How people react when you speak their language

Comedy/Humour
21

It was a bit that like working in a French office back in the day, but with kisses and coffee.

22

At first I found it fascinating to watch as a group of locals would greet one another… with just these 2 words.
So many ways to say “ça va” depending on the cadence, emphasis, body language as well…

it’s a very useful phrase… :+1:

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23

I’ve noticed this with Cussy locals, just a quick, sometimes multiple repeated ca va.

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24

Ça va can mean how are you, I’m ok, everything is fine, so far so good, that’s enough, stop, wotcha looking at, are you mad etc etc

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25

Very much like “(you) alright” in English, I guess

26

Why would you expect a New Yorker or any USAmerican to speak English as we know it?

Or any British person born this century?

27

Or indeed as Barbara Buncle knows it.

I don’t think it is possible to have it both ways, delighted that English is the lingua franca, but dismayed that as such it evolves.

28

I love the irony of this statement. :grin:

I ought to Google it probably, but I wonder when French stopped being the lingua Franca?

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29

Always asked what the Queen is like in the US and whether I’d met her. And the first time we gave American guests Branston Pickle and English Cheddar they fell in love with what is essentially a Ploughman’s Lunch. Funnily enough they didn’t feel the same way about Christmas Pudding or Cake

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30

franca means free etymologically I think, I don’t think it’s the same root as France.

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31

Well according to the Internet Gods it comes from a phrase meaning “Language of the Franks” - but not strictly French as it was more of a pidgin language it seems.

The first use of the term ‘lingua franca’ was recorded in 1553. The term franca (literally ‘Frankish’) was at one time used to referred to western Europeans, and lingua franca (meaning ‘language of the Franks or western Europeans’) was an Italian expression for the language that came to be used for communication purposes between traders in the Mediterranean area. Since then, the meaning of the term has evolved.

(Open University)

Wikipedia has more detail:

Around the Renaissance era a mixed language of Italian (80%) and many words from Turkish, French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic was used in the eastern region around the Mediterranean Sea It was in use as the language of commerce and diplomacy and was called lingua franca. At that time, in the port cities of the Ottoman empire there lived very many Italian speakers. Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca came from its meaning in Arabic. That word came into use before the Crusades, when Europeans used to be called “Franks” or Faranji in Arabic.

So we’re both wrong, it was mainly Italian! :smiley:

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32

The French don’t accept that English is now the Lingua Franca. As a TEFL teacher I used to start with a lesson about English as a Lingua Franca, and nobody had ever heard it! I taught a class of people hoping to go into Tourism Management, and they said visitors needed to speak French. When I suggested that coach loads of Chinese might speak some English but no French they were outraged! They were there to learn English!

33

Well, they woudn’t, would they? :smiley:

But I had always assumed that French was the original “lingua franca”, but as explained by those quotes that i posted above, it seems it wasn’t - the “franca” bit referring to “Franks” in the Crusades-period sense of people from Western Europe, not the language or nation of France specifically..

2 Likes