When I think of a lingua franca, the first thing that comes to mind is Latin, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, if only for the centuries of dashing strides of Roman legionaries across the Mediterranean world, much of Western Europe, the Balkans, Crimea, and vast regions of the Middle East, including Anatolia, the Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia and Arabia. But Latin held strong even after the fall of the Roman Empire, although its status as the official language of the Croatian parliament as late as the mid-nineteenth century is more of a curiosity than the norm. Nevertheless, the first truly global lingua franca was French—to think that it all began with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts—and its undivided reign in courts and salons, universities and military headquarters, received its first blow only when the Treaty of Versailles was also drawn up in English. And so here we are—with the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and Orwell—producing literature, scholarly works and manuals by the mile and wondering what will come next—Chinese perhaps? But I have a hunch that the next truly global lingua franca will be 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001, but that is going to be as relevant to us as the invention of the washing machine was to the dinosaurs.
More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com
hidden pilcrow 