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WotD: Lingua Franca
You know, it’s been a while since I dropped some Latin on you guys.
Today we’ll take a look at lingua franca.
No, this is not some kind of funky pasta.
A lingua franca is a universal language between people who speak different mother tongues.
As history has progressed, English has become the lingua franca for international business.
It is not the only one, though.
At various times in history, French, Russian and Latin were all lingua francas of Europe.
Everything changes over time, and where once all the royal families of Europe spoke French, now there is not even a French royal family anymore.
Things change, and history moves on.
Perhaps one day, Spanish or Chinese will become the lingua franca of the world.
It’s entirely possible.
It’s also possible that another language that doesn’t even exist yet will rise to the top.
It might even be Esperanto.
Esperanto is an invented language.
It was created in the late 1800s by a Polish ophthalmologist named L. L. Zamenhof.
Although it never became the main lingua franca, some people still speak it today.
Then there is Klingon, which is one of the languages invented for the Star Trek series.
It’s not related to any country on Earth (Hollywood is not a foreign country, although the people from there may seem like aliens at times).
Avid Star Trek fans speak it all over the world, and when they get together for conventions, they can use it as a lingua franca of sorts.
Right now, English is the lingua franca of international business, but in a few hundred years, some other language may have taken its place.
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Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 68.
The higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100, the easier the passage is to read.