Thank You for Your Frankness

The term Lingua Franca, as many readers know, stems from a 16^th-century Mediterranean reference to the language used between speakers of different tongues as “the language of the Francs,” the Francs being all Western Europeans – that is, all non-Greeks. Since then, the Francs has come to mean the inhabitants of France – though most would agree that English, not French, is the lingua franca of our era throughout much of the world.

The gist of the title of this blog, which we are laying to rest at...