “teutonic” languages, he thought, such as German, which instead of the Greek-based “cacophonous” has its own word, übellautend (ill sounding), formed out of its own Germanic roots?
Molee began to work on a language with a consistent spelling system and a regular grammar that was based on common Germanic roots. He started with American Language or Germanic English (1888):
“Then drew near all the publicans and sinners for to hear him.” (Luke 15:1)
This then became Pure Saxon English (1890):
“Your highly welcome letter was brought to me yesterday.”
This was followed a little more than a decade later by Tutonish(1902):
dau shal not kil,
dau shal not stiel
dau shal not baer falsh vitnesu gegn dauo nabor.
This turned into Niu Teutonish (1906):
m seen eena d likt af ds velt een kold vintri morgn an d 3a dag of eenam.
“I saw first the light of this world one cold wintry morning onas the 3rd day of January.”
While Molee did seek “to re-unite all teutonic people into one language within fifty years,” he emphasized that his goal was not to dominate over others but to stick up for a language heritage that was under threat. He didn't think it was fair that Esperanto and other heavily Latin-based languages were the most popular proposals for an international language. These “commerce languages,” as he called them, were geared toward people who did a lot of international business and could probably afford translators anyway. He wanted to help out the poor and uneducated American workingman who was