The lingua franca is a Pidgin, which was spoken formerly in the wearing of the Mediterranean. The words used were mainly borrowed from the Spanish and to the Italian but they could belong in a more heterogeneous way to other languages of the Mediterranean basin like the Arab , the Maltais, the Turkish , the Provençal or the French.

Nowadays, by extension the term of lingua franca indicates a Common language used by a population given to communicate. Let us note that these common languages are not obligatorily pidgins like was the lingua franca . Example: the Kiswahili in sub-Saharan Africa, the Afrikaans in Namibia.

See too

• linguistic Official language

• Impérialisme

Map-bms: Lingua franca