Overview: Elefen Tutorial || Constructed Languages

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Vecderg

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Published on November 14, 2024 9:21:15 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee1biWWYMbs

Duration: 0:00

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Ranked #2 as the "least bad auxlang" by jan Misali, here's Elefen, also known as Lingua Franca Nova! I'm a big fan of its simplicity and aesthetics, and it has the best website I've seen across all auxlangs. While it was an early favorite of mine as a contender for the next worldwide language, I have begun to favor some other conlangs, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate all the wonderful work put into it. I also forgot to put in the disclaimer this time, but I'm not an expert at this language and did not consult anyone for this video, so it may be slightly off. If you want to learn it more seriously, check out some resources below!

This is the last video planned in my series on conlang overviews, languages that were constructed/designed by people rather than arising naturally. I'm focused on teaching auxlangs (aka IALs, international auxiliary languages), which are conlangs that are designed for people to learn as a second language for international communication. While English is the current de facto auxiliary language, that hasn't stopped people from attempting to make ones that are more culturally neutral/easier to learn!

I do want to make more conlang videos, but they will probably be either about my own conlangs, or less about teaching auxlangs.

Official website: https://elefen.org/
Introduction to Elefen: https://elefen.org/introdui/engles.html
Searchable dictionary: https://elefen.org/disionario/
Grammar Documentation: https://elefen.org/gramatica/en/index.html
Story source: https://elefen.org/leteratur/ozimandias.html

0:00 Introduction
0:59 Alphabet / Pronunciation
2:14 Grammar: Nouns / Adjectives
2:46 Verbs
3:02 Questions
3:17 Prefixes / Suffixes
3:33 Conclusion
3:48 Sample Story

Video editing program: Shotcut
Art software: Clip Studio Paint

On 0:51 --
I felt there may be some comments on the fact that Elefen has such a small pool of source languages for something that's designed to be a worldwide language, and I also agree that I would prefer a more universal language for an IAL. However, I did want to highlight the fact that the creator directly addressed this in the official website's FAQ: https://elefen.org/faq.html

"...by adding words and other things from many other unrelated languages, I add little to Elefen’s learnability for the people of China, etc., while reducing greatly the learnability for those familiar with the Romance languages.

I should make a little political point: It is the European Union that is most likely to seek and adopt a constructed language, and it is the European Union that has the economic and cultural power to make it attractive enough for others all over the world to learn!"

Whether or not you agree with this line of reasoning is perfectly fine, but I thought it was worth pointing out that there was thought and reasoning behind these choices rather than just defaulting to European languages. It seems rather clear to me that the language is very decipherable to many Romance speakers even without studying, so I could see the language being used very well as a zonelang, even if not as a worldwide language.

Still, despite this having the shortest runtime of the auxlangs I've reviewed so far, I wouldn't consider it to be the simplest one -- it's the easiest to comprehend for English speakers, definitely, but not necessarily for speakers of other languages (of which I hear things like prepositions and articles can be a bit more difficult to figure out, which didn't have to be covered in the video since again, they work like English). Just some things to consider!