A lingua franca is a language systematically used to make communication possible between people not sharing a first language, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both speakers' first languages. Examples of lingua francas are numerous, and exist on every continent. The most obvious example is English, which is the current lingua franca of international business, science, technology and aviation. There are many other lingua francas centralized on particular regions, such as Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish.
The popularity of languages changes over time, and there are many lingua francas that are of historical importance. These include French, which was the language of European diplomacy from the 17th century until the mid-20th century, and Classical Chinese, which served as both the written lingua franca and the diplomatic language in Far East Asia until the early 20th century. French and Chinese are still significant lingua francas today.
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Afrikaans is spoken as a first language by many millions of people in South Africa, both white and non-white, and as a second language by millions more. During apartheid, the South African government aimed to establish it as the primary 'lingua franca' in South Africa and South African-controlled South-West Africa (now Namibia), although English was also in common use. Since the end of apartheid, to avoid any political or ethnic problems, English has been widely adopted as the sole lingua franca. Many Afrikaans company names have been dropped, such as those of South African Airways and the South African Broadcasting Corporation, which are now solely to be referred to by their English names in official documentation. Afrikaans is still widely used, especially by the adult population in everyday speech; however, English is becoming more popular among the younger generation. Afrikaans itself is also still developing, recently including many more English loan words and spelling conventions.
There are more Arabic speakers in Africa than Asia. It not only spoken in the countries on the south coast of the Mediterranean, but across the Sahara as far as the Sahel. There are Arabic speakers in Mali, Chad and Maidaguri State in Nigeria. It is also widely spoken as a second language in the Horn of Africa and is an official language in both Eritrea and Somalia. Arabic is also an official language in Comoros. (See Arabic in Asia below.)
During the rise of Berber dynasties like Almoravids and Almohads between 1040 and 1500, Berber was the lingua franca of North Africa. Today the language is less influential due to its suppression and marginalization, and the adoption of French and Arabic by the political regimes of the Berber world as working languages. However, Tuareg, a branch of within the Berber languages, is still playing the role of a lingua franca to some extent in some vast parts of the Sahara Desert especially in southern Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Libya.
Fanagalo or Fanakalo is a pidgin based on the Zulu, English, and Afrikaans languages. It was used as a lingua franca mainly in the mining industries in South Africa, however in this role it is being increasingly eclipsed by English which is viewed as being more neutral politically.[1]
Fula (Fula: Fulfulde or Pulaar or Pular, depending on the region; French: Peul) the language of the Fula people or Fulani (Fula: Fulɓe; French: Peuls) and associated groups such as the Toucouleur. Fula is spoken in all countries directly south of the Sahara (such as Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Mali…). It is spoken mainly by Fula people, but is also used as a lingua franca by several populations of various origin, throughout Western Africa.
Hausa is widely spoken through Nigeria and Niger and recognised in neighbouring states such as Ghana, Benin, and Cameroon. The reason for this is that Hausa people used to be traders who led caravans with goods (cotton, leather, slaves, food crops etc.) through the whole West African region, from the Niger Delta to the Atlantic shores at the very west edge of Africa. They also reached North African states through Trans-Saharan routes. Thus trade deals in Timbuktu in modern Mali, Agadez, Ghat, Fez in Northern Africa, and other trade centers were often concluded in Hausa.
Krio is the most widely spoken language throughout Sierra Leone even though its native speakers, the Sierra Leone Creole people or Krios (a community of about 300,000 descendants of formerly enslaved people from the West Indies, United States and Britain), make up only about 5% of the country's population. The Krio language unites all the different ethnic groups, especially in their trade and interaction with each other. Krio is also spoken in The Gambia.
Lingala is used by over 10 million speakers throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa) and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic, although it has only about two million native speakers.[2] Its status is comparable to that of Swahili in eastern Africa.
Between 1880 and 1900, the colonial administration, in need of a common language for the region, adopted a simplified form of Bobangi, the language of the Bangala people, which became Lingala. Spoken Lingala has many loanwords from French, inflected with Lingala affixes.
The largely interintelligible Manding languages of West Africa serve as lingua francas in various places. For instance Bambara is the most widely spoken language in Mali, and Jula (almost the same as Bambara) is commonly used in western Burkina Faso and northern Côte d'Ivoire. Manding languages have long been used in regional commerce, so much so that the word for trader, jula, was applied to the language currently known by the same name. Other varieties of Manding are used in several other countries, such as Guinea, The Gambia, and Senegal.
The Sango language is a lingua franca developed for intertribal trading in the Central African Republic. It is based on the Northern Ngbandi language spoken by the Sango people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo but with a large vocabulary of French loan words. It has now been institutionalised as an official language of the Central African Republic.
Swahili is used throughout large parts of East Africa as a lingua franca, despite being the mother tongue of a relatively small ethnic group on the East African coast and nearby islands in the Indian Ocean. At least as early as the late 18th century, Swahili was used along trading and slave routes that extended west across Lake Tanganyika and into the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo. Swahili rose in prominence throughout the colonial era, and has become the predominant African language of Tanzania and Kenya. Some contemporary members of non-Swahili ethnic groups speak Swahili more often than their mother tongues, and many choose to raise their children with Swahili as their first language, leading to the possibility that several smaller East African languages will fade as Swahili transitions from being a regional lingua franca to a regional first language.
Wolof is a widely spoken lingua franca of Senegal and The Gambia (especially the capital, Banjul). It is the native language of approximately 5 million Wolof people in Senegal, and is spoken as a second language by an equal number.
In the Middle East, from around 2500BCE to 1500BCE, forms of Akkadian were the universally recognized language. It was used throughout the Akkadian empire as well as internationally as a diplomatic language—for example between Egypt and Babylon—well after the fall of the Akkadian empire itself and even while Aramaic was more common in Babylon.
Arabic, the native language of the Arabs, who originally came from the Arabian Peninsula, became the "lingua franca" of the Islamic (Arab) Empire (from CE 733 – 1492), which at a certain point spread from the borders of China and Northern India through Central Asia, Persia, Asia Minor, Middle East, North Africa all the way to Spain and Portugal in the west.
Arabic was also used by people neighbouring the Islamic Empire. During the Islamic Golden Age, Arabic was the language of science and diplomacy (around CE 1200), when more books were written in Arabic than in any other language in the world at that time period. It influenced many sub-Saharan African languages, with stronger influences on east African languages, such as Swahili and loaned many words to Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Spanish and Portuguese, countries it ruled for 700 years (see Al-Andalus). It also had some influence over the English language.
Arabic script was adopted by many other languages such as Urdu, Persian, Swahili (changed to Latin in the late 19th century) and Turkish which switched to Latin script in 1928. Arabic became the lingua franca of these regions not simply because of commerce or diplomacy, but also on religious grounds since Arabic is the language of the Qur'an, Islam's holy book and these populations became heavily Muslim. Arabic remains as the lingua franca for 22 countries (24 if one was to include the Palestinian territories and Western Sahara), in the Middle East and North Africa in addition to Chad. Despite a few language script conversions from Arabic to Latin as just described, Arabic is the second most widely used alphabetic system in the world after Latin.[3] Arabic script is/has been used in languages including Afrikaans, Bosnian, Hausa, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Malay, Morisco, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tatar, Turkish, Urdu, Uyghur.[4]
According to Encarta, which classified Chinese as a single language, Arabic is the second largest native language.[5] Used by more than a billion Muslims around the world,[4] it is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[6]
Aramaic was the native language of the Aramaeans and became the lingua franca of the Assyrian Empire and the western provinces of the Persian Empire, and was adopted by conquered races such as the Hebrews. A dialect of Old Aramaic developed into the literary language Syriac. The Syriacs, such as the Syriac-Aramaean, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, continued the use of Aramaic which ultimately evolved into the Neo-Aramaic dialects of the Middle East.
Azeri served as a lingua franca in Transcaucasia (except the Black Sea coast and most of Georgia), Southern Daghestan, Turkish Armenia, Kurdistan,[7][8][9] and Iranian Azerbaijan from the 16th century to the early 20th century. Its role has now been taken over by Russian in the North Caucasus, and by the official languages of the various independent states of the South Caucasus.[10][11]
Until the early 20th century, Classical Chinese served as both the written lingua franca and the diplomatic language in Far East Asia including China, Mongolia, Korea, Japan, the Ryūkyū Kingdom, and Vietnam. In the early 20th century, vernacular written Chinese (Mandarin) replaced Classical Chinese within China as both the written and spoken lingua franca for speakers of different Chinese dialects, and because of the falling power and cultural influence of China in East Asia, English has since replaced Classical Chinese as the lingua franca in East Asia. Outside of China, Cantonese and Hokkien have served as the lingua francas among overseas Chinese because most Chinese emigrants were from Guangdong and Fujian. However, since the late 20th century when China started economic reform, Mandarin has become the lingua franca because overseas Chinese now include people coming from many different regions of China. Today in Mainland China of the People's Republic of China and Taiwan, Mandarin is the lingua franca between speakers of different and mutually unintelligible languages, and between the Han Chinese and other ethnic groups; however in Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and Macau, Cantonese remains the spoken lingua franca. Hokkien used to be the spoken lingua franca among ethnic Chinese in Singapore and some parts of Malaysia, though this too is being supplanted by the use of Mandarin.
Throughout the centuries of Jewish exile, Hebrew has served the Jewish people as a lingua franca; allowing Jews from different areas of the world to communicate effectively with one another. This was particularly valuable for cross-culture mercantile trading that became one of the default occupations held by Jews in exilic times. Without the need for translators, documents could easily be written up to convey significant legal trade information. Among early Zionists, a newly reconstructed form of Hebrew served as a common language between Jews from nations as diverse as Poland and Yemen. In modern Israel, Hebrew is the commonly accepted language of administration and trade, even among Israeli-Arabs whose mother-tongue remains Arabic.
Hindustani, or Hindi–Urdu, is commonly spoken in India and Pakistan. It encompasses two standardized registers in the form of the official languages of Hindi and Urdu, as well as several nonstandard dialects. Hindi is one of the official languages of India, and Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. Urdu is also an official language in India. However, whilst the words and much of the speaking may sound similar, small differences are present, and Urdu is written in Nastaliq script while Hindi is written in the Devanagari script.
Hindi is also a lingua franca in Nepal. It has been proven that most of the people in Nepal understand Hindi, and a large proportion can even speak and write it. In the Terai i.e. floodplain districts of Nepal (along the Indian border), Hindi is the dominant language, though the people's mother tongues are typically Avadhi, Maithili, or Bhojpuri. Additionally, Hindi-Urdu is useful throughout the world due to the export of labor from South Asia. It is commonly spoken among working populations on land and at sea throughout the Middle East and East Africa.
In the 15th century, during the Malacca Sultanate, Malay was used as a lingua franca in the Malay archipelago, by the locals as much as by the traders and artisans that stopped at Malacca via the Straits of Malacca.
Nowadays, Malay is used mostly in Malaysia (officially called Bahasa Malaysia) and Brunei, and to a lesser extent in Singapore and various parts of Sumatra. One of Singapore's four official languages and now Singapore's national language due to historical reasons, the Malay language or 'Bahasa Melayu' was the lingua franca for Malays in Singapore prior to the introduction of English as a working and instructional language, and remains so for the elder generation.
However, Indonesian, a language based on traditional Malay, but mostly influenced by various languages such Dutch, Arabic, English and Portuguese instead of English, serves as a lingua franca throughout Indonesia and East Timor (where it is considered a working language), areas that are home to over 700 indigenous languages.
Nepali is the lingua franca of the many ethnic, religious and cultural communities of Nepal, and is also spoken in Bhutan, parts of India and parts of Myanmar (Burma). It is one of 23 official languages of India incorporated in 8th annex of the Indian Constitution. It has official language status in the formerly independent state of Sikkim and in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. Similarly, it is widely spoken in the state of Uttaranchal, as well as in the state of Assam. While Nepali is closely related to the Hindi–Urdu complex and is mutually intelligible to a degree, it has more Sanskritic derivations and fewer Persian or English loan words. Nepali is commonly written in the Devanagari script, as are Hindi, Sanskrit and Marathi.
Persian became the second lingua franca of the Islamic world, in particular of the eastern regions.[12] Besides serving as the state and administrative language in many Islamic dynasties, some of which included Samanids, Ghurids, Ghaznavids, Ilkhanids, Seljuqids, Moguls and early Ottomans, Persian cultural and political forms, and often the Persian language, were used by the cultural elites from the Balkans to India.[13] For example, Persian was the only oriental language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kubla Khan and in his journeys through China.[14] Arnold Joseph Toynbee's assessment of the role of the Persian language is worth quoting in more detail:
In the Iranic world, before it began to succumb to the process of Westernization, the New Persian language, which had been fashioned into literary form in mighty works of art ... gained a currency as a lingua franca; and at its widest, about the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries of the Christian Era, its range in this role extended, without a break, across the face of South-Eastern Europe and South-Western Asia.[15]
Persian remains the lingua franca in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan and was the lingua franca of India before the British conquest. It is still understood by many in India and Pakistan.
Sanskrit was widely used across South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia at various times in ancient and medieval times; it has religious significance for those religious traditions that arose from the Vedic religion.
Tamil is the lingua franca not just in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, but also a much larger swathe of South India, with many second language speakers in neighbouring Indian states.[16] It is one of the official languages of India,[17] as well as one of the official languages of Singapore and the national language of Sri Lanka.[16] There are significant numbers of Tamil speakers in Malaysia, South Africa, Bahrain, the United Kingdom, and Canada.[16] Tamil is a classical language, with a long and rich history.[18]
Telugu is the lingua franca in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and Yanam district of Pondicherry, as well as in Tamil Nadu. As of 2001[update], it had the third largest number of native speakers in India, behind Hindi and Bengali.[19] Telugu is one of the four classical languages as declared by the Government of India.
English is the current lingua franca of international business, science, technology and aviation. It has replaced French as the lingua franca of diplomacy since World War II. The rise of English in diplomacy began in 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, when the Treaty of Versailles was written in English as well as in French, the dominant language used in diplomacy until that time. The widespread use of English was further advanced by the prominent international role played by English-speaking nations (the United States and the Commonwealth of Nations) in the aftermath of World War II, particularly in the establishment and organization of the United Nations. English is one of the six official languages of the United Nations (the other five being French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish). The seating and roll-call order in sessions of the United Nations and its subsidiary and affiliated organizations is determined by alphabetical order of the English names of the countries.
When the United Kingdom became a colonial power, English served as the lingua franca of the colonies of the British Empire. In the post-colonial period, some of the newly created nations which had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the lingua franca to avoid the political difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. The British Empire established the use of English in regions around the world such as North America, India, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, so that by the late 19th century its reach was truly global,[20] and in the latter half of the 20th century, widespread international use of English was much reinforced by the global economic, financial, scientific, military, and cultural pre-eminence of the English-speaking countries and especially the U.S. Today, more than half of all scientific journals are published in English, while in France, almost one third of all natural science research appears in English,[21] lending some support to English being the lingua franca of science and technology. English is also the lingua franca of international Air Traffic Control communications.
French was the language of European diplomacy from the 17th century until the mid-20th century, and is still a working language of some international institutions. It was also the lingua franca of European literature in the 18th century. French is still seen on documents ranging from passports to airmail letters. Until the accession of the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973, French and German were the official working languages of the European Economic Community.
French was spoken by educated people in cosmopolitan cities of the Middle East and North Africa and remains so in the former French colonies of the Maghreb, where French is particularly important in economic capitals such as Algiers, Casablanca and Tunis. Until the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon, French was spoken by the upper-class Christian population. French is still a lingua franca in most Western and Central African countries and an official language of some, a remnant of French and Belgian colonialism. These African countries and others are members of the Francophonie. French is the official language of the Universal Postal Union, with English added as a working language in 1994.[22] French is the main language of Québec, an official language of Canada, and the second language of Luxembourg, Belgium, and Switzerland.
German served as a lingua franca in large portions of Europe for centuries, mainly the Holy Roman Empire.
Previously one of the official languages of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German remained an important second language in much of Central and Eastern Europe long after the dissolution of that empire after World War I. Today, it is still the most common second language in some of the countries in the region (e.g. in Slovenia (45% of the pop.), Croatia (34%),[23] the Czech Republic (31%) and Slovakia (28%). In others, it is also known by significant numbers of the population (in Poland by 18%, in Hungary by 16%).
During the construction of the Snowy Mountains Scheme in Australia, German was the lingua franca for workers from central and east Europe.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, German was a prerequisite language for scientists. Despite the anti-German sentiment after World War II it remains a widespread language among scientists.
Within Western Europe, it is also (along with English and French) one of the most spoken foreign languages. It is most widely known in the Netherlands, in Denmark and in Sweden. It is also the primary language of Switzerland. Within the European Union, German native speakers (in Austria, parts of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and in the Italian province South Tyrol/Alto Adige) form the most numerous language group with just under 100 million members.
During the time of the Hellenistic civilization and Roman Empire, the lingua francas were Koine Greek and Latin. During the Middle Ages, the lingua franca was Greek in the parts of Europe, Middle East and Northern Africa where the Byzantine Empire held hegemony, and Latin was primarily used in the rest of Europe. Latin, for a significant portion of the expansion of the Roman Catholic Church, was used as the basis of the Church. During the Second Vatican Council, Catholic liturgy changed to local languages, although Latin remains the official language of the Vatican. Latin was used as the language of scholars in Europe until the early 19th century in most subjects. For instance, Christopher Simpson's "Chelys or The Division viol" on how to improvise on the viol (viola da gamba) was published in 1665 in a multilingual edition in Latin and English, to make the material accessible for the wider European music community. Another example is the Norwegian (and Danish, since Norway was then in union with Denmark) writer Ludvig Holberg, who published his book "Nicolai Klimii iter subterraneum" in 1741 about an ideal society "Potu" ("Utop" backwards) with equality between the genders and an egalitarian structure, in Latin in Germany to avoid Danish censorship and to reach a greater audience. Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica was published in Latin in 1687: the first English translation did not appear until 1729. In subjects like medicine and theology Latin has been a subject of study until the present day in most European universities, despite declining use in recent years.
The Mediterranean Lingua Franca was largely based on Italian and Provençal. This language was spoken from the 11th to 19th centuries around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in the European commercial empires of Italian cities (Genoa, Venice, Florence, Milan, Pisa, Siena, Ragusa) and in trading ports located throughout the eastern Mediterranean rim.[24]
During the Renaissance, Italian was also spoken as language of culture in the main royal courts of Europe and among intellectuals. This lasted from the 14th century to the end of the 16th century, when French substituted Italian as lingua franca in "educated" Europe.
The Italian language is still used as a lingua franca in some environments. For example, in the Catholic ecclesiastic hierarchy, Italian is known by a large part of members and is used in substitution of Latin in some official documents as well. The presence of Italian as the second official language in Vatican City indicates its use not only in the seat in Rome, but also anywhere in the world where an episcopal seat is present.
In the 1950s and 1960s Italian was the lingua franca of some colonies of the former Italian Empire, like Eritrea and Italian Somalia.[25]
Many musical terms encountered in printed scores, music reviews, and program notes are in Italian, in accordance with the Italian origins of many European musical conventions.
From about 1200 to 1600, Middle Low German was the language of the Hanseatic League which was present in most Northern European seaports, even London. It resulted in numerous Low German words being borrowed into Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. After the Middle Ages, modern High German began to displace Low German, and it has now been reduced to a regional dialect.
Polish was a lingua franca in areas of Eastern Europe, especially regions that belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Polish was for several centuries the main language spoken by the ruling classes in Lithuania and Ukraine, and the modern state of Belarus.[26] After the Partitions of Poland and the incorporation of most of the Polish areas into the Russian Empire as Congress Poland, the Russian language almost completely supplanted Polish.
Portuguese served as lingua franca in Africa, South America and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries. When the Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of change the Lingua Franca and Portuguese lexicon was replaced with the languages of the people in contact.
Portuguese remains an important lingua franca in Africa (PALOP), East Timor, Goa, and to a certain extent in Macau where it is recognized as an official language alongside Chinese though in practice not commonly spoken.
Russian is in use and widely understood in Northern and Central Asia, areas formerly part of the Soviet Union or bloc, and may be understood by older people in Central and Eastern Europe, formerly part of the Warsaw Pact. It remains the lingua franca in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Russian is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[6]
Serbo-Croatian is lingua franca in all former Yugoslav republics, including Slovenia and Macedonia.
With the growth of the Spanish Empire, Spanish became established in the Americas, as well as in parts of Africa, Asia and Oceania. It became the language of global trade until Napoleonic Wars and the breakup of the Spanish Empire at the beginning of the 19th century. Spanish was used as lingua franca throughout the former Spanish Colonial Empire, except territory in present day U.S., but particularly in present-day Mexico, Central America and South America.
Nowadays it is the second most used language in international trade, after English, and the third most used in politics, diplomacy and culture, after English and French.[27]
Yiddish originated in the Ashkenazi culture that developed from about the 10th century in the Rhineland and then spread to central and eastern Europe and eventually to other continents. For a significant portion of its history, Yiddish was the primary spoken language of the Ashkenazi Jews. Eastern Yiddish, three dialects of which are still spoken today, includes a significant but varying percentage of words from Slavic, Romanian and other local languages.
On the eve of World War II, there were 11 to 13 million Yiddish speakers, for many of whom Yiddish was not the primary language. The Holocaust, however, led to a dramatic, sudden decline in the use of Yiddish, as the extensive Jewish communities, both secular and religious, that used Yiddish in their day-to-day life were largely destroyed. Although millions of Yiddish speakers survived the war, further assimilation in countries such as the United States and the Soviet Union, along with the strictly Hebrew monolingual stance of the Zionist movement, led to a decline in the use of Yiddish. However, the number of speakers within the widely dispersed Orthodox (mainly Hasidic) communities is now increasing. It is a home language in most Hasidic communities, where it is the first language learned in childhood, used in schools, and in many social settings.
In the United States, as well as South America, the Yiddish language bonded Jews from many countries. Most of the Jewish immigrants to the New York metropolitan area during the years of Ellis Island considered Yiddish their native language. Later, Yiddish was no longer the primary language for the majority of the remaining speakers and often served as lingua franca for the Jewish immigrants who did not know each other's primary language, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yiddish was also the language in which second generation immigrants often continued to communicate with their relatives who remained in Europe or moved to Israel, with English, Spanish or Portuguese being primary language of the first and Russian, Romanian, or Hebrew that of the second.
Chinook Jargon was originally constructed from a great variety of Amerind words of the Pacific Northwest, arising as an intra-indigenous contact language in a region marked by divisive geography and intense linguistic diversity. The participating peoples came from a number of very distinct language families, speaking dozens of individual languages.
After European contact, the Jargon also acquired English and French loans, as well as words brought by other European, Asian, and Polynesian groups. Some individuals from all these groups soon adopted the Jargon as a highly efficient and accessible form of communication. This use continued in some business sectors well into the 20th century and some of its words continue to feature in company and organization names as well as in the regional toponymy.
In the Diocese of Kamloops, British Columbia, hundreds of speakers also learned to read and write the Jargon using the Duployan shorthand via the publication Kamloops Wawa. As a result, the Jargon also had the beginnings of its own literature, mostly translated scripture and classical works, and some local and episcopal news, community gossip and events, and diaries. Novelist and early Native American activist, Marah Ellis Ryan (1860?–1934) used Chinook words and phrases in her writing.
According to Nard Jones, Chinook Jargon was still in use in Seattle until roughly the eve of World War II, especially among the members of the Arctic Club, making Seattle the last city where the language was widely used. Writing in 1972, he remarked that at that later date "Only a few can speak it fully, men of ninety or a hundred years old, like Henry Broderick, the realtor, and Joshua Green, the banker."
Jones estimates that in pioneer times there were about 100,000 speakers of Chinook Jargon.
Classical Nahuatl was the lingua franca of the Aztec Empire in Mesoamerica prior to the Spanish invasion in the 16th century. An extensive corpus of the language as spoken exists. Like Latin and Hebrew (prior to the founding of Israel), Classical Nahuatl was more of a sociolect spoken among the elites (poets, priests, traders, teachers, bureaucrats) than a language spoken in any common family household.
After the Spanish conquest, Nahuatl remained the lingua franca of New Spain. Spanish friars matched the language to a Latin alphabet, and schools were established to teach Nahuatl to Spanish priests, diplomats, judges, and political leaders. In 1570, Nahuatl was made the official language of New Spain, and it became the lingua franca throughout Spanish North America, used in trade and the courts. In 1696, the official use of any language other than Spanish was banned throughout the empire. Especially since Mexican independence, the use of Nahuatl has dwindled.
Portuguese and Spanish started to grow as lingua francas in the region in since the conquests of the 16th century. In the Case of Spanish this process was not even and as the Spanish used the structure of Inca Empire to consolidate their rule Quechua remained the lingua franca of large parts of what is now Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Quechua importance as a language for trade and dealing with Spanish-approved indigenous authorities (curaca) made the language expand even after the Spanish conquest. It was not until the rebellion of Túpac Amaru II that the Spanish authorities changed to a policy of Hispanization that was continued by the republican states of Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. Quechua also lost influence to Spanish as the commerce circuits grew to integrate other parts of the Spanish Empire were Quechua was unknown, for example Rio de la Plata and Chile.
Also known as Runa Simi, as the Inca empire rose to prominence in South America, this imperial language became the most widely spoken language in the western regions of the continent. Even among tribes that were not absorbed by the empire Quechua still became an important language for trade because of the empire's influence. Even after the Spanish conquest of Peru Quechua for a long time was the most common language. Today it is still widely spoken although it has given way to Spanish as the more common lingua franca. It is spoken by some 10 million people through much of South America (mostly in Peru, south-western and central Bolivia, southern Colombia and Ecuador, north-western Argentina and northern Chile).
Mapudungun was for a long time used as lingua franca in large portions of Chile and Argentine Patagonia. Adoption of Spanish was in Chile a slow process and by the 19th century the unconquered Indians of Araucanía had spread their language across the Andes during a process called Araucanization. Pehuenches were among the first non-Mapuche tribes to adopt the language. The increasing commerce over the Andes and the migration of Mapuches into the Patagonian plains contributedto the adoption of Mapudungun by other tribes of a more simple material culture. Even in Chiloé Archipelago Spaniards and mestizos adopted a dialect of Mapudungun as their main language.
The Old Tupi language served as the lingua franca of Brazil among speakers of the various indigenous languages, mainly in the coastal regions. Tupi as a lingua franca, and as recorded in colonial books, was in fact a creation of the Portuguese, who assembled it from the similarities between the coastal indigenous Tupi–Guarani languages. The language served the Jesuit priests as a way to teach natives, and it was widely spoken by Europeans. It was the predominant language spoken in Brazil until 1758, when the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil by the Portuguese government and the use and teaching of Tupi was banned.[28] Since then, Tupi as Lingua Franca was quickly replaced by Portuguese, although various Tupi–Guarani languages are still spoken by small native groups in Brazil.
Various pidgin languages have been used in many locations and times as a common trade speech. They can be based on English, French, Chinese, or indeed any other language. A pidgin is defined by its use as a lingua franca, between populations speaking other mother tongues. When a pidgin becomes a population's first language, then it is called a creole language.
Guinea-Bissau Creole is a Portuguese Creole used as a lingua franca of Guinea-Bissau and Casamance, Senegal among people of different ethnic groups. It is also the mother tongue of many people in Guinea-Bissau.
Tok Pisin is widely spoken in Papua New Guinea as a lingua franca. It developed as an Australian English-based creole with influences from local languages and to a smaller extent German or Unserdeutch and Portuguese. Tok Pisin originated as a pidgin in the 19th century, hence the name 'Tok Pisin' from 'Talk Pidgin', but has now evolved into a modern language.
Also called Pidgin English, this Lingua Franca is also spoken in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The versions of Pidgin vary between PNG, the Solomons and Vanuatu, but all Pidgin speakers from these countries are able to communicate and often understand each others' language variations.