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Lingua franca
1. Language used for communication among people of different mother tongues.
2. A hybrid language containing elements from several different languages used in 
this way.
3. Any system of communication providing mutual understanding.
Figure 4.2 The definition of ‘lingua franca’ from the Collins English Dictionary (2005)
There are at present some 6,000 recorded languages in the world, but many 
are fast disappearing with the death of their last native speakers, and it 
has been estimated that perhaps only 2,000 will survive by the end of this 
century. The main trend is perceived to be the spread of English, which has 
increasingly become the lingua franca, as we have already seen. The huge 
development of the Internet and electronic publication led Bill Gates in 
1999 to publish Microsoft’s new Encarta World English Dictionary, with the 
slogan ‘One World: One Dictionary’. The next stage is perhaps ‘One World, 
One Language’.
There have been several lingua franca throughout history in different parts 
of the world. One of the best known examples in recent times is Latin, which 
was recognized as the international language of the Church, education, 
diplomacy and learning in Europe from the eleventh century to the sixteenth 

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The International Use of English 65
century. After the Protestant Reformation of the 1530s and the develop-
ment of local language printing with the invention of the printing press, 
the importance of Latin diminished, so that today many Roman Catholic 
Church ceremonies are conducted in the national language. From the seven-
teeth century to the nineteenth century, the international language of 
diplomacy was French, as well as at court and in polite society, for example, 
in Tsarist Russia. It began to be challenged, however, by the rise of English 
as the British Empire grew towards its peak at the end of the nineteenth 
century. German, the language of international science, research and pub-
lication, held sway in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, while 
Russian acted as the lingua franca of the Soviet bloc from 1917 to 1990.
In his book Language Death, David Crystal deplores the loss of many 
languages and puts this succinctly: ‘If diversity is a
pre- requisite for 
successful humanity, then the preservation of linguistic diversity is essential, 
for language lies at the heart of what it means to be human’ (2002: 35). 
This is further emphasized by a Czech proverb which says: ‘As long as the 
language lives, the nation is not dead.’ Such concerns are seen in modern 
Britain with, for example, the successful attempt to retain a knowledge of 
Kernuak, the Cornish language, which was preserved from extinction by the 
government in 2002 when it was declared an official minority language in 
Britain. The Welsh language has also survived and is an official alternative 
to English in Welsh schools; it is also used extensively in the media, official 
documents and notices, particularly after the devolution of power to the 
Welsh Assembly. This is in contrast to the decline of the number of speakers 
of Scottish Gaelic, the ancient language used by a small minority in the 
Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides. By 1982, the number of fluent Gaelic 
speakers was only 80,000 and by 2002 the figure had declined to approxi-
mately 50,000.