Lingua Franca Nova

**Lingua Franca Nova** (also **Elefen**) 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.

## History

Boeree started to create Lingua Franca Nova in 1965,His goal was creating an international auxiliary language simple and easy to learn for international communication.  He was inspired by two languages:
- the Mediterranean Lingua Franca or "Sabir", a Romance pidgin used by European sailors and merchants as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Sea from the 11–18th century,
- different creoles such as Papiamento and Haitian Creole.
He took the language vocabulary from French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan.

Lingua Franca Nova first appeared on the internet in 1998. A Yahoo! Group 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. The wiki moved to Wikia in 2009, then was hosted directly on the official website in 2019.

In 2007, Igor Vasiljevic created a Facebook group, which now has over 600 members.

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_.

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.

On May 15, 2020 on the Web and on May 10, 2021 in printed form the first original novel written in Lingua Franca Nova was published: _La xerca per Pahoa_, by Vicente Costalago. He published the second original novel in the language, _La marcia nonconoseda_, in February 2022.

On January 5, 2021, the language's creator, C. George Boeree, died of pancreatic cancer aged 68.

## Grammar

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|
| --- | --- | --- |
|me|nos||
|tu|vos||
|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).  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).

### Original

The first original novel published in Lingua Franca Nova was _La xerca per Pahoa_ ["the search for Pahoa"], written by Vicente Costalago; Publishing started in 2020 (internet) and 2021 (book). The second original book published was _La marcia nonconoseda_, also by the same author. He wrote another book of the series, called _La Club de la Marcia en peril_. Another story, _Rancur_, was published by the same author in October 2023. Regarding original poetry, there are the poems _Pensas rimada_ and _Senas_, written by him; although the main poet in Lingua Franca Nova is Guido Crufio.

### Translated literature

The first translated text was _Hills Like White Elephants_, by Ernest Hemingway; translated by Daniel Alegrett in 1999. It is an example of ancient lingua franca nova.

We have to wait until 2008 to see other literary texts written in this language. This time, it is Bocragonia (the poem _Jabberwocky_ by Lewis Carroll) and _The Fall of the House of Usher_, translated by Simon Davies. This elephenist has translated other works such as _Alisia en la pais de mervelias_, translated in 2010 and published in 2012, making it the first paper publication in this language.

This text was originally translated by someone else, but after discovering that it was not a translation of the original, but from the English, Simon Davies decided to retranslate it from scratch.

Between 2013 and 2014, Simon Davies He also translated _Tra la miror, e lo cual trova a ultra_.

In 2014, C. G. Boeree translated William Shakespeare's _The Tragedy of King Lear_, the first play to be translated into the lingua franca nova.

In 2018, Simon Davies translated _Un studia en scarlata_ and on 29 April 2019 he finished the translation of the first book of the Aeneid.

On June 22, 2019, Vicente Costalago translated the Gospel of Saint Mark, based on the English and Spanish versions of the Vatican Bible. It is the third complete text of the Bible translated into this language, the Second Letter of St. John the Second, translated by the same author in 2008; and Ecclesiastes the First, translated by Dave MacLeod in 2006. Pieces of other parts of the Bible have been translated, such as parts of the Gospels of St. Luke and St. John.

On November 10, 2019, Vicente Costalago translated the first chapter of Don Quixote and on February 22, 2020, he finished the translation of the Gospel of Saint Matthew.

The main literary works translated into Lingua Franca Nova, are:
- _Colinas como elefantes blanca_ ("Hills Like White Elephants") by Ernest Hemingway
- _Demandas de un laboror lejente_ (_Questions from a Worker Who Reads_) by Bertolt Brecht
- _Frate peti_ (_Little Brother_) by Cory Doctorow
- _La alia de capeles roja_ ("The Red-Headed League") by Arthur Conan Doyle
- _La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias_ (_Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_) by Lewis Carroll
- _La cade de la Casa de Usor_ ("The Fall of the House of Usher") by Edgar Allan Poe
- _La jigante egoiste_ ("The Selfish Giant") by Oscar Wilde
- _La prinse peti_ (_The Little Prince_) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- _Leteras de la tera_ (_Letters from the Earth_) by Mark Twain
- _Re Lear_ (_King Lear_) by William Shakespeare
- _Tra la miror, e lo cual Alisia trova a ultra_ (_Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_) by Lewis Carroll
- _Un canta de natal_ (_A Christmas Carol_) by Charles Dickens
- _Wini-la-Pu_ (_Winnie-the-Pooh_) by Alan Alexander Milne

## Other websites

- Official website
- Dictionary
- Grammar
- Literature
- Vici de Elefen
- Lingua Franca Nova on Langoland
- Swadesh list for Lingua Franca Nova

## Infobox (language)

- **name**: Lingua Franca Nova
- **altname**: Elefen
- **image**: Flag of Lingua Franca Nova.svg
- **imagesize**: 140px
- **creator**: C. George Boeree
- **created**: 1965
- **setting**: International auxiliary language
- **script**: Latin script
- **iso3**: lfn