Word: lingua
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...made them. (None of the analysts - academics, think tank researchers and one diplomat - would go on the record with their views, pointing to the explosive nature of the controversy.) "This is certainly not excusing them, but the kinds of [anti-Jewish], anti-Israel comments attributed to Hosni are the lingua franca of Arab political and cultural elites," says one Middle East expert. "Virtually none of it would be used in polite, international company, but officials who fail to use such terms to friendly or domestic audiences won't get much of a hearing...
...Moreover, because the lingua franca of international hotel staffs is English, notoriously monolingual Americans, Brits and Australians probably rank higher than they should. The French readily volunteer that their practice of foreign languages leaves much to be desired, but even the harshest Francophobe would mock the poll's finding that the average Yank tourist is the better polyglot. At least that's what French travelers might argue...
...musical vogues and eras. The Broadway where he started out in the '50s is no more. Once the majority of Broadway audiences were New Yorkers; now they are mostly tourists. Rock and pop have moved into the mainstream, edging out movie and show tunes as the world's musical lingua franca. Sondheim's not bitter: "Pop made people listen to lyrics more." He is regretful, though, that orchestras have shrunk - no new Sondheim show has had a full orchestra since 1981, and as smart and innovative as the new chamber-piece productions of his shows are, "you can always pare...
Purists may say that in an era of niche hits, we are losing our cultural lingua franca, our national watercooler. In the New York Times, SUNY Buffalo American-studies professor Elayne Rapping wrote that the fracturing of TV has created a "craving for the culture that used to unify us as a nation." But really the watercooler has just moved. Online, fans can bond with thousands of like-minded viewers rather than just a few co-workers. We don't all sit en masse for Must-See TV, but cultural moments - from late-night TV to the news to American...
...protagonist, Hidayat, is a Jakartan intellectual caught up in the Japanese occupation. The conquerors use Bahasa Indonesia, the archipelago's lingua franca, as an administrative tongue in their polyglot territory. Hidayat - drawing on Alisjahbana's actual wartime employment in occupied Indonesia's language office - is put in charge of formalizing its grammar and syntax. In the novel (as it was in life), the office is a meeting place for nationalists who seize on Japan's defeat in 1945 to declare independence and adopt Bahasa Indonesia as the new nation's official tongue...