BIZAKEN

The Lost Latin of Africa

What if Latin had survived in North Africa?

A language that never existed — and yet might easily have existed.

For centuries, North Africa was one of the great centres of Latin language and culture. Carthage was a flourishing Roman city, and African writers such as Apuleius, Augustine, and Dracontius left their mark on Latin literature.

The Roman Empire eventually disappeared from North Africa, but Latin did not vanish overnight. Evidence suggests that Latin and its descendants survived in parts of the region for centuries after the Arab conquest.

What if history had taken a different course? What if Carthage had remained the centre of a Latin-speaking kingdom, and African Latin had continued to evolve into a living Romance language?

That language is Bizaken.

Bizaken is a constructed language inspired by the lost Latin-speaking world of North Africa. Built primarily on Latin foundations, with influences from the languages and cultures of the region, it imagines a Romance language with its own grammar, vocabulary, literature, and history.

But Bizaken is more than a linguistic experiment. It is a language to be used and enjoyed.

You can learn it through four graded readers, from A1 to B2. You can explore its grammar and vocabulary, read stories and literature, listen to songs, and discover the imagined kingdom in which the language is spoken.

Explore Bizaken

Learn the Language
Discover Bizaken grammar and explore its growing wordlist.

Read in Bizaken
Begin with simple stories and progress to advanced readers and literature.

Listen to Bizaken
Experience the language through songs and music.

Discover the Bizaken Kingdom
Explore an alternate history in which Latin-speaking Carthage survived and developed its own distinctive civilisation.