Let it be distinctly understood that Volapük is intended to be viewed as an international, and not as a universal language, save in the sense of its being used in all places where people speak a different language.

Each man's mother-tongue will always be the one best to use when speaking or writing to his fellow-countrymen on all subjects appertaining to the ordinary social relations of life, whatever the language in which, by birth, he may happen to speak. The acquired, or foreign, can never stand in the place of the naturally instilled mother-tongue of baby-life. There are nationalisms and peculiarities and verbal idiosyncrasies about one's own tongue which will always place a foreigner at a disadvantage, how long soever he may have studied, written and spoken it; and this is the case with every native language and with the people of every nation. Diversity of language is felt to be a great barrier to international intercourse. Volapük, however, is not intended to destroy that diversity, but to supplement it by the introduction of a neutral or unnatural language which the people of all nations may learn without wounded pride or national jealousy. Its intention was never meant to supersede any present dominant living language, but to be acquired in addition the mother-tongue of every people (adapted from the preface).

The grammar contains chapters on orthography and pronunciation, nominal morphology (gender, declension, numeral verbs, pronouns, etc) and verbal morphology (active, passive, gerund, conditional, subjunctive, etc.), syntax, and exercises (re-edition; originally published 1888, London).