Franglais: the Lingua Franca You Already Speak

I always enjoy the French getting whacked over the perversion of their language. Don't misunderstand me, I speak some French, but all languages are borrowers, and not just from English -- go look at Swahili, for example. And I have Chinese friends who happily insert English words into their sentences, especially OK and "bye." The French should be happy their language is still alive enough to be both importing and exporting words!

C'est un cool article.

Wonderful article - evolution of language is a deeply held passion for me.

I seeded an article last year (also from the BBC) titled "It's Hinglish, innit?" It is along the same lines as this one here, except it is a blend of Hindi and English. As the man in this article says, Vote pour moi:-)

Miss Linguistics - love your avatar. Where have you been hiding on the Vine? Good to find you.

Some training for Miss Linguisitcs:

Le mélange des langues est un procès naturel, et l'anglais n'est pas la seule langue qui on en profite. Car, au moins aux États-Unis, l'anglais progressivement assimile avec l'Espagnol de type Mexicain. Et la aussi, la discussion Américaine est marquée d'émotions notables. Et discussions qui, notons bien, est même menée intensivement aux niveaux politiques et médiatiques les plus hautes.

D'aillerus, les mots d'origine Hindou forment déjà aujourd'hui outil de base de l'anglais-anglais de la génération de jeunes urbains britanniques la plus récente.

Sans pousser trop fort, l'argument que l'anglais pur et net s'écrase sous le poids d'immigration non anglophone sur les deux cotés de l'Atlantique pourrait se faire avec aisance. Et le problème sous-jacent touche toutes les langues, dites Occidentaux, en excluant á la limite l'Espagnol.

I grew up speaking French and Hausa, a language of the southern Sahara. French is the old colonial language of most of the area, but Hausa is the trade language of the area, what Swahili is to the east coast of Africa.

There's a phrase we still hear in all the romance languages: lingua franca, to describe the common language used by people in a given area. It means "the language of the Franks", the ancient people who predate the French, and gave French its name. But the term "Frank" was rather a misnomer, since all the Arabs called Europeans "Franks".

But lingua franca was once a real language, and one hears a fair bit of it in the eastern Mediterranean coastline today. It has elements of Provençal, French, Spanish, Arabic, Greek, and Turkish in it. It has an Italian variant called Sabir.

In a shrinking world, it's inevitable languages will cross-pollinate. French itself was divided for centuries, the place name "Languedoc" means the Language of "Oc". Oc was the way the southern French said "Oui", = yes. English itself is a train wreck mixture of French and Saxon, all our four-letter dirty words are Saxon, their politer equivalents are Latinate and French.

The French are fighting back, they've always had the Académie française, often called the forty immortals, who supposedly standardize French. But French itself is a bit of an anachronism, once the great language of statecraft, it lost its supremacy when it lost its empire. They must not complain too much: in an era of the Chunnel and banlieues full of Arabs and Africans, the immigrants and visitors will give French a new lease on life.

You could do this with Spanish...

Oh wait, that's Esperanto! (Birdo? Insekto? Come on.)

(Heh. The other day in Spanish class, I said that somebody "esta talkativo." Unfortunately, things don't work like that.)

Tre's Bon!