What is a Lingua Franca?

Lingua franca refers to any language used for communication between people who do not share a native language.

At the University of Buckingham where I study, there are students from all over the world communicating. Students all have their native language but will converse in a third language formed of pieces of languages from other languages to aid communication.

The term lingua franca originally meant “Frankish tongue” in 17th century Italian. It was spoken in Mediterranean ports, which were active trade centres where people from many different countries spoke many different native languages.

The Frankish tongue was made up from parts of Italian, French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic languages. More generally research indicates this language of business or commerce was developed in an area we call the Levant; referring to specific coastal regions along the Mediterranean in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, all along the entire eastern Mediterranean Seas.

Latin was one of the most widespread of the early lingua franca. It spread to surrounding parts of Europe, Africa and Asia with the expansion of the Roman Empire. Official documents, trade and negotiations were all conducted in Latin.

Spanish

When Europeans conquered the New World, Spain became one of the largest and most popular empires in the world. Their territory in the New World included parts of Southern United States, Central America and many parts of South America. Spanish soon became the lingua franca of these regions, eventually replacing many indigenous languages as their inhabitants’ native language.

English

Today, English operates as the dominant lingua franca worldwide. While linguists note that English is one of the harder languages to master, its widespread use comes from the massive expansion of the British Empire during the Colonial era and the economic power of the United States during the 20th century.

This article was written from study.com by Sunday Mouton from a website called study.com Chapter 4/lesson 9.

Personally I remember in 2016, just after the EU referendum going on holiday to south Switzerland and conversing with a group of people from Europe around a few beers each evening. We spoke about politics, food, other holiday destinations using a mixture of French, German, Swiss and English. When a conversation got lost in translation our own formation of a lingua franca evolved. It worked really well!

Saving the best until last, there are regional lingua franca and national ones. In Africa they use French as their lingua franca to communicate across a large portion of the country. An example of a national lingua franca in is Pakistan, where the Urda is used between the different states. Sometimes there are both national and regional LF together in one country. All very interesting.