Lingua franca

Conjugate Verbs

Introduction

Lexicon from Italian and Provençal. An earlier version may have been a pidginized Latin. On the Barbary Coast of North Africa in 1578, its lexicon came from Spanish and Portuguese.

In Algeria in the 1830s, it drew increasingly from French, and later became the nonstandard French of that area. It may also have influenced other pidgins. There is a report of a present-day variety on the Aegean Islands, used as a pidgin in the southeastern Mediterranean region, to have mainly Arabic syntax, and vocabulary which is 65% to 70% Italian, 10% Spanish, and other Catalan, French, Ladino, and Turkish words.

Documented in Djerba, Tunisia in 1353. Dictionary. Coastal. Craftsmen, urban workers. sea level. Christian, Sunni Muslim. Extinct.

The Lingua Franca Verb

There are two tenses: non-past and past. Non-past is the infinitive and past is past participle. Verbs are not inflected in person. Verbs are regular and end either in -ar or -ir.

Sample Verb: andar

• Non-past: andar
• Past: andato

Sample Verb: fazir

• Non-past: fazir
• Past: fazito

Verblist

• ablar
• ajudar
• andar
• bisogno
• crompar
• fazir
• hablar
• kiamar
• pensar
• quérir
• respondir
• sabir
• star

• fazir -- to do
• andar -- to go
• ajudar -- to help
• amar -- to love
• brachiar -- to light
• alloumar -- to light
• amousar -- to amuse
• mirar -- to view
• kiamar -- to call
• attacar -- to attack

External Links

• Lingua Franca grammar and dictionary

References

• Dictionnaire de la langue franque ou petit mauresque, suivi de quelques dialogues familiers et d'un vocabulaire de mots arabes les plus usuels, à l'usage des Français en Afrique. Feissat et Demonchy. Marseille, 1831.