[Anglo-Franca] some un dis recent, that this subreddit mour before it commence. Vrai dised, this commentaire choqued me an little. What attend un of an noveau Subreddit? In addition to this, let we oubli not, that âll projets affront the same probleme: un tend to parl sole upon the langue, even if they parl in le langue. We have besoin of thèmes! Of what would you aim to parl?

Me had the idee to copi the recent thèmes from r/ido, r/elefn etc., but recent thèmes sembl apparent not to exist in these subredits. We’s r/BabloLinguo be more actif than the other choixes. Let the personnes here soulev interessant thèmes. Let other personnes fais remarques upon these thèmes

===
[Esperanto] Iu diris lastatempe, ke tiu subredito mortas antaŭ ol ĝi komenciĝos.Verdire, tiu komento iom ŝokis min. Kion oni atendas de nova subredito? Krome, oni ne forgesu, ke ĉiuj projektoj frontas la saman problemon: oni emas paroli nur pri la lingvo, eĉ se oni parolas en la lingvo. Ni bezonas temojn! Pri kio vi volus paroli?

Mi havis la ideon kopii la lastatempajn temojn el r/ido, r/elefen, ktp, sed lastatampaj temoj verŝajne ne troviĝas en tiuj subreditoj. Nia r/BabloLinguo estas pli aktiva ol la alternativoj. Ni bezonas, ke la homoj ĉi tie levu interesajn temojn. Ni bezonas komentojn pri tiuj temoj.

Qui parl Idiom Neutral, Reform-Neutral, Novial, Occidental, o Neo?

Saluto, Idist-amiki,
Ni bezonas vin en r/BabloLinguo . Videz, mem la nomo dil grupo esas en Ido! Bablo esas loko, ube on povas parolar sua propra helpolinguo inter la reciproke interkomprenebla helpolingui, kam Occidental, Interlingua, ed Ido. Ma til nun mankas Idisti. Voluntez venar.

Kun amikala saluti,
Tomaso
---
Originala mesaĝo en Esperanto:

Saluton, Idist-amikoj,
Ni bezonas vin en r/BabloLinguo . Vidu, eĉ la nomo de la grupo estas en Ido! Bablo estas loko, kie oni povas paroli sian propran helplingvon inter la reciproke interkompreneblaj helplingvoj, kiel Occidental, Interlingua, kaj Ido. Sed ĝis nun mankas Idistoj. Bonvolu veni.

Kun amikaj salutoj,
Tomaso
---
Klarigo pri BabloLinguo en la angla:
BabloLinguo: A Home for Mutually Intelligible Auxlangs

I saw a similar post in the Auxlangs FB group and wondered what would be involved in doing the same for Anglo-Franca.

https://preview.redd.it/u0r6pd0l4bzg1.png?width=1171&format=png&auto=webp&s=d2794c4c4b2f7d786675729191b4fb710c8d749c

My next thought was that it would be as simple as just searching for this kind of thing in French, since basically all content words in Anglo-Franca come directly from the French dictionary.

What I hadn’t considered was that the French diagrams would have function words on them. It was fairly simple to erase them - along with the unwanted English translations.

It took me longer to notice that the French word for “eyes” is irregular, so I had to erase that too. Anglo-Franca doesn’t have irregular plurals, so I’d have to edit the photo to say “The oeils”.

All in all, pretty easy work. This demonstrates one of the advantages of using “réel materiel” in a language like Anglo-Franca. There's no shortage of learning material.

My muse spoke to me tonight and gave me this adaptation of the famous poem about the purple cow - translated into the 1889 project Anglo-Franca. The world has been waiting 137 years for this:

Me have never voyed an pourpre vache
Me esper never to voy un
But me pouv to dis that me vrai saçh
Me voul more to voy than croy un

An conversation in Anglo-Franca and Occidental <- This phrase be in Anglo-Franca. It be not in English.

Me: [Occidental]Omni lingue es permisset
[Anglo-Franca] Even Anglo-Franca?
^ This phrase be not in English. It be in Anglo-Franca.

He: Secun me, yes! Yo suposi que it ne va esser desfacil a comprender...

Me: It be facile if you compren English and Francais.

Leo: Dank Deo compren ik dat. Ik parl ok platt-latinsk.

Me: Where pouv un to trouv an description of platt-latinsk?

Leo: Til nunc blot in min imaginatio.

Me: Oh, Anglo-Franca be an réel langue with mots and règles.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in this post (Bablo in North America), years ago I was involved with something called Bablo. In short, it was the idea that people would get together for conversation and friendship in their favorite Auxlang. Generally people used the various Euroclones and Esperantidoj, because they are mostly mutually intelligible.

I have just opened a subreddit called r/BabloLinguo . "Linguo" was chosen from Ido - a language I don't actively use. This was meant, in small part, to reflect the Spirit of Bablo, which is that even if we each have our preferred projects, we can put that aside and still understand each other.

Nothing is off topic in Bablo (as long as they are in line with the Spirit of Bablo), but you must use an auxlang. Literally any auxlang or auxlang proposal is allowed but keep in mind, the goal is mutual compatibility. If you're posting in Volapük, be sure to include enough glosses that people can follow along with what you're saying.

NO ENGLISH. There are plenty of spaces to discuss auxlangs or other topics in English. The whole point is that Bablo is a place where we can use the languages we're interested in. With this in mind, I agree that it's a little weird that I'm writing this post in English. This may be my last one of this type. One possible exception might be Ogden's Basic English. We've yet to have anybody show up claiming to advocate for that project, but at this point I figure if you're going to take the time to learn it, we can try to understand you.

The Whitelist. In chatting about Bablo with people, it came up that maybe there would need to be a "whitelist" of languages that are specifically allowed. Very broadly, you can use Esperanto or an established Esperantido, you can use basically any established Euroclone. Personal Esperantidos and Euroclones would probably be fine. Projects based on a single language would generally not be allowed, unless explicitly whitelisted. I don't know if anybody advocates for LSF, but that's on our (still hypothetical) whitelist - as is Anglo-Franca, just to make sure.

But mostly people showed up and spoke Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. Bablo was started over 20 years ago by an Idist in Australia (I believe). When he suddenly vanished and the original list stopped working, I created a new group on Google Groups which has been inactive for 10 years, but apparently still works. There was also a Facebook group. (It has more recent activity, but it's been pretty quiet too).

If you need me, I'll be in r/BabloLinguo trying to get some conversations started. Come introduce yourself or just leave a coment.

I’ve been wanting to post hare to get a conlanger’s perspective on all this. Maybe in a week or so, I could post a detailed overview of the project. For now, I’d like to offer some quick reflections and ask for your feedback.

Today marks day 30 of a 30 day challenge to learn the historic auxiliary language project Anglo-Franca by P. Hoinix - published in 1889. Nobody ever took Anglo-Franca seriously, but it’s mentioned in many anthologies of constructed languages because it’s a notable example of a blend of two modified national languages: English and French.

• Me pren the liberté to ecriv to you in Anglo-Franca. Me have the honneur to soumett to you's inspection the prospectus of me's objets manufactured

The first reaction upon seeing it is to ask “so - it’s just a random jumble of English and French?” While it’s hard not to say that it’s a jumble, it’s certainly not a random jumble. There’s a structure to it all.

I’ve written about Anglo-Franca in the following reddit threads:

• Historic English-French conlang (Initial request for information about Anglo-Franca.)
• 30 Jours with Anglo-Franca (The start of the 30 day challenge)
• Un Semaine with Anglo-Franca (One week update)
• Du Semaines with Anglo-Franca (Two week update)
• Tre Semaines with Anglo-Franca (Three week update.)

P. Hoinix is the pseudonym of George Henderson who was actively churning out auxlang projects before and after releasing Anglo-Franca. Part of me thinks that even he didn’t take the project all that seriously. All the same, after a month of submitting myself to learn the project as the author laid out, I’ve come to see it with different eyes.

A good chunk of my time was spent trying to figure out the pronunciation. My thought was that if I knew how to pronounce the words consistently, then it wouldn’t feel so jarring to see alternating English and French words in a text. I still haven’t figure out the pronunciation, but working with it daily, it no longer feels so much like a “jumble.”

The general concept is that Anglo-Franca is a combination of “simplified English” and “simplified French.” The grammar is essentially English, and there is a list of 130 function words taken straight from English. “The remaining words are French”.

This last detail isn’t 100% true. The system of numbers is arbitrary, and he admits a list of 12 international words (or expressions) that are mostly from Latin. Let’s call it close enough.

Well, except, I don’t really know how he counts the 130 English words. There’s a list of 130 words with 128 entries on it. I did find three words that he used that weren’t on this list - and with one of them was clearly an error, so we’re back to 130 words.

The only thing is that some of the entries are more than one word, and many words are repeated in more than one entry. Looking at it this way, I could not get the numbers to add up to 130.

In the intro to the section of the book with the sample texts, it says that the texts were written with 120 English words. As I write this, I decided to actually count the words (since I previously generated a list of all the words used in that part of the document.) In the process, I found yet another word that clearly was meant to be part of Anglo-Franca, and yet wasn’t on the list of 130 words.

And as it turned out, I counted 89 unique English words used in the section that supposedly used 120 English words. I guess I just don’t know.

Detailed, but maybe a touch hasty

The last few paragraphs are kind of typical of my experience trying to use this language. Part of me was amazed that someone could sketch out a few principles, and the result would be a full language - with rules, vocabulary, and a dictionary that contains 100 000 words including everything you’d need for modern discussions.

But the other part of me kept running into little frustrations. The author went to great lengths to make it possible for somebody with little or no French knowledge to write using his scheme. After a while however I started running into things that he never explains.

According to the author, the pronunciation is “simplified French”. As a side note, the descriptions and how to pronounce things are so gloriously 19th century and quite funny if you have the right sense of humor about such things. But nowhere does he explain how to pronounce the letter H or the combination OI. It seems to me those are pretty big questions left unanswered.

Verbs come from French but the grammar is English so you can form a participle by adding -ed. Adjectives also come from French. No guidance was given about what to do if a participle was listed in the dictionary as an adjective. So is it agé or aged? Trouvé or trouved? Fabriqué or fabriqued? His usage suggests the latter, but apparently “agé” is not a participle in French - so how would a non-French speaker know this? There’s no discussion.

I documented my progress and thoughts in a Google doc which is linked in some of the threads that I linked above. If you want more detail, that would be a good place to look. I would like to come back and post a more detailed overview here in a week or two.

When I started this learning project, I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to stick with it - so I committed to 30 days - April 1, 2026 to April 30, 2026. The timing made some people think it was an April Fools Day prank - and that was part of the fun. Now that I have completed the first 30 days I feel like I've started some things that I want to finish, so most likely I'll be continuing for another 31 days.

I thought some people here might enjoy these screen grabs of the actors who played the Pakuni: Phillip Paley, Sharon Baird, and Joe Giamalva. I had the honor of sharing the floor with them for a panel discussion about the Paku language in Milwaulkee, in 2018.

https://preview.redd.it/lse5djkx1nwg1.png?width=1013&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbb3d40186c030268454acfd839e16348201e5f1

https://preview.redd.it/f0jmb2pe2nwg1.png?width=1406&format=png&auto=webp&s=e9f7bc32d90b66e11a36240b9ee77700029249ee

My mother-in-law was VERY impressed that I'd met Sharon, because she remembers Sharon from The Mickey Mouse club. The whole cast was great - very approachable, but I would also want to quickly add that I was also very honored to meet Nels P. Olsen (far right in the lower photo), the author of the most quoted Pakuni dictionary on the internet.

Some of you may have noticed some of the posts from PreparationRound2657 about the Pakuni language. Quite frankly, I think he is not well. I don't mean to drag anybody into the middle of any drama, but I would like to point out this one thing:

>Minor Esperantist Thomas Alexander in 2018 published a decipherment contribution in the Language Creation Society online magazine but I remember it being not a full decipherment at all and rather unskilled. 

I'm the Thomas Alexander in question. That's me on the far left of the lower photo in one of the moments I'm going to remember for the rest of my life. Nels said that being able to be on stage with the Pakuni family was a dream come true. I didn't even dare to dream.

I've had run ins with Larry (PreparationRound2657) before. His pattern is to apologize to me and then block me -- which is what he did here. I suspect that this is why he deleted the previous version of his post and reposted it without my commentary - so my apologies for that.

I would like to say that I love The Land of the Lost -- and all the more now that Wesley and all them made me feel so welcome in 2018. Nels Olsen and Mark Zender (mentioned by Larry in his posts) are great people and very knowledgeable about the Paku language. I'd be glad to try to answer questions too.

It has been 3 semaines. It sent to me over tôt to quitt now.

Draft Version of the Anglo-Franca Flag 2026

The opening line of this post is in Anglo-Franca, an Auxlang project from 1889 which I have decided to learn for 30 days straight, even though to my knowledge nobody in history has ever taken this project seriously. As you can see, it looks like a random jumble of English and French. As I've said, it's not random. There's a system.

On April 1 I committed to learning this forgotten project for 30 days. I've been documenting my thoughts and progress in this Google doc. 

The linked document contains a lot of thoughts, some analysis of the original book about the project, a (new) list of 500 frequent words, basic phrases, and some new translations, including the first page of The Petit Prince and some A1 texts.

Other places to read about this experiment include these Reddit threads:

• Historic English-French conlang (Initial request for information about Anglo-Franca.)
• 30 Jours with Anglo-Franca (The start of the 30 day challenge)
• Un Semaine with Anglo-Franca (One week update)
• Du Semaines with Anglo-Franca (Two week update)

This jour be the du-dec-unième jour

I'm having a lot of fun with this and at this point I think once my 30 days is complete I'll stick with it at least another month. I'm feeling like I'm starting to make some progress. I've finally made some flashcards and I'm working on increasing my vocabulary.

The header here highlights another issue however. Anglo-Franca is well sketched-out, but it is not complete. In these 21 days, I've come up with a few questions that the author doesn't seem to provide an answer for. In this specific case, I'll point out that there are no examples in the book of ordinal number over 19. In addition, there's no explanation why sometimes twenty is du-decs and sometimes du-dec. And so, du-dec-unième is based on my best guess on how this is supposed to work.

Réel Matériel

For me, one of the most persuasive arguments that it's worth spending any time at all playing with Anglo-Franca is that, as the author points out, it's made up entirely of "real material." When I occupy myself with Anglo-Franca, I can't help but brush up on my French at the same time. Twenty-one days in, I have mixed feelings about this.

It is absolutely the case that this is helping me brush up on my French. French was the first romance language I ever learned formally. I've even had the benefit of TWO in person courses in French, but at this stage in my life it was also very rusty and was possibly the romance language I would be least likely to return to any time soon. Sometimes now I'll wake up from a night's sleep and some long-forgotten French will be on my mind.

It's also true that I'm learning some elements of French conjugation that I wasn't all that aware of. Anglo-Franca doesn't have conjugation, but verbs are based on the present participle. To take one example, I remember the word dire. This stays fresh in my mind in Esperanto "diri". I also remember the teacher saying "dites moi" (tell me). But in Anglo-Franca I learned that the verb is "to dis". I didn't know this form of the verb in French, but now I do.

But where I am doubting the "real material" claim is in pronunciation. I think there's no doubt that my reading ability in French will get better the more I do Anglo-Franca. I worry, however, that my speaking will get worse. (Or stay the same.) Maybe a better reading ability in French isn't a bad thing - especially if I wouldn't return studying French otherwise.

The Drapeau

The flag above is a symbol for the 2026 revival of Anglo-Franca. The revival is completely fictional, but you didn't hear that from me.

The colors represent the red, white, and blue of the French, American, and Union Jack flags, especially French. The stripes are meant to call to mind the stripes of the Union Jack and the 13 stripes of the American flag. The white space in the middle is proportioned to match the white space in the Canadian flag.

But Anglo-Franca is more than a jumble of English and French. It is a piece of Auxlang history. It represents the late 19th century dream of a universal second language. And so, we have the Phoenix in the center. It too is striped red, white, and blue. It represents both the author of Anglo-Franca (P. Hoinix), and the fact that it is rising from the ashes today in 2026.

I made the design because I needed to know how to color-code my flashcards.

The topic of BABM (and this subreddit) came up recently. I mentioned that I have a copy of the original book. I thought I'd share that here. Does anybody still pay BAMU any attention?

https://preview.redd.it/rcxtl12v2rvg1.png?width=678&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a7be16773947c3051d4117989776b9ca921815d

https://preview.redd.it/njj6ktwx2rvg1.png?width=683&format=png&auto=webp&s=25f72062c46f34f58a28501ea7e0f565dd96f831

The Vocabulary Problem

In the recent thread about "worldlangs", I made the following claim:

• For myself I have come to the conclusion that the "vocabulary problem" cannot be solved. The "vocabulary problem" as I define it, is essentially this: the more source languages a project has, the smaller the chance that any speaker will benefit at all from the fact that the project has source languages.

Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I have no specific interest in either Dunianto or Kotava. I'm bringing them up as examples of two different approaches to The Vocabulary Problem.

1. Kotava, in effect, admits that the Vocabulary Problem cannot be solved and uses arbitrary vocabulary to make a language that is equally difficult for all.
2. Dunianto holds on to the idea that by using source languages, you can confer an advantage to people familiar with any vocabulary drawn from these source languages.

The question up for discussion today is whether there is significant practical difference between approach 1 and approach 2.

One defender of the "worldlang" concept used the phrase "practically a priori", to which I made the further claim:

• I am at present convinced that all worldlangs are "practically a priori." This is the essence of the "vocabulary problem."

Marcos Kramer (the author of Dunianto) took exception to this and challenged me to look at the Dunianto dictionary and tell him whether it looks "practically a priori". Well, friends, I looked, and the vocabulary is indeed "practically a priori".

Not my assumption

Marcos immediately responded saying, essentially, that if I were a polyglot in numerous world languages, I wouldn't have this impression. Of course not. Then again, people who can speak countless languages don't need auxlangs. The whole point of an auxlang is that it's a universal second language, not a universal tenth language.

Marcos continued:

>Your argument against a world-sourced vocabulary is based on the wrong assumption that every word just has a single language or a small number of languages as its source. but this assumption is wrong for well-designed worldlangs like Globasa and Dunianto. These languages take over words that appear in many languages at the same time.

This is not my assumption. This claim spelled out by Marcos here was the very claim I was replying to when I said that I was convinced that all worldlangs are "practically a priori"!

Cherpillod makes a similar argument about Esperanto vocabulary. I'm going from memory and actually just making up numbers for illustration, but it's basically along these lines:

Don't say that Esperanto's vocabulary is:

• 60% Latin/Romance
• 30% Germanic
• 10% Slavic

Say instead that it is:

• 85% Latin/Romance
• 60% Germanic
• 40% Slavic

That is - every sensible person knows that vocabulary can overlap between languages.

So, thank you Marcos, no. My argument is not based on an assumption that vocabulary cannot overlap.

A mathematical necessity

My argument is essentially a mathematical argument. It's about proportionality. I absolutely understand and would freely concede that it is possible to chip at the margins by finding words that are international in more than one family. 

The question I was posing is whether there is a coherent, clear, and persuasive argument written out somewhere already to show that this "chipping away at the margins" is enough to counteract the diminishing returns of including an increasingly diverse and increasingly broad number of source languages to a project. I suspect the answer is no.

Put another way, I am convinced that the more a language of the Dunianto type ("type 2" above) adds source languages, the more it will resemble (to the target consumer a language) a language of the Kotava type ("type 1" above), even keeping this "chipping away at the margins" in mind.

The Dunianto Challenge

Even the wild claims of worldlang advocates are pretty modest. User "atrawa" claims only that 25% of the vocabulary of a well-designed worldlang would be familiar to "the majority of the people". I say: Show me the money!

Who are these people who don't speak a European language who can understand 25% of any of these projects? Is it really true (as atrawa also claimed) that someone like me should understand 50% of that same language.

And at what point do we say that recognizing a small amount of vocabulary isn't all that big of a deal when it comes to learning a language. If the vocabulary is 75% or 90% unfamiliar, is this not the same as being "practically a priori"?

As I mentioned, Marcos challenged me to look at his dictionary. I looked at all the words that started with "ta". Not counting place names, there were exactly three words that were familiar.

1. tablo tabelo
2. talo telero
3. taypi tajpi

I'm not actually sure if "talo" counts. It could be anything - tall, tail, language, valley...

In the same section, I saw about 22 unfamiliar words. That means that Dunianto is 88% unfamiliar to me. What happened to "most people" being able to understand 25% of a language like this?

The Vocabulary Problem cannot be solved

P.S.

I really don't know whether Kotava or Dunianto does a better job at other aspects of making a language easier for people to learn. It's almost certain that all either one can succeed in doing is more "chipping away at the margins."

Dunianto has some interesting word builiding - such as lake and puddle being the same word with different (practically a priori) endings to distinguish them. Apparently we're also supposed to know that a telerego is a basin, a teleroco is a bowl, and a teleromo is a specific kind of cooked food that can be served.

I've kind of assumed that Kotava does similar things, but I haven't looked into it. But Kotava is more than practically a priori.

As a reply to a recent thread that I started, u/Melodic_Sport1234 commented that it would be interesting if somebody "had a stab" at learning BABM.

I replied that I actually have a first edition copy of the BABM book, but that the language does not speak to me.

After some reflection last night, I think I am willing to elaborate a little bit. Someday, I may even be willing to commit up to three days to the project. There's no way though that I would actually learn it.

Until which time that I can free up three days for this project, I will share a few more thoughts.

One of the unique features of BABM is that it uses the Latin alphabet as a syllabatry. I also recall that it is meant to be written in all caps.

The vocabulary of BABM is completely a priori and schematic. In the words of Don Harlow, if you understand roughly how the Dewey decimal system works, then you already have a rough idea of what BABM is.

It's simply does not speak to me.

But to put an even more fine point on it, I will turn to a slightly modified text from P. Hoinix himself which explains why I'm willing to put 30 days into Anglo-Franca, but at most 3 days into BABM.

>Anglo-Franca is made up entirely of real material, and the actual appearance and conventional meaning of words is retained. In learning all that is required for an efficient use of this medium, one incurs no risk of acquiring knowledge which will be useless in the event of Anglo-Franca never being practically adopted. In making himself the master of it, an Englishman will be preparing himself for the acquirement of French. A Frenchman learning it will acquire the knowledge of English grammar, without its irregularities, by means of which grammar, though not of the conventional form, he will find himself able to make himself perfectly intelligible to English people. This knowledge of a regular English grammar will prove to be of great assistance to him in the event of his wishing to learn proper English. Germans, Spaniards, Italians, Russians, and others, will of course be acquiring a preparatory knowledge of both English and French, so tha they also can hardly feel the task so very risky and useless.

>The knowledge required for BABM, however, serves one end only, and that is--the end of BABM. In the event of BABM not becoming universally accepted and generally taught--and the probability of this is slight indeed--all the time and labour spent upon the acquirement of its vocabulary is simply wasted.