Speaking on Lingua Franca Trivia Quiz

Answer: The expansion of the British Empire

Although the concept of lingua franca, or 'Frankish tongue', may seem to imply that there is a single common language, the truth is that there are multiple at any given time, with some having more prevalence than others, especially with a more interconnected globe. These languages developed most over the ages of exploration, colonization, and enhanced trade as single common languages allowed people to converge and communicate for the sake of economic growth.

The English were, perhaps, the most successful at spreading the English language because the expansion of the British Empire led to the creation of what would, perhaps by happenstance, become some of the most powerful nations on the planet over the centuries. Countries like the UK, America, Canada, and Australia would all remain primarily English-speaking, and with their grip on world trade, other countries would shift their understanding to suit. It's not uncommon to travel many international countries and still find English on road signs or food labels or still find people in large, more cosmopolitan cities still speaking workable English.

And it's quite interesting, as well, to find how English (and language in general) forms in the mind, especially since English is not a particularly easy language to pick up due to its complex grammar rules, colloquial syntaxes, and extensive vocabulary. Further, not all languages use the same alphabet, and the ones that do share the modern Latin alphabet don't necessarily use the same sounds for the same letters. Take, for instance, the difficulty of a Native French speaker starting a word with the letter 'H' or an East Asian speaker differentiating, in English, between 'L' and 'R'. Ways of speaking that English speakers may take for granted don't often come naturally, but that's the beauty of the lingua franca-- it brings more people closer to that understanding by bridging the language gap.

Answer: Tagalog

As Spain traveled the globe and staked its claim to lands in both the Western Hemisphere and parts of Asia, it left behind a language and a cultural influence that persists even in the modern era. Spanish would become one of the most widespread languages anywhere, with most of Central and South America using it as its primary language.

An interesting holdout of the Spanish language is the Philippines, which may seem unexpected due to its relative distance from any other Spanish-influenced nation. But after Spain colonized the islands in the 16th century, the Philippines never saw independence until the early 20th century, and this left an indelible mark not only on language, but common names of people and places.

Around WWII, Tagalog started to rise in use throughout the Philippines as the nation reclaimed its voice, but in adopting this language, the country was unable to completely shake off its Spanish roots. What's interesting is that Filipino and Tagalog varies enough throughout the many islands of the Philippines that it creates numerous dialects, many of which lean into pronunciations and inflections typical of Spanish speech (for instance, some islands will not use glottal stops when speaking, which is normal in Spanish dialogue). Tagalog, similarly, began its life as a language with only three vowels, but over time took phonemes from Spanish to up its number to five vowel sounds.

So with this in mind, the question might be as to whether or not Spanish speakers can understand Tagalog speakers and vice versa. And the answer is...more than you might think due to a great deal of shared vocabulary. While grammar and syntax may be different, numerous Tagalog words that derive from Spanish should still hold in conversation.

Answer: The Democratic Republic of Congo

France emerged as one of the world's most influential powers in the 16th century and the French language followed it as it commenced exploration around Africa, and to this day, countries like Senegal and Madagascar still use French as lingua franca; someone from France would be able to communicate quite well there.

But as with most places, there's a question of dialect. French-speakers around the world will share much understanding between each other, but even in looking at French-speaking from France as compared to French-speaking from the deepest regions of Québec (ie. Québécois French), you'll see the obvious differences in cadence, nasality, grammar, and pronoun usage. There is a vast amount of similarity, but it wouldn't be unimaginable for people from each location to be tripping up in discussion.

As for the Democratic Republic of Congo, this is a unique historical case. French also happens to be an effective lingua franca for neighbouring Belgium, and it's the Belgians who occupied the DRC for a century starting in the mid-19th century. What resulted was a nation of hundreds of disparate language groups amongst decentralized villages, but these were brought together by colonization and French commonality. The DRC gained independence in 1960, but in doing so, kept French as its official language, with half of its population being able to read and write it.

Said French would be highly-influential to the native languages as well. Cilubà, for example, also known as the Luba-Kasai language, is spoken by millions in central DRC, but due to faltering education rates, it's not uncommon for locals to speak a blend of Cilubà and French as a hybrid, still making them able to communicate with their fellow countrymen...or even French visitors.

Answer: The Qu'ran

One of the world's most widespread languages, Arabic is the primary language of nations along the Mediterranean coast of Northern Africa, throughout the Middle East, and deeper into Asia, and there are a few reasons for its noteworthy prevalence. Notably, it took root as a necessary connective tissue for the dissemination of art, culture, and storytelling during the Golden Age of Muslim Civilization, allowing advancements in economics, science, and technology amongst nations of the Middle Ages.

In the modern era, the importance of Arabic has held due in part to the continued effect of religion and customs in this part of the world. On one side of this is the Islamic faith, the teachings of which, in the Qu'ran, are written in Arabic, the basis of which was created, derived loosely, thousands of years ago, from Egyptian hieroglyphs. It's an alphabet which takes nods from others in the region, like Hebrew, in that it can leave readers to infer vowel sounds if omitted from writing.

On the other side of this is the unique nature of immigration and cultural maintenance brought on by centuries of geopolitical shifts. Egypt, for instance, adopted its own take on written Arabic to reclaim its language after colonialism swept through. Eritrea, further east, brought Arabic into its nation as recently as the 1990s as emigrants returned after its War of Independence.

And naturally, with all of these types of shifts came the tendency for regions to take on their own dialects in Arabic speech, some of which vastly differed from others. Egyptian Arabic, for instance, is quite widely understood due to media proliferation in the Arab sphere. But an Egyptian Arabic speaker may have trouble understanding a Moroccan Arabic speaker due to their propensity to shrink or omit short vowel phonemes. It's a complex language with many varieties all stemming from the same basis of Modern Standard Arabic understanding.

Answer: The Soviet Union

Although the Soviet Union once encompassed a much larger component of the globe before its dissolution in 1991, the modern map contains more than a dozen former-Soviet regions, now sovereign nations, which owe a lot of their cultures to decades of Russian influence. Though many of these nations would go on to have revolutions and seek independence in later years, their reliance on Russian infrastructure, and especially key exports (like gas and oil), would foster a continued need for a common lingua franca, so Russian remained.

Some countries in the region, like Azerbaijan, are significantly influenced by all countries surrounding them, and the Azerbaijani language is often supplanted by its Turkic origins, Iranian dialects, and Russian, perhaps most of all, as its northern border forced strong ties.

To the west, in the Baltic States, both Lithuania and Latvia would be considered similar languages, but they do not have overlapping words (despite having similar grammar rules). Additionally, while the two were part of the Soviet Union, neither share similarities to Russia, using completely different alphabets and coming from different families of language altogether (Russian is Slavic while the others are Baltic). Nonetheless, the Russification of both countries led many of their citizens to be bilingual, and while there's not necessarily a particular dialect that has allowed Russian to evolve within these nations, it's clear that specific loanwords and colloquialisms still persist in their respective languages.

Russian is a unique lingua franca because the use of the Cyrillic alphabet-- including all of the sounds not found within the Latin alphabet-- seems to make sense for bordering nations like Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Belarus, but in a country like Armenia, which has its own alphabet, the differences almost seem like they couldn't be more vast. And yet, history is the ultimate decider.

Answer: The Iberian Peninsula

Portuguese, like Spanish, was proliferated as a lingua franca during an era in which most European nations-- at least the seafaring ones-- created trade routes around the globe, and it's because of this that regions in South America, Africa, and Asia still use Portuguese to an extent today. Portuguese, as a Romance language formed on the Iberian Peninsula, already shares major similarities to Spanish (and other European languages); while their phonology differs quite a bit, the written language for both is quite comparable, and their lexicons overlap significantly. This being said, the more notable differences often derive from, of all sources, Arabic origins. Certain words and phrases in Spain developed from its close connection to its neighbours across the Mediterranean and its Moorish history.

It's because of this that, especially at border locations, the idea of Portuñol can thrive as its own, unique hybrid language. Speakers of either Portuguese or Spanish languages can have a fairly coherent and intelligible conversation based in their own languages, but in the instances where their lexicons or pronunciations differ, new idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms emerge and stick, making them known within their linguistic bubble.

Instances like these are created when speakers engage in what's known as 'code-switching', wherein they have a conversation with someone in a second language and make adjustments to their speech-- this includes syntax, dialect, and word choices-- to make that conversation more palatable and cogent. What results in the case of Portuñol is an odd Pidgin language, the specifics of which could actually become easier to understand for an outsider as a result of their commonalities, or much more difficult if they're truly of a colloquial and regional nature.

Portuñol, while extremely common on the border between Spain and Portugal, is also known to form in South America between the borders of Brazil and its neighbouring countries (notably Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay).

Answer: Hindustani

Interestingly, speakers of both Hindi and Urdu have a lot of common words, phrases, and syntax, so much so that conversation would be quite intelligible without much change to their speech. But while India uses both as national languages, Urdu is much more prevalent in neighbouring Pakistan, where the vocabulary is built up of more loanwords coming from the west, specifically from Arabic and Turkic origins (meaning that the connections stretch as far as Western Africa).

The result is a pair of languages that are virtually interchangeable barring pronunciation. Each has their own alphabet, and those alphabets are presented in very different ways, especially when written; Urdu is written right-to-left (like Arabic text) while Hindi is written left-to-right. The catch is that Hindi words have letters associated with phonetic sounds, so the words lay out the way they're said. Urdu, however, utilizes different inflections and unique letters to form the same words, so in speech, there's still a common ground being met despite the different route taken to reach that specific vocabulary.

The combination of these two languages-- Hindustani-- is the resultant umbrella term for people of the region falling under the same lingua franca. Established centuries ago, it allowed people of all classes and ethnic groups in North India and Pakistan to communicate collectively despite a vast multitude of slightly different communities.

Answer: Afrikaans

Visitors to Southeast Asia are likely to find speakers of the Malay language not only in Malaysia, but in Singapore, parts of Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei, and each of these countries has a slightly different approach to vocabulary and dialect, almost in the way that French-Canadians differ from European French speakers. In both these cases, the spread of a single language allows it to evolve due to its proliferation in to diverse and otherwise contained regions.

It helps, as well, that many of the vocal inflections and syntax found in Malay allow speakers to leverage what they know for other regional languages. Indonesian, as a language, is spoken throughout the thousands of islands in the Indonesian archipelago (another lingua franca!) but all of that is standardized, based on Malay as well.

But a truly unique case of language dissemination can be found in South Africa, where Dutch and English settlers over the centuries shifted workers and colonizers from their own home nations and from the East Indies. As such, there has long been an established presence of Malay descendants in South Africa, and with that, the customs and language of the distant region. Though this obviously had major implications during Apartheid, considering the topic of race, one shining bit of brilliance, at least in the world of sociolinguistics, is the fact that Malay language has imprinted itself on Afrikaans, the language of the lower-class, where there are distinct common words between the two, and saying them in either location-- Cape Town, South Africa or Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for example-- would result in the same common understanding.

Answer: Swahili

The Swahili language took root in Central Africa, especially along the east coast in the nations of Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda, and it mainly comes from the languages of the Bantu people, but with some interesting notes. As the area received immigrants from nations to the north, a major Arabic influence started to slide into Swahili vocabulary. Nowadays, with as much colonization as occurred in this region of the world, it's believed that two in every five Swahili words are of external origin, whether that be Arabic, English, Portuguese, or even Malay.

Originally, the Swahili alphabet made use of Arabic characters, but with German occupation, the Latin alphabet was instituted. There are interesting differences, however, as the Swahili alphabet only uses 23 letters, and one of those, 'c', is only used as part of the 'ch' digraph.

With this in mind, there are many dialects of Swahili due in part to the variety and widespreadedness of Bantu people. The language, however, is rooted in its history in Zanzibar City, Tanzania; the dialect spoken there is said to be the basis for all Swahili, even if it varies the further out it spreads. The further away one goes, however, the more likely it becomes that Swahili speakers will not understand others, which is a good indication of how even a lingua franca's capability can diminish in its own radius of use.

Answer: Creole

The word 'creole', itself, is fascinating, having derivatives in multiple languages while also referring to a common Latin root, 'creare', meaning 'to make'. It means that it's a term used the world over, and not just in Louisiana, where most people may believe the word creole to apply most. The idea of creole people refers to the mixing pot of cultures and customs in different regions, which subsequently leads those people to take on their own unique culture and, with that, language.

Creole language occurs when different aspects of blended languages come together, creating their own dialects, vocabularies, and syntaxes to pidginize the ways through which people communicate. In the case of Creole Louisianans, the French language blended with not only Anglo-centric American dialects and ways of speaking, but also Caribbean patois, developing into a language completely unique to that pocket of the world.

In cases like these, linguists refer to this simplification of language, for the sake of understanding, as pidginization, and it's what happens when a lingua franca isn't completely established between different people coming together in the same region. What results is either the inevitability of a dominant language, or something rudimentary, like this, that can just barely be understood through its relative simplicity. In a modern world, this isn't quite so common, but in colonial eras, it was much more prevalent.

There are also, still, types of creole languages to be found in Africa, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, South America, and Australia. There are obviously less than there were a couple hundred years ago, what with the advent of globalization and the internet, and it's most likely that none of these languages would be able to speak with one another coherently, even if they're all creoles.