Lingua Franca Nova
, is an auxiliary language originally built by
C. George Boeree
of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania, and developed by many of its users. Its vocabulary is based on the
Romance languages
: French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan.
Boeree started to create Lingua Franca Nova in 1965,
[1]
[2]
His goal was creating an
international auxiliary language
simple and easy to learn for international communication.
[3]
He was inspired by two languages:
He took the language vocabulary from
French
,
Italian
,
Portuguese
,
Spanish
, and
Catalan
.
Lingua Franca Nova first appeared on the internet in 1998.
[1]
A
Yahoo! Group
[4]
was formed in 2002 by Bjorn Madsen, and reached about 300 members who contributed to the evolution of the language.
In 2005 Stefan Fisahn created a
wiki
for the language.
[5]
The wiki moved to
Wikia
in 2009,
[6]
then was hosted directly on the official website in 2019.
[7]
In 2007, Igor Vasiljevic created a
Facebook
group, which now has over 600 members.
[8]
In 2012 a novel fully translated into Lingua Franca Nova was first published in printed form:
La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias
. It is Simon Davies's translation of
Lewis Carroll
's
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
.
[9]
[10]
In 2014 a new official website was created on the "elefen.org" domain. It offers different materials in several languages to learn the language. It also has a wiki and the official dictionary. Some books in Lingua Franca Nova are also available on the official website for reading.
On April 18, 2018,
Wikipedia in Lingua Franca Nova
, called "Vicipedia", was officially launched.
[11]
On May 15, 2020
[12]
on the Web and on May 10, 2021 in printed form
[13]
[14]
the first original novel written in Lingua Franca Nova was published:
La xerca per Pahoa
,
[13]
by Vicente Costalago. He published the second original novel in the language,
La marcia nonconoseda
, in February 2022.
[15]
On January 5, 2021, the language's creator,
C. George Boeree
, died of pancreatic cancer aged 68.
[16]
LFN is a subject-verb-object language.
Modifiers
generally follow what they modify, as do
prepositional phrases
and
subordinate clauses
.
Other than the plural in
-s
or
-es,
nouns
don't change. A noun's role in a sentence is determined by word order and
prepositions
. There are 22 prepositions.
Nouns are usually preceded by
articles
(
la
or
un
) or other
determiners
such as
esta
(this, these),
acel
(that, those),
alga
(some),
cada
(every, each),
multe
(many, much), and
poca
(few, little). Possessive determiners,
cardinal numerals
, and the adjectives
bon
and
mal
(good and bad) also precede the noun;
ordinal numerals
follow the noun. A variety of pronouns are identical to or derived from determiners.
The personal
pronouns
don't change:
person
|
singular
|
plural
|
1
|
me
|
nos
|
2
|
tu
|
vos
|
3
|
el / lo / on
|
los
|
El
is used for people and higher animals;
Lo
is used for all else.
On
is used in the same way as in French or "one" in English (in the way that one would be using it if one said this sentence).
Verbs
don't change. The verb alone represents the present tense and the infinitive. Other
tenses
and
moods
are indicated by preceding particles:
tense/mood
|
particle
|
example
|
translation
|
present
|
-
|
me vade
|
I go
|
past
|
ia
|
me ia vade
|
I went
|
future
|
va
|
me va vade
|
I will go
|
conditional
|
ta
|
me ta vade
|
I would go
|
Adverbs
such as
ja
(already) and auxiliary verbs such as
comensa
(begin to) are used to add precision. The active
participle
ends in
-nte
and the passive participle in
-da.
They can be used with
es
(to be) to form a progressive aspect and a passive voice, respectively.
Adjectives
are don't change, and adverbs are not distinguished from adjectives. Adjectives follow nouns and adverbs follow verbs but precede adjectives. The
comparative
is formed with
plu
or
min,
the
superlative
with
la plu
or
la min.
Questions
are formed by adding
esce
at the beginning of the sentence with or by using one of several "question words", such as
cual
(what, which),
ci
(who),
do
(where),
cuando
(when), and
perce
(why).
[17]
These same words are also used to introduce
subordinate clauses
, as are words such as
si
(if),
ce
(that),
car
(because), and
afin
(so that).
Prepositions
include
a
(at, to),
de
(of, from),
ante
(before, in front of),
pos
(after, behind), etc.
Conjunctions
include
e
(and),
o
(or), and
ma
(but).
The main literary works translated into Lingua Franca Nova, are:
[18]
The first original novel published in Lingua Franca Nova was
La xerca per Pahoa
["the search for Pahoa"], written by
Vicente Costalago
;
[19]
Publishing
started in 2020 (internet) and 2021 (
book
). The second original book published was
La marcia nonconoseda
, also by the same author.
[20]
- ↑
1.0
1.1
1.2
Boeree, C. George.
"La evolui de elefen"
.
Vici de Elefen
(in Lingua Franca Nova)
. Retrieved
2020-11-09
.
- ↑
Boeree, C. George.
"Istoria de elefen"
.
Vici de Elefen
(in Lingua Franca Nova)
. Retrieved
2020-11-10
.
- ↑
Bartlett, Paul O. (2005-11-30).
"Conlangs and International Auxiliary Languages"
. Retrieved
2020-11-13
.
- ↑
"Lingua Franca Nova (LFN)"
.
Yahoo! Groups
. Archived from
the original
on 2007-01-14.
- ↑
"LinguaFrancaNova"
(in Lingua Franca Nova). Archived from
the original
on 2005-01-21.
- ↑
"Paje xef"
.
Wikia
(in Lingua Franca Nova). Archived from
the original
on 2009-02-19.
- ↑
"xef"
.
Vici de Elefen
(in Lingua Franca Nova).
- ↑
"Lingua Franca Nova"
.
Facebook
. Retrieved
2021-08-03
.
- ↑
Eley, Rachel (2012-05-06).
"Alice in Hawaiian and six more languages besides"
.
Lewis Carroll Society of North America (LCSNA)
.
Archived
from the original on 2012-06-09
. Retrieved
2020-10-12
.
- ↑
Mithridates (2012-03-21).
"A book has been translated into Lingua Franca Nova; can be purchased at amazon.com"
.
Page F30
. Retrieved
2020-11-13
.
- ↑
Task on Phabricator
- ↑
"Revisas vea"
.
Vici de Elefen
(in Lingua Franca Nova).
Archived
from the original on 2020-07-18
. Retrieved
2021-09-20
.
- ↑
13.0
13.1
Vicente (2021-05-10).
"Publica"
.
Prexins
(in Catalan).
Archived
from the original on 2021-05-11
. Retrieved
2021-09-20
.
- ↑
Litteratura in Occidental
, in Cosmoglotta 329 (Januar-junio 2022), pag. 2-15
- ↑
"La marcia nonconoseda"
.
Vici de Elefen
(in Lingua Franca Nova)
. Retrieved
2022-02-21
.
- ↑
"Cornelis George Boeree (1952-2021)"
(in Lingua Franca Nova). 2021-01-08
. Retrieved
2021-01-09
.
- ↑
Moskovsky, Christo; Libert, Alan (2006).
"Questions in Natural and Artificial Languages"
(PDF)
.
Journal of Universal Language
. No. 7. pp. 65?120. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 2014-02-01.
- ↑
"Leteratur"
(in Lingua Franca Nova).
- ↑
"Book"
. Archived from
the original
on 2021-08-11
. Retrieved
2021-08-16
.
- ↑
"La marcia noncoseda"
. Archived from
the original
on 2022-03-07
. Retrieved
2022-03-29
.
The English
Wikibooks
has more information on: