Talk:Lingua franca

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Malay/Indonesian

As I understand, Indonesian language is one of two standards of Malay language (the other being the official language of Malaysia). Now, is the "Malay" referred to here, as a l.f. across a wide area, specifically the Indonesian variety (as the present text implies), or a complex of dialects, or what? —Tamfang (talk) 22:40, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tamfang: The standardized Malay variety called "Indonesian" is the national language of Indonesia and almost everybody (except for an increasingly dwindling minority of people in remote areas without access to mass media and schools) speaks it as a second or first language. Is French a "lingua franca" in France? Is English a "lingua franca" in the United Kingdom? If this strikes you as a bit off, you will feel what I feel when I read "Malay language also known as Indonesian [...] is [...] a lingua franca in Indonesia". Historically, the Vehicular Malay varieties (often called "Low Malay") served as genuine lingua francas (i.e. languages that serve as medium for inter-ethnic and international communication without necessarily being regulated or sanctioned as such) especially in Jakarta and in eastern Indonesia before Indonesian succeeded to permeate all regions in Indonesia as a daily tool of communication. In pre-independence Indonesia, there was diglossia between Vehicular Malay and regional languages; after independence, the propagation of Indonesian has produced triglossia (Indonesian – Vehicular Malay – regional language) which still exists in many areas, but language shift has often produced a new type of diglossia, viz. Indonesian vs. Vehicular Malay (as L1), or in some areas of Indonesia, Standard Indonesian vs. newly-emerging regional language-influenced varieties of Indonesian.

Indonesian nevertheless serves at one point as a typical lingua franca, namely in the communication between Indonesian and Timor Leste. In Timor Leste, the status of Indonesian was downgraded after independence to a "working language" (on par with English), but proficiency in Indonesian is still high and quite indispensable when doing trade with Indonesia. –Austronesier (talk) 11:54, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Classical Maori

Comments welcome please. An IP - '222.152.26.228' - has expanded this short subsection with further statements and Wp:CITEKILL numerous citations. There are many issues with this and I don't have time to work through that section properly. If you don't already know, as part of the Maori Renaissance in NZ, there is a widespread promotion of all things to do with Maori culture and language, a project enthusiastically adopted by certain sections of society prone to such causes. This subsection is an example of what is happening. Some general concerns that other editors with more time might want to handle, or just comment on here, are: 1/ Most of the sources are not ideal Independent-RSSs they are opinion pieces or govt published articles 2/ Maori words have been used instead of the commonly understood English words (I have put back the two islands to 'North Island' and 'South Island', for example. 3/ Classical Maori is a theoretical term with no evidence to back its existence - Maori were illiterate until European arrival in the late 18thC. It is the term used to describe the unknown form of the language during the period known as Classical period of Maori history c. (1500-1769). It is debatable if it should be in this list. 3/ WP:SYNTH is everywhere. The last sentence about an 1867 act is being used, for example, as evidence that because of that act Maori stopped being a lingua franca. This is original research and off-topic. 4/ The term L-F here refers to the period from 1769 to 1840/50. Some Europeans used Maori with varying levels of fluency to communicate with the locals, such as in barter and by Church missionaries. This is not really a lingua franca situation, and if it can be technically described as such, it goes against the spirit and intent of the term. Roger 8 Roger (talk) 23:05, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

the range of German

[German] is recognised as an official language in countries outside of Europe, specifically Namibia.

This seems to say that beyond Europe the countries where German is official are Namibia. Is Namibia the only one (in which case the sentence ought to be rewritten), the most populous, or what? —Tamfang (talk) 19:04, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it is the only one with official status on a national level outside of Europe, see German language. It is, however, also a recognized minority language on a sub-national level in Brazil. Additionally, the Azovsky Nemetsky National District in Russia lies outside the boundaries of geographical Europe. These are the ones documented on Wikipedia, but use of German as a lingua franca is not confined to these places (it is, after all, still one of the most-spoken languages in Europe, and still has a pretty large set of L2 speakers). TucanHolmes (talk) 10:45, 15 April 2024 (UTC)