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You probably know that not everyone speaks English. Still, English has become the closest thing we currently have to a global lingua franca (sorry, Esperanto!). But have you ever wondered why? There are several languages that are more widely spoken than English, including Hindi, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. And yet, those aren’t the ones people are using to connect internationally. Here’s why our language has become a lingua franca – and why, despite these other languages h

Being an American abroad has its challenges.  One you might not expect is how Americans are perceived outside the US.  Sure, we have this cool cachet – we’re the country of hip-hop and Hollywood, after all.  But you also get associated with a lot of negative stereotypes. A stereotype I hear a lot is that we’re stubborn monolinguals who expect everyone else to speak English.  In reality, an estimated 20% of Americans speak at least one other language (and the real number could

When it comes travel or business, a lot of people say there’s really only one language you need to get by: English.  It may seem like they have a point: with its adaptability and relative easiness to learn compared to other major world languages like Mandarin or Arabic, English has become a lingua franca.  In addition to its estimated 300 million+ native speakers, according to some sources, more than 1 billion people speak it (with varying degrees of fluency) as a foreign lan

If English is becoming a lingua franca with a billion speakers, why bother learning a foreign language?  Isn’t it enough to speak English?  Oh ye of the limited view. This is why everyone should be learning a foreign language RIGHT NOW: It makes you smarter.  Learning a language involves mental flexibility, problem solving, conceptual thinking, reasoning and creativity.   Studies show children studying a second language score higher in reading, language arts and math tests. I

What happens when two people who need to communicate with each other learned different mother tongues?  In the days of the Ottoman Empire when Mediterranean port cities were the hot bed of commerce and diplomacy, this was a real problem.  The solution was Lingua Franca. A common language, Lingua Franca was mostly Italian mixed with a smattering of French, Spanish, Greek and Arabic for commonality sake.  Franca means frankish since Europeans were called “Franks” or “Franji” in