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Polish. Polish was a lingua franca in areas of Central and Eastern Europe, especially regions that belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Polish was for several centuries the main language spoken by the ruling classes in Lithuania and Ukraine, and the modern state of Belarus.
Polish-speaking nobles (not all of them necessarily Polish – some Lithuanian, Belarusian, and so forth) started to develop a highly peculiar way of speaking which soon became notorious across Europe. Poland at the time had very many fluent and skilled Latin speakers, Latin being widely used as a lingua franca.
Lingua franca. Europe has had a number of languages that were considered linguae francae over some ranges for some periods according to some historians. Typically in the rise of a national language the new language becomes a lingua franca to peoples in the range of the future nation until the consolidation and unification phases.
Historically, Polish was a lingua franca, important both diplomatically and academically in Central and part of Eastern Europe. In addition to being the official language of Poland, Polish is also spoken as a second language in eastern Germany , northern Czech Republic and Slovakia , western parts of Belarus and Ukraine as well as in southeast ...
- Native: 40 million (2012), L2 speakers: 5.0 million, Total: 45 million
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Why did Polish become a lingua franca?
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What is a lingua franca?
Through this, Polish became the lingua franca in Northeastern Europe. Since at this time, Ruthenian was the third official language of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, it also influenced Polish to some extent. Ruthenian later developed into the Ukrainian and Belarusian dialects. Between 1795 and 1918 Poland ceased to exist.
Although geographically separated, Polish also has some close relations with Serbian. History. Polish was once a lingua franca in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, due to this historic significance of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The language is spoken today by 37-38 million native speakers in Poland.
After this, literature took off. Polish became the lingua franca in many parts of Europe as more people were interested in reading literary works written in the Polish language. The 16th century was also the era in which the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was established, covering the areas of modern-day Poland and Lithuania.
