A note on lingua franca

A note on lingua franca

On the Human Condition Series # 01

The subject of lingua franca is an interesting one as it is the only means by which people can start to understand one-another in order to get some kind of world peace.

The term lingua franca

Lingua franca means ‘free language”. 

A lingua franca is a language that can be used freely by anyone without being considered part of the people, race or area from which the language originates. Using a lingua franca, then, does not reflect one’s race or culture. It simply is a
way to make oneself understood by an unknown interlocutor. Example, two people meet at an airport. They don’t know each other nor one another’s country of origin. They first try English in the phrase “Excuse me, do you speak English?” That is using lingua franca.

The term originates from the time of the crusades in the Middle East. These were French-supported and the armies communicated mainly in French. Pockets of French speaking people in the Middle East, however, did not survive the Muslim conquest of the 13th century after which Arabic become the universal language in that area. However, French had remained the language of the upper-classes until very recently, until civil war broke out in Libanon in 1975.

European history of lingua franca

There have been several lingua franca’s but not many. Here’s a list for Europe and Middle-East, with the approximate era of useage:

Lingua Franca in Europe and Middle East	Approximate period as a lingua franca
English	1918 – present day
French ( diplomacy and upper-classes all across Europe and Middle East)	1100 A.D.  -  1975
Latin (science, diplomacy)	500 A.D. – 1800
Classic Greek (science, trade, literature, the New Testament of the Bible)	300 B.C. – 460 A.D.
Aramaic (Jesus spoke Aramaic, not Hebrew. Parts of the Old Testament.)	900 B.C. – 800 A.D.
Akkadic	1600 B.C. – 500 B.C.

For instance, when Gaius Julius Caeser crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. he did not say “Alea iacta est” (the die is cast), a mistranslation we learn at school. He said “ἀνερρίφθω κύβος ‎[anerrhíphthō kúbos]” (let the die (‘cube’) be rolled) which was a well-known line from a popular play by the Athenian playwright Menander (342 - 290 B.C). It had become some kind of idiom and appears in several writings. It means something like “let us begin the adventure”.  It was used, for instance, to nudge a lover into one’s bed. It is not unlike most people today still know the first words of a famous line from the stage play William Shakespeare wrote 460 years ago: “To be or not to be, that is the question.”

5000 year old Sumerian cuneiform

Before Akkadic, there was the famous Sumerian language and culture that was dominant from 2400 till 1600 B.C. but completely lost until it was rediscovered in 1845 by coincidence at an excavation. (Ill.) A civilization that ultimately had defined our Western civilization, had been lost and completely forgotten for over 3000 years.

Mandarin as lingua franca in the Far East

In the Far East, a new lingua franca is in the making. It is Mandarin Chinese. All over the world, every Chinese person, citizen of China or not, had or has to learn Mandarin. Mandarin used to be a Chinese dialect mainly spoken around Beijing. Now, it is the mothertongue of about 70% of the population. Many people in countries that deal with China, have started to learn and speak it, too. The reasoning behind a unified language is not just administrative. It also empowers the Chinese people, for Chinese languages and dialects differ greatly and, for 3000 years have acted as barriers of communication between Chinese provinces.

Chinese for "Standard Chinese"

Chinese writing is superior to European alphabet

By the way, Chinese writing, indeed, the very characters that are mocked and scoffed at in the West, is far superior to our alphabeth. For Chinese writing can be understood by everybody as it is fully independent of any spoken language. It had been designed that way around 700 B.C. In Europe, just after 800 A.D., we had one chance to have such a useful system, too. Unfortunately, Charlemagne, who could not read or write himself when he became king, was not that clever. If he would have been, anyone in Europe could have read and understood any newspaper or book ever issued after Charlemagne’s reign anywhere in Europe.

An Argentinian tango master got a culture shock in Amsterdam from putting faith in Spanish as a universal lingua franca

In 2007, the daughter of a friend of mine brought her boyfriend from Buenos Aires to Amsterdam. It was the only time I met someone who actually suffered from a real culture shock, in psychological as well as in medical terms. 

It had never occurred to him that there existed billions of people who did not understand a word of Spanish. All of the tourists and foreigners he had ever met in Agentina and its neighbouring countries, everyone had been able to converse with him in Spanish, one way or the other. And in his mind, Spain was the most important country of Europe (as he had been taught since kindergarten), so “surely everybody will know at least some Spanish, won’t they?”
Another culture shock hit him in reverse when he discovered that there were plenty of accomplished tango masters in Amsterdam. He had expected to bring something very special to the table. He was a professional dance master of some fame who had specialized in tango. He did not last six weeks. 

These days, culture shock is rare but, apparently, in spite of the ubiquitousness of internet, it is still possible. He should have known what a lingua franca is and should have known that Spanish is no lingua franca over here. The ignorance of youth, spiced by the typical Spanish haughtiness that entices women and makes them swoon, almost killed him, just like my own curiousity sometimes almost killed me.

(Recommended reading: “Empires of the Word, a language history of the world”, Nicholas Oster, 2005, 600 pgs. Published by Harper Perennial, London. ISBN 0-00-7711871-6)