Talk:Lingua franca

From Academic Kids

The statement from the article quoted below reminds me of the old joke, "If we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs, if we had some eggs."

Despite constructed languages current relatively limited pool of speakers, comparisons between numbers of speakers may not be a reasonable criterion in judging the adequacy of the language itself, given that a preexisting large number of speakers further enforces a language's likelihood of being learned by other speakers. If a constructed language (or language with few speakers) were to be decided upon such as by international agreement to be used as an international auxiliary language, then the imbalance in not having enough speakers would be more readily leveled.

It is a tautological statement, if there were more speakers of constructed languages, there wouldn't be so few speakers, and there would be more if someone would make people speak them. It does not really address the question of whether the idea of constructed languages is a sound one. Ortolan88

Actually, I'm not sure that the statement is a tautology. It sounds to me like it is making the point that there would be more people willing to use a constructed language if everyone would agree on choosing one as the lingua franca. That seems like a debateable point that should not be uttered as a fact in this article, but I don't see it as a tautology. soulpatch

It's badly put, but it should be said that constructed language suffer from a vicious of circle of "too few people speak it, so nobody learns it". -- Tarquin 17:04 Feb 24, 2003 (UTC)

Go ahead and edit it if you like...I was just trying to point out the existence of that argument. brettz9

Now probably this could be splitted into Lingua Franca (the language) and lingua franca (the concept). -- Error

This theory explains the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creoles, like Tok Pisin, Papiamento, Krio, Chinese English Pidgin. These languages use forms similar to sabir for "to know" and piquenho for "children".

What a curious thing. 'To know' in Portuguese is Saber and 'Children' is Pequenos (more exactly, little ones) tought in some port. dialects pequenhos is used and piquenos is widly used (sopken, I say). Pedro 01:32, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I removed this text

adopted as a common means of communication between people of different languages

from the ungrammatical and undecodable definition. I may have gotten it wrong (my dictionary is ambiguous), if only a language widely enough used in this way that it is common for two non-native speakers to use it between themselves qualifies as a l.f. If so, someone please fix, but please don't put back the horrible version i found there.

The previous version of the "General sense" section of the article placed an excessive emphasis on the role and characteristics of English, and seemed strongly associated to the NPOV-disputed page English as a lingua franca for Europe. I toned this down and removed the link to that page. -- Brian Lucas

Contents

1 Old Norse

2 Contradiction

3 Last edit looks poor to me

4 Pre 212.232.54.69 page

5 General sense

6 Specific language

7 External links

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Old Norse

Hall�! Please take a look at Talk:Old Norse language#Latin of the North too. Regards Gangleri 01:08, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

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Contradiction

The article says the plural is linguae francae, implying it is Latin, and then goes on to say that it is Italian. The Italian plural would be lingue franche. So which is it? You can't have it both ways. Chameleon 13:29, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Lingua franca didn't have plurals, did it? -- Error 23:51, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If Swahili is a lingua franca and Urdu is a lingua franca, then you have two of them, don't you? See article. Plural is necessary to discuss the phenomenon. (If, by your question, you mean that Lingua franca � the classic, first version � was uninflected, and that by your lights inflection includes pluralization, then you have a teeeny tiny undocumented point that has no bearing on the issue of whether the term lingua franca has a plural.) Ortolan88 00:41, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think he/she was just making an academic point about a feature of thr original Lingua franca language. Chameleon 09:45, 16 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Last edit looks poor to me

The edit by User:221.232.54.69 appears to have some organizational superiority, but has dropped a lot of useful information. I watch this page, but it isn't my specialty. I don't think a simple revert is the answer, but 221.232.54.69 took out all the headers and all the foreign Wikipedia links, so it needs a carefully staged reversion. I'll do it, but one of the more connected editors would probably do a better job. Ortolan88 18:46, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I'd go for reversion. -- Error 02:20, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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Pre 212.232.54.69 page

[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Lingua_franca&oldid=7715908):

Lingua franca, literally "Frankish language" in Italian, was originally a mixed language or jargon consisting largely of uninflected Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Italian, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. The term is now applied to any mixed jargon used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another.

See the two sections below for further details of each of these two uses of the term.

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General sense

The term lingua franca refers generally to a language learned, beyond its native speakers, for international commerce or other extended intercultural interactions. It has acquired this general sense by extension from the specific language described below.

Since there is more than one, various plurals for lingua franca are used by linguists. The Italian plural lingue franche is perhaps most "correct", but, appropriately to the topic, it is also given the Anglicised plural lingua francas and the Latinised form linguae francae is also encountered. The Franks were an ancient Germanic people. The terms Frank and Frankish were used by Arabs for Latin-rite Christians. (Greeks were rumi ("Romans").

In the Western world, Koine Greek, Latin and French have all served as lingua francas at different times. French has been the language of diplomacy in Europe from the seventeenth century, and as a result is still the working language of international institutions and is seen on documents ranging from passports to airmail etiquettes. German served as a lingua franca in portions of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in business. English is the current lingua franca of Western international business and is displacing French in diplomacy.

In other regions of the world, other languages perform the function of a lingua franca: Swahili in Eastern Africa, Russian in areas formerly associated with the Soviet Union, Hindi (along with English) in India, Malay in South-East Asia, Bislama in the Pacific Islands, and various Pidgin languages in other locations and times. Portuguese served as lingua franca in Africa and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries. Mandarin Chinese also serves a function of providing a common spoken language between speakers of different and mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects.

Constructed languages such as Esperanto, Ido, Mondlango, and interlingua are proposed by some as a global lingua franca. Their supporters argue that a lingua franca should be as simple as possible, while still being highly expressive. They claim that English and other natural languages, being ethnically derived, are not suitable for a common language, since natural languages contain caveats and idiosyncracies that hamper their ability to be learned, confer an automatic advantage on native speakers, and are associated with political, economic, and cultural dominance of their nation of origin.

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Specific language

Lingua Franca (Italian meaning "Frankish language") or Sabir ("knowledge") was an early pidgin language, used in the Mediterranean area from the fourteenth century or earlier and still in use in the twentieth century.

It had a heavy influence of Romance languages, especially Italian dialects. It was the language used between slaves and their captors in the bagnio of Algiers.

According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins pioneered by Hugo Schuchardt, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crew tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of relexification, the Lingua Franca and Portuguese wordstock was substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact.

This theory explains the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creoles, like Tok Pisin, Papiamento, Sranang Tongo, Krio, Chinese English Pidgin. These languages use forms similar to sabir for "to know" and piquenho for "children".

Lingua Franca left traces in today's Algerian slang and Polari. Polari from Italian parlare ("to talk") was a cant used by London variety artists and gays.

English words like "savvy" (from sabir) and "pickanniny" can be traced to Lingua Franca.

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