• Badass_panda
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 year ago

    Interestingly, while French was the lingua franca of Europe for several hundred years, it wasn’t the origin of the term ‘Lingua Franca’.

    That term meant the “language of the Franks” and was the Mediterranean trade language in the medieval through Renaissance eras. It was actually a pidgin of Italian, French, Greek and Arabic adopted as being roughly mutually intelligible among Venetians, Byzantines and North Africans.

    The reference to the ‘Franks’ is because the generic word for a western European (in the Byzantine, Greek world) had long been “Frank”.

    • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      No kidding? That’s what I get for just accepting information without checking it! I heard that from an old family member and have never bothered to question it

      Thank you, for the correction and doing in such a friendly way :)

      • Badass_panda
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I always thought the same thing! I only found this out relatively recently, and I thought it was pretty cool