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Definition of lingua franca: "bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_fr
by mgraupner 3y ago
Definition of lingua franca: "bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
And it does not mean French, but Frankisch tongue. And by the definition this phrase means "language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language" - which is English nowadays, at least in the Western Hemisphere.
- CRConrad 3y ago> And it does not mean French, but Frankisch tongue. Yeah, but "Frankish" in the sense of what we now call French. What is nowadays called "Fränkisch" is the dialect of German spoken in the north-west corner of Bavaria, and that sure as fuck wasn't what was used as a universal pidgin around the Mediterranean in the days of the Crusades. > And by the definition this phrase means "language systematically used to make communication possible between groups of people who do not share a native language" - which is English nowadays, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Yup. Which in the days of the Crusades was a mixture of many tongues, prominent among them knights from, if not then, then what is now France and whose language(s) even then were seen as variants or close relatives of that "Frankish" we now call French.