Today s lingua franca BEFORE READING Answer these questions. a. What do you use English for at present? b. How do you think you will use it in the future? c. Do you think it is important to have native speakers as pronunciation models? Why/why not? d. What is a lingua franca and what is it used for? e. What historical examples of a lingua franca do you know about? f. How many people in the world now use English as a lingua franca? Here are a few historical examples of a lingua franca: Latin the language of cultured European people from the time of the Roman Empire to the end of the Middle Ages; French the language of the nobility and of diplomacy in Western Europe from about 1100 AD to the 1700s; Swahili the language used across East African cultures; the sign language once used among native American Indian tribes. English has now become the world s lingua franca and the term global English has become very common. It is a way to demonstrate that English is spoken in every part of the world, both among speakers inside a particular country who share a first language and also by speakers from different countries. Unit English is no longer spoken only by its native speakers in the UK, North America, Australia and New Zealand and by those who learn English in order to communicate with native speakers. It is also spoken among non-native speakers in countries like India, the Philippines and Singapore, plus in many other countries. This use of English is generally called English as an International Language or EIL. It is this kind of English a lingua franca which is the largest group of English speakers, numbering an incredible 1.5 billion. The appearance of so many varieties of EIL has caused a number of linguists to think that native speakers may not always be the best models for pronunciation in the teaching of English. Map of the English-speaking world What is global English? A lingua franca is a means of communication between people of different languages who need to communicate for various social and economic reasons. A lingua franca is generally the language of the dominant culture of the civilisations that come into contact, but it may also be a combination of elements from them. The term goes back to the Middle Ages, when travellers used a simplified compromise language (based on Italian with elements of Spanish, French, Greek and Arabic) when doing business in various parts of the then-known world. module 1 mother-tongue use official/semi-official second language mother-tongue use co-exists with other language