Interlinguistics - Lingua Franca, Pidgin, International Auxiliary Language, Pasigraphy, List of Lingua Francas, Constructed Language (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 28. Chapters: Lingua franca, Pidgin, International auxiliary language, Pasigraphy, List of lingua francas, Constructed language, Language planning, Worldlang, Plains Indian Sign Language, Philosophical language, Engineered language, Mute English, International Auxiliary Language Association, Esperantology, Plateau Sign Language, Cosmoglottics. Excerpt: 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. 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 comp...