Skip to main content Skip to Search Box

Definition: lingua franca from Philip's Encyclopedia

Language that serves as communication between people who otherwise lack a common tongue. A lingua franca may be a simplified form of the dominant language, such as Pidgin English, or it may be a hybrid, such as Swahili, which consists of words of both Arabic and Bantu origins.


lingua franca

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(lĭng'gwӘ frăng'kӘ), an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutually unintelligible tongues in order to communicate with one another. Such a language frequently is used primarily for commercial purposes. Examples are the several varieties of the hybrid pidgin English (see pidgin ); Swahili, a native language of E Africa (see Swahili language ); Chinook jargon, a lingua franca formerly used in the American Northwest that was a mixture of Chinook, other Native American languages, English, and French; and a variety of Malay (called bazaar Malay ), which served as a compromise language in the area of British Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and neighboring regions (see Malayo-Polynesian languages ). The original lingua franca was a tongue actually called Lingua Franca (or Sabir) that was employed for commerce in the Mediterranean area during the Middle Ages. Now extinct, it had…
4,247 results

Full text Article lingua franca

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(lĭng'gwӘ frăng'kӘ), an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutually unintelligible tongues in order to communicate with one another. Such a language frequently is used primarily for…
| 256 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article LINGUA FRANCA

From Dictionary of Race, Ethnicity & Culture
While the actual Lingua Franca was a language that developed in the eastern Mediterranean basin - probably around the time of the first Crusades (1095) - following early commercial and military relations between Europeans and Arabs, the general term lingua franca’ refers to any language used for…
| 255 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics
Refers to any form of language serving as a means of communication between speakers of different languages. Lingua francas (or lingue franche) may be ‘natural’ languages (e.g. French used between a speaker of Lingala and one of Bambara in Africa), PIDGINS (e.g. Tok Pisin used between speakers of…
| 117 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Any language that is used as a means of communication by groups who do not themselves normally speak that language; for example, English is a lingua franca used by Japanese doing business in Finland, or by Swedes in Saudi Arabia. The term comes from the mixture of French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, …
| 111 words
Key concepts:
| 55 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
| 96 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
| 58 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article Lingua Franca

From Collins English Dictionary
| 34 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary
| 82 words
Key concepts:

Full text Article lingua franca

From Philip's Encyclopedia
| 50 words
Key concepts:
Mind Map

Stack overflow
More Library Resources