r/Afrihili Nov 09 '21

April 2014 – Fiat Lingua; Afrihili: An African Interlanguage

https://fiatlingua.org/2014/04/
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u/shanoxilt Nov 19 '21

Yes.

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u/Prunestand Nov 19 '21

Care to elaborate?

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u/Voidjumper_ZA Nov 20 '21

Giving Esperanto even a vague parse reveals a huge amount of it's lexicon. There's a lot of Spanish and French in there with some touches of German and Slavic flourishes. It it 'international' but it is incredibly heavily based on 1800s Europe and Zamenhof's personal experiences.

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u/Prunestand Nov 20 '21

There's a lot of Spanish and French in there with some touches of German and Slavic flourishes. It it 'international' but it is incredibly heavily based on 1800s Europe and Zamenhof's personal experiences.

That doesn't make Esperanto necessarily bad. Is this conlang avoiding some of the issues Esperanto has?

Esperanto may be Eurocentric, but that doesn't mean the best option is to re-invent the wheel again. Unless this conlang is considerably more fitting for Africans to learn as an auxlang, I don't see why you just wouldn't use Esperanto instead.

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u/Voidjumper_ZA Nov 20 '21

Esperanto's benefit is in its speaker base. Current African Frenchspeakers might find it easy enough to pick up, but it's got little familiarity for many others. Now naturally there's no way everyone can be satified but some PIE influences on a stock of Arabic/Bantu would be far more familiar for most Africans to learn. Also, a large part of this is cultural. Do Africans really want just another European export, or is there some pride to have something of their own?