An Introduction to Lingua Franca - Roberto
Rossetti
Summary
A Romance pidgin, called Lingua Franca, appeared in the
Holy Land around the 13th Century. Piracy and naval warfare brought
it in the 16th century to the Barbary Coast, where it came to be
used in official records, on account of trade contacts. By the 19th
century, European settlers and the opening of regular schools
threatened this once widespread informal jargon.
As an instinctive adaptation of a basic Italian/Spanish lexicon
to a simplified Arabic syntax, Lingua Franca does
occasionally appear even today: specific matchings and examples are
given from the current Palestinian Pidgin, Dodecanese Creole, and
the 'Petit Nègre' of Eritrea.
Contents
- Earliest Records
- The Dawning of North
Africa
- Consular Excerpts
(1582-1675)
- Travellers' quotes on Barbary
(1670-1731)
- Other Evidence of Population
Transfers across the Mediterranean
- The Genoese settlement at
Tabarka
- The Opening of the Port of
Leghorn
- Travellers' Quotes in the
early 19th Century
- Lingua Franca
Evolution
- The Opening of the first
Italian Schools in North Africa
- The Picture in the early 20th
Century, and linguistic 'neighbors'
- Lingua Franca Relics in
present day colloquial Discourse
- Etymological Clues
- A personal Note
- Greek Islands' Spillover
- Present day Situation in the
Near East
- Colloquial Sample of
Palestinian pidgin and Dodecanese
creole
- Official Translations
- Sentence Constructions
- The Case of Eritrea
- Glossary
Most of the pidgin and creole languages around the world are of
English or French origin; true, there are Portuguese ones in Africa
and South East Asia, and even a couple of Spanish and Dutch origin
in South America. But there is only one along the Mediterranean sea
that is linked to Italian: it is usually referred to as 'Lingua
Franca' by the early and most knowledgeable references.
It might have originated at the times of the Crusades in the
Levant (probably at Acre, where a Pisan, Venetian and Genoese
mediaeval quarter huddle side-by-side around the harbour.) The
earliest examples are to be found in medical prescription recipes, to be followed by
accounting, and later by clothing: to this day in the Middle East,
words such as 'fatùra'(= bill of expenses), 'msura' (= misura,
size), 'bruva' (= prova, fitting trial), 'bandalòn'(=
pantaloni, trousers), 'sgarbìne' (= scarpine, ladies' shoes),
or 'modelo' are of daily use. There was a parallel transfer from
Arabic to Italian of words such as 'ricamo' (= needlework, from the
Arabic raqm, figure), 'cifra' (=figure, from sfr, zero), or
'ragazza' (= girl, from raqqàs, waitress at the inn). In Genoa
we might still hear complaints about 'il terribile vento garbino'
(= the dastardly westerly wind), while the 'bora' northerly wind
(from the Greek 'vorra') blows over Trieste.
Later examples of a very similar language sprout up in North Africa
from the 16th to the early 19th centuries. In Egypt it was known as
'Lisàn al Ifràng' (language of the Europeans) later
abbreviated to 'Ferenghi'; it must be reported that Egypt always
had a sizeable community of Italian ancestry, which nevertheless
was raised in proper Italian schools and did frown upon the use of
so coarse an idiom; but it was inevitably adopted to some extent in
cross cultural contacts with other groups. Elsewhere in North
Africa it went by the vague name of 'Sabìr' and later
'Aljamìa' (same as in the Middle East it took the adjective of
'ajnabi,' or foreign.) Indeed the western variant was heavily
spiced with Spanish flavour, even mixed with Haketia, as spoken by
the Jews expelled from Spain, but still the Italian element could
be noticed and understood, as this was never a cultivated language,
but served well its immediate purpose.
The prevalence of Italian over the French and Spanish elements
in the Lingua Franca can be partly explained by the fact
that most of the enslaved sailors in Barbary came from southern
Italy, their uncertain scribblings could be picked up along the
courtyard walls at the Bardo palace: 'Io Natale Sorrentino dalla
Torre del Greco cascato Schiavo alli 10 Luglio 1786 il detto fu
Guardaletto di Hamud' (quoted by Riggio, here below; notice the
characteristic expression 'tumbled slave.') To be fair, an equal
number of North African slaves were sold in Malta to Italian
cities, spreading further Lingua Franca.
The European communities in Tunis and Tripoli were headed each by a
consul, who acted also as a notary, and it was not only in the
Italian consulate, but in those of France, England, Denmark or the
Low Countries that bookkeeping was usually held in an Italian of
some sort: most of the contracts, receipts, insurance reports,
Patenti di Corsa (privateering licences) and other legal papers had
to be drafted in the only language that was equally spread among
merchants and sailors, notaries and shipowners, renegades and
captives. Typical expressions include 'Guardian Basci o delli
schiavi,' 'Bassà,' 'Sciausc,' 'Tunesina' (instead of Tunisina)
'lo mattò' (he masted it), 'bigiutterie', and the usual
obsession with berets and caps consignments. Maone had nothing to
do with Genoese merchant guilds, but mean Port Mahon, on the island
of Menorca.
The documents include some colorful signatures: 'osta morato
fermo 1607' (signed Osta Muràd); 'io Assan Genovese afermo'
(I, Hassan from Genoa, state); 'Io Solima, Basia di Tunisi afermo'
(I, Suleiman, Pasha of Tunis, state); 'Agostin bianco alis [sic]
morato raixi genovesz' (Agostin Bianco, a.k.a. Captain Muràd
from Genoa); 'Regeb Reneghato de lo Sig. Mamed Bey, che lo Sig.
Dios guarde de malle' (Regeb, renegade of Muhammad Bey, may the
Lord God protect him); 'Io Amato Napolitano' (I, Ahmed from
Naples); 'Iou Regeb Caito de la diona ho rescevoto ly mille e sey
cente equaranto nove che son escritto a qua supra e non altro' (I,
Regeb, the Head of Customs have received in 1649 what is written
only according to this receipt.) A longer document, dated 14
September 1637, and published by Grandchamp, stars 'Io Isouf Dei,
Capitan di li Milissia di questo Regno di Tunis aio fatto franco et
libro Claudio Eymo et Pedro Bremond di Marsilla per haver ben
servitto.' From the same year and source a French renegade, Osman de Arcos,
takes the trouble to correct by hand a document written in Italian.
The first diplomatic treaty between France and Tunis of 1621 (now
in the Marseilles Chamber of Commerce) was couched in Italian, and
the anonymous Histoire Chronologique du Royaume de
Tripoly in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris mentions that around
1675 passports were usually written in Italian 'as the Deys have
always to deal with Christian Princes and European merchants...they
keep a Christian secretary, who deals with correspondence in
Italian' and goes on to say that European consuls generally adopt
the Italian language 'it being resonably spread in Barbary.' It is
odd to notice what insults were directed at that time against their
usually Christian opponents: 'Cane Giudeo, perché non mainar'
= Jewish dog, why not lower (the sail.) Another habitual curse,
'senza fede' (faithless) is reported again 250 years later barely
distorted (sanza fida) allowance being made for the Semitic
distortion of vowels (by Rossi, see below.)
Eighteenth Century Travellers' Quotes
on Barbary
Dr. John Covel, when visiting the ruins at Carthage in 1670,
mentioned in his diary his guide, speaking 'broken Italian and
Lingua Franca, which is bastard Spanish with words of most
trading nations.'
In 1788 Venture de Paradis, in describing the court of the Bey of
Algiers, mentions a Christian slave, whose curious title was
Capitano Prove, and had the duty to chant aloud twice each morning
from the gallery 'Bonjorno Effendi.'
Other than official correspondence, which was confined to
standard definitions, the esprit de langage can be gleaned from
short literary quotes in the reports of Redemptorist and
Mercedarian friars, assisting the captives. Abbot Diego de Haedo, a
nephew and namesake of the Archbishop of Palermo, in his History of
Algiers, published at Valladolid in 1632 gives some examples of
their arguments: 'Dio grande, no pigliar fantasia. Mundo così
così. Si estar scripto in testa andar, andar. Si no, acà
murir.'
Another report from a mission to Algiers in 1670 gives some of the most common words:
Yorno, matina and manchar (day, morning and to eat.)
One of the most fitting and precise accounts of the Lingua
Franca was given by Charles Etienne de la Condamine, after a
visit to Algiers around 1731:
Le Mauresque est la langue du pays. Les Turcs parlent
Turc entre eux; mais la langue dont se servent les uns et les
autres pour se faire entendre aux Européens est ce qu'on
appelle la Langue Franque. On dit qu'on la parle dans tout le
Levant et dans tous les ports de la Méditerranée, avec
cette différence que celle qui est en usage du côté
est plus en avant vers le Levant est un mélange de
provençal, de grec vulgaire, de latin et surtout d'italien
corrompu, au lieu que celle qu'on parle à Alger, et qu'on
appelle aussi Petit Mauresque, tient beaucoup plus de l'espagnol
que les Maures on retenu de leur séjour en Espagne... On ne
sert presque pas d'infinitifs [sic!] dans ce jargon, qui s'entend
aisément quand on est accoutumé à l'accent ... c'est
celui des divertissements turcs du Bourgeois Gentilhomme, et de
l'Europe Galante.'
The Turkish Ceremony episode of Molière's Bourgeois
Gentilhomme had the incidental music and text by Lully, who,
coming from Florence, was more attuned to Lingua Franca
antics.
Population Transfers across the
Mediterranean
Presently the only Spanish towns in North Africa are Ceuta (since
1580) and Melilla (since 1496), but Spain did control much of that
coast, including Oran (1509-1792), Algiers (1509-29), and the
Tunisian shores (1535-74), then Larache (1610-89), and Mamora
(1614-81) [presently Kenitra, and Port Lyautey from 1913-1958] some
of the garrisons being composed of contingents from the Spanish
Kingdom of Naples. In 1530 Malta was ceded by Emperor Charles V to
the Order of Saint John, which had lost Rhodes and adjoining
territories in 1522, on condition that it would keep the fortress
of Tripoli, occupied in 1510, and it was defended at great expense
until 1551. The Order of Saint John statutes specified that French
was to be the language of the central administration, but for its
navy the paramount language was Italian. In today's Italy such
family names can be spotted as: Algeri, Barbaresco, Bengasi, Brega,
Cairo, Cartago, Cirenei, Derna, Egitto, Libeccio, Marocco, Melilla,
Moresco, Nador, Orano, Tangerini, Tagiuri, Tamietto, Tripoli,
Tunisi. Corresponding family names connected to the Levant include
Aleppo, Bagdalli, Berutto, Caiffa, Caiazzo, Cipro, Damasco,
Dervisci, Di Persia, Edessa, Efrati, Gazes, Levante, Libani,
Loturco, Orfali, Ottomaniello, Palestini, Persiano, Rodi,
Salonicchio, Samarra, Saraceno, Simi, Sinai, Siriano, Smirne,
Soria, Stambouli, Stampalia, Terrasanta, Turcato.
A fishing community from Genoa settled in La Calle since the 15th
century to exploit the tuna and anchovy fisheries. In 1555 the
Lomellini banking family with a loan to the Spanish Crown won a
coral exploitation concession at Tabarka, that continued until
1741. Most of the settlers had been moved in 1737 to Carloforte on
the island of San Pietro off the Sardinian coast, but in 1798 the
entire population (about 1000) were again made slaves by the
Tunisians, who in 1815 made another 125 slaves on the nearby
Sant'Antioco Island: the raiders were kept in check by the cruises
of Lieut. Decatur in 1804, Commodore Decatur in 1815, and Lord
Exmouth in 1816, who obtained the liberation of slaves from the
Kingdoms of Naples, Sardinia and from the Ionian Islands: the
distinctive 'Tabarchino' Genoese accent can be still heard today at
San Pietro.
Giovanni Pagni was dispatched as official surgeon to the Court
of Tunis in 1667-68 and most
painters and architects were Italian, perhaps on account of the
proximity; an engineer, Tomaso Farina, had a hand at the Manouba
palace, and his name is underlined by the works of the outer
moorings of the Tunis bay at Porto Farina (Dhar el Melah.)
The Opening of the Port of Leghorn
Besides, most of the trade contacts were effected primarily by
Italian merchants, notable Jews from Leghorn, called 'Gurni', who
often kept their correspondence with the warehouses at Venice or
Marseilles in this sort of approximate Italian.
Leghorn had been plotted as a free port by B. Buontalenti on the
remains of the port of Pisa on the birthday of Francis I dei Medici
'all'ora sedicesima e 2/3 del 28 Marzo 1577 secondo l'astrolabi e
l'oriuoli.' Its charter of 1609, the 'Costituzione Livornina,'
begins:
A tutti voi, mercanti di quisivoglia nazione,
Levantini, Ponentini, Spagniuoli, Portoghesi, Greci, Tedeschi et
Italiani, Hebrei, Turchi, Mori, Armeni, Persiani et altri, salute.
making it a perfect cradle for the recast Lingua Franca.
The most valuable Italian philatelic cover on record is an envelope
of 7 January 1861 from Leghorn to Alexandria in Egypt, franked with
provisional Government stamps (the temporary administration that
preceded annexation to Italy.) It might well have contained a
letter in Lingua Franca.
The Jewish population of Tunis was split between merchants from
Livorno and local craftsmen, who yearned for a Tuscan passport; but
Article 2 of the treaty negotiated by Ferdinand III with Tunis on
11 October 1822 read:
E quelli Ebrei che vi verranno in avvenire non saranno
considerati e riguardati come sudditi Toscani che venendovi di
passaggio con il loro passaporto; ma manifestando nell'atto del
loro arrivo in Tunis l'intenzione di fissarvisi e di commerciare
per del tempo, o se dopo due anni di dimora vi si stabilissero e vi
fissassero domicilio colla loro famiglia, allora saranno annoverati
nel numero degl'altri Ebrei così detti Gurana, e di sudditi Tunisini.
19th Century Travellers' Quotes
Reports from the 19th century indicate little change in the
language. Doctor Louis Frank, who attended the Bey of Tunis from
1806 to 1815, noted in his book Tunis published in
Paris in 1862, that the expatriate community of that town was
mainly composed of people from Genoa, Corsica, Naples and Rome;
among the most common turns of phrase was the expression
'Star la usanza' (this is the way.) Once he heard a Moslem
beggar pleading: 'Donar mi meschino la carità d'una carrouba
per l'amor della Santissima Trinità e dello gran Bonaparte.'
Don Felice Caronni, a priest from Milan, while aboard a
Napolitan bark returning from Palermo was captured by Barbary
corsairs and brought to Tunis; in his account published in Milan in
1805 and sold to collect funds for the redemption of fellow
prisoners, he gives quite a few such sentences: 'buono, questo star
buono' (this be good) 'perchè non mangiare' (why not eat?)
'cosa stare questo' (what be this?) 'cosa avere detto Papasso?'
(what say the priest?) 'stare usanza di mare' (this be sea custom)
'tu dire questo per iscapolare' (you say this to avoid [a chore] --
then suddenly:) 'Buona presa!' (good catch) and, in good Italian,
'Padre, avete freddo?' (Are you cold, Father?)
Filippo Pananti, a writer from Florence, was captured by
Algerian pirates off the Sardinian coast, and wrote in 1817 his
Adventures and Observations on the Barbary Coast,
which were also translated into English and German, and published
as Relation d'un Séjour à Alger in Paris in
1820. In it he observes:
'Italian is understood throughout the Barbary coast,' and in the
Florence edition (page 339) he goes on:
the ministers, the merchants and the Jews all use a
mixture of Italian, Spanish and African that is called Lingua
Franca, all in infinitives and without prepositions, but
through which aliens and nationals easily understand each
other.
Turning to Tripoli, in the mid 18th century a report of the
Chancellor to the English consul, informed him that there were a
Khaznadàr Grande and a Khaznadàr piccolo ( a greater and
lesser treasurer) and, when going to the Castello for the
Ramadàn and Bayràm greetings 'the consul kisses the
Basha, wishes Buona Festa, Vostra Eccellenza, and places himself in
a chair as also the vice-consul.' A Spanish adventurer passing from
Tripoli in 1805, commented that many languages were spoken there,
and the Pasha, Yusùf Karamanli, spoke good Italian.
Blaquière's Letters from the Mediterranean inform us
in turn that Hamat (Ahmed) who had been Yusùf Pasha's
ambassador to Spain, knew Italian particularly well. George Francis
Lyon, who was briefly in Tripoli to start his voyage to Socna,
Sebha and Mourzuk, reported in his narrative of 1818 that some sort
of bad Italian was well know by the town inhabitants, greatly
facilitating expatriates' transactions.
Yusùf Pasha, who had loosened for a while the ties with
Constantinople (just as the Bey of Tunis, or Muhammad Ali in Egypt)
was surrounded by southern Italians who enriched his vocabulary;
the archives of the Sardinian consulate at Tripoli bore evidence of
this in quoting, often in direct speech, his talking.
Consul Parodi had had to leave in 1824 due to a health problem,
and the Pasha missed his services, commenting to one in his
retinue:
tuo console nuovo star buono, non cercare me né
buono né male, inscialla tutti li consoli star come
isso
which is a Sicilian inflection. But on the arrival of his
substitute, the Pasha took offence at not receiving the customary
gift, protesting repeatedly
Mi conoscer ti aver bona cabesa, pirò re Sardinia
mandar sempri Consul sensa rigal? Ti star consul o no star? mi non
entender, così aver fatto Re Sardinia per Ugo, i tratato con
Sardinia no dicir questo
and
Cristiane star furbi, Barodi star morto, i Re Sardinia
mandar ti Tripoli birché tener bona cabesa i procura no pagar
rigal.
That being the time of gunboat diplomacy, Consul Parodi returned
the following year escorted by a naval expedition that compelled
the Pasha to present his excuses.
The Dictionnaire de la Langue Franque ou de Petit Mauresque,
suivi de quelques dialogues familiers et d'un vocabulaire des mots
arabes les plus usuels published at Marseilles in 1830 gives some short sentences,
such as 'Que hablar in città?' (literally: what is the talk in
the town?) or 'mi poudir servir per ti per qualke cosa' (what can I
do for you.) Its purpose had been to provide the expeditionary
corps with basic communication samples as could be collected in
that harbour: in fact the Lingua Franca did not venture
beyond a tightly knit urban context of pirates and traders confined
to the port vicinity, and was of little use out in the country,
where only Arabic or Berber dialects would be understood by the
population.
Still, in 1852 the newspaper L'Algerien was bringing a
measure of the gradual assertion of French ways in the Lingua
Franca: 'Moi meskine, toi donnar sordi' (I am poor, give me
alms) and 'Toi biber l'agua' (you may drink from this water.)
After the 1848 revolutions many Italian patriots sought refuge in
Tunis; among them were Giuseppe Morpurgo and Pompeo Sulema, from
Leghorn (even Garibaldi had called at Tunis in 1834 to advise Bey
Hussein on the administration of a modern navy; he came back in
1849 and was hosted at Palazzo Gnecco, Rue de l'Ancienne Douane.)
Among the exiled was Gustavo Modena, who earned his living by
teaching Italian to the Tunisian gentry 'smerciando participi'
(peddling participles, in his own inventive expression.) Sulema
opened a regular school that was soon patronized by the Jewish
minority, both local and from Leghorn, as it was not a confessional
one, while the other Italians preferred to follow the Rotonda and
Visconti school. Another Italian school was opened in 1845 by
Morpurgo, Luisada and Salone, joined later by Sulema, and was
closed in 1863. Trading houses of the regency in this period were
mostly Italian (Bensasson, Fiorentino, Gutierrez, Moreno, Peluffo,
Sonnino.) On 4 January 1874 the Italian community, headed by the
Consul, oppened an elementary school that was partly funded by the
state: on opening it had 73 pupils, half of them from the Jewish
community. The secretary of state of the Bey, today we would say
the prime minister of the time, was often an Italian. In 1859 the trade
convention between the Bey of Tunis and the consul general of
Austria, Giovanni Gasparo Merlato, had been written in Italian;
that is no wonder, since in the Austrian Empire as a federal
entity, the official language for the Navy and most of the trade
was Italian. At the turn of the century there was also an Italian
newspaper in Tunis, called L'Unione, which clamored for
annexation of the territory; but France was gradually taking hold
and, after 1902, foreign lawyers (most of whom were Italian
nationals) could not practice unless they had a French degree, and
the licence from the Italian High School in Tunis was not adequate
to gain access to a French university. In 1924 the Bulletin
du Comité de l'Afrique Francaise, under the title 'Les
écoles italiennes, foyer d'irredentisme national' accused them
d'entraver la francisation du pays, which was probably
true, yet the Prince of Naples and Giovanni Meli Italian Schools
mustered classes of 100 pupils.
The Picture in the early 20th Century,
and linguistic 'neighbors'
As late as 1912, Marcel Cohen was noting that various Lingua
Franca words were still used, though exclusively along the coast. For much of the
above historical information I am indebted to the profound
knowledge and rich library of Ettore Rossi. At the time he was writing, the
Lingua Franca of Tripoli had given in almost completely to
standard Italian, propounded by new immigrants flanked by a
Franciscan mission and a state school. The forlorn remnants of a
waning discourse were barely discernible in the harbour vernacular:
scìma (= cima, lime), bonazzi (= bonaccia, lull), fortuna (=
fortunale, storm.) Or at the market: 'falsu' meant cheat and 'tocca
la mano' stood for 'Gimme five,' or as the French Pègre would
say: 'Tope-la'; even ingrained military ranks as Yuzbashi and
Mulàzim had been superseded by 'Gubtàn' and 'Tninti.'
Alan D. Corré (whose excellent research on Lingua
Franca is available here on the web, and can be conveniently
consulted with its clear dictionary and abundant bibliography)
comes to the conclusion that Judeo-Arabic is a dying language, and
a limited survival of Judeo-Spanish is unlikely.
Ladino, or Hakètia (apart from the use of Rabbinic
characters) was reasonably like the language of Cervantes; where it
diverged dramatically was in the pronunciation, so as to evade
comprehension to an untrained ear. Among the few who still practice
it, was the family of the Chilean Ambassador to the Vatican at the
time of the pontifical mediation in the Beagle Channel dispute. An
instance I was given by a common acquaintance in Chile was 'Where
is the water?' (Adonde está el agua aquí) which came to
sound 'ande talahuaki; and makes you think first of Euskera: to
settle its new empire, the Spanish crown had decided to set aside
each part for a specific region, thus Texas was reserved to the
Canary Islands, Cuba to Catalonia (we may remember José
Martí or Xavier Cugat) and Basque family names, but only
names, are very common in Chile for this reason. At the other end
of the spectrum, Judeo-Arabic reminds the listener of colloquial
Maltese, when in the middle of an intricately wrought argument in a
Tunisian-like dialect an occasional alien word as 'bazikament' is
injected every now and then.
Now both of them as
we have seen, were the nearest neighbours to the Lingua
Franca of old; its syntax was basically Arabic, and the
vocabulary roughly 60% Italian, 20% Spanish, with Catalan, French,
Ladino and Turkish words thrown in. As a Pidgin it had several
geographic variants that blended gradually into each other so as to
preclude a strict dividing line: at least a Levantine, an Egyptian,
and one, possibly two, North African strains could be detected. The
difficulty was compounded by the fact that it was a spoken language
of illiterate people, though it had illustrious albeit short
literary quotes ('Qui voler fiora di bella giardina' -- Mozart
libretto.) From the above it is apparent that it was always limited
to simple words, often insults or commands, at best short greeting
formulas, and was unlikely ever to produce longer periods of prose,
or poetry.
I travelled extensively (mostly in the Middle East) as did my
parents before me, and the funny thing is that I found the
Lingua Franca, or what looks like a very close relative,
alive and well in the small Levantine communities stretching from
Cyprus to Jerusalem. The same happens in Tunisia. (Instances kindly
provided by Dr. Mouaily al Mohsen, a Tunisian scholar and legal
interpreter based in Milan, include 'meshkito' ('forged,' from
'mischiato'); daily paid workers are hired 'b'ljornata' and simple
minded folks are called 'qawalshpata' probably from an old
Neapolitan playing card) and I know for a fact that a creole occurs
in the Aegean Islands.
Lingua Franca Relics in present
day colloquial Discourse
Of the few authors tackling Lingua Franca, only Sarah Arenson declares it
to be still spoken, but this is generally discounted as probably
referring to convenience jargons that arise ad hoc, and
not to the historic Lingua Franca. Actually the first
Lingua Franca, born during the Crusades had probably no
direct link to the second one, which spanned the Lepanto to
Gallipoli period. Its emergence was again primed by political
contingencies which adapted an Arabic grammar to a Romance
vocabulary that are still the same. True, we are nowadays unlikely
to hear exotic tales about a visit to the Palazzo of the Gran
Signor to witness a sentence of Bastinado (Falanjca) in front of
the Serraglio, but basic catch-phrases as 'gué fatu' (what's
up) 'Iu sdai qua' (I'll be waiting here) or indeed 'Vadu dal Bosta'
(= Go from [I am going to get] the mail -- an example that is close
to what Rossi reported in Libya 70 years ago) are often to be heard
now all over the Middle East, coming straight out from a distant
past. Tomato, for instance, is a loan from Nahuatl, shared by most
western languages. Yet in Italy, where it grows successfully, it
received on first being introduced, the pedantic name of pomodoro
(golden apple) and, sure enough (before the civil war at least) the
Suq el Frenji vendors in Beirut were extolling the virtues of their
banadora, slata (lettuce) and bortoqal (oranges; in Rome too some
200 years ago oranges were called Portogalli as they were mainly
imported from there.) A meat plate is 'rosto' and vinegar becomes
'negro'; candles are called shàm'a in Arabic, but a lantern is
often called al kandìl, and sometimes laterna.
As what is left of the historical Lingua Franca is little
more than a lexicon, we are faced with the same problem of
Etruscan, though a list of words can indeed get across more than
their stark meaning. Some words, coming from French presumably
denote their newer entry in the vocabulary (achetir, aigre,
armuriero, artimon, avalar, bagatela, baguette, brossa, briquet,
bureau). Others underline its merchant origin (banqueroute,
créancier, or cambiale = bill of exchange.) Coquiare and
cortello (spoon and knife) imply southern Italian origins because
they are dialect words. The origin of the other ones (gandufa =
plague, luta = napkin, or nuba = garrison) is more difficult to
explain. Translation is not always straightforward: conciare is to
fashion, but cunciar is to do; massar is to kill, but masseria is a
farm; meter is to put, but metir is to hoist a flag; oschio is eye,
but ochia is goose. Ove means both 'where' and 'eggs,' piano as in
modern Italian, both 'slowly' and 'storey.' Shaky orthography and
implied meanings added to the confusion: castali (chestnut),
dimiterio (bedroom), ferencia (difference), ginazio (knee),
labrizou (jail), lepero (hare), nazo (nose), mele (not apples, but
honey), mentone (not chin but sheep), paia (not pair but straw),
peci (not pitch but fishes), sbendut (bandit).The orthography of
'much' oscillated between multo and mumucho, that of 'wife' from
moukere to mugera to mugeros. 'Quattordici' (fourteen) became
quartodici. Other common words got a slightly different meaning:
'chiodo' from nail to screw, 'cornudo' from cuckold to dog,
'fantasia' from fancy to offence, 'fugar' (from affogare) from
drown to strangle, 'intestato' from addressed to obdurate,
'involtar' from turn to envelop, 'logo' from place to military
post, 'mescolar' from mix to forge, 'noia' from boredom to anxiety,
'rame' from copper to leather, 'riclamar' from claim to implore,
'rimportar' from reintroduce to take back, 'scaliere' from step to
threshold, 'schifa' from boat to vestibule, 'spachiar' from
dispatch to settle, 'suono' from sound to sleep, 'tassa' from tax
to cup, 'tempo' from time to season, 'toucar' from touch to kill, '
vernir' from paint to turn;; 'salame' meant just salting, and
'roba' usually clothing. At times the French or Spanish origin of
the words explained the difference: carta (letter), cativo
(prisoner, locheza (foolish news), lodar (to hire), lunetta
(telescope), malsinar (to slander: from the Hebrew
malshin, slanderer), mareia (mirror), papas (crawfish), or
sangre (family). As the words follow the Arabic grammar, in a
Judeo-Arabic context at least, the plural of falta (mistake) is
alfaltàt, and the plural of tabla (plank) is attawàl.
Words of Arabic origin are comparatively few: adelfa (oleander),
bezèf (much), cadi (judge) yshrab (to drink), cheytan (devil),
fùnduk (fondaco, hostel), Nicsarane (Christian), taba (seal),
usìf (black slave); some are from local dialects, like
bernùs (cloak), maboul (crazy), or rubie (spring); occasional
ones come from Turkish: bakshìsh (tip), yatagàn
(scimitar) or yoldàch (janissary).
Most Pidgin languages have a reduced vocabulary of 700 to 1500
words, and Lingua
Franca has over 2000, gathered in the 1830 Dictionary, in the
works of Hugo Schuchardt and Marcel Cohen, and occasional quotes
from other books, such as Shay Lamora, a Judeo-Arabic
trouvaille by Professor Alan Corré, which was written in Oran
by Solomon Zarqa and Judah Darmon, and published by the House of
Belforte at Leghorn in 1864. Some of the Lingua Franca
grammar peculiarities are obvious to an Italian ear: for example,
the difference between 'in a month' and 'dobbo una meze' (after one
month) is blatant in an Italian context, whereas it is much less
offensive in English.
I devoted so much space to earlier relics only to compare them
better to present day findings: the samples that are given below,
of Palestinian Pidgin and Dodecanese Creole, are from 1970 and 1978
respectively. There were several other people speaking like this,
especially in Lebanon and Cyprus, where I was for a longer time,
and from the West Bank of the Jordan, or as far as Smyrna, but
their limited conversation being always the same, I noted down only
such examples that would permit to record texts of an adequate
length. Whenever their users did not have an immediate connection
with Italy, they used to congregate around the harbour: the
surrounding quarter in Beirut is still named 'Karantina.'
My first brushing with this language must have been around 1957
at Athens. My family moved to Beirut in 1962 and at first I was
mildly intrigued by this funny way of speaking; it was only ten
years later while attending University in Rome that I discovered by
chance its glorious past.
Greek Islands Spillover
Around 1971 I met in Dubai a foreign correspondent of a Rome daily
newspaper; he had what sounded as a very Italian name, but in
introducing himself, he went on 'Io sono Greco dall'isola di Scio'
(I am a Greek from the island of Chios.) Once again the English
translation does not do justice to the sentence construction, which
in standard Italian sounds peculiar. A case in point, as a
journalist he had to resist the expressions that would come
naturally to his mouth, but his British-born mother, whom I met
subsequently in Cyprus, was under so such constraint, and recalled
humorously how gentlemen in tail-coat at a diplomatic reception,
were referred to as 'scazzaculìn' (that can be roughly
translated as 'ass-sweeper'.)
As for the spelling Scio, this was the consecrated form in the
18th century official records, as were Bella Pola (Velopoula),
Cerigo e Cerigotto (Kithira and Antikìthera), Millo (Milo),
Morea (Peloponneso), Negroponte (Eubea) or Santo Strati (Aghios Eustratos.) Most
of the Northern Sporades did belong to Genoa, Chios in particular
from 1304 to 1566. Contemporary chronicles refer to Lepanto as the
battle of Curzolari, from a nearby achipelago, and the islands of
Spetse and Simi were usually called Settepozzi (Seven Wells) and
delle Simie (of the Apes): Benedetto Dei, a correspondent of
Leonardo da Vinci, wrote in his chronicle, kept at the Royal
Library in Munich: 'Sono stato per la costiera della Barberia
cioè a Sione e Orano e Archudia, la dove si vendono le scimie
e le bertuccie e arreconsi a manzi legate per i piedi di Dreto
chome i polli' = I was on the Barbary coast ... where they sell
apes and monkeys and tie them up like chickens.)
One of the peculiarities that Lingua Franca shares with
Ternateño for example is what can be termed the 'Alamo
factor', or the ability to survive on its own after weak cultural
links were interrupted; a latter day, turn of the century
Lingua Franca derivation in East Africa, that will be
dealt with at the end of this paper, concentrated on engineering
and technical words, in connection with the railway construction.
As can be seen from this short feature, bibliographic references
tend to be old, but this is an original subject which never enjoyed
much popularity; two modern works devoted to it are H. & R.
Kahane and A. Tietze, The Lingua Franca in the Levant:
Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin (Urbana
1958) and most notably Professor John Holm's volume of 1989 on
Pidgin and Creoles.
Present Day Situation in the Near
East
There is a linguistic continuum between the Lingua Franca
used as a pidgin and as a creole. In the first case, it arises
spontaneously as a means of communication between expatriate aliens
and local people who are not proficient in standard Italian, but
were superficially exposed to it through the radio or TV, at church
or school (Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, Bethlehem): the contents are
plainly intelligible to anybody with a minimum knowledge of formal
Italian, but the typical idiomatic expressions, stress and
intonation are lost to the occasional listener. Despite the
relative isolation and time lapse between instances, the language
shows a remarkable level of consistency. As a creole it is lesser
used, basically by a few people of Italian origin from the Aegean
Islands, who, as with many dialects, think of it as mainstream
Italian. It is only a spoken language, but the rare cases of
transcription (short quotes) usually follow the French or Spanish
orthography; as a creole it is more elaborate, but basic grammar
rules for the pidgin medium include:
- the use of rigid sentence starters, such as 'éggo'
(there);
- the switching of prepositions (from meaning of; for meaning
to);
- gender confusion: masculine nouns become feminine or vice
versa, and sometimes neutral, which in Italian does not exist;
- doubling adverbs to underline description (a common pidgin
trait): 'Poco poco star quatr'ora' (little stay 4 hours = it is
almost four o'clock, a classic example from the 1830
dictionary);
- few simple verbs towards the end of the sentence, in the
infinitive or past participle tense ('done' meaning anything from
happened to been);
- transitive and reflexive forms are often disregarded.
Colloquial Samples of Palestinian
Pidgin and Dodecanese Creole
Two short samples of Pidgin first, and Creole second, together with
a literal translation and intended meaning, including some of the
typical phrasing will attempt to clarify the picture.
Du visdo li belatsu dal Amiro? Dendro duddu sce: li
filio dal Amiro, il molio dal Amiro. Anghe scyulày futàna
... ghè kìamatu questu? (Hai visto il palazzo dell'Emiro?
Dentro c'è tutto: i figli dell'Emiro, la moglie dell'Emiro,
c'è anche una fontana ... come si chiama?)
You seen the palace from the Amir? Inside all there is: the sons
from the Amir, the wife of the Amir. Also you have wench ... what
called this? (Did you see the Emir's residence? Everything is in
there: the Emir's children, his wives. There is even a fountain [in
the garden] ... how do you call it?)
Vedi ghè adèzzo
uscirò. Sdo pensando per kuello el novo menistro dalli Esteri
ghè gòllabboravamo dalla vekkia ambasciata. Ghè, el
kuale, el vradêllo, ghè bella moglie ha a! (Adesso
uscirò. Pensavo al nuovo ministro degli esteri, con cui
collaboravamo all vecchia ambasciata. Suo fratello, che bella
moglie che ha!)
See that now I will go out. I am thinking for that the new
minister from foreign affairs that we used to work with from the
old embassy. That, which, the brother, what beautiful wife he has!
(I am intent on leaving now, on an errand to the new minister for
foreign affairs, the one with whom we used to work at the old
embassy. His brother [intended: the brother of whom] what a
beautiful wife he has.
This last topic-comment sentence comes straight from spoken Arabic,
a language of which the speaker was ignorant.
In the main Dodecanese Creole is much more elaborate, and closer
to standard Italian than Levantine Pidgin, though it mostly depends
on the topic of the conversation. A parting shot I often heard
was:
Ghè sèmbre pendzo da non vàto 'rrabiare
sua çelendza (that always I think from not made angry his
Excellency)
which looks very close to historical examples quoted earlier (a
stronger expletive than 'angry' was habitually used, though.) The
Dodecanese were wrested from Ottoman Turkey in 1912 (together with
Libya) and was transferred to Greek sovereignty in 1947. There was
a sizeable community of Sephardic Jews that were deported to
Germany in July 1944, following the Italian armistice of September,
1943: 120 from Kos, and as many as 1700 from Rhodes, most of them
disappearing in the Holocaust.
Another example of Levantine Pidgin: 'Barlatu dal vakansa'
(spoken from the holiday.) Now 'barlatu' can have several meanings
ranging from 'he declared' to 'I questioned' and a couple more in
between. With some luck, and a little help from the context, it
will mean: 'Did you ask him about the leave authorization?'
The previous examples are from the discourse of embassy messengers,
which in the quaint jargon of the Italian Foreign Affairs former
Eastern Service of around 1910-1939 were termed 'dragomanni ' (=
turjumàn, interpreter, from the Arabic verb tàrjama, to
translate.) In fact, messengers corresponded to anything between a
driver and a doorman, but on rare occasions they did perform legal
translation assignments, sometimes with puzzling results, as the
following example indicates:
Io c'è il guardia Fares Abu Hàsan da ... Stai
Signor Martini danote con donna. Firmato: il dito.
(Me, there is the watchman Fares Abu Hasàn from ... Stay Mr
Martini from the night with woman. Signed: the finger = I am the
watchman Fares Abu Hasàn assigned to ... [I can confirm that]
Mr Martini on that night was [consorting] with a damsel. [By way
of] signature a finger[print].
Martini is a fancy name that I chose, for in spite of its Italian
sound. it is also at times a name of Turkish origin (Mardini, i.e.
coming from the town of Mardin, not far from Edessa, in a Syriac
speaking enclave.) From the above short sample the typical
occurrence can be drawn of the verb STAY used in place of BE.
Another classic quote is from the ballet to Molière's
'Bourgeois Gentihomme': 'Dice Turque, qui star quista.'
The primary difficulty with Lingua Franca use lies in the
fact that, as a limited means of expression, often it conceals a
subtler meaning than what is readily understood, viz. 'ghè,
vole bevanda?' (would you like to have a drink?) is not too far
from standard Italian, but 'bevanda' in Venice still means wine
mixed with water (this is from the Dodecanese creole.) In the
Levantine pidgin a frequent word is 'too much' meaning 'a great
deal': Gyulay trobbo li soldi = he has too much money. The evidence
quoted does not seem to rely on any specific rule except what
seemed most expedient to convey a message: in the early seventies,
when I was in Kuwait, the young children of the Spanish Ambassador
had some problem in distinguishing between 'cuchillo' (Spanish for
'knife') and 'sekkìne' (knife in colloquial Arabic.) 'Pero
ellos dicen 'sequillo' y se lo arreglan asì' (But they say
'sequillo' and solve the doubt.) The peculiar trait of this
language does not lie so much its ancient origins but rather in the
fact that it appeared in the same way and understanding whenever
European languages and Arabic were combined: historic Lingua
Franca examples point to the use of coupling a verb infinitive
with the word 'bisogno' (need) to hint to the future tense; this is
just a literal translation of the Arabic locution 'làzim' that
in present day broken English is to be rendered as 'màstaba'
(must be.) The unusual feature does not lie in the sentence
construction that, coming from Arabic has not changed, but rather
in the opting for an Italian word at a time when the navies of
France and Spain had a higher profile.
A short quotation is required to sum up the concept; Venture de
Paradis was a distinguished 'arabisant' reputed by Jomard, the
founder of the Institut d'Egypte, and five volumes of his
manuscripts are at the National Library in Paris, the first of
which is simply titled 'Notes sur Alger' and in 1894 was edited by
E. Fagnan to become a slim 180-page booklet. The original text
comes from letters written by Venture de Paradis from Algiers
throughout 1788 and the early part of 1789, and badly pasted
together by the staff of the Paris National Library: the cuts
through the paper caused by the steam tongs of the disinfection
process are still visible. Most of the Lingua Franca
locutions reported in the text as a matter of course, come from
Spanish, as 'izbandid/sbandouts' (bandit), contador (overseer of
the Treasury), trigo (wheat), Muchache de la golfe (valet, from the
Arabic word 'ghorfa', room.) But in describing the sequence of the
day, Venture de Paradis whose mother tongue was French, does
mention that a flag was displayed from the Government Palace:
'Bandiera arriva' (sic) indicated twelve noon, while 'Bandiera
bassa, l'heure de la bastonnade' fell around 1.30 pm. The fact that
Italian orthography rules were normally adopted, to the point of
contradicting the meaning of the sentence (arriva [coming] instead
of arriba [hoisted] ) seems to indicate that Italian at the time
was more popular.
An amazing resonance of the Lingua Franca range comes from
the 1890's Italian settlements along the Red Sea coast at Assab and
Massawa; as the case had been with the Tay Boy of French
Indo-China, with Petjo in the Dutch East Indies, or indeed the
Butler English of the Raj, it grew up as a means of communication
with household help, but I am told that is still very much in use,
as Italian has remained the cultivated language in the area. Unlike
the Lingua Franca of old, this offshoot lacked three
centuries of progressive development, yet it shared most of its
syntactic peculiarities. My father, who had been stationed there
for three years in the late thirties, used to say that some of the
old-timers had 'gone native' and were unable to express themselves
in anything else than this uncouth lingo. Some examples:
- 'Telefino c'è non c'è = telephone there is there
isn't (there was no phone call: the speaker first acknowledges the
object of the conversation, then denies its occurrence) --
- 'Borgo li miseria, du sguggiado ber me' = dammit, you annoyed
me!
- 'Signori Ufficiali, branzo brindo' (dinner is ready; a common
stock-phrase though sometimes the party included no officer)
- 'Di a Hakìm Ciuccio che madama bue fatto diavoletto = tell
donkey doctor that lady ox made little devil (Advise the
veterinarian that one of the animals has calved. Diavoletto is a
contamination from the Arabic word 'waled', child.)
Here is a short list of some Lingua Franca locutions mentioned in
the text: each identifies the source, year, and prevailing area of
use, ALGiers, TRIpoli or TUNis. The cluster sch implies
the sound sk.
| Abandàgia |
laundry |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Bandiera Arriva |
hoisted flag, 12 noon |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Bandiera Bassa |
lowered flag, about 1.30 pm: l'heure de la bastonnade |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Birchè |
because |
Ferrari |
1824 |
TRI |
| Bitte Casanadale |
Beit el Khaznadar= Treasurer's Residence |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Bitte Laùdo |
Beit el Oudu= Rest House |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Bonàzzi |
lull |
Rossi |
ca 1890 |
TRI |
| Bonjòrno |
good morning |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Caìto, Caytto |
captain |
Grandchamp |
1664 |
TUN |
| Capitano Prove |
chamberlain |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Caravana |
foreman |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Cavagini, cavacino |
coffee caterer |
Riggio |
1797 |
TUN |
| Ciaùs |
orderly |
Riggio |
1781 |
TUN |
| Coionàr |
to fool, swindle |
Gallico |
1820 |
TUN |
| Compàsso |
mental sanity |
Gallico |
1820 |
TUN |
| Contador |
treasury overseer |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Cuatr'ora |
four o'clock |
Dict! |
1830 |
ALG |
| Dall'Imèn |
Imam's Residence |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Dicir |
to say |
Caronni
Ferrari |
1805
l824 |
ALG |
| Diòna |
customs |
Grandchamp |
1649 |
TUN |
| Dolètri |
Deyletli=Head of the Police |
Riggio
Finotti |
1797
1856 |
TUN |
| Effendi |
master |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Entendèr |
understand |
Ferrari |
1824 |
TRI |
| Fasìr |
to do |
Gallico |
18l0 |
TUN |
| Fortùna |
storm |
Rossi |
ca 1890 |
TRI |
| Fortìzza |
fortress |
Gallico |
ca 18l0 |
TUN |
| Giardinàri |
gardeners |
Riggio |
1797 |
TUN |
| Grecani |
north-east wind |
Riggio |
1850 |
TRI |
| Guardagolfa |
Majordomo |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Guardaròbi |
wardrobe |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Guarda Scarpi [sic] |
shoe valet |
Riggio |
ca 1802 |
TUN |
| Mainàr |
to lower the sail |
Rossi |
1675 |
TRI |
| Manubi |
mahbùb=10 Piastres Tunisian gold coin |
Grandchamp |
1806 |
TUN |
| Muchache de la Golfe |
servant, boy |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Mucciaccio [sic] |
servant, boy |
Riggio |
1802 |
TUN |
| Oldàch, Juldag |
janissary |
Grandchamp |
ca 1620 |
TUN |
| Ostro Levanti |
south-east wind |
Riggio |
ca 1850 |
TRI |
| Ostro Ponenti |
south-west wind |
Riggio |
ca 1850 |
TRI |
| Pataca |
Real de a Ocho |
Asunciòn |
1670 |
ALG |
| Pertuseri |
caulker |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Procurar |
to manage to |
Ferrari |
1824 |
TRI |
| Raìxi |
captain |
Grandchamp |
ca 1610 |
TUN |
| Rigàl |
gift |
Gallico
Ferrari |
1820
l824 |
TUN
TRI |
| Sachegì |
janissary |
Riggio |
1781 |
TUN |
| Sappa Tappa, Sappi Tappa, Zappi Tappa |
Sàhib at-Tàbi=Lord Keeper of the seals |
Riggio |
18l5 |
TUN |
| Scìma |
mooring line |
Rossi |
ca 1890 |
TRI |
| Sempri |
always |
Ferrari |
1824 |
TRI |
| Tescherè |
note, receipt |
Riggio |
1781 |
TUN |
| Torcimànio |
dragoman |
Riggio |
1781 |
TUN |
| Trigo |
wheat |
Venture de Paradis |
1788 |
ALG |
| Yorno |
day |
Asunciòn |
1670 |
ALG |
Glossary References
- ASUNCION l670
- Volume II of the Diccionário de Escritores
Trinitários de España y Portugal, Rome 1899, page
376 et seq. by Padre Antonino de la Asuncion.
- CARONNI 1805
- Ragguaglio del Viaggio Compendioso in Barberia by
Padre Caronni, published anonymously by Sonzogno in Milan in l805,
and often erroneously attributed to Ludovico Settala, to whom it
was dedicated.
- FERRARI l824
- G. Ferrari, La Spedizione della Marina Sarda a Tripoli nel
l825, Rome l912.
- FINOTTI 1856
- G. Finotti, La Reggenza di Tunisi, Malta l856.
- GALLICO l820
- Augusto Gallico, Tunisi e i Consoli Sardi (l816-1834)
Cappelli, Bologna l935 (The same source presumably accounts for
GALLICO ca l810.)
- GRANDCHAMP
- These entries are found in: Pierre Grandchamp, La France en
Tunisie (l582-1705) 10 volumes, Tunis 1920-1933. The item
Manubi, however, is quoted in an article by him in the
Revue Tunisienne.
- RIGGIO l802
- Achille Riggio, Archivio Storico per la Calabria e
Lucania, III/IV l938, page 333 et seq.
- ROSSI ca 1890
- Ettore Rossi, L'Idea Coloniale, Tripoli l0 April
l926
- VENTURE DE PARADIS 1788
- Alger au 18 Siècle, edited by E. Fagnan,
Typographie Adolphe Jourdan, 4 Place du Gouvernement, Alger, 1898
(a rare booklet of 180 pages: Bandiera Arriva and Bandiera Bassa
are quoted at page l58, Trigo at page 91, Muchace de la Golfe at
page 54, Contador at page 107. On page 65 Izbandid together with
the plural Sbandouts is quoted. This plural is also in the
Marseilles list.)
A book not appearing on this list which was very famous in its
time was the Geographical and Historical Narrative of a
Residence in Algiers by Filippo Pananti (London l8l8),
originally published in Florence as Avventure ed Osservazioni
sulle Coste di Barberia, in l8l7 and further reprinted in
Milan (1829), Genoa (l830), Florence (l83l), translated into French
in l820 and into German in l823.
Acknowledgement
I owe the possibility of quoting so many elusive and hard to find
publications to the kind advice of Padre Giovanni from the
Trinitarian Convent in Rome, of the staff of the African Institute
of Rome, and of the C.A. Nallino Institute of Oriental Studies,
which some 25 years ago provided me with texts that were crucial to
my doctoral dissertation on the Boundaries of Eastern Arabia, and
now enabled me to trace the hidden thread of Lingua
Franca.
This study was first published in Englishes, letterature
inglesi contemporanee, #8 ANNO 3 1999, pp 42-62. It includes
some subsequent additions.
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Alan D. Corré
corre@uwm.edu