Lingua Franca Nova

Lingua Franca Nova, abbreviated as LFN and known colloquially as Elefen, is a constructed international auxiliary language that was created by C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania, and further developed by many of its users. Its vocabulary is based primarily on the Romance languages, namely French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Lingua Franca Nova has phonemic spelling based on 22 letters from the Latin script.
The grammar of Lingua Franca Nova is inspired by the Romance creole languages. As most creole languages, Lingua Franca Nova has an extremely simplified grammatical system that is easy to learn.

WWW elefen.org Fandom ial:Lingua_Franca_Nova R/ linguafrancanova

History

Boeree started to design Lingua Franca Nova in 1965, with the goal of creating an international auxiliary language simple, coherent and easy to learn for international communication. He was inspired by the Mediterranean Lingua Franca or "Sabir", a Romance pidgin used by European sailors and merchants as a lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11–18th century, and by various creoles such as Papiamento and Haitian Creole. He used French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan as lexifiers.
Lingua Franca Nova was first presented on the internet in 1998. A Yahoo! Group was formed in 2002 by Bjorn Madsen, and reached about 300 members who contributed significantly to the further 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.
LFN was given an ISO 639-3 designation by SIL in January 2008.
In 2008 Simon Davies started to make important updates to the LFN–English searchable "master" dictionary. The dictionary is being kept up-to-date in the official website, with over 20,000 entries, and was even published in printed form in 2018.
In 2012 a novel entirely translated into Lingua Franca Nova was first published in printed form: La aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias, which is Simon Davies's translation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In 2014 a new official website was launched on the "elefen.org" domain: it offers various teaching supports available in several languages, and hosts a wiki and the searchable official dictionary. Some literary works entirely translated in Lingua Franca Nova are also publicly available on the official website for reading. The website now contains an example conversational dialog: La conversa prima for beginning learners.
On April 18, 2018, Wikipedia in Lingua Franca Nova, called "Vicipedia", was officially launched as a regular Wikipedia project.
On May 15, 2020 on the Web and on May 10, 2021 in printed form the first original literary novel written in Lingua Franca Nova was published: La xerca per Pahoa, by Vicente Costalago.
On January 5, 2021, the language's creator, C. George Boeree, died of pancreatic cancer aged 68.

Pronunciation and spelling

Phonology

Vowels

Lingua Franca Nova has five vowels like Spanish, Modern Greek, and Modern Hebrew.

Orthography

LFN is normally written using the Latin alphabet. Its orthography is highly phonemic.

Latin script

IPA

Cyrillic script

Names

hax

LFN vowels are pronounced as they are in Spanish or Italian. The vowel sounds allow a degree of variation, especially a, e, and o.
Diphthongs are ai, au, eu, and oi .
The letters i and u are used as semivowels at the start of a word before a vowel, between vowels, in li and ni between vowels, and in cu and gu before a vowel. The letter n is pronounced as in think before g and c, and in -ng at the end of a syllable. The letters a, e, and o may vary in pronunciation with possible allophones being, or, and or respectively.
Although stress is not phonemic in LFN, most words are stressed on the vowel or diphthong before the last consonant. Words with no vowel before the last consonant are accented on the first vowel. Words ending in a diphthong are accented on the diphthong. Those ending in the double vowels ae, ao, ea, eo, oa, oe, or ui are accented on the first of these vowels. The addition of -s or -es for plural nouns does not alter the stress.
The phoneme /h/ is highly marginal and may be silent.
The letters k, q, w, and y are available for words and names from other languages. Variations in pronunciation are acceptable.

Grammar

LFN is an SVO language. Modifiers generally follow what they modify, as do prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses.
Other than the plural in -s or -es, nouns are invariant. A noun's role in a sentence is determined by word order and prepositions. There are 22 prepositions, such as a, de, en, and con.
Nouns are usually preceded by articles or other determiners such as esta, acel, alga, cada, multe, and poca. Possessive determiners, cardinal numerals, and the adjectives bon and mal also precede the noun; ordinal numerals follow the noun. A variety of pronouns are identical to or derived from determiners.
The personal pronouns do not decline for case:
The third person singular animate pronoun el is used to refer to people of both sexes and animals; the gendered forms elo and ela are rarely used. The singular inanimate pronoun lo is used for things and abstract concepts. In the plural, both animate and inanimate referents use the pronoun los. The indefinite pronoun on is used when the referent is an unspecified person, or concerns people in general, similar to the generic you in English.
For the first and second person pronouns, the reflexives are the same as the regular pronouns, and the possessive determiners are mea, nosa, tua, and vosa. Possessive pronouns are formed by using the article la before possessive determiners, e.g. la mea.
Se is the third-person reflexive, singular and plural. The third person possessive determiner, both singular and plural, is sua, and the possessive pronoun is la sua.
Verbs are invariant. 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 and auxiliary verbs such as comensa are used to add precision. The active participle ends in -nte and the passive participle in -da. They can be used with es to form a progressive aspect and a passive voice, respectively.
Adjectives are invariant, 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 preceding the sentence with esce or by using one of several "question words", such as cual, ci, do, cuando, and perce. These same words are also used to introduce subordinate clauses, as are words such as si, ce, car, and afin.
Prepositions include a, de, ante, pos, etc.
Conjunctions include e, o, and ma.

Affixes

LFN has a small number of regular affixes that help to create new words.
Three suffixes that create nouns are -or, -ador, and -eria, which refer to a person, a device, and a place respectively. They can be added to any noun, adjective, or verb. For example:carne + -or > carnor lava + -ador > lavador flor + -eria > floreria
Another suffix is -i which, added to an adjective and some nouns, means "to become" or "to cause to become". It is also used with names for tools, machines, or supplies with the meaning "to use". For example:calda + -i > caldi telefon + -i > telefoni
Two more suffixes are -eta, which forms a diminutive version of something, and -on, which forms an augmentative version. For example:bove + -eta > boveta tela + -on > telon
There are also three suffixes that turn nouns into adjectives: -al means "pertaining to...," -in means "similar to...," -osa means "full of..." For example:nasion + -al > nasional serpente + -in > serpentin mofo + -osa > mofosa
Other suffixes include -able, -isme, and -iste.
There are also several prefixes. Non- means not, re- means again or in the opposite direction, and des- means to undo. For example:non- + felis > nonfelis re- + pone > repone des- + infeta > desinfeta
Other prefixes include pos-, pre-, supra-, su-, media-, vis-, inter-, and auto-
Compounds of verbs plus objects create nouns:porta + candela > portacandela pasa + tempo > pasatempo para + pluve > parapluve
Two nouns are rarely joined, but are linked with de or other prepositions instead:avia de mar – seabirdcasa per avias – birdhousexef de polisia – police chief

Literature

A rich literature in Lingua Franca Nova with both original and translated texts exists.
The first original literary novel written in Lingua Franca Nova was La xerca per Pahoa, by Vicente Costalago, published on May 15, 2020 on the Web and on May 10, 2021 in printed form.
Here are the main literary works translated into Lingua Franca Nova, all publicly available for reading on the official website:Colinas como elefantes blanca by Ernest HemingwayDemandas de un laboror lejente by Bertolt BrechtFrate peti by Cory DoctorowLa alia de capeles roja by Arthur Conan DoyleLa aventuras de Alisia en la pais de mervelias by Lewis CarrollLa cade de la Casa de Usor by Edgar Allan PoeLa jigante egoiste by Oscar WildeLa prinse peti by Antoine de Saint-ExupéryLeteras de la tera by Mark TwainRe Lear by William ShakespeareTra la miror, e lo cual Alisia trova a ultra by Lewis CarrollUn canta de natal by Charles DickensWini-la-Pu by Alan Alexander Milne

Flag

The flag of Lingua Franca Nova, designed in 2004 by Stefan Fisahn and Beate Hornung, is the main symbol of Lingua Franca Nova and Elefenists.
The flag is made up of five color strips starting from the bottom-left angle and extending to top and right borders.
It is similar to the flag of Seychelles, a country that has adopted Seychellois Creole as its official language, but uses the colors of a rainbow symbolizing peace. Its shape is meant to call the sunrise to mind.
In the past other flags existed: the first one, originally designed by Boeree and jokingly called "europijon" from the word pun between "pijon" and "europijin", was inspired by Pablo Picasso's drawing.