Lingua Franca

Column: 'Lingua Franca' - Australian Larrikinism in biweekly GameSetWatch-exclusive column by Daniel Johnson which discusses the relationship between language, culture and video games.

GameSetWatch 2009

Depending on the native languages of people speaking them, the pidgins collectively referred to as Lingua Franca also integrated elements from Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Portuguese, and other native languages of the Mediterranean.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Depending on the native languages of people speaking them, the pidgins collectively referred to as Lingua Franca also integrated elements from Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Portuguese, and other native languages of the Mediterranean.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Lingua Franca, from the Italian for “language of the Franks,” did not refer to Franks per se, nor to any language spoken by them.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

Lingua Franca, from the Italian for “language of the Franks,” did not refer to Franks per se, nor to any language spoken by them.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010

There was a little kerfuffle about it between issues I and II of the fanzine in a now defunct probably because it was so hip publication called Lingua Franca, in which Butler rebuked Miss Spentyouth and was rebuked in turn by others who accused her of not having a sense of humor.

Archive 2008-07-01 Tenured Radical 2008

Now that it seems to have shut down permanently, its longest-serving editor, Alexander Star, has brought out a memorial anthology, Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Franca, that is filled with the wit and energy for which the short-lived magazine (it lasted eleven years) was known.

In Memoriam Delbanco, Andrew 2003

He spoke in that jumble of languages in use at that time among the Mediterranean nations called Lingua Franca, for the negro did not understand Arabic.

The Middy and the Moors An Algerine Story Arthur Twidle 1859

I took a ticket for the only town on the railway list whose history I knew, and then in a third-class carriage made entirely of wood I settled down to a conversation with my kind; for though these people were not of my blood -- indeed, I am certain that for some hundreds of years not a drop of their blood has mingled with my own -- yet we understood each other by a common tongue called Lingua Franca, of which I have spoken in another place and am a past master.

Hills and the Sea Hilaire Belloc 1911

An interesting detail, especially given what we’ve seen about the loss of inflection in the history of English, is that the spoken languages referred to as Lingua Franca mainly used uninflected Italian: dropping inflection made Italian words easier for nonnative speakers to use.

The English Is Coming! Leslie Dunton-Downer 2010