I thought that "lingua franca" just meant "a language adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different." This is one of its meanings. I have heard English used in this way in Europe. I could understand two guys because they were communicating in my language. But another meaning of "lingua franca" is "a mixture of Italian with French, Greek, Arabic and Spanish, formerly used in the eastern Mediterranean." This must be what is meant on p. 314. Everard already knows medieval Latin and Greek and electronically acquires enough German, French and Italian to get by but decides against Arabic because any Saracens would probably at least know lingua franca.
The languages that he does acquire are still sometimes mutually incomprehensible sets of dialects. A linguist like JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis might have been able to write some interesting dialogues between time travellers and Tolkien would have been able to make a start on constructing Temporal.
3 comments:
Literally, "lingua franca" means "the tongue of the Franks" -- medieval Muslims referred to all Latin Christians as "Franks" (or "infidels", of course).
Basically it was a Romance dialect. At the time, there was a "dialect continuum" of Latin-derived languages from southern Spain through to Belgium and east into the Balkans.
If you went far enough down the chain, you'd be incomprehensible -- starting with a Vlach(Proto-Romanian) and moving west, or an Andalusian and moving north.
But there were no clear boundaries between the Romance languages, because they hadn't been standardized on politically selected 'standard' forms yet.
Italian was the first to have that happen, because of the cultural prestige of Tuscan (the source of standard Italian) in the middle ages. Tho' as recently as a century ago, most Italians didn't speak the standard form, and were only just acquiring a familiarity with it through compulsory education and universal military service.
Note: if you're a peasant and don't move around much, a local dialect is fine.
If your occupation requires a lot of mobility, you need to have something more widely understood.
It's a matter of the frequency and spread of communication outside your locality. The worldwide spread of English over the last few generations is a function of the increasing velocity and spread of communication -- as witness this blog. Sean's on the eastern fringe of this continent, I'm near the west coast, Paul is in England.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: a fascinating notion, persons like Anderson and Tolkien working out the beginnings of a language like Temporal!
Mr. Stirling: Ha! I still remember that London shop keeper being able to tell from my accent I came from Massachusetts, not just the US.
Yes, the British Empire and the US, between them, has turned English into a truly GLOBAL language. And will it evolve into something like the Anglic of the Technic stories?
Ad astra! Sean
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