link language

plural link languages · alternative link-language

1. A common language linking various people groups or ethnicities, where the adopted language is not a native language of any of the speakers using it; a lingua franca.

   On the basis of past and present, we can foresee a very bright English in India as link language, a window on the modern world and a library language.

   2010, Teaching of English

   3 more examples

   [...] 'Adoption of [a second] language [in our case Latin] . . . generally leads to changes in the adopted link language, or even in the native language of the speaker, and thus can have profound effects on linguistic change.'

   2003, James Noel Adams, Bilingualism and the Latin Language

   A term that covers all of this range is link language. Link languages and related phenomena are of interest to students of language change because they often require the adoption of another language, generally a second, but perhaps even a third.

   2009, Hans Henrich Hock, Brian D. Joseph, Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship

   The provision of recognising English as a link language was made available in the 1978 Constitution by the 13th Amendment which was brought in to effect in 1987 with the expectation that English would function as a force that could unify the two main ethnic groups in the country.

   2015, Robert Kirkpatrick, English Language Education Policy in Asia