lingua franca
see also: Lingua Franca
Pronunciation
  • (British) IPA: /ˈlɪŋ.ɡwə ˈfɹæŋ.kə/
Noun

lingua franca (plural lingua francas)

  1. A common language used by people of diverse backgrounds to communicate with one another, often a basic form of speech with simplified grammar, particularly, one not the first language of any of its speakers.
Synonyms Antonyms Related terms Translations
Lingua Franca
Proper noun
  1. (historical, archaic) Sabir, the Italian-based pidgin that served as the lingua franca of Mediterranean trade in the late Middle Ages and early Modern period (c. 11th–19th centuries)
    1864, J.C. Hotten, The Slang Dictionary, 22
    ...the Lingua Franca, or bastard Italian, spoken at Genoa, Trieste, Malta, Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, and all Mediterranean seaport towns. The ingredients of this imported Cant are many. Its foundation is Italian, with a mixture of modern Greek, German, (from the Austrian ports,) Spanish, Turkish, and French.
Synonyms


This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003
Offline English dictionary