"Lingua franca" (LING-gwuh FRANG-kuh) – from the Italian for "Frankish tongue" – is a medium of communication between people who speak different languages. It was originally a combination of Italian, Spanish, French, Greek, Arabic, and Turkish spoken in eastern Mediterranean ports.
Example (as used by John McWhorter in a New York Times review of The Word of the Lord Is Upon Me by Jonathan Rieder): "It was Martin Luther King who made the black preacher’s cadence a lingua franca… ."
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