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.
12 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
Sean: chicken and egg. It probably started with the Danelaw; Old Norse was a language closely related to Old English, but they differed in grammar. Simplifying it was a way to talk to people who spoke the other language. Add in the effects of the Norman Conquest. English has some (though not all ) of the characteristics of a "contact Creole" language.
OTOH, some parts of it are fiendishly difficult for outsiders. The "th" sound, for instance!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And maybe the "wh" sound as well? My understanding is that people speaking languages like Chinese might say "wat" instead of "what."
I would expect that simplifying of English to continue as it hypothetically morphs into Anglic.
Ad astra! Sean
Ggggggrrrrrrrrrrrr, I meant to say "...might have trouble saying "wat"....
Sean
When I was in China in 2023, we got "assigned" a female university student who studied English. Her pronunciation improved vastly over the 4 days we were together.
I have a friend who was born in China in the early 1960s. She was studying in Canada when the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, so she was able to stay in Canada. Her English doesn't have many clues that she learned it as a second language. Her accent is very much N. American. I suppose one clue is that sometimes when the topic of conversation is scientific I sometimes have to explain a term because she knows the Chinese but not the English for the concept. When she was listening to "Project Hail Mary" as an audiobook she asked about "astrophage" and I explained the Greek roots that had been combined to make up the term. Chinese doesn't do much borrowing of terms from other languages.
After I had known her for a few years I learned that her name 'Hai' means Sea in Chinese, then I recalled seeing 'Bo Hai' on a map as the name of a bay off the East China Sea.
By the standard of being multilingual I am uneducated. I just know bits of other languages from the origins of English words & seeing French on cereal boxes ;)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Mr. Stirling: I have a dark suspicion those "minders" assigned to your group were supposed to keep an eye on you all and report to the secret police on what you said and did. It would be natural for the young lady assigned to you to have her English improving so much because of practice and use.
Jim: A bit surprised scientifically educated Chinese knew so little about English language scientific terms (which used Greek and Latin). I'm sure they had access to English scientific texts and journals.
Ad astra! Sean
She did say that her parents got their scientific education largely in English. I do have the impression that under Mao China moved away from using English or other west European languages as much as possible, so that to some extent explains why she didn't get much English in her scientific education until later.
Mao also explains her complaint that she didn't get any history in school, nobody knew what was safe to teach, so she is catching up later in life, partly from conversations with me.
Kaor, Jim!
That explains what seemed a bit odd to me, during Mao's dictatorship the regime banned use of scientific terminology of Western origin for nonsensical ideological/political reasons.
Yes, it was very dangerous to teach accurate history in mainland China, esp. during the chaos of the lunatic "Great" Cultural Revolution. Safer to parrot the Party Line, no matter how absurd or false it was.
Far too many years ago I went thru a Chinese phase and read quite a lot of Chinese history, including extracts from classical works of Chinese history such as the RECORDS OF THE GRAND HISTORIAN and the HISTORY OF THE FORMER HAN. And works by modern historians, such as Jonathan Spence's EMPEROR OF CHINA, an "autobiography" of the K'ang-hsi Emperor, selected and compiled from that ruler's writings.
Ad astra! Sean
Oh, yeah, she was quite open about that.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good, I'm glad that young woman was so open about her task. No deception was attempted.
Ad astra! Sean
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