Lingua franca

How it is used

Researchers study English as a lingua franca (ELF), focusing on how non-native speakers communicate successfully with each other. The plural is lingua francas or, more rarely, linguae francae.

Example sentences

1. At the conference, English was the lingua franca for researchers from twenty countries.

2. Swahili serves as a lingua franca across much of East Africa.

Common collocations

• English as a lingua franca
• serve as a lingua franca
• global lingua franca
• ELF

Related terms

• bilingualismThe ability to use two languages, or the regular use of two languages by a person or a community; using more than two is called multilingualism.
• native speakerA person who learned a language from early childhood as one of their first languages and uses it naturally, without having studied it formally.
• standard languageThe variety of a language used in education, government, the media and dictionaries, and generally accepted as the norm for formal writing.
• sociolinguisticsThe study of how language varies and changes with society: how age, region, social class, gender and situation shape the way people speak.

More terms: Sociolinguistics

• dialect
• accent
• code-switching
• register