Talk:List of lingua francas

Old talk

This page has been split from lingua franca, and as such there is talk about the text of this article over at Talk:Lingua franca. Please check there to read comments other editors have made before making new ones. Specifically, there are comments about Old Norse, French, the letter to Japan from Kublai Kahn, and Telugu. Thanks! — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 00:36, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Changing title to "List of linguas francas"

It's a Romance adjective, after all. Why not linguas francas? —Tamfang (talk) 18:43, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Good question. I've never heard the plural of lingua franca before, so I didn't give it much thought when I split the page. Feel free to move it if you want. I don't have a strong opinion on the matter. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 21:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I suppose I should have checked this before the page move, but these dictionary sites all suggest the plural form should be "lingua francas", or perhaps "linguae francae". [1][2][3][4][5] However, the Hutchinson Encyclopedia has it as "linguas francas".[6] I can't find a good explanation of Romance adjectives to support this though - does anyone know of one? Also, one person at this Yahoo Questions discussion seems to think it should be "linguas franca", and this would seem to fit the pattern of "Estates General" that Tamfang suggested in the edit summary, though it is different from the current article title. However, most others at the Yahoo discussion seemed to agree with "linguae francae". Myself, I am inclined to agree with the dictionaries' plural of "lingua francas", but I am open to persuasion. What do people think? — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 00:09, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Adjectives in Romance languages (among others) normally match their nouns as to gender and number: if the noun is plural, the adjective must be plural.

Because of its Italian origin, the most correct plural is lingue franche (compare Latin nominative linguae francae), but even I find that jarring in an English article. When I raised the question, I forgot that it's Italian, and so proposed a Spanish form – though truer Spanish is lenguas. Well, the Vulgar Latin would be linguas francas (from the classical Latin accusative case).

linguas franca is an interesting compromise, putting the plural marker on the noun but, because English lacks adjective agreement, not on the adjective. (The article in Interlingua Wikipedia uses this form.)

I hope the phrase is transparent enough that most readers recognize lingua franca as a kind of lingua, rather than a kind of franca! —Tamfang (talk) 00:49, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Ah, now I see. Thanks for the explanation! So we are agreed that in the original romance-language version it should be some form where the adjective and the noun agree, although that varies according to the language you pick.

I think here, however, the real issue is whether lingua franca is considered an English word or not. I would argue that it is, based on the dictionary entries I linked to above. As a bonus I found that Britannica uses lingua francas as well (there is a mention near the end of the article).

Wikipedia's guidelines are to use other languages sparingly and to use the name which is most frequently used to refer to the subject in English-language reliable sources; in this case I think that squarely points at going with the dictionary version of lingua francas. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 05:25, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a note to say I've moved the page back to List of lingua francas. I think the Wikipedia policies are pretty clear in this case, but I am of course willing to discuss this if people think otherwise. — Mr. Stradivarius (drop me a line) 06:08, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Lingua francas is obviously the normal English for this kind of plural - and is used by most authorative sources. Linguas franca is patently NOT English usage at all - and is based on a silly affectation. The idea is that the plural should go onto the part of an expression that represents the noun, rather than the adjective - but why? In English the adjective almost always comes first - in anglicising a foreign "adjective last" construction like this it is natural for the plural marking "s" to go on the last element, even if it is an adjective. More importantly, that's where almost everyone actually puts it. Only stupid pedantry of the worst kind suggests that this is something to be "corrected", or that common usage in this case needs to be changed. As people have pointed out, we would not even be conforming to foreign practice, since in most European languages an adjective agrees with its noun in case, number and gender. Mercifully, English nouns to not have case at all, nor, in the grammatical sense, gender. "Agreement" of adjectives with their nouns, even in number, has not been used in English for about a thousand years - and there is absolutely no suggestion that I am aware of that it be reintroduced. Unless someone is seriously suggesting "linguas francas" ??? Bah!! - humbug!! ----Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:33, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone write attorney generals? — You say or at least imply that –as –as fails to "agree ... in case, number and gender". How? —contrarian Tamfang (talk) 03:32, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I guess just about everyone SAYS "attorney generals". There is a case that could be made for "attorneys general" (or, in Australia, "governers general") in written prose - but even there my own verdict would be that this is a bit affected. The point is that we don't want any more cases like this to creep in - especially when all the best dictionaries favour "lingua francas" anyway. (If you don't believe us look them up!)

In English, we simply don't have agreement between adjectives and nouns. They still have it in many other languages but in English we don't. That is all I said (or meant to imply). Hence "linguas francas" would be INCORRECT English of course. No prizes whatever for making up "extra grammar". --Soundofmusicals (talk) 04:42, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

OR imposing foreign grammar onto English words because they were once "borrowed" from another language. Sorry to raise this again, but the erroneous statement that "linguae francae" is "from the Latin" had crept into the lead of the article. This just ain't so. Its not "from the Latin" at all. "Lingua franca" is not a Latin phrase. Simple as that. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:43, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I can't believe the people who tried to correct this were shouted down. Yes, English doesn't normally have subject adjective agreement. Still that doesn't mean you pluralize the adjective?

For example in English we say - mothers-in-law, attorneys general, ladies-in-waiting.

To continually scorn correct and clear communication as an "affectation" is merely a sign of ignorance, willful or otherwise. 2607:FB91:2D20:4E69:205B:501:950A:8A84 (talk) 14:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Malay / Indonesian

Whether one considers Bahasa Indonesia to be one of the several dialects of colloquial Malay - or whether one wants (like the Scots do with their variant of English) to emphasise its status as an independant language - it still makes sense to mention both in the heading to a section that considers them together. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:39, 10 June 2012 (UTC)

Dutch?

I was somewhat surprised that i can find no trace of dutch in the list? During their prominent time in trade, from the 17th up to at least 18th century, their massive trade fleet and establishment of colonies made Dutch one of the common languages. Even if not "superbig" it was still used as a "lingua franca". DW75 (talk) 17:55, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Africaans in Southern Africa is the main example I can think of offhand. Most Dutch people I know would rather this reference appeared under its present heading! The Dutch seem to have been better at learning other people's languages (from Malay to Zulu) rather than getting other people to use theirs. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:58, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Azeri

Nikolai Trubetzkoy: "Кумыкский язык является «международным» почти всего Северного Кавказа (от Каспийского моря до Кабарды включительно), азербайджанский господствует в большей части Закавказья (кроме Черноморского побережья) и, кроме того, в Турецкой Армении, Курдистане и в Северной Персии." / "Kumyk is the "interntional language" for almost the whole North Caucasus (from the Caspian Sea to Kabarda inclusively); Azeri dominates in most of the Transcaucasia (except the Black Sea coast) and besides that, in Turkish Armenia, Kurdistan and Northern Persia." (Наследие Чингизхана, Agraf, 1999, pg. 478). Parishan (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The opinion of one author is not enough to make it uncontested fact. Armenians, Turks, and Kurds spoke Turkish with one another in Turkish Armenia - whence and how did the Azerbaijani dialect make inroads so far west in a region where there were no Azerbaijanis - much less an identifiable Azerbaijani community - to begin with? How is it that this fact has simply gone unreported in most scholarly sources? The fact of the matter is is that you're grasping for straws and citing an author who adhered to a particular ideology whose main theories were born out in the early 20th century. This is, after all, the same Trubetskoy who called the Armenians "parasites." All I have to do is refer all the readers to the discussion that took place on the talk page five years ago [7], where you were unable to advance these groundless claims across.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 16:47, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, MarshallBagramyan, but you do not seem to know much about the topic. If a user questions the widely known fact of a historical presence of ethnic and self-identifying Azeris in eastern Turkey, he or she would not be able to contribute much to the discussion. If you followed that discussion carefully, you would see tons of proof of Azeris living and Azeri being spoken in eastern Turkey: Most widely spoken is Azeri (varieties of which are spoken in eastern Turkey and the Republic of Azerbaijan, where it is the official language, and in northern Iraq [8], let alone this article, this map, and an Ethnologue report, which the user that was discussing the topic with me, had nothing academic to argue against. His response (I cannot even call it argumentation) was simply ridiculous and incomparable to the amount of sources I presented. So this version is going to stay until someone proves there was a different lingua franca in the area. Parishan (talk) 17:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, grasping for straws. The first source merely says that Azeri is spoken in Eastern Turkey (and it's referring to the time article was written, not when the Ottoman Empire still existed), and even then it doesn't say it was the lingua franca of the region. Nor do the maps demonstrate that Azeri was the common tongue of the peoples of Turkish Armenia. This is either a case of poor reading comprehension or an ill-faith attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of other editors and unilaterally foist a certain editor's version upon others, despite compelling evidence to the contrary. So, no, it cannot stay since there are serious problems barring the inclusion of your version.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 17:55, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

MarshallBagramyan, I have no yet started presenting sources on Azeri being the lingua franca. For now, that was merely a response to your comment: "whence and how did the Azerbaijani dialect make inroads so far west in a region where there were no Azerbaijanis - much less an identifiable Azerbaijani community - to begin with?". Does this mean we have come to an agreement that Azeri has been spoken in Eastern Turkey for at least 108 years (the map is from 1897), contrary to your statement at the beginning of the discussion? If so, I will proceed to discussing the lingua franca issue. Parishan (talk) 00:20, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Your sources didn't satisfy me to the least (even if they were originally addressing the issue of the arrival of the Azerbaijanis in what is now eastern Turkey) But please begin on the lingua franca issue, which is what I'm so interested in hearing about.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 06:08, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Hang on a second. Do you still insist that eastern Turkey is "a region where there were no Azerbaijanis"? Because if you still do, even following neutral academic sources which challenge that belief of yours, our discussion is not going to go anywhere. Parishan (talk) 07:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I know that Azerbaijanis currently do live in Turkey. I met many when I visited Kars. Now whether or not one or two Tatars – since it is still inappropriate to label them Azerbaijanis at this time – may have crossed the porous border from Iran and Russia and settled or worked in Erzurum and Kharpert is not the issue here. Let's see those sources telling us how an insignificant minority population was able to impose its dialect if not language over the vast swath of the six provinces.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 16:43, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry, MarshallBagramyan, but it is important for me to hear feedback from you on whether or not we agree that Azeris have populated Eastern Turkey in significant numbers before we move on, because in all honestly, I am considering applying for WP:DR on this. I simply do not wish to waste time having this discussion with someone expressing flat-out POV. This discussion is taking place for a reason, and so far it seems to me like a typical case of WP:IDONTHEARTHAT. After tons of evidence on my part about the Azeri population in Eastern Anatolia, you, who literally denied the mere possibility of Azeri presence there at the beginning of discussion, condescended to admitting there were "one or two Tatars or worked there" - I am sorry, but this is beyond being neutral and productive. Also if you want to drag this discussion into arguing whether "Azerbaijani Tatars" refers to ethnic Azeris, this is not happening either (as long as you prove to me that Tiflis and Tbilisi are two different cities). Anyway, I cannot assess this weaseling your way out of a clear question as a "yes" or "no"; and I have all the reasons to believe that the arguments I am going to present are going to be treated in the same way. So let me ask you again: do we agree, in light of the sources about (Iranica, Ethnologue and others) that Azeris (i.e. Azerbaijani Tatars) lived (not leaped over the border as guest workers) in Eastern Turkey and that Azeri was spoken there in the mentioned period? Parishan (talk) 20:49, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

You're misrepresenting the problem. I don't have to admit or accept anything. This entire discussion is incumbent on you to introduce sources that demonstrate the point you are trying to get across in the article. You consistently claim that Azerbaijani was the lingua franca in Turkish or Western Armenia. Fine, let's see some reliable sources saying that. The ones you have provided thus far fail to show that; the experience of thousands of Armenians, Turks, and Kurds living in that region nullifies that notion as well, since none of them, including their own descendants today, wherever they are, seek recourse for communication not in the Azerbaijani language, but in Turkish. The Armenians of Turkish Armenia spoke the Turkish used by those in the administration and that spoken by their Turkish neighbors, not some dialect of the language itself.--Marshal Bagramyan (talk) 16:42, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

MarshallBagramyan is correct here, Parishan. Stop dancing around the issue with small points, and produce multiple reliable sources which explicitly discuss Azerbaijani as a lingua franca in the area. Perhaps MarshallBagramyan was wrong in the first place to get distracted by conversations about other topics, but we should not be building up a picture from small points to large ones; doing that is WP:OR. If you have the sources, present them here, and if there's still no agreement, then we can jump into DR. Qwyrxian (talk) 22:05, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Turkish

Wasn't Turkish the lingua franca of the Ottoman Empire? Anonymous96.226.22.43 (talk) 04:33, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

turkish is still lingua franca between gypsies and albanians in the southeast europe, and in the west between armenians and kurds (incl. dersim zazaish speaking armenians), pontians, manavs etc. but there should be a good source to add it into the list. 188.155.24.116 (talk) 22:09, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

"Widely spoken languages" are not necessarily "lingua francas".

• A language may (or may not) have many native speakers, spread over a wide area.

• It may (or may not) be widely used between non-native speakers as a common language.

These are totally different things (although many languages belong to both categories, of course). English, for instance, is not a lingua franca in Australia - it's the national language, since almost everyone born in Australia speaks English as their first language. English IS a lingua franca in many other former members of the British Empire, since it is widely used as a common language between people whose first languages are other than English. In exactly the same way, no one would describe German as a "lingua franca" in Germany. Nor, might I suggest is it a lingua franca in Austria, or several other countries and regions in central and eastern Europe where German is by far the most common first language.

I have in fact deleted a whole paragraph from the "German" section of this article because it ignored the distinction - and thus strayed "off topic". I suspect a good deal of trimming of other sections should be done - just to keep the article relevant to its title. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 11:11, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Tupi

There have actually been two branches of the Tupi lingua franca in Brazil, which was actually known as "língua geral". The southern branch is known as Língua geral paulista, which was spread by the bandeirantes and was completely replaced by Portuguese and was extinct by the 20th century. The northern branch, the Língua Geral Amazônica, is known today as Nheengatu, and it is still used by some peoples in the Amazonian region.191.176.81.234 (talk) 22:08, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Lead/Africaans

This "list" article does not need a long or complicated lead - in particular we don't need to start up separate lists of "examples". I have severely cut the lead, which still seems to cover its function of introducing the subject without the risk of attracting chauvinistic contention. The formatting of the section for Africaans seems to have got disturbed, and extraneous matter inserted - I have (tried to) fix this. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:02, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

You mean Afrikaans. The statement is also a bit misleading. The NP had both Afrikaans and English as official languages for 'White South Africa' with institutions having one or both languages as official and lingua franca. The homelands had Bantu languages as official languages, but may have used Afrikaans, English or both as well. So it wasn't about establishing Afrikaans as lingua franca, but protecting it's official character in specific parts of the country were Afrikaners were living. 105.4.4.69 (talk) 03:32, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Keep to the definition!

English is not a lingua franca in Australia - nor is German in Liechtenstein. Widespread use of a language is very simply not what we are talking about in this article - the assumption is that most English speakers of (e.g.) Australia, just like German speakers in many countries (especially those in Central Europe) share verbal communication with their neighbours of the same (first) linguistic persuasion. Even if a person from Australia were to communicate with someone from Liechtenstein in (probably very bad) French, because they could both remember a little from their high school days, this is still not really what we are talking about here (although it is closer to the mark. All else confusion. Just think about it for a moment. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:47, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Per the Australia example, there is a clear line of distinction between an indisputable state language and lingua franca. The state language is not written into the constitution in numerous countries simply because there haven't been any situations whereby it needs to be spelled out, i.e., making a legal status case about the obvious. With citizenship tests having become more complex in the last decade or so, the level of English language proficiency has been written into everything but the constitution itself. Reading between the lines in order to create ones own WP:SYNTH is a breach of WP:NOR. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 20:34, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

I would think we would want to have the main body of the article limited to the narrowest commonly used definition of lingua franca to leave room for articles on contact language (which includes creoles, pidgins, etc) and on vehicular language, which is sometimes limited to labeling the language chosen by two individual speakers to communicate to each other (eg, an 18th century Danish scientist writing to an Italian contemporary in Latin, French, or German, none of which are lingua franca in the strict sense that contributors to this article would be wise to use). DCDuring (talk) 13:08, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Modern lingua francas?

Perhaps a section titled "Modern lingua francas" should be made to distinguish lingua francas spoken today from historic ones. I know I personally would benefit from this as would other users. I don't feel like sifting through the entire article to find which ones are historic or contemporary.

— Tha†emoover†here (talk) 22:56, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Or perhaps there could be a section titled "Historic lingua francas" if there's far more examples of modern lingua francas. Or even "Global lingua francas", though this would likely be limited to no more than 5-10 languages.

— Tha†emoover†here (talk) 23:02, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

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Lingua franca means I speak Language A, you speak Language B, and we communicate in Language C

Totally agreed with everyone saying this is just a list of widely spoken languages.

If I speak English, you speak German, and we communicate in English, that doesn't make English a lingua franca. And then when you speak German, your friend speaks Hungarian, and you communicate in German, that doesn't make German a lingua franca.

But if your friend speaks Hungarian, her friend speaks Romanian, and they communicate in English, that *does* make English a lingua franca. 2604:2000:F183:37F0:70F0:86A7:13AF:C038 (talk) 19:26, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with the main point that a language is not a "lingua franca" just because it is widely used as a second language. A lingua franca, strictly defined (as it should be in an encyclopedia), is a widely used mixed language that is nobody's first language. It is a kind of contact language and can serve as a vehicular language between individuals. English, which is not a mixed language, is a vehicular language for many because it is a first or second language for both parties who desire to communicate. DCDuring (talk) 13:19, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes, but this definition of lingua franca is evidently much more restrictive than the one used in this article, (and, more importantly, the "parent" article). That a language is the language of a large community of native speakers (a vernacular) does not necessarily disqualify it from being used as a lingua franca in another context, at least in the sense of the word used here, although of course it doesn't make it a lingua franca either - English is not a lingua franca in Australia, but it is in Papua New Guinea. Regrettably, this distinction is hard to maintain consistently in an article like this, and we don't always quite succeed. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:41, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

The "German" section

The current section of this article treating the German language has two real flaws:

• It still confuses "distribution of people speaking German as a first language" and "contexts in which German is used to communicate between people, neither of whom is a native German speaker". One must, once more, insist that these are different things.
• The section bears signs of being (very badly) translated from a German text (perhaps the German Wikipedia) and verges on incomprehensibility.

I have (almost) no German at all myself - or I would be tempted to re-do this section. It would be grand if someone better qualified could step up to the plate in my stead! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:09, 27 September 2019 (UTC)