Word: francae
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...million people; it is the second language of 250 million others. It has long been the language of world commerce and, said Eccles, is rapidly becoming "the accepted language of development and aid in all continents." Even Communist-bloc engineers on foreign aid missions accept English as the lingua franca; more than 50% of all Soviet schoolchildren take an intensive, eleven-year English course...
Swahili clearly falls into this last category. As the lingua franca of about one-third of Africa, it is important now, and it will become more important twenty years from now. Quite simply, there is no reason why the University should not provide a course in it, unless the CEP is out to prove what nobody disputes: that it is oblivious to the desires of Harvard's students, even when their requests are perfectly sound...
Urdu, which is a Turkish word for lashkar (army), developed under the influence of the Mogul kings some 400 years ago as a sort of lingua franca, originating in the northern parts of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. Later during the centuries, it spread very rapidly throughout the subcontinent and became the principal language of the people. For the first time in its history, Urdu has been declared an official language (in Pakistan, pop. 95 million)-the other official language being Bengali. The Urdu script is Arabic, written from right to left...
...Moscow last week grinning Ghanaian diplomats gleefully celebrated the signing of a $45 million contract for Soviet development of their nation's mineral and industrial resources. In the Hotel de France in Guinea's steaming capital of Conakry, the lingua franca of the lobby has shifted from French to Russian. At Leopoldville and Stanleyville in tne Congo, Soviet Ilyushin transports buzz familiarly in and out, debouching badly needed food -plus intelligence officers, tactical advisers for premier Patrice Lumumba's army and, according to Western intelligence reports, arms and ammunition...
...Turkish, about 12% of the school's 515 students come from other countries in the area, and the figure will rise to as much as 20%. Most of the students are still from upper-class backgrounds; since English is the modern world's technical lingua franca, all studies are conducted in English, and only the best-educated students are equipped to understand the texts. But in time, President Burdell expects his enrollment to include ''sons and daughters of peasants of Anatolia, miners of Zonguldak, fishing families of the Black Sea." In keeping with the students...