lingua franca, language used as a means of communication between populations speaking vernaculars that are not mutually intelligible. The term was first used during the Middle Ages to describe a French- and Italian-based jargon, or pidgin, that was developed by Crusaders and traders in the eastern Mediterranean and characterized by the invariant forms of its nouns, verbs, and adjectives. These changes have been interpreted as simplifications of the Romance languages.
I realize that I have understood the generic term, "lingua franca," but not its origin.
In Poul Anderson's Technic History, Polesotechnic League merchants use "League Latin," which no doubt involves a simplified grammar.
In Anderson's Time Patrol series, "Temporal," an artificial language, is a lingua franca for time travellers.
For a mission in 1137, Time Patrolman Manse Everard accepts brain implants of some of the local dialects that are in the process of becoming German, French and Italian. He already knows medieval Greek and Latin and decides against Arabic because any Saracens should at least know lingua franca.
I regard fluency in more than one language as part of being educated. In other words, I am not properly educated. I wish that we had been taught French, Latin and Irish properly at school. (I was at secondary school in the Republic of Ireland.) I wish also that I had realized the importance of learning languages but that was impossible at the time. What I realize now I was incapable of realizing then.
2 comments:
Pidgins tend to have simplified grammar -- lack of inflections, positional syntax, etc. English has some elements of that.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And that relative simplifying of English must have contributed to it becoming a de facto global language.
Ad astra! Sean
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