Sanskrit, Classical Arabic, Latin and now English – a case of a special kind of lingua franca use and status

3.1 First major distinction: loss of reference to native speakers

One of the most striking differences that can be observed between ‘ordinary’ LFs and the proposed LCs is that the latter had, at one point, experienced complete loss of native speaker reference in communication, i.e. the ‘death’ of the native speaker (Leonhardt 2013: xi). Without native speakers (that is, persons who could claim ‘ownership’ of a language) present in the, by definition, linguistically and culturally heterogeneous discourse community that uses an LF, belonging of an LF to the whole heterogeneous community rather than only to the ‘master’ (i.e. native) part of it becomes implied and accepted (Erasmus 1528; Schneider 2003). Language, in such a case, is reduced from one of (national/ethnic) identification to one of communication and convenience primarily (Hüllen 1992). The release from the ideological baggage thus allows for an easier acceptance of the language in cosmopolitan communication because this eliminates the guise of threat (linguistic and political) that is otherwise usually perceived in LFs (Motschenbacher 2016).

The consensus as to the ‘death’ of the native speaker having occurred in all three of the historical LFs analysed here is not hard to reach. After they had already been extensively used as LFs for prolonged periods of time, Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin lost reference to the native speaker in both the political and linguistic (i.e. real-time communication) sense at the onset of their becoming LCs. For example, Classical Arabic (i.e. the variety of Arabic which possesses a fully-fledged case and mood system) lost any significant reference to native speakers starting from the time of its expansion around the 8th century (Holes 2004: Ch. 1; Versteegh 2010: 61). Classical Sanskrit lost its connection to native speakers by the 4th century at the very latest (Pollock 2009: 12–14). The ultimate cause for the ‘death’ of the native speaker of Latin (i.e. of any persons who would claim ownership of it)^[5] was most likely its church-motivated reconstruction around the 8th–9th century (Clackson and Horrocks 2010: Ch. 8). What is more, it can very well be claimed that it was this release from the bond of the native speaker reference and their implicit ‘ownership’ of these LFs that was crucial to their attainment of LC status. This strips an ‘ordinary’ LF from the threat it otherwise embodies in the perception of its non-native users as the political extension of its (usually powerful) ‘owners’.^[6]

Interestingly enough, reduced reference to the native speaker, even if not the ‘death’ itself, can also be observed with KiSwahili, but for reasons different from the loss of native speaker reference (Mugane 2015).^[7] KiSwahili is actually the native language of the small ethnic group of the Swahili people on the East African coast and nearby islands in the Indian Ocean (i.e. primarily in today’s Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique). As a locally present and already habitually used LF along trading and slave routes that extended west across Lake Tanganyika and into the present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, it was co-opted in the late 18th century by the Arabic colonialism effort of the time and employed as the vehicle of communication with the different local populations. Thus, its native speakers carried no kind of power or prestige, as is usually the case at the onset of an LF. The LF also spread across a relatively wide region of Africa, far beyond the comparatively small group of its original native speakers. As a result, this special kind of use of KiSwahili left native speakers largely absent from reference from the very beginning of its use as an LF (Spear 2000).

When it comes to Spanish and French, however, the reference to the native speakers as the implicitly perceived ‘owners’ of the two languages has never disappeared or even diminished in perception, even at the highest points of their uses as LFs. Although French was exported to all parts of the world as a result of colonial expansion, France has continued seeing itself, and has also been perceived by others, as the single ‘owner’ of French (Pöll 2017: Ch. 3). This holds both linguistically (thanks to the strong awareness and policy output exercised by different French stakeholders, such as the Académie française) and socio-politically (thanks to the relevance of France as a geopolitical entity). Despite some questioning in the francophone world as to where the standards of French reside, they had for a long time mostly been anchored in France when it comes to its use beyond its national borders. True, since the 1960s, varieties of French outside of France have undergone processes of empowerment and legitimisation of their own linguistic standard, but only to a certain, limited extent (Pöll 2017: Ch. 4). The French language has also always been strongly linked to feelings of French nationality as well as being a core identity marker (in a positive and a negative sense) of French-speaking communities outside of France (Reutner 2017). What ended the use of French as a prestige LF (so employed between the 17th and 20th centuries in Europe) and reduced it to how it is used today as an LF (i.e. in Western and Central Africa as well as the Indian Ocean region) was not a reduction of the native speaker reference. Rather, it was the strengthening of one of its competitor LFs – namely of English – whose prestige was extraordinarily bolstered in the last century, beyond that already engendered by the British Empire, by the burgeoning power of the USA, combined with the relative loss of the geopolitical importance of France (Drake 2004; Wright 2006).

Spanish, in contrast to French, experienced a thorough adoption in most of its former colonial settings, largely the domain of its spread and use as an LF (Godenzzi 2006). An ocean apart and faced with a crumbling Spanish Empire, each former colony rose to independence around a Spanish already considered as ‘owned’ by many of the speakers using it in the different former colonies. This was facilitated by the fact that, rather than being self-liberated from colonial power by the subjugated population, Spanish colonies in the Americas had a tendency of having independence established by the descendants of the colonisers themselves, i.e. the so-called criollos (Roberts 2006). Hence, in a way, Spanish is what they felt was their native language already, despite this not being the case for much of the unprivileged part of the population (including the indigenous peoples and the descendants of slaves). As a result, rather than losing the reference to the native, Spanish developed several new native cores and was thus not really caught up in the native versus non-native struggle observable in most other post-colonial linguistic settings (Riegelhaupt et al. 2003: 130–131). In other words, this caused Spanish not to be perceived as an imposed language. What remains of the use of Spanish as an LF is mainly in its role as the common medium within Hispanic America and in Equatorial Guinea (alongside French), as well as within the current revitalisation attempts in the Philippines (Moreno and Atilano-Tang 2023).

3.2 Second major distinction: conduit of the times

If we could glimpse a circle of learned people, most speaking different mother tongues, discussing in 9th-century Baghdad the finer points of the Qur’an, we would hear a discussion taking place in Classical Arabic. Poetry and academic work across the region would have been produced in the same language, functioning as the linguistic medium of the shared contemporariness of the Classical Arabic world of that time (Harb 2020). It is important to underline that this would have been done by default. Those scholars would not have had to discuss which language to use. There was only one prestigious expression of the ‘modernity’ (i.e. shared contemporariness) of their time and place, and they all spoke it as a part of their essential skillset. Making an argument as to how Latin and Sanskrit also represented the same kind of conduit of the times in their respective spheres of influence and times of employ would not be very hard (Leonhard 2013; Pollock 2009).

Looking at the three LFs proposed as likely not having reached the same kind of status and manner of use as Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin, Spanish was a very commonly used language of trade, more than anything else, having been used widely for general communication in a particular time and place in relation to colonisation. KiSwahili was never used with the aura of prestige that most LFs attain, due to uneven position of power, and, hence, never for what can be called prestigious domains of communication, such as literature or academia. Only French was at one point the most preferred language of its contemporary surroundings (at the very least in Europe and North America).

Starting from the reign of Louis XIV onwards, French became the dominant LF in Europe initially, as of the 17th century, in Central Europe, and in the 18th and 19th centuries in Eastern Europe (Wright 2006). Thus, much of academia and politics involved its heavy use. Yet French has never truly achieved the position of being the only, default expression of its own times as Latin had, for example, because of its competition in Europe at the time with German and even Latin. It has also not managed to retain the prestigious role it once held (Fernández Vítores 2005: 180). Some researchers even question the widespread view of French as almost universal in the 18th century. For instance, Siouffi (2010: 411–419) points out that this perception needs to be taken with some reserve, as it is based on a small number of texts that are often misinterpreted and inadequately confronted with reality. He highlights the fact that the spread of French beyond its borders was temporary, partial and subject to multiple dynamics, calling into question the accepted idea of its pervasiveness. Ultimately, one can say that French was potentially at the cusp of LC status in terms of this criterion, but never really there; nor is there now a chance of it attaining such a status in the foreseeable future (Drake 2004; Rjeoutski et al. 2019).

In sum, a distinctive feature of an LC is that it becomes by common understanding and unspoken agreement the preferred language of expression in any international context and domain. Using it becomes key to success and a marker of ‘modernity’ and professionalism. In addition, it is not only politics and academia which take place internationally in the LC by default. Perhaps even more importantly, it is the cultural output that also takes place in it. Thus, the LC becomes the intrinsic marker of the (global) community of practice of its time, representing the contemporary societies (and what is common to them) happening around it and in it. Such a community is not brought together by phenomena related to nationalism or other more traditional markers of community (such as literary tradition, ethnicity or heritage). Rather, the community of practice that finds its anchor in an LC is actually brought together by the shared ‘Zeitgeist’, so to speak, as the relevant ‘joint enterprise’, for which an LC is the de facto conduit.

3.3 Third major distinction: norm (very) ‘fixed’ in written material

The massive variability produced by immense numbers of non-native speakers (observable in glimpses in writing but very present in spoken language), prompts early on in the evolution of an LC a move towards solidifying standards (specifically of core lexicon and grammar) to combat heteroglossia. The reason for this lies in the intrinsic necessity to hold on to the utility of the language as a widely employed medium of cross-cultural communication, even if the standardisation, as in the case of Classical Arabic, overtly took the form of keeping the perceived ‘holy’ language pure and preserving it from ‘foreign’ influences and ‘corruption’ (Al Shlowiy 2019: 199).

What makes this process of ‘fixing’ an LF (Leonhardt 2013) different from standardisation observable within languages otherwise (especially today) is, firstly, that it comes across as a much more extreme process. This is because the wide international use of an LF drives language change in a fiercer and more diverse manner than any language otherwise experiences internally, even those with high numbers of non-native (i.e. migrant) speakers within (Mauranen and Ranta 2009). For instance, if we observe any contemporary natural language, the effects of internal variation, coming in the form of sociolects, dialects, jargons and similar, are kept relatively minimal in most countries because of the internally widespread exposure to the standard language in schools and through the media. The extent of externally driven change, observable with LFs, is not confined in the same manner due to the absence of prolonged exposure to the standard, outside the foreign-language classroom. Nevertheless, exonormativity (Schneider 2003: 245), inherent to ‘ordinary’ LFs, stands as an obstacle for any non-native variability having influx into the standard.

With LCs, there are no such obstacles because of the removal of the native speaker as a reference point for the standard. This allows, and especially has done so in the past, for a free-for-all influx of non-standard forms into the LC (Dahlgren et al. 2022). As a natural reaction, intended to preserve communicative usefulness of the LC, a severe form of standardising (i.e. ‘fixing’) of the lexico-grammatical core occurs, orientated towards written rather than spoken material (Leonhardt 2013: 19). This may not be surprising in historical terms, where the existing literature output was the only tangible representation of language to use as reference for any standardisation effort. For example, Latin was thus ‘fixed’ in the literary output of the 1st c. BC/1st c. AD (Rovai 2021). Yet, even today, languages in wide international use still draw predominantly on written native-speaker language material, in the form of corpora or via AI, when defining standard language and its norms both for first language and for LF international use (Gilquin 2022). Moreover, such languages are learned in international contexts predominantly via their written representations, coming in the form of textbooks, grammars and dictionaries in formal education, despite the ever-increasing possibility of also utilising audio-visual aids in instruction and the yet-to-be measured exposure to social media or video games, facilitating dual acquisition of English (Rose and Galloway 2019: Ch. 6).

Fixing of the lexico-grammatical core, as has taken place with Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin, was therefore a necessity to preserve their utility as LCs. The need and manner to do so was, for example, recognised by learned people of the time engaged in writing grammars and instructional material (e.g. Dionysios Thrax, Donatus or Sibawayh). It should be noted, however, that another aspect of preserving utility of an LC was the allowance of a certain amount of communicative (i.e. lexical) innovation to continuously, in an additive manner (i.e. addition taking place without the loss of redundant lexemes being incurred), occurring alongside the extreme ‘fixedness’ (Holes 2004: 5–6; Stotz 2002). Effectively, an LC adopted a mix between exonormativity and endonormativity as the means of survival (Schneider 2003: 249). Exonormativity remained present in the form of the written material that represented, in effect, the original standard language, as a means of assuring stable and long-term mutual intelligibility. Endonormativity became present in the guise of additive innovation, as a mechanism assuring long-term communicative usefulness. This kind of dual approach to language maintenance did, for example, help increase the expediency of Latin as a medium of cosmopolitan communication to such an extent as to facilitate a millennium of use.

Languages such as French, Spanish and KiSwahili have not had to go so far in their standardisation efforts as to shut out any interference from spoken language and its non-standard varieties and stop them from affecting their lexico-grammatical core. The manner in which contemporary corpora are constructed and the central role they subsequently play in linguistic research, which, in turn, in a trickle-down manner ultimately informs the norm, still allow for some link between non-standard (i.e. spoken) varieties and the standard one to be maintained, even beyond the surface (i.e. lexical) level. Spanish, in this sense, exhibits standard fixtures of norming (i.e. norm subject to periodical change according to usage, as, for example, evident in the new Ortografía de la lengua Española [Real Academia de la Lengua Española 2010]), as would be expected of any language managed under the modernist world paradigm (Del Valle 2014). In other words, the discourses concerning the different cores of Spanish (in the form of language corpora) serve, longitudinally, as the bases for relevant dictionaries and grammars.^[8] French, even though the often very strict official language policies ensure that its core elements remain very stable (Wright 2006: 39), remains in touch with the non-standard varieties via a vibrant output of the related linguistic research community (i.e. academic publications related to spoken language and variability therein). Ultimately, endonormativity comes across as more advanced in the Spanish than in the French-speaking world, where the prestige of the French standard partially slows down the process. KiSwahili has, in fact, only relatively recently undergone a more formal standardisation treatment, as it started taking on the role of vehicle for education and academia in countries using it in some official manner (Alcock and Ngorosho 2004: 5).

3.4 Fourth major distinction: extreme longevity in stable form

Given the scale of variability observable in the evolution of a language, it is a major assumption to consider almost any natural language used for millennia as one continuous linguistic entity (Auer and Voeste 2012: 282); and yet the case is different for LCs. Classical Arabic, Latin and Sanskrit have, once they established themselves in their communicatively dominant roles, carried these roles for exceedingly long periods of time, involving millennia of continuous use. In addition, not only have they been present for a long time, but they have existed in very stable forms. For example, unlike the intractable difficulty a speaker of modern Czech would have in following a text written in Old Czech (five or six centuries earlier), a speaker of Latin in the 15th century would have had little difficulty understanding a text produced a millennium and a half before. LCs, in their ‘fixed’ written forms, truly remain continuous entities in a linguistic sense, and do so for epochs.

The reasons why LCs tend to show extreme longevity in the function they perform internationally lie in the characteristics presented earlier in this paper. Firstly, the ‘death’ of the native speaker releases the language from political baggage, which normally keeps an LF from full adoption by its non-native speakers (Seidlhofer 2021: 396). Secondly, the fact that an LC is usually the most dominant (if not the only) expression of its times promotes investment into it (i.e. in teaching, publishing, technology, science and cultural output), which makes the LC hard to break away from (Kirkpatrick 2021: 3). Thirdly, deep-level ‘fixedness’ combined with surface-level pliability allows for utility across both time and space, solidifying longevity (Leonhardt 2013: Ch. 3).^[9] Here, one may observe only Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin as clearly showing such longevity in stable (written) form. Because longevity is so firmly anchored in ‘fixedness’, which Spanish, KiSwahili or even French still do not exhibit beyond regular standardisation, one cannot observe or predict longevity in such a stable form for them (either as LFs or as national languages).

3.5 Fifth major distinction: emergence of and co-existence with ‘daughter’ languages

The tension between the ‘fixed’ LC core and the ever-present and rampant variability of spoken forms has in the past always, in the very long run, resulted in divergence. In simple terms, divergence implies splitting of what is perceived to be one language into two or more languages (Wright 2012: 552). What happens is a change of status of co-existing varieties of one language, from being considered non-standard varieties to being seen as different languages, in sociolinguistic terms (Hinskens et al. 2009).^[10] We term the descendent linguistic codes which established themselves in such a new status by means of divergence ‘daughter’ languages. In the past, with the three historical LCs, this happened because of both the exceedingly long periods of their use without widespread literacy to reinforce the standard variety and because of socio-political conditions appearing as conductive to divergence (Wright 2012: 562). In addition to that and in difference to similar processes of divergence having taken place with many other natural languages (including those of LF status), LCs do not break apart into the ‘daughter’ languages (as did, for example, Imperial Aramaic or Old Church Slavonic, fully dissolving into its many descendants) but rather continue to co-exist with them for very long periods of time.

In the pre-LC stage of its use (i.e. going up to the 8th c.), Latin has, like any other language, always had a number of well-developed non-standard native varieties existing in parallel with the ‘fixed’ standard (Mullen 2011). Due to education (and thus access to learning the standard, existing in written form primarily) being very limited and elitist, these non-standard varieties continued evolving almost independently of the ‘fixed’ standard (experiencing usual contact with the other languages spoken in each of the conquered territories) and only in spoken form (Adams 2014). Furthermore, after the spread of Latin as an LF, we also have compounding effects of ‘non-native’ non-standard varieties appearing, which led to diglossia occurring across the empire (i.e. as of the 3rd–4th c. and the Tetrarchy) (Leonhardt 2013: 88). This extensive variability across the Roman world (including in Europe) was eventually further complicated by several factors (Wright 1995).

Firstly, there was Alcuin of York’s church-mediated 8th-c. reform of Latin, conscripted as part of Charlemagne’s educational reforms (Wright 1982: Ch. 3). Secondly, prompted by said reforms and the manner in which they excluded what were until then the native speakers of Latin, there is the emergence of writing systems for these ‘vulgar’ varieties as a reaction (based on the Latin alphabet, though) and of the desire to use them for literary purposes. Eventually, as these varieties started taking over the functions of Latin, over a span of several centuries (14th–16th c.), and as ideas and feelings of patriotism started evolving in Europe relatively shortly after that (Hirschi 2015), they increasingly became perceived as languages themselves, resulting in what we today call the Romance (sub-)family of languages (Brown 2020; Clackson 2011). At the same time, Latin as an LC continued to exist parallel to them, unobtrusive for centuries.

It is a fact that all six LFs analysed in this study can demonstrate effects of non-native-driven change stemming from their international (i.e. non-standard non-native) use (D’Anna and Benkato 2024; Dobrić 2024; Korenjak 2018; Leitner and Procházka 2025; Lwangale and Simiyu 2020; Ramírez-Cruz 2020; Ruppel 2017; van Putten 2020; Wetzel et al. 2023). However, the ‘death’ of the native speaker and the centripetal forces involved in the interplay between extreme variability in an international sense and extreme ‘fixedness’ (in the past also linked with elitism) has led to divergence and then co-existence only with the three considered as having also been LCs.^[11] For example, we have, as noted, Latin and the Romance languages, then Classical Arabic and the modern Arabic languages (traditionally still referred to as ‘dialects’ (Procházka 2021: 219–220; Retsö 2013: 436; Watson 2002: 7–9)),^[12] and also Sanskrit with Hindi and other modern Indian languages (Pollock 2009: Ch. 5).^[13]

Due to staying exonormative and still firmly rooted in native speaker reference, and due to the time spans involved in their uses as LFs (being much shorter than with the historical LCs), neither French nor Spanish (nor KiSwahili, even though it is somewhat different in nature and behaviour (Amidu 1995)) have as LFs ‘given birth’ to ’daughter’ languages (nor, by default, have had a chance to then co-exist with any descendants). As far as French varieties are concerned, there have been very few attempts defending the idea that they should constitute distinct languages, in a modernist sense. With Spanish, what we can see is an implicit agreement of ‘unity in diversity’, even if each country and region have their own particular characteristics. This is all despite some of them, like French, being very widely used as a prestige LF for several centuries.

3.6 Revisiting the assumptions

The main thrust of this study has been in proposing how certain LFs, under specific conditions, can attain a special status as an LC. This status was hypothesised to comprise a distinctive use of a language in international communication (i.e. distinctive from that of an ‘ordinary’ LF). Six LFs, used widely at different time periods, in different locales, and of very different linguistic, socio-cultural and political backgrounds were then analysed in terms of key properties in select cases. Three were initially assumed as being LCs at one point (Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin) and three as likely not having reached that status (French, Spanish and KiSwahili). Table 1 summarises the results of the analysis in a simplified manner and should be read in the light of the entire discussion presented so far.

At the onset, it is interesting to note that the characteristics which researchers generally attribute to LFs in statuses of use termed here LCs have not, in fact, been flagged as relevant (Leonhardt 2013). These include the importance contributed to the power of the entity from which the LC originated, forceful imposition of the LC on the subjugated peoples, linguistic peculiarity of the LC somehow specially favouring its initial adoption for cosmopolitan use, and the numbers of its original native speakers.

Firstly, the political entities which fostered the languages which were to attain LC status generally did not force their language upon their conquered subjects. In fact, in some cases they actively discouraged use of it, Classical Arabic being a case in point (with capitation tax (Alawi 1966) reasons potentially being behind that). The truth is that the Roman Empire did not need to thrust Latin upon anyone because the majority of new speakers of it (especially native speakers of ‘smaller’ languages) wanted to adopt it (Leonhardt 2013: 45). The reason for this was not any kind of special linguistic quality of clarity, precision or range which would have made Latin originally more appropriate for cosmopolitan communication than any other natural language (although a millennium and a half of extensive use as an LC may have made it so through evolution). Rather, the reason behind their readiness to adopt Latin (and other faucets of the identity it represented) was that the use of Latin at the time signified prosperity, advancedness, and belonging to the community that it epitomised (Garnsey et al. 2015: Ch. 12), in addition to being practically useful. Secondly, neither of the recorded historical LCs disappeared after the political entity that had spawned them and sent them on their way as LFs disappeared. It can even be said that they blossomed after that. The ‘golden age’ of Latin, in terms of geographical spread, written output and intellectual dynamism, was between the 9th and 17th centuries, long after the old Roman Empire, of which it was a native language early on, had dissolved (Leonhardt 2013: 2). The Amarna letters, a collection of 382 clay tablets showing the very interesting correspondence between the Egyptian administration and the neighbouring kingdoms between roughly 1360 and 1332 BC, are written in Akkadian (one more language likely in use as an LC, in the ancient Near East), almost a millennium after the high point of the Akkadian empire (2334–2154 BC) (Moran 2002).

At this point it may be opportune to raise the issue of the potential interdependency of the identified LC signifiers. For example, it may be interesting to consider whether ‘fixing’ of LCs came about as a consequence of the loss of the native speaker. Yet this is unlikely, as even if native speakers were present and claiming ownership in, say, 14th c. Europe, their linguistic presence in cosmopolitan communication taking place in Latin would have been, if nothing else, geographically rather limited. It would resemble the presence of, for instance, English native speakers in what is mostly non-native to non-native communication taking place in it internationally. Moreover, the historical LCs would not even have had the benefit of the continuing existence of the ‘spoken’ media (such as YouTube and similar) which still somewhat perpetuates the presence of native speakers of English in its global employ. The ‘fixing’ of, for instance, Classical Latin took place between approximately 100 BC and 100 AD, when the language of the major prose writers of the classical period of Latin literature (e.g. Cicero) became the standard. At the same time, native speakers of Latin existed until around 600 AD, using a range of non-standard spoken varieties. Rather, it is more likely that its ‘fixing’ came about as a consequence of the natural need to have a standard of some sort, both for safeguarding the communicative utility of an LC (i.e. as resistance to language change) and also for educational and literary purposes. In the case of Classical Arabic, whose ‘fixing’ took place during the 8th and 9th centuries,^[14] additional motivation could be found in a perceived need to ‘protect’ the language of the Holy Quran, this time not only from internal language change but also from ‘foreign influences’.

Similarly, we could consider the relationship between ‘fixing’ and divergence (i.e. ‘daughter’ languages) in the same manner. Interdependency between the two may be seen as implied due to the fact that the situation of having a high ‘fixed’ version by default created a diglossic situation early on in the development of the LCs, long before they reached this status. Nevertheless, it was only centuries later that the feelings of patriotism and, ultimately, nationalism came to be connected with the non-standard varieties existing in parallel with the LC ‘fixed’ version. It was at that point that the ultimate divergence and establishment of ‘daughter’ languages actually occurred.

Generally speaking, there is little to no interdependency to be observed between the five LC markers, implying an overall lack of a potential temporal order. While concatenation may exist in purely historical terms (with certain signifiers observable as taking place before the others), it does not seem to exist in terms of cause and effect. As the two previous paragraphs argue, it is likely that specific external, socio-cultural factors operating in specific time periods (such as economic advantage, prestige, patriotism and similar), in combination with certain demands coming from the communicative needs of the communities using an LC (such as need for ‘fixedness’ of a certain extent), served as independent impetuses, at different points in time, for the largely autonomous development of each of the LC signifiers listed in Table 1.

In sum, looking at Table 1 and the significance of the five criteria for describing the key aspects of the nature of Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin and not of French, Spanish or KiSwahili, it can be said that the former three do seem to indicate an existence of an idiosyncratic group of LFs. The five identified characteristics appear to confirm the initial assumptions this study made of there being a special status of LC and of only some LFs reaching it. In addition, these five characteristics include both a consideration of the socio-political reasons behind one LF attaining LC status and of the sociolinguistic consequences of that. However, before the significance of these findings can be discussed in terms of what they may mean for the field of study of LFs and before the limitations and the fundamental nature of the present analysis can be underlined, one particular case intentionally omitted from the analysis above needs to be visited as currently central in the field.

4.1 English and the distance of the native speaker

Starting with the loss of reference to native speakers, it needs to be underlined that there are many international speakers of English that have never spoken to a native speaker of English nor visited any anglophone country (Choi 2015). This is both because of the geographic limitations present in many cases and also because the motivation behind learning English for most non-native speakers is actually to communicate with other non-native speakers (which, in fact, they mostly end up doing), of which there are very many more than native ones (Seidlhofer 2021).

A typical Vietnamese speaker of English as an LF would, for instance, have learned English from a non-native teacher of English, who has also learned it from the same kind of teacher. The teacher at hand would likely never have been to a country where English is native (or at least not beyond minimally, in a tourist sense) and would have had no or at best little direct interaction with those who we consider to be native speakers of English (Leonard 2018; Llurda 2004). The main vehicle of instruction would for both be written language material, such as textbooks and grammars, despite the moves to incorporate more audio-visual sources (Rose and Galloway 2019: Ch. 6). These examples illustrate well the typical physical distance of the native speaker of English in most international interactions involving English. Even indirectly, via multimedia the presence of the native speaker is questionable. The Vietnamese speaker of English as an LF would experience only haphazard exposure (i.e. in the form of music, film, or some predesigned instructional material), often constituting not only inadequately comprehensive but also even less than understandable input (Song and Iverson 2018).

4.2 English and the conduit of the times

The extent to which English is used today as the vehicle of most of what we perceive as contemporary (i.e. modern) society is potentially unsurpassed by any LC preceding it, due to the technological and socio-political advantages it has experienced (Ostler 2011). Bolstered by globalisation, to such an extent as to become the linguistic anchor of the global “community of practice” (Wenger 1998), implying community markers beyond the traditional ones of nationality or ethnicity, and given wings by the Internet, English has reached such a default level of ubiquity in nearly every internationally communicated domain of human endeavour to have become almost mundane (Bolton et al. 2024).^[15]

For example, in terms of the account of the LCs outlined above, we can also see, similar to the example of the 9th-century Baghdad scholars, that when academics find themselves at an international conference, they will naturally and automatically communicate in English (Bolton and Bacon-Shone 2020). This is also true when a group of school children meet at an international sporting event, or when an Argentinian tourist finds herself in a remote Greek village in need of directions.

This is similar to the earlier argument for Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin. The same was not true of French, Spanish or KiSwahili, even at the highest points of their uses as LFs. Not only did their reach fail to match that of LCs, as accounted for above, but they also had to contend with (often stiff) competition, the likes of each other (e.g. French and Spanish), and then of German, English, and even Latin and Classical Arabic, in different locales (Ostler 2006: Ch. 16). English is today, just as Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin were at the heights of their LC uses, without any real competition when it comes to being the primarily selected medium of international communication (Patel et al. 2023).

4.3 English and ‘fixing’ in writing

That the norm of English and standard English as a variety^[16] are becoming increasingly ‘fixed’ in written material, potentially more so than other natural languages, is evident in several aspects of their behaviour on the global stage. Firstly, standard English, used as the default norm for teaching English internationally and nationally, is not naturally spoken as a native language by anyone (as is the case for most languages, in fact). Rather, it is a formalisation of the linguistic use observable in native speaker-produced corpora of largely written language (due to reasons of practicality and resources), often far removed from the spoken non-standard uses (Dobrić 2013: Ch. 2). This focus on written language is further challenging because written language sources are by default elitist, sampled largely from educated speakers who are the ones who habitually produce texts to be collected in the first place (Gilquin 2022). Nevertheless, such corpora are at the core of applied linguistic research (Dobrić 2009) and it is applied linguistic research that ultimately informs the norm and the standards at one point in time (i.e. research findings slowly trickle down from academic output into policy outputs, involving textbooks, dictionaries, testing standards and curricula).

What makes the case different for English in comparison to most other natural languages, bringing in an extra dimension of ‘fixedness,’ is that, firstly, English is experiencing far more pressure from non-standard forms coming from the outside (i.e. from the non-native speakers using it internationally) than any other contemporary language (Patel et al. 2023: 161). It can even be argued, considering the migrant nature of countries such as the USA, that internal pressure from non-native variability has also been, for a long time, greater than for most languages (Clyne 2003). This implies a heightened necessity for standardisation in order to preserve communicative usefulness of a shared standard variety. Secondly, standard written English has become the default language of the Internet. More than half of all web content (52.1 %) is in English (Statista 2004), surpassing ten-fold the runner up that is Spanish (with 5.2 %). On top of that, we have online communication which in any international context happens in English first and foremost, and in writing (Lamb and Arisandy 2019).

Furthermore, the written language that comprises corpora of a similar kind and with similar problems of representativeness is becoming the basis for the norm and standards adopted by text generative AI and its various natural language processing (NLP) iterations of English (such as Chat GPT), which is the language most of them are at the moment primarily designed to process (Leiter et al. 2024). How such tools are to keep in touch with English as actually spoken and not only written (even within what we consider the native discourse community alone) and whether there are any corporate interests (i.e. on the side of the AI developers and providers) to do so, remains an open question.

Finally, the number of people learning English primarily from textbooks, grammar books and dictionaries (based largely on the standards and sources described previously as linguistically and socio-culturally problematic) outstrips by a margin of five-to-one the number who acquire it as a first language (Patel et al. 2023: 161). The classroom focus, for almost any of the two billion non-native users, is predominantly on written material, with limited input from audio-visual sources (Perez 2022), whereby even such audio-visual sources also tend to represent standard English as much as possible.

4.4 English and the possibility of longevity in stable form and of ‘daughter’ languages

Since English is arguably at the start of its journey to potentially becoming an LC (or is perhaps there already, to a large extent, but with a long path yet to travel) and because it is evolving in a world drastically different to that of Sanskrit, Classical Arabic (for a large part of its history) and Latin, its longevity in a stable form, in an international sense, can only be speculated about. The ‘fixing’ is possibly already taking place, especially the most recent kind related to AI and to educational standards at the international level, which can give some indication as to likelihood of stability. In addition, the international investment into English observable at every step, from it being one of the most prominent school subjects worldwide (often alongside the first language and maths) to its place in the online world and everything in between, may serve as indication as to likelihood of longevity.

The fact is that without remaining stable in the future, English may lose some of its usefulness in a global communicative sense, negatively impacting its longevity as an LC. Internationally observable variability first puts English in danger of diglossia appearing (Vila 2021) (i.e. school-promoted standard as ‘high’ vs. the vernacular international Englishes as ‘low’ variants) and then, ultimately, of too early divergence (Wright 2012). The danger to its potential longevity is, however, not only linguistically conditioned but also socio-politically. To illustrate the socio-political issues undermining any kind of unburdened international use of English, one need only consider the fierce contemporary discussion of English within the EU, which is torn between the promotion of multilingualism on one side and the popularity of English on the other (Breiteneder 2009; Motschenbacher 2016; Seidlhofer 2021).

4.5 English as a lingua cosmopolitana in the early stages

If Table 2 is offered as a summary of the five signifiers of LCs being applied to English as an LF, a significant amount of pertinence (as indicated by the discussion above) can be observed.

Unlike French, Spanish and KiSwahili as its contemporaries, English as an LF shows much more overlap with Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin in terms of compliance to the five LC signifiers deduced earlier. It appears that aided by globalisation (so far led largely by the English-speaking USA) and by logically taking advantage of the Internet as an unsurpassed platform for natural spread, English may have managed to attain certain key characteristics that have eluded French, Spanish, KiSwahili (and most likely all other LFs). In addition, English managed to do all of this rather fast and rather thoroughly. In the first place, the main aspect of this spread of English involves it becoming the de facto conduit of the times, and, probably for the first time in recorded history, a truly global one due to factors such as globalisation and digitalisation (O’Regan 2021). This is perhaps the key characteristic indicating the belonging of English as an LF into the group of LCs. It helps advance both its prestige and its usefulness, motivating vast numbers of speakers to invest in it.

Other characteristics, such as the loss of reference to native speakers and even ‘fixing’ in writing, can only be seen as being in progress (hence provided in Table 2 with an accompanying question mark), as natural consequences of the nature of the international use of English, and thus not yet as conclusive. Firstly, there is the lack of complete equality between the native speaker being distant (as is the case with English) and the native speaker being completely absent (i.e. ‘dead’). There is a yet inadequately charted and still wildly varying extent of exposure of non-native speakers to native English in the form of YouTube, music, films and similar media that international speakers of English as an LF do experience. What is equally uncharted is how this relatively limited exposure impacts its use.

Secondly, ‘fixing’ in writing is also an ongoing development, still offset by the linguistic community and the way it observes spoken language and expresses applied linguistics results, i.e., the manner in which investigation into non-standard spoken language varieties trickles down into considerations of standards (Altendorf 2017; Carter and McCarthy 2017; Kerswill 2006). When it comes to English, the research done on spoken language and the rich output relevant to English language teaching still potentially exert an effect on how norms are formed. Yet to what extent this is impactful is not adequately covered by the literature. Finally, longevity, stability of form, or any divergence looming on the horizon are aspects of English as an LC that only time will reveal.

5.1 Updating the paradigm of what a language can be

In relation to the current linguistic paradigm of natural language as a broad phenomenon, it is evident that LC as a concept does not fit many of the characteristics of what we call a language today, especially in the socio-political sphere (i.e. in terms of possible language statuses of first, second, foreign, or even LF). Namely, as elaborated in detail below, LCs fail to conform to any of the tenets of the currently prevailing modernist view of language, with central roles still played by native-speakerism, pre-eminence of the nationality/ethnicity references, and the modern language standardisation approaches to LFs housed in exonormativity.

5.2 Updating the paradigm of what an LF can be

Most of the current research into the phenomenon of an LF is performed by tackling English as the most prominent contemporary embodiment. Likewise, most currently available research on LF paradigms is intrinsically biased by the ingrained modernist view of language discussed above. This is particularly true when it comes to questions of status. While descriptive accounts of English language forms and linguistic change as an LF can be considered ideologically unbiased (e.g. Rose and Galloway 2019), their interpretation in light of who contributes to the form the language takes, of how they do that, and of the perceptions of the relationship between proficiency and ’nativeness’ is not. This is not surprising, considering that language is a phenomenon fully shaped by its interaction with its own socio-cultural environment (Haugen 1972), which makes the perceptions of the general (i.e. non-academic) stakeholders more impactful than the actual realities of language use.

For instance, the extensive research done on the use of English as an LF, both in terms of linguistic characteristics and in terms of stakeholder attitudes, has still not managed to lead us to a definite account of how English used internationally is to be observed, neither within the linguistic community (despite a number of more recent promising accounts, e.g. Jenkins and Mauranen (2019); Kuteeva (2023); or Kuteeva et al. (2020)) nor among the more general stakeholders (i.e. international speakers and related policymakers). On the one hand, most of the linguistic community still largely perceive English as predominantly and firmly anchored in the native speakers and try to approach it from the point of view of a natural language just like any other, both within the World Englishes and the English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) paradigms (Haswell 2013).

On the other hand, policymakers are stuck in the view of ‘nation equals language’ and ‘native equals norm’. This is despite such views having massive negative consequences, from, for example, native-like standard English being the unsuccessfully sought language acquisition aim in most international educational contexts to the prestige still accorded to native speakers in the classroom over the local non-native ones, who actually present more achievable role models (Rose et al. 2021). Finally, despite the plainly observable distinction between how omnipresent English is in comparison to any other foreign language present in most communities, for the majority of general stakeholders there is little in terms of awareness of the conceptual otherness of English. This is despite the fact that national multilingualism (Stewart 1968), or rather national bilingualism with English as the default additional, adoptive language (Fiedler 2011; Maalouf 2008) for everyone, is the already existing unofficial model in most settings. All of these issues could potentially be addressed by considering English as of novel status (i.e. contemporarily novel, as an LC). It would highlight it as a language on its way to existing beyond a reference to nationality or nativeness, as several other languages before it. This would also imply including all of its speakers, native and non-native alike in the composition of the standards and the norm (something that was possible only on a lexical level for other LCs in premodern times).

Therefore, one possible path to successfully dealing with both English and with the phenomenon of internationally used languages in general (in terms of updating the current palette of statuses) would be to consider that they are not only internationally widely used foreign languages but perhaps something more. A way forward appears to be in looking at the times when languages similar in function to what is observable in English were the norm. Surprisingly, this was actually most of the time, whereby an absence of an LC we have seen in the last several centuries (at the very least, in Europe) is actually a historical exception (Gordin 2015). Therefore, lessons need to be drawn from historical precedents, such as Sanskrit, Classical Arabic and Latin indicated here (and more, likely including Akkadian, Ancient Greek or Classical Chinese). By observing their behaviour and how it may have differed from how we observe language today, the road to an updated definition of what a language in international communication can be and what English likely is and how it can be tackled may be found.