Is it possible for Occitan to be a modern linguafranca at least in Europe
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You say it "remains" a lingua franca; when was it ever a lingua franca? I was quite sceptical on reading it and looking at the Encyclopedia of European languages doesn't seem to suggest it ever was a lingua franca (as a language of international / trade communication), even if it was at one point a language of some literary influence.
Well, in many respects it resembled a pidgin language (one linguist, Keith Whinnom, has even suggested that it was the ancestor of all the Romance-based pidgins attested from the Americas to the Pacific, through a process he termed "relexification"), and was closely connected to one particular form of trade: the slave trade, initially Trans-Mediterranean and then subsequently Trans-Atlantic.Point of fact:
Look up the language Sabir, which was a trade language across the Med heavily influenced by Occitan/Provencal.
Well, in many respects it resembled a pidgin language (one linguist, Keith Whinnom, has even suggested that it was the ancestor of all the Romance-based pidgins attested from the Americas to the Pacific, through a process he termed "relexification"), and was closely connected to one particular form of trade: the slave trade, initially Trans-Mediterranean and then subsequently Trans-Atlantic.
The basis for Sabir was probably some form of Italian, but it acquired and jettisoned vocabulary as it docked in various ports of call, and at times can appear more like French or Spanish than Italian. I actually can't say that I've seen much Provencal influence in any of the texts alleged to be Lingua Franca or Sabir that have survived.