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We quite agreed with Cospatric that Classics and Mathematics, and Natural Science as she is taught at Cambridge, are one and all of them useless burdens, not worth the gathering; but we were not prepared to say with him that we hungered after the acquisition of French, German, Spanish, Norsk, and Italian, or eke Lingua Franca or Japanese.

Latin was, at that time, the 'Lingua franca' of instructed people, not only in an international sense, as a means of intercourse between Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Italians, but also in an interprovincial sense.

Igitur peracta collocutione nostra satis producta, egressos principes in cameram reuocauit, ex quibus quatuor de maioribus iuxta nos aduocans, fecit eos expresse ac debite, per singulas diuisiones in lingua Gallicana destinguere per partes, et singuarum nomina partium, omnem regionem terrae Angliae, ac alias Christianorum terras multas, acsi inter nostros fuissent nati, vel multo tempore conuersati.

I had heard her conversing in Lingua Franca with her master, a fine old man, who, like her, felt very weary of the quarantine, and used to come out but seldom, smoking his pipe, and remaining in the yard only a short time.

While he thus indulged his grief, a clear and solemn voice, close beside him, pronounced these words in the sonorous tone of the readers of the mosque, and in the lingua franca mutually understood by Christians and Saracens:

This was in Arabic, and the Emir further insisted on his prostrating himself to ask pardon, while he himself in LINGUA FRANCA explained that the man was of a low and savage tribe of Bedouins, who knew not how to keep faith.

The Malayan language, which has commonly been supposed original in the peninsula of Malayo, and from thence to have extended itself throughout the eastern islands, so as to become the lingua franca of that part of the globe, is spoken everywhere along the coasts of Sumatra, prevails without the mixture of any other in the inland country of Menangkabau and its immediate dependencies, and is understood in almost every part of the island.

They are both, indeed, used by various nations in their commercial transactions; but, beyond this, nothing can be more unjust or absurd than the comparison. The lingua franca is a jargon compounded at random, devoid of grammar or elegance; the Malayan, on the contrary, is musical, simple in its construction, and well calculated for the expression of poetry.

Assiduous at the library, he was also a frequent visitor to the marketplace, halting for choice in front of the peasant girls who sell oranges, and listening to their unconventional remarks. He was learning, he would say, from their lips the true Lingua Toscana.

"You understood?" he gasped. "I understood enough," said she. "This lingua franca is none so different from French." And again she asked "Why did you deny him?" He paced across to her side and stood looking down at her. "Do you ask why?" "Indeed," she said bitterly, "there is scarce the need perhaps.