Lingua Franca Nova

## Overview

**Lingua Franca Nova** (abbreviated as **LFN** or **Elefen**) is an auxiliary constructed language originally created by C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. Its vocabulary is based on the Romance languages French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. The grammar is highly reduced and similar to the Romance creoles, and is easily comprehensible and learned. The language has phonemic spelling, using 22 letters of either the Latin or Cyrillic scripts.

## History and Community

Boeree was inspired by the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a pidgin used in the Mediterranean in centuries past, and by creoles such as Papiamento, Haitian Creole, and Bislama. He used French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan as the basis for his new language.

LFN was first presented on the Internet in 1998. A Yahoo! Group was formed in 2002 by Bjorn Madsen. Group members contributed significantly to the further evolution of the language. In 2007, Igor Vasiljevic began a Facebook page, which has over 300 members. LFN was given an ISO 639-3 designation (lfn) by SIL in 2008.

Stefan Fisahn[11] created a wiki for the language in 2005. The site moved to Wikia in 2009 and as of 2015 has over 3000 articles. The searchable "master" dictionary (LFN–English / English–LFN) was updated by Simon Davies in 2008, and now has over 20,000 entries. There is also a LFN–French dictionary and seven small dictionaries available in other languages as well as a Wikibooks tutorial[16] in eight languages. Introductions and "LFN for Travellers" are available in 12 languages. Complete grammars are available in English, Spanish, French, Finnish, LFN, and Esperanto.

Translated texts include Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's *The Little Prince,* Charles Dickens' *Christmas Carol,* Mark Twain's *Letters from the Earth,* and Shakespeare's *King Lear.* There are also many poems, both translated and original.

Simon Davies's translation of Lewis Carroll's *Alice in Wonderland* is the first publication of a work entirely in LFN.

As of January 1, 2014, LFN has a news blog, maintained by Simon Davies, called *Aora Oji* ("Now Today"), as well as a homepage using the name "Elefen".[26] An English-Elefen-English dictionary was published in 2018. The LFN Wikipedia was created (released) to the public on April 18, 2018.

## Lingua Franca Nova excerpt from Wikipedia article "C. George Boeree"

La nom Boeree veni de la franses *bourrée*. La asendente de la ramo de la familia en Nederland, Peter Borry, ia nase en 1560 en Poperinghe (aora Beljia). Un eglesor protestante, el ia vade a Haarlem en 1583 pos la reversa de la proclama de Nantes. La nom ia es cambiada a Boeree pos tre jeneras.

Boeree ia nase en 15 janero 1952 en Badhoevedorp, prosima a Amsterdam, (Nederland). El es la fio de Cornelis George Boeree e Eberdina van Olffen. En 1956, la familia ia vade a Isola Longa, prosima a la Site New York. El ia sposi Judith Kovarik en 1972 en Bay Shore (New York) e los ave tre fias.

El ia reseta sua diploma laural de la Universia de Stato Pennsylvania, e sua diplomas mestral e dotoral de la Universia de Stato Oklahoma, tota en psicolojia. Sua spesiali es en la lado filosofial de psicolojia. El ia comensa sua carera como un profesor a la Universia de Shippensburg en 1980. En sua carera, el ia scrive multe sur psicolojia e budisme a la interede, e el ia developa la libros prima enlinia per aprende la psicolojia sin custa. Alga de esta testos ia es traduida a espaniol, deutx e otra linguas.

El ia jubila a 15 janero 2010 e vive con sua sposa en Shippensburg.