1839 – Trilingual Chinese–Malay–

English text – Malay was the lingua

franca across the Strait of Malacca,
including the coasts of the Malay
Peninsula (now in Malaysia) and the
eastern coast of Sumatra (now in
Indonesia), and has been established
as a native language of part of western
coastal Sarawak and West Kalimantan
in Borneo.

A lingua franca (/ˌlɪŋɡwə ˈfræŋkə/ ( listen); lit. Frankish tongue),[1] also known

as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary
language, vehicular language, or link language is a language or dialect
systematically used to make communication possible between groups of
people who do not share a native language or dialect, particularly when it is a
third language that is distinct from both of the speakers' native languages.[2]

Lingua francas have developed around the world throughout human history,
sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called "trade languages" facilitated
trade), but also for cultural, religious, diplomatic and administrative
convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists
and other scholars of different nationalities.[3][4] The term is taken from the
medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a Romance-based pidgin language
used (especially by traders and seamen) as a lingua franca in the
Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century. A world language – a
language spoken internationally and by many people – is a language that
may function as a global lingua franca.
 Characteristics

Lingua franca refers to any language used for communication between

people who do not share a native language.[5] It can refer to mixed languages
such as pidgins and creoles used for communication between language
groups. It can also refer to languages which are native to one nation (often a
colonial power) but used as a second language for communication between
groups.[6] Lingua franca is a functional term, independent of any linguistic
history or language structure.[7]

Lingua francas are often pre-existing languages with native speakers, but
they can also be pidgin or creole languages developed for that specific
region or context. Pidgin languages are rapidly developed and simplified
combinations of two or more established languages, while creole languages
are simply pidgins that evolve and are passed onto later generations.[8] Pre-
existing lingua francas such as French are used to facilitate
intercommunication in large-scale trade or political matters, while pidgins
and creoles often arise out of colonial situations and a specific need for
communication between colonists and indigenous peoples.[9] Pre-existing
lingua francas are generally widespread, highly developed languages with
many native speakers. Conversely, pidgin languages are very simplified
means of communication, containing loose structuring, few grammatical
rules, and possessing no native speakers. Creole languages are more
developed than their ancestral pidgins, utilizing more complex structure,
grammar, and vocabulary, as well as having native speakers.[8]

Whereas a vernacular language is the native language of a specific

geographical community, a lingua franca is used beyond the boundaries of
its original community, for trade, religious, political, or academic reasons. For
example, English is a vernacular in the United Kingdom but is used as a
lingua franca in the Philippines. Arabic, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish,
Portuguese, Hindustani, and Russian serve a similar purpose as
industrial/educational lingua francas, across regional and national
boundaries.

International auxiliary languages created with the purpose of being lingua

francas such as Esperanto and Lingua Franca Nova have not had a great
degree of adoption globally so they cannot be described as global lingua
francas.[10]

Etymology
The term lingua franca derives from Mediterranean Lingua Franca, the pidgin
language that people around the Levant and the eastern Mediterranean Sea
used as the main language of commerce and diplomacy from late medieval
times, especially during the Renaissance era, to the 18th century.[11][6] At that
time, Italian-speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the
Ottoman Empire and a simplified version of Italian, including many loan
words from Greek, Old French, Portuguese, Occitan, and Spanish as well as
Arabic and Turkish came to be widely used as the "lingua franca" (in the
generic sense) of the region.

In Lingua Franca (the specific language), lingua means a language, as in

Portuguese and Italian, and franca is related to phrankoi in Greek and faranji
in Arabic as well as the equivalent Italian. In all three cases, the literal sense
is "Frankish", leading to the direct translation: "language of the Franks".
During the late Byzantine Empire, "Franks" was a term that applied to all
Western Europeans.[12][13][14]

Through changes of the term in literature, Lingua Franca has come to be

interpreted as a general term for pidgins, creoles, and some or all forms of
vehicular languages. This transition in meaning has been attributed to the
idea that pidgin languages only became widely known from the 16th century
on due to European colonization of continents such as The Americas, Africa,
and Asia. During this time, the need for a term to address these pidgin
languages arose, hence the shift in the meaning of Lingua Franca from a
single proper noun to a common noun encompassing a large class of pidgin
languages.[15]

As recently as the late 20th century, some restricted the use of the generic
term to mean only mixed languages that are used as vehicular languages, its
original meaning.[16]

The Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary states that the term Lingua Franca
(as the name of the particular language) was first recorded in English during
the 1670s,[17] although an even earlier example of the use of Lingua Franca in
English is attested from 1632, where it is also referred to as "Bastard
Spanish".[18]

The term is well established in its naturalization to English, which is why

major dictionaries do not italicize it as a "foreign" term.[19][20][21] Its plurals in
English are lingua francas and linguae francae,[20][21] with the former being
first-listed[20][21] or only-listed[19] in major dictionaries.
 Examples

Koine Greek

The use of lingua francas has existed since antiquity. Latin and Koine Greek
were the lingua francas of the Roman Empire and the Hellenistic culture.
Akkadian (died out during Classical antiquity) and then Aramaic remained
the common languages of a large part of Western Asia from several earlier
empires.[22][23]

The Hindustani language (Hindi-Urdu) is the lingua franca of Pakistan and

Northern India.[24][25] Many Indian states have adopted the Three-language
formula in which students in Hindi-speaking states are taught: "(a) Hindi
(with Sanskrit as part of the composite course); (b) Urdu or any other modern
Indian language and (c) English or any other modern European language."
The order in non-Hindi speaking states is: "(a) the regional language; (b)
Hindi; (c) Urdu or any other modern Indian language excluding (a) and (b);
and (d) English or any other modern European language."[26] Hindi has also
emerged as a lingua franca for the locals of Arunachal Pradesh, a
linguistically diverse state in Northeast India.[27][28]It is estimated that 90
percent of the state's population knows Hindi.[29]

   Regions where English is a

majority native language
   Regions where English is official
but not a majority native language

Swahili developed as a lingua franca between several Bantu-speaking tribal

groups on the east coast of Africa with heavy influence from Arabic.[30] The
earliest examples of writing in Swahili are from 1711.[31] In the early 1800's
the use of Swahili as a lingua franca moved inland with the Arabic ivory and
slave traders. It was eventually adopted by Europeans as well during periods
of colonization in the area. German colonizers used it as the language of
administration in Tanganyika, which influenced the choice to use it as a
national language in what is now independent Tanzania.[30]

In the European Union, the use of English as a lingua franca has led to the
emergence of a new dialect called Euro English.[32]

When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the
lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period,
some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages
opted to continue using English as an official language .

Francophone Africa

French is still a lingua franca in most Western and Central African countries
and an official language of many, a remnant of French and Belgian
colonialism. These African countries and others are members of the
Francophonie.

Russian is in use and widely understood in Central Asia and the Caucasus,
areas formerly part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, and in much of
Central and Eastern Europe. It remains the official language of the
Commonwealth of Independent States. Russian is also one of the six official
languages of the United Nations.[33]

In Qatar, the medical community is primarily made up of workers from

countries without English as a native language. In medical practices and
hospitals, nurses typically communicate with other professionals in English
as a lingua franca.[34] This occurrence has led to interest in researching the
consequences and affordances of the medical community communicating in
a lingua franca.[34]

Indonesian – which originated from a Malay language variant spoken in Riau

– is the official language and a lingua franca in Indonesia, although Javanese
has more native speakers. Still, Indonesian is the sole official language and is
spoken throughout the country. Persian is also the lingua franca of Iran and
its national language.
Hausa can also be seen as a lingua franca because it is the language of
communication between speakers of different languages in Northern Nigeria
and other West African countries.

The only documented sign language used as a lingua franca is Plains Indian
Sign Language, used across much of North America. It was used as a
second language across many indigenous peoples. Alongside or a derivation
of Plains Indian Sign Language was Plateau Sign Language, now extinct.
Inuit Sign Language could be a similar case in the Arctic among the Inuit for
communication across oral language boundaries, but little research exists.

Further reading

Hall, R.A. Jr. (1966). Pidgin and Creole Languages . Cornell University Press.
ISBN 0-8014-0173-9.

Heine, Bernd (1970). Status and Use of African Lingua Francas. ISBN 3-8039-
0033-6.

Kahane, Henry Romanos (1958). The Lingua Franca in the Levant.

Melatti, Julio Cezar (1983). Índios do Brasil (48 ed.). São Paulo: Hucitec
Press.

Ostler, Nicholas (2005). Empires of the Word. London: Harper. ISBN 978-0-00-

711871-7.

Ostler, Nicholas (2010). The Last Lingua Franca . New York: Walker.
ISBN 978-0-8027-1771-9.

See also

Rosetta Stone

Global language system

International auxiliary language

Koiné language

Language contact

List of languages by number of native speakers

List of languages by total number of speakers

Mediterranean Lingua Franca

Mixed language

Mutual intelligibility

Pidgin

Interlinguistics

Universal language

Working language

World language

References

1. "lingua franca – definition of lingua franca in English from the Oxford

dictionary" . Oxforddictionaries.com. Retrieved 18 June 2015.

2. Viacheslav A. Chirikba, "The problem of the Caucasian Sprachbund" in Pieter

Muysken, ed., From Linguistic Areas to Areal Linguistics, 2008, p. 31. ISBN 90-
272-3100-1

3. Nye, Mary Jo (2016). "Speaking in Tongues: Science's centuries-long hunt for

a common language" . Distillations. 2 (1): 40–43. Retrieved 20 March 2018.

4. Gordin, Michael D. (2015). Scientific Babel: How Science Was Done Before and
After Global English. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
ISBN 9780226000299.

5. "vehicular, adj." OED Online. Oxford University Press, July 2018. Web. 1
November 2018.

6. "LINGUA FRANCA:CHIMERA OR REALITY?" (PDF). ISBN 9789279189876.

7. Intro Sociolinguistics – Pidgin and Creole Languages: Origins and

Relationships – Notes for LG102, – University of Essex, Prof. Peter L. Patrick
– Week 11, Autumn term.

8. "The Difference Between Lingua Franca, Pidgin, and Creole Languages" .

Teacher Finder. Retrieved 29 April 2019.

9. "Lingua Franca, Pidgin, and Creole" . 3 April 2015. Retrieved 29 April 2019.

10. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission (2011). "Studies

on translation and multilingualism" (PDF). Europa (web portal). Archived
from the original (PDF) on 15 November 2012.

11. "lingua franca | linguistics" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 8 August

2017.
12. Lexico Triantaphyllide online dictionary, Greek Language Center (Kentro
Hellenikes Glossas), lemma Franc ( Φράγκος Phrankos), Lexico tes Neas
Hellenikes Glossas, G.Babiniotes, Kentro Lexikologias(Legicology Center) LTD
Publications . Komvos.edu.gr. ISBN 960-86190-1-7. Retrieved 18 June 2015.
"Franc and (prefix) franco- (Φράγκος Phrankos and φράγκο- phranko-"

13. "An etymological dictionary of modern English : Weekley, Ernest, 1865–1954 :

Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive" . Archive.org. Retrieved
18 June 2015.

14. [1] Archived 12 October 2014 at the Wayback Machine

15. Brosch, C. (2015). "On the Conceptual History of the Term Lingua Franca".
Apples - Journal of Applied Language Studies. 9 (1): 71–85.
doi:10.17011/apples/2015090104 .

16. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, Simon and
Schuster, 1980

17. "Online Etymology Dictionary" . Etymonline.com. Retrieved 18 June 2015.

18. Morgan, J. (1632). A Compleat History of the Present Seat of War in Africa,
Between the Spaniards and Algerines . p. 98. Retrieved 8 June 2013.

19. Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford Dictionaries Online , Oxford University Press.

20. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English
Language , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

21. Merriam-Webster, MerriamWebster's Collegiate Dictionary , Merriam-

Webster.

22. Ostler, 2005 pp. 38–40

23. Ostler, 2010 pp. 163–167

24. Mohammad Tahsin Siddiqi (1994), Hindustani-English code-mixing in modern

literary texts , University of Wisconsin, "... Hindustani is the lingua franca of
both India and Pakistan ..."

25. Lydia Mihelič Pulsipher; Alex Pulsipher; Holly M. Hapke (2005), World
Regional Geography: Global Patterns, Local Lives , Macmillan, ISBN 0-7167-
1904-5, "... By the time of British colonialism, Hindustani was the lingua franca
of all of northern India and what is today Pakistan ..."

26. "Three Language Formula" . Government of India Ministry of Human

Resource Development Department of Education. Archived from the
original on 22 February 2012. Retrieved 16 May 2016.
27. Chandra, Abhimanyu (22 August 2014). "How Hindi Became the Language of
Choice in Arunachal Pradesh." Scroll.in. Retrieved 12 March 2019.

28. http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/C-17.html

29. Roychowdhury, Adrija (27 February 2018). "How Hindi Became Arunachal
Pradesh's Lingua Franca." The Indian Express. Retrieved 12 March 2019.

30. "Swahili language" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 August 2014. Retrieved

29 April 2019.

31. E. A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa, London, 1975.., pp. 98–
99 ; T. Vernet, "Les cités-Etats swahili et la puissance omanaise (1650–1720),
Journal des Africanistes, 72(2), 2002, pp. 102–105.

32. Mollin, Sandra (2005). Euro-English assessing variety status. Tübingen: Narr.
ISBN 382336250X.

33. "Department for General Assembly and Conference Management – What are
the official languages of the United Nations?" . United Nations. Archived
from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 25 January 2008.

34. Tweedie, Gregory; Johnson, Robert. "Listening instruction and patient safety:
Exploring medical English as a lingua franca (MELF) for nursing education" .
Retrieved 6 January 2018.

External links

Lingua franca
at Wikipedia's sister projects

Definitions from
 
Wiktionary

Media from Wikimedia

 
Commons

  Data from Wikidata

"English – the universal language on the Internet?" .

"Lingua franca del Mediterraneo o Sabir of professor Francesco Bruni (in

Italian)" .

"Sample texts" . from Juan del Encina, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Carlo

Goldoni's L'Impresario da Smyrna, Diego de Haedo and other sources
"An introduction to the original Mediterranean Lingua Franca" .

Last edited 3 days ago by Tobby72