The Post-Lingua Franca Blog!

⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚Hey, welcome to my first blog post! My name’s Ash and I run this little website, blogging to a nonexistent audience cuz my school held me hostage to do this project thing. I love anything language related! In today’s post I wanted to just go over what a global language is, cuz that’s a pretty huge part of what my site is and all. It’s basically what it says on the tin- a language spoken internationally. But plenty of languages are spoken internationally nowadays due to globalisation… so why on earth are some languages Global Languages and others are considered not so?

Well, it likely mainly comes down to the politico-economic influence of the language, as well as the number of countries in which it holds some official status or power for daily communication. Take for example, English. Essentially considered the only Global Language which linguists can agree upon, which is pretty crazy cuz linguists never agree upon anything honestly. Why’s English so globally influential? Well, following the British colonisation of pretty much a fight of the globe spread across evenly, English became the language of business. Knowing English improved your chances of raking in coin from filthy rich British traders, so… it spread like wildfire, and in our modern world English is considered the language of globalisation for this reason.

This, however, brings up an interesting counter-example. Mandarin Chinese is the second-most spoken business language in the world, yet the vast majority of linguists do not consider Mandarin Chinese to be a Global Language. What sets it apart from English?

Most likely, it comes down to China’s lack of colonial reach, as well as it lacking official as well as lingua franca status in most countries internally. You’re most likely to only find fluent Mandarin speakers among the ethnically Chinese, especially Northern Chinese. Even within this category, many people in this ethnic category do not have a strong grasp of their mother tongue. On the contrary, English has a strong reach across a multitude of regions as an official or administrative language as a result of British colonialism, and is widely spoken across individuals of every ethnicity as a lingua franca. (What’s this lingua franca thing, you ask? I’ll make a post about it later. There’s a reason I named my blog after it! :P )

Here's a handful of sources and interesting further reading on the topic which explain it better and more formally than I do:

Thanks for following along! This is Ash, signin’ out from the best worst linguistics blog on the net. ⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚

⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚ Second blog entry! I’m practically overflowing with literary masterpieces here already. Anyways, IALs are the other major part of my site so it makes sense for me to talk about what they are and explain their history a little bit.

An International Auxiliary Language (IAL) is basically a language deliberately created in order to facilitate communication which is ethnically, politically and economically neutral. Due to them being constructed, they hold no cultural roots and therefore they hypothetically make an ideal method of communication in settings such as the business world or in international conferences.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s, Johann Martin Schleyer created Volapük, the first IAL to really catch on. It was based mainly on German, English, and French- making it not the most international of languages but opening up a wide chunk of Europe to quickly learn and catch on to this new tongue. Schleyer eliminated difficult-to-pronounce phonemes in order to make the language accessible across people regardless of their mother tongue. Three international conferences were held among zealous members of the Volapük society, the third of which was held entirely in this newly created tongue. There was a bit of an IAL craze after that, but none of them really stuck- except for one.

Around the same time as Volapük was first introduced to the world, L.L Zamenhof was in the process of creating a language known as Esperanto. Esperanto was created with the intention of being an IAL, being easy to learn and fairly mutually intelligible with all European Romance languages, while deriving some of its grammar and phonetics from Slavic roots due to Zamenhof’s Polish background. Esperanto was easy to learn beyond its etymology- it contained no gendered nouns, only a single definite article, and extremely simple tenses, practically unheard of for Romance-derived languages. Not everything was sunshine and rainbows, though: while Esperanto caught on like wildfire in the linguistic scene, it faced criticisms for confusingly mixing elements of Romance and Slavic languages in the utilisation of non-latin characters and non-romance grammar. Furthermore, words for queries and answers are so similar that it is very difficult for all but the most skilled of speakers to make out simple questions. Finally, the same simple tenses that made it so easy to learn made it quite difficult to communicate when actions occurred or were to occur. Despite these flaws, the language persisted as popular, and in modern times, Esperanto has gathered a small community of native speakers, yet it still holds its purpose as being a language for communication rather than culture- practically all of the, what, 1000???-ish Esperanto speakers in the world are bilingual or beyond.

Since Esperanto, we’ve made all sorts of advancements in IALs as well as in Constructed Languages (ConLangs) which could be potentially repurposed as IALs. Interlingua was an IAL developed in the mid 20th century by a team of linguists who wished to facilitate pan-European communication. Interlingua was created to be as naturally close to a Romance language as possible and to be intelligible on sight by speakers of any Romance language. In terms of something not created with the purpose of international communication, toki pona is the second most popular ConLang after Esperanto. It has an absolutely minimal vocabulary of around 130 words and was created by Sonja Lang around 2001 in order to simplify her thoughts. toki pona (written in all lowercase due to linguistic conventions ok I don’t have terrible grammar) has since caught on and even been considered as a prospective IAL for extremely simple communication, though it would be useless in settings such as the workspace due to the fact that it just can’t communicate complex ideas.

Here’s a handy dandy list of sources and further reading:

Thanks for givin’ this a read! This is Ash, signin’ out from the best worst linguistics blog on the net. ⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚

⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚ Well, the day finally came. Remember how I said in my first post that I’d explain what a lingua franca is in a future post? And why my site is named after it? Well, basically, the term Lingua Franca, or the “Frankish Language” comes from a historical trade language developed by eastern mediterranean traders. What was notable about Lingua Franca is the fact that it was really simple. Like, REALLY simple. Its nouns, verbs and adjectives didn’t change much in relation to what was being said. It was essentially a really boiled down baby of French and Italian for trade purposes.

In the modern day, a “Lingua Franca” is used to refer to any language that is used between a few groups (ethnic or otherwise) which speak different languages in order to communicate information related to trade, science, academics (lingua francas are often taught in institutionalised settings) and official documents. In countries where multiple languages are commonly spoken, lingua francas are extremely important for communication: Bahasa Indonesia serves as the lingua franca of Indonesia, Hindi and English serve this purpose in India, and Tok Pisin is genuinely utilised for nationwide communication in Papua New Guinea. English can be considered a lingua franca among all British-colonised countries, and is also considered the lingua franca of the business world and medical world. I named my site “Post-Lingua Franca” cuz I wanted to explore what happens when you go BEYOND, or post, a lingua franca: instead of only facilitating communication between a few groups of people in a certain geographical region or academic field, a global language should serve as a sort of lingua franca for pretty much everyone (hence why English is currently the main contender for the title of global language).

In addition to lingua francas, there are two other areas of linguistic interest which aren’t quite as global as my first two posts, but are still extremely interesting examples of communication nonetheless. (Man I’m starting to sound like a total nerd in these posts)

Pidgins are super simplified languages created to facilitate communication in situations when speakers share no common language. They’re sort of like lingua francas, only even more rudimentary and used in a variety of communication including less formal settings. The main difference between pidgins and lingua francas is the fact that pidgins are generally never used for communication between people of the same general background. For instance, English can be used as a lingua Franca among different ethnicities while also spoken among native speakers, but it cannot be created to bridge the gap between groups where no linguistic common ground exists. An interesting example of a pidgin is the now-extinct Japanese Pidgin English (JPE), also known as Bamboo English, which developed as a way for Japanese folks to communicate with US military personnel following the second World War. JPE later moved to being used as a form of communication between the same US armymen and South Koreans, interestingly enough: the original ethnolinguistic group with which the gap was trying to be bridged was no longer present, yet the language was transplanted and changed with time in order to meet new requirements for communication. Another short-lived Japanese Pidgin was known as Yokohama Japanese Pidgin or Yokohamese. This arose at the trade ports at Yokohama in the late 19th century and was utilised by the Japanese, Europeans, Americans and the Chinese as a form of mutual, politically neutral trade communication. Unlike its successor, it was a product of trade rather than war: Yokohamese was crucial in driving Japan’s economy at the time: it allowed Yokohama to grow as a major trade city and which in turn gave Japan monopoly over the export of raw silk. Pretty useful!

Now, let’s turn to Creoles. Creoles are essentially pidgins which have been given the time to linguistically mature and become a full-fledged language rather than a rudimentary method of communication. While pidgins generally are born of situations where two groups need to communicate and are a mishmash of the first languages of the two communicating groups, Creoles are generally the primary language of a population and used to communicate outside of trade, colonial and military settings. Out of all Creoles, perhaps the most well-known is Haitian Creole (endonym Kreyòl ayisyen or simply Kreyòl). Kreyòl is a product of the French colonisation of Haiti from the 1600s to the 1800s, and unlike other French-based Creoles, it’s well-known for being highly influenced by the original mother tongues of its speakers (in this case, a variety of African languages). Kreyòl is also known for being used in formal settings in Haiti. While most creole languages hold some official status in their countries of origin, it is generally the colonial language which holds the formal status: Haiti’s pretty unique!

Here’s some of my sources so you can educate yourself more than I have:

Hope you learnt something new today! This is Ash, signin’ out from the best worst linguistics blog on the net. ⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚

We’re back to IALs with this one, folks. But maybe not in the way you’d expect. Unless you (gasp) read the title of the post!

There’s a ton of different forms of sign languages out there. America’s got ASL, Britain’s got BSl, Australia’s got Auslan, so on and so forth. Sign language is OBVIOUSLY not just limited to big western countries, I just named those three cuz I’d consider them the most well known. There's over 300 sign languages in the world! A slightly lesser known type of Sign Language is Chinese Sign Language (CSL), which is unique as it's a language isolate and mirrors spoken and written Chinese in an interesting manner. The hand signs are pretty pictorial and there's different sigs for different familiar relations just like in oral/written Chinese!

Some systems of sign language are considered easier to understand than others. For example, Australian Sign Language (Auslan) is generally considered a more intuitive and learnable sign language than its American counterpart of ASL. Sign languages have their own linguistic diversities and idiosyncrasies and function similar to oral languages in that regard. They tend to form linguistic bridges just as oral languages do as well: for instance, a well-known sign language pidgin is International Sign, created with the goal of being universally understood to Sign language users and to overcome linguistic barricades. Sound familiar? If it doesn’t you clearly haven’t read anything on my site up ‘til this point, which is weird. Go back and read. Fill your head with knowledge or I’ll find you.

Using a form of sign language as an IAL may have both its pitfalls and uses. It’s useless for online communication like text exchanges or e-mails, but face to face it may be a useful way to communicate without phonetic barriers such as accents and mispronunciations. The main pitfall, though? There’s no agreed upon universal sign language. International Sign is a pidgin but not an accepted global language which everyone who signs is familiar with, and draws heavily from exclusively European Sign Languages (just like how many oral IALs draw from exclusively Romance and Germanic languages!). To assign one sign language as a global one creates exactly the same pitfalls as Global languages, in which there are direct political and cultural ties to one group present within the language. If a constructed sign language were to be conceived, in a similar but more deliberate fashion than International Sign, a Sign Language as an IAL may be a possibility. A similar problem arises with other accessible forms of communication such as Braille: there is no universality to it and it is not standardised as one language as most people tend to assume.

Here’s a handful of interesting sources about sign languages and Braille:

Golly, if this blog weren’t just dedicated to IALs and Global languages and whatnot I would’ve loved to delve into non-oral linguistics more! Maybe in the future...

Hope you like the food for thought! This is Ash, signin’ out from the best worst linguistics blog on the net. ⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚

⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚ Be honest, what do you think of when you think of conveying information visually? Sure, there’s regular old reading which sort of counts, but chances are you probably thought of something less wordy.

Pictures. Paintings. Logos. Can you consider these a form of internationally intelligible communication? Is conveying a concept enough to qualify as communication? Can conveying a concept visually qualify as a language?

Short answer: Maybe? Long answer: Nah.

Frankly, artworks don’t meet the criteria for a language. Written languages are generally made up of an alphabet or a deliberate combination of strokes and symbols. While you can argue that visual artworks are composed of deliberate strokes trying to convey meaning, those strokes are not STANDARDISED with any sort of consistency between artists. There are an infinite amount of strokes which you can create an infinite amount of artworks. Meanwhile, languages tend to have a concept of discrete infinity: in which a finite set of letters/strokes/spoken phonemes/whatever are used to create an infinite set of sentences and phrases. The keyword there is a FINITE set of whatever it is. There is set sound or meaning to these strokes generally, unlike visual artworks which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Sure, there’s some near-universal agreements about the visual arts. You will probably agree that thick, solid strokes look “friendly” and clean, or that yellow is generally a “happier” looking colour than blue or deep purple. You’ll also probably agree that the Monster energy logo looks radioactive as hell. Is information successfully conveyed through a visual manner? Yeah. Is it in a manner which is standardised and conveys more or less the same meaning to everyone? Nah. You could argue that written artworks such as poetry can be interpreted differently by different readers as well, but poetry’s… different. It uses the fundamentals of language to build a sort of artwork of words. Visual arts don’t use the fundamentals of a language, but rather are built around a certain set of elements and principles which differ from how languages are formed.

(A comically long) FOOTNOTE: Remember how I mentioned that most written languages are composed of either alphabets or a set of deliberate characters and symbols? Writing systems such as Chinese or even the historical writing system for Nahuatal used by Aztecs may be considered artsy and difficult to wrap one’s head around by people used to alphabetised written languages such as I. They are very deliberate, though: 90% of Chinese characters are pictophonetic, made up of one part explaining the meaning of the character and the other part explaining its sound. Pretty cool! Most common Chinese characters (such as the words for body parts and natural features) are more directly pictographic, depicting a simplified version of what the character refers to. In terms of written Nahuatl, most of the written glyphs were found in documents known as codices. While they’re pretty self explanatory when you look at them, no one’s sure how to classify the writing system because we’re not entirely sure as to how closely the symbols correlate to word roots in the spoken language. Codices during the Spanish colonial era tended to be transliterated into the Latin alphabet, so cracking pronunciations wasn’t ever an issue. It was mainly an argument of how well some symbols correlate to certain sounds in pictograms. Current linguistic insight suggests that written Nahuatl was not often used to represent spoken language and sentences, but rather to keep records of stuff like personal and place names: it was flexible in terms of how logograms and syllabograms were depicted, to the best of our knowledge. There’s a codex out there with strings of glyphs which hasn’t been deciphered yet due to a lack of transliteration which COULD, maybe, be full sentences, but… as of what we know right now, Nahuatl is an interesting semi-mystery of pictographic-ish writing. Cool stuff. Man, this footnote is longer than the main part of the article :’]

Here’s sources for you nerds who like delving deeper into this stuff:

Pretty cool how we’re always communicating, even through means we wouldn’t conventionally classify as language! This is Ash, signin’ out from the best worst linguistics blog on the net. ⊹ . ݁˖ . ⋆₊˚

P.S.: Before I go, I’d like to say that I’ve opened up an ask box on my site for those of you who have questions about nerdy interlinguistics stuff. PLEASE send in asks. I want to geek out about this stuff so bad you don’t even know T-T

Post-Lingua Franca is a living, growing blog (lie). Down here you can find a constantly updated works cited (click this fancy cursive bit!) of all the sources I've attached throughout my blog posts!