LINGUA FRANCA

O
A Potential Use of English as the
Official Lingua Franca
In the European Union

Lingua Franca

lingua

franca

is

language

systematically

used

to

make

communication possible between people not sharing a mother tongue, in

particular when it is a third language, distinct from both mother tongues.
The original Lingua Franca was a mixed language composed mostly
(80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, French, Greek,
Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. It was in use throughout the eastern
Mediterranean as the language of commerce and diplomacy in and around
the Renaissance era. At that time, Italian speakers dominated seaborne
commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman empire. Franca was the Italian
word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca originated from its
meaning in Arabic and Greek, dating from before the Crusades and during
the Middle Ages, whereby all Western Europeans were called "Franks" or
Faranji in Arabic and Phrankoi in Greek during the times of the late Eastern
Roman Empire. The term lingua franca is first recorded in English in 1678.
"Lingua franca" is a functionally defined term, independent of the
linguistic history or structure of the language: though pidgins and creoles
often function as lingua francas, many such languages are neither pidgins
nor creoles. Whereas a vernacular language is used as a native language in a
single speaker community, a lingua franca goes beyond the boundaries of its
original community, and is used as a second language for communication
between communities. For example, IN Australia where there are still
indigenous languages in existence, tribes will often use english as their
lingua franca as they do not know each others respective indigenous
language.
There is a linguistic continuum between the Lingua Franca used as a
pidgin and as a creole. In the first case, it arises spontaneously as a means of

communication between expatriate aliens and local people who are not
proficient in standard Italian, but were superficially exposed to it through the
radio or TV, at church or school (Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, Bethlehem): the
contents are plainly intelligible to anybody with a minimum knowledge of
formal Italian, but the typical idiomatic expressions, stress and intonation are
lost to the occasional listener. Despite the relative isolation and time lapse
between instances, the language shows a remarkable level of consistency. As
a creole it is lesser used, basically by a few people of Italian origin from the
Aegean Islands, who, as with many dialects, think of it as mainstream Italian.
It is only a spoken language, but the rare cases of transcription (short
quotes) usually follow the French or Spanish orthography; as a creole it is
more elaborate, but basic grammar rules for the pidgin medium include:

the use of rigid sentence starters, such as 'ggo' (there);

the switching of prepositions (from meaning of; for meaning to);
gender confusion: masculine nouns become feminine or vice versa, and
sometimes neutral, which in Italian does not exist;
doubling adverbs to underline description (a common pidgin trait): 'Poco
poco star quatr'ora' (little stay 4 hours = it is almost four o'clock, a classic
example from the 1830 dictionary);
few simple verbs towards the end of the sentence, in the infinitive or past
participle tense ('done' meaning anything from happened to been);
transitive and reflexive forms are often disregarded
There are certain languages that have been created as a result of the
difficulty of communication between people who speak distinct languages
but have common interests. Faced with this linguistic situation, the speakers
are capable of creating a specific language for these contexts in which there
is a community of interests; this common communication system is known as
the lingua franca. The aim of these pages is to analyze the lingua franca
created on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea from the 15th century until
the late 19th century. There is no intention to describe its linguistic system

but to define what exactly must be understood by the lingua franca of the
Mediterranean.
Towards the end of 1951, the lingua franca was defined as what was
normally used by speakers of different mother tongues in order to be able to
establish communication between them. When using a lingua franca, the
speakers of different linguistic systems pursue one objective or a variety of
ends: trade, political, military, cultural, administrative or religious relations.
These ends are those that justify some of the synonymous, or almost
synonymous, terms of the lingua franca that form part of the bibliography of
the subject: trade language, contact language or international language.
Specifically, the lingua franca which is the object of this study was born
at the end of the Middle Ages with the political and, above all, economic
expansion of the main maritime cities of the Mediterranean, which would
leave so many marks throughout their area of influence. A language of
international communication was constructed, which developed a more or
less uniform lexicon. It seems that the base of this lingua was configured
fundamentally by the presence of the Romance languages but also by
Arabic, vulgar Greek and Turkish, all languages that contributed not only to
the lexicon or the morphosyntax but also to the phonetics.
Actually the first Lingua Franca, born during the Crusades had probably
no direct link to the second one, which spanned the Lepanto to Gallipoli
period. Its emergence was again primed by political contingencies which
adapted an Arabic grammar to a Romance vocabulary that are still the same.
True, we are nowadays unlikely to hear exotic tales about a visit to the
Palazzo of the Gran Signor to witness a sentence of Bastinado (Falanjca) in
front of the Serraglio, but basic catch-phrases as 'gu fatu' (what's up) 'Iu
sdai qua' (I'll be waiting here) or indeed 'Vadu dal Bosta' (= Go from [I am
going to get] the mail -- an example that is close to what Rossi reported in
Libya 70 years ago) are often to be heard now all over the Middle East,
coming straight out from a distant past. Tomato, for instance, is a loan from
Nahuatl, shared by most western languages. Yet in Italy, where it grows

successfully, it received on first being introduced, the pedantic name of

pomodoro (golden apple) and, sure enough (before the civil war at least) the
Suq el Frenji vendors in Beirut were extolling the virtues of their banadora,
slata (lettuce) and bortoqal (oranges; in Rome too some 200 years ago
oranges were called Portogalli as they were mainly imported from there.) A
meat plate is 'rosto' and vinegar becomes 'negro'; candles are called shm'a
in Arabic, but a lantern is often called al kandl, and sometimes laterna.
Examples of lingua francas are numerous, and exist on every continent.
The most obvious example today is English. There are many other lingua
francas centralized on particular regions, such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian,
French and Spanish.
The popularity of languages changes over time, and there are many
lingua francas that are of historical importance. For example, French was the
language of European diplomacy from the 17th century until the mid-20th
century. Until the early 20th century, Classical Chinese served as both the
written lingua franca and the diplomatic language in Far East Asia including
China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, the Ryky Kingdom, and Vietnam. Arabic
became the "lingua franca" of the Arab/Islamic Empire (from CE 733 1492),
which at a certain point spread from the borders of China and Northern India
through Central Asia, Persia, Asia Minor, Middle East, North Africa all the way
to Spain and Portugal in the west.

Bibliography:
VILCEANU

Titela, Intercultural

Communication

Prerequisites

for

Effectiveness and Efficiency, Ed. Universitaria, Craiova, 2008.

KAHANE, H. and R. KAHANE, Lingua Franca: The Story of a Term,
Romance Philology, vol. XXX, no. 1, 1976.
ROSSETTI Roberto, An Introduction to Lingua Franca, 2000.

 HLMBAUER

Cornelia,

BHRINGER

Heike,

SEIDLHOFER

Barbara,

Introducing English as a lingua franca (ELF): Precursor and partner in

intercultural communication, Vienna, 2008.
MARTNEZ DAZ Eva, An Approach to the Lingua Franca of the
Mediterranean, Barcelona,
SAMARIN, W.J., Lingua Francas of the World, Mouton Publishers, 1972.
WHINNOM, K., The Context and Origins of Lingua Franca, Tbingen,
Gunter Narr, 1977.