Lingua Franca
An extinct language of Tunisia
| Population | Extinct. |
| Region | Tunisia; Dodecanese Islands west bank, Greece; Cyprus; other major Mediterranean ports. |
| Alternate names | ’Ajnabi, Aljamia, Ferenghi, Petit Mauresque, Sabir |
| Dialects | Lexicon from Italian and Occitan [oci]. An earlier version may have been a pidginized Latin. On the Barbary Coast of North Africa in 1578, its lexicon came from Spanish and Portuguese. In Algeria in the 1830s, it drew increasingly from French, and later became nonstandard French. May have influenced other pidgins. Reportedly a present-day variety on Aegean Islands, used as pidgin in southeast Mediterranean region, to have mainly Arabic syntax and vocabulary which is 65%–70% Italian, 10% Spanish, and other Catalan [cat], French, Ladino [lad], and Turkish [tur] words. |
| Classification | Pidgin, Romance based |
| Language development | Dictionary. |
| Comments | Documented in Djerba, Tunisia in 1353. Craftsmen; urban workers. Christian, Muslim (Sunni). |
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