Lingua franca

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Lingua franca

A lingua franca is any language widely used beyond its native speakers, primarily for international commerce but extending to other cultural exchanges, such as diplomacy. The origin of the term lingua franca is Latin (literally "Frankish language"), derived from the medieval Arab and Muslim use of "Franks" (ancient Germanic people) as a generic term for Europeans during the period of the Crusades.

Originally "lingua franca" referred to a mix of mostly Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, Persian, French, Greek and Arabic. This mixed language (pidgin, creole language) was used for communication throughout the medieval and early modern Middle East as a diplomatic language; the generic description "lingua franca" has since become common for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another.

In an important sense, the terms "lingua franca" and "diplomatic language" remain distinct; the former refers largely to spoken languages which find common use, while the latter is typically limited to common written systems which do not directly find use among the common public. A prime example is Akkadian, which (as shown in the Amarna letters, ~1350 B.C.) was used for correspondence between Egypt and its Canaanite vassals, and neighboring kingdoms, as far away as Babylon. Akkadian, being one of the first "diplomatic languages", contained Sumerograms, from Sumer, the sumerogram being many hundreds of years older, from the beginning of written language. This diplomatic-level communication would, over time, serve language (hence cultural) transculturation, eventually developing the Greek and Roman writing systems, that we currently use today.