Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 09:03, 5 November 2012

Linguistics: Applied Linguistics C‑class

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Linguistics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of linguistics on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LinguisticsWikipedia:WikiProject LinguisticsTemplate:WikiProject LinguisticsLinguistics C This article has been rated as C-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. ??? This article has not yet received a rating on the project's importance scale. This article is supported by Applied Linguistics Task Force. This article has been automatically rated by a bot or other tool because one or more other projects use this class. Please ensure the assessment is correct before removing the |auto= parameter.

Languages C‑class High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Languages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of languages on Misplaced Pages. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.LanguagesWikipedia:WikiProject LanguagesTemplate:WikiProject Languageslanguage C This article has been rated as C-class on Misplaced Pages's content assessment scale. High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Old Norse

Halló! Please take a look at Talk:Old Norse language#Latin of the North too. Regards Gangleri 01:08, 2004 Oct 18 (UTC)

Pre 212.232.54.69 page

:

Lingua franca, literally "Frankish language" in Italian, was originally a mixed language or jargon consisting largely of uninflected Italian plus a vocabulary drawn from Italian, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic and used for communication throughout the Middle East. The term is now applied to any mixed jargon used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another.

See the two sections below for further details of each of these two uses of the term.

General sense

The term lingua franca refers generally to a language learned, beyond its native speakers, for international commerce or other extended intercultural interactions. It has acquired this general sense by extension from the specific language described below.

Since there is more than one, various plurals for lingua franca are used by linguists. The Italian plural lingue franche is perhaps most "correct", but, appropriately to the topic, it is also given the Anglicised plural lingua francas and the Latinised form linguae francae is also encountered. The Franks were an ancient Germanic people. The terms Frank and Frankish were used by Arabs for Latin-rite Christians. (Greeks were rumi ("Romans").

In the Western world, Koine Greek, Latin and French have all served as lingua francas at different times. French has been the language of diplomacy in Europe from the seventeenth century, and as a result is still the working language of international institutions and is seen on documents ranging from passports to airmail etiquettes. German served as a lingua franca in portions of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, especially in business. English is the current lingua franca of Western international business and is displacing French in diplomacy.

In other regions of the world, other languages perform the function of a lingua franca: Swahili in Eastern Africa, Russian in areas formerly associated with the Soviet Union, Hindi (along with English) in India, Malay in South-East Asia, Bislama in the Pacific Islands, and various Pidgin languages in other locations and times. Portuguese served as lingua franca in Africa and Asia in the 15th and 16th centuries. Mandarin Chinese also serves a function of providing a common spoken language between speakers of different and mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects.

Constructed languages such as Esperanto, Ido, Mondlango, and interlingua are proposed by some as a global lingua franca. Their supporters argue that a lingua franca should be as simple as possible, while still being highly expressive. They claim that English and other natural languages, being ethnically derived, are not suitable for a common language, since natural languages contain caveats and idiosyncracies that hamper their ability to be learned, confer an automatic advantage on native speakers, and are associated with political, economic, and cultural dominance of their nation of origin.

Specific language

Lingua Franca (Italian meaning "Frankish language") or Sabir ("knowledge") was an early pidgin language, used in the Mediterranean area from the fourteenth century or earlier and still in use in the twentieth century.

It had a heavy influence of Romance languages, especially Italian dialects. It was the language used between slaves and their captors in the bagnio of Algiers.

According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins pioneered by Hugo Schuchardt, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When 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 crew tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of relexification, the Lingua Franca and Portuguese wordstock was substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact.

This theory explains the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creole languagess, like Tok Pisin, Papiamento, Sranang Tongo, Krio, Chinese English Pidgin. These languages use forms similar to sabir for "to know" and piquenho for "children".

Lingua Franca left traces in today's Algerian slang and Polari. Polari from Italian parlare ("to talk") was a cant used by London variety artists and gays.

English words like "savvy" (from sabir) and "pickanniny" can be traced to Lingua Franca.

French has NEVER been the sole official language in the European Community.

I was appalled when I read the following statements in the 'Lingua franca' article:

"For many years, until the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden, French was the sole official language of the European Economic Community". ... ... "A landmark recognition of the dominance of English came in 1995 when, on the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden, English joined French as one of the official languages of the European Union".

This is totally unfundamented and simply ridiculous. The official languages of each individual country are (and have always been) official in the EU as well. This includes, of course, spanish, german, dutch, english, maltese... you name it. The only exception are those languages that are only 'partially' official, so to speak. An example: galician, basque and catalan are official in their corresponding regions in Spain, but not in all the country, and therefore not in the EU. I think that frysk is official in Friesland, but not in all the Netherlands, and therefore not in the EU, and so on.

All documents must be translated to each and every language, period. However, not all languages can be used while official matters are being discussed in real time. But english, german AND french have always been used as 'working languages', ever since what we now know as the EU was first founded in the fifties.

Please correct those silly and unfundamented remarks.

needs more work

English is a lingua franca of professionals a lot of East Asian countries eg Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand.

Edit notice for this article

This article really needs a WP:Edit notice. There are many frequent incorrect, though good faith, edits that attempt to Latinise the plural of "lingua franca", despite that it is not a Latin word. The edit notice should clearly inform and/or remind potential editors this. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email 21:33, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Good effort, but a dead-end. Although the term is not classical Latin, it is quite defensibly treated as New Latin, because even though it came from Italian (as verified by the etymologies given in Merriam-Webster Collegiate and the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language), the feminine singular word lingua is homographic across Latin and Italian, so the term has just as often been taken by English speakers to be New Latin as it has been taken to be Italian—which is why both Merriam-Webster Collegiate and the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language show linguae francae as an accepted alternate plural form in English. Meanwhile, they don't show the Italian plural form, lingue franche, as being an accepted alternate plural form in English, although if life were fair, it probably would be accepted. — ¾-10 22:39, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Update: (1) I do certainly agree with you, though, that it is not a good idea to go through the article and change all the instances of -as to -ae, as some editor recently did (and was reverted on). (2) I see that User:Soundofmusicals said in an edit summary that the -ae plural form is an "ignorant barbarism". While it may not be a preferred form, the fact that AHD enters it as a variant shows that it is also not an "ignorant barbarism". The English language is filled with usages that arose out of phenomena such as false etymology, but they are nevertheless long since prevalent and accepted English usages. To try to retroactively purge them from the language would be a hypercorrective, quixotic quest. — ¾-10 22:56, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

linguas franca would also be a legitimate English form, patterned on sergeants major and various Norman phrases. —Tamfang (talk) 23:03, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it would be legitimate (attorney general → attorneys general being the analogy that pops into my head), but it is also true that this option is not entered in major dictionaries (unlike the others discussed above). Which doesn't mean it can't be used—just that it traditionally hasn't been so far. So I would not try to use it in this Misplaced Pages article, because it would be assailed as neologistic. By the way, in my opinion this article could include a section about etymology and plural forms, mentioning all of these things that some readers are going to ask about anyway. — ¾-10 23:12, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

It is so an "ignorant barbarism" - as you tacitly confess anyway. It is Italian, not Latin, and there is absolutely no sound reason whatever for giving it an Latin plural (although we just might justify an Italian one). The fact that the ignorant have been known to confuse Latin and Italian is a thumping great "non-reason", surely. Citing dictionaries is fraught in a context like this. Dictionaries (especially popular ones) are primarilly concerned with recording the language as it is actually used, rather than the "correct" spelling - and will in fact quite often record "wrong" spellings that are "often" found(!!) They also have a perfectly good reason (which we do not) for including several alternative spellings - after all, words are what they are about, whereas we are more concerned with the ideas the words stand for. This is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, and we are effectively constrained to limit ourselves to the most "correct" form of a word or phrase, unless popular usage has totally overwhelmed it (NOT the case here, mercifully). "Linguas franca" is simply wrong, on similar grounds - we only put the plural on "inverted" noun-adjective combinations where the construction is based on French usage (even this is rather silly, since genuine French usage would pluralise the adjective as well). Even here, Fowler and many other authorities decry it except in certain fossilised remnants we probably can't get rid of at this stage. In case I be put down as a pedant here - pedantry is rather the coining of the weired and wonderful - there is (or ought to be) another word altogether for defending the simple and natural. The "natural" English formation is "lingua francas" - which happens also to be correct. Adding alternative forms may work well for a dictionary entry - but adds nothing to an encyclopedia article. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:32, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

7.5: thank you for playing (adding a colon to my comment), but I was replying to your first paragraph, not your second. —Tamfang (talk) 23:48, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

By all means remove any indent you think makes the thread harder to follow. Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:03, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

Soundofmusicals, there's a spectrum of language epistemology from linguistic prescription to linguistic description and blends in between. Your mention of what's "natural" and "correct", as well as your conception of how dictionaries approach the two, show that you're firmly a prescriptivist. Not going to try to convert you to linguistic science, but your idea that encyclopedias are inherently supposed to be prescriptionist in contrast to dictionaries being descriptivist is a false dichotomy. Good writing and copyediting are always a balance of the two, in either of those reference works or in many other spheres. And that's a driving spirit behind the AHD editorial mindset. As for encyclopedic coverage of topics like etymology, orthography, and language epistemology itself, Misplaced Pages should state the facts on all of what's under the sun. For example, in this particular case, it should state that "the Latinized plural form linguae francae was born of false etymology, although it is nevertheless widespread in English and thus entered in major dictionaries. It is best avoided by the careful writer, as prescriptivists decry its false etymological roots." — ¾-10 03:15, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

I certainly don't consider there to be anything "lamentable" about dictionaries being descriptionist (or at last more descriptionist than encyclopedias). That's what they're there for. My point is that encyclopedias should use language consistently, and (typos excepted) "correctly". By "natural" I simply mean following the normal rules of the language rather than manufacturing exceptions to them that have no etymological basis. I tend to actually be in favour of changes that move in the direction of simplifying the written language, or at least making it more consistent. What I don't like are innovations that are based in ignorance (especially that species of ignorance that comes from a tiny grain of very superficial and poorly digested "knowledge") and that introduce unnecessary, and frankly silly, complications to something that's already quite hard for foreigners, and even native speakers, to get right. "Lingua francas" is (so far as I know) still everyone's FIRST choice, even if some dictionaries recognise other alternatives, or at least note that they are sometimes used. In a dictionary, or an encyclopedia article on (say) the subject of pendantry and false etymology we might like to go into this sort of thing a bit. No need whatever to even mention it in passing here - where we are not taking about how to spell something - but about what it is. Soundofmusicals (talk) 09:03, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

• C-Class Linguistics articles
• Unknown-importance Linguistics articles
• C-Class applied linguistics articles
• Applied Linguistics Task Force articles
• Automatically assessed Linguistics articles
• WikiProject Linguistics articles
• C-Class language articles
• High-importance language articles
• WikiProject Languages articles