A
lingua franca (from
Italian, literally meaning
Frankish language, see etymology under
Sabir and Italian below) is any
language widely used beyond the population of its native speakers. The
de facto status of
lingua franca is usually "awarded" by the masses to the language of the most influential nation(s) of the time. Any given language normally becomes a
lingua franca primarily by being used for international commerce, but can be accepted in other cultural exchanges, especially
diplomacy.
A lingua franca is a language used by people whose mother tongues are different in order to communicate. Any language could conceivably serve as a lingua franca between two groups, no matter what sort of language it is. Lingua franca is thus a purely functionally-defined term, i.e., linguistic structure of the language involved plays no role.[1]
A synonym for lingua franca is “vehicular language.” Whereas a vernacular language is used as a native language in a single speaker community, a vehicular language goes beyond the boundaries of its original community, and is used as a second language for communication between communities. For example, English is a vernacular in England, but is used as a vehicular language (that is, a lingua franca) in the Philippines.
The term lingua franca is also applied to international auxiliary languages meant specifically for communication between speakers of different native languages. Examples include Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Latino Sine Flexione, and Novial. This is a prescriptive rather than descriptive definition of a lingua franca, and therefore whilst the term lingua franca may be applied to such languages, this does not necessarily mean that the language is commonly used as a lingua franca in the sense of communication between speakers of different native languages.
