The Cambridge Introduction to Applied Linguistics

The term “lingua franca” has been used to define a contact language that emerges from the need to communicate when speakers do not share a common language. Due to different linguistic backgrounds, interactions taking place in such contexts may develop as pidgins or creoles, that is, a mixture of two or more languages. In other cases, natural languages can serve similar purposes (Mauranen, 2018). Latin, for instance, used to be a lingua franca during the Roman Empire. Actually, the term itself derives from Latin “language of the Franks” (lingua franca) to refer to the language used mainly for commerce in the area around the East Mediterranean Sea. In colonial times, for example, the language of the colonizers (e.g., English in India) was generally imposed as a lingua franca.