The Italian term lingua franca was first used early in the seventeenth century. Its literal meaning was “frankish language,” and it was actually a mixture of French, Spanish, Greek, and Arabic that was spoken in Mediterranean ports as a common trading language. The phrase is used today to mean any common language that people who don’t have a common first language use to communicate with one another.
English has already become the official common language of airline pilots around the world. Since English-speaking peoples dominated the early development and growth of the airline industry, it became incumbent upon international commercial pilots and air traffic controllers to demonstrate minimum proficiency levels in the English language; their having a common language is now essential to avoiding accidents.
Computer programmers have also adopted English as their common language, because they believe that it has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore a better tool for their jobs.
For international diplomacy, linguistic rights have been equated with human rights, and so, although many languages are used in diplomatic circles, English has nevertheless gained currency as an international language and is the most commonly used diplomatic language,
This blog is not attempting to persuade or influence anyone to use English as a global lingua franca; it is simply acknowledging that it has, de facto, become one. That said, English should not be exclusive of non-English words that are clearer or more precise in certain areas, e.g., Italian for classical music and opera, French for ballet, or Swiss German for skiing. It is important to keep in mind that a functional and successful lingua franca does not try to suppress the use of foreign words, but rather tries to incorporate them—wherever that other language can more clearly express a particular feeling, or has a more diverse or specific terminology for a specific field of knowledge.
For thousands, of years, different groups of people created different common languages as the need arose, and, often, such languages evolved on their own, usually around ports or other hubs along trading routes, as trading languages. Such trading languages usually had as their base the language of the dominant trading country, but also incorporated words from the languages of the other nationalities of the people involved in the business activity.
Most people are aware that, in the last hundred years or so, a movement arose to create a synthetic global lingua franca, Esperanto. Many people, including global financier George Soros, tried to promote its use, yet somehow it was never globally embraced, probably because few people could afford to take time from their lives to learn a language that was at best an idealist’s dream, but that wasn’t actually spoken widely anywhere. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a global lingua franca did develop, quietly and without any official promotion. The language was English.
English has already become the official common language of airline pilots around the world. Since English-speaking peoples dominated the early development and growth of the airline industry, it became incumbent upon international commercial pilots and air traffic controllers to demonstrate minimum proficiency levels in the English language; their having a common language is now essential to avoiding accidents.
Computer programmers have also adopted English as their common language, because they believe that it has a richer technical vocabulary than any other language and is therefore a better tool for their jobs.
For international diplomacy, linguistic rights have been equated with human rights, and so, although many languages are used in diplomatic circles, English has nevertheless gained currency as an international language and is the most commonly used diplomatic language,
This blog is not attempting to persuade or influence anyone to use English as a global lingua franca; it is simply acknowledging that it has, de facto, become one. That said, English should not be exclusive of non-English words that are clearer or more precise in certain areas, e.g., Italian for classical music and opera, French for ballet, or Swiss German for skiing. It is important to keep in mind that a functional and successful lingua franca does not try to suppress the use of foreign words, but rather tries to incorporate them—wherever that other language can more clearly express a particular feeling, or has a more diverse or specific terminology for a specific field of knowledge.
At the same time, the essential meanings and usages of English should not be allowed to be degraded, or the whole value of communicating in a common language will be lost. The blogger welcomes questions and submissions from readers regarding English grammar and usage, common areas of miscommunication, and examples of words from other languages that have become part of English, “the world’s common language.
