Lingua franca and other scholars of different nationalities. The term is taken from the medieval Mediterranean Lingua Franca, a Romance-based pidgin language used by European merchants and sailors during the 2nd millennium. A world language – a language spoken internationally and learned and spoken by a large number of people – is a language that may function as a global lingua franca. Lingua Franca refers to any language used for communication between people who do not share a native language. It can refer to hybrid languages such as pidgins and creoles used for communication between language groups. It can also refer to
Mixed language it is a matter of controversy whether the concept of a mixed language can meaningfully be distinguished from the contact phenomena of certain languages from the type of contact and borrowing seen in all languages. Scholars debate to what extent language mixture can be distinguished from other mechanisms such as code-switching, substrata, or lexical borrowing. Other terms used in linguistics for the concept of a mixed language include "hybrid language", "contact language", and "fusion language"; in older usage, 'jargon' was sometimes used in this sense. In some linguists' usage, creoles and pidgins are types of mixed languages, whereas in others'