Trade languages of the world in 1908 from The Harmsworth Atlas and Gazetteer (public domain image)

(5) LINGUA FRANCA – LINGUISTIC IMPERIALISM

The lingua franca – literally the Frankish tongue – is more generally used as a term for a “common tongue” or language among different people.

And generally, it is one native to the imperial nation or state of an empire, although it can arise from trading nations – but also from cultural or religious influence, as well as “diplomatic and administrative convenience” or scholarly and scientific convention, albeit these things also tend to be by-products of empire.

The most famous “imperial” lingua franca is of course English in the contemporary world (from the British Empire and American hegemony), but notable predecessors (or rivals) include French, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Greek, and of course Latin.

Whether or not a lingua franca emerges from “linguistic imperialism” is far more contentious. Empires as a general rule do not deliberately stamp out the native languages of their subjects – although occasionally they will to “acculturate” those subjects within their empire, or more brutally, in displacing or wiping out those subjects altogether.

Indeed, the Roman Empire was famously multilingual. Latin may have had first place as the original language of the Romans – but Greek loomed almost as large among elite Romans and larger among eastern provinces, with the eastern Roman empire even shifting its official language to Greek from Latin after the western half of the empire fell. Other languages in the classical empire included Aramaic or Syriac, Coptic, Punic, Celtic, and ultimately Germanic languages such as Gothic.

However, empires often reduce linguistic diversity not so much through deliberate policy but through the priority or privilege of the language of the imperial nation as lingua franca – people follow the lingo to the money or power that comes from speaking it.