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The Lingua franca of the Mediterranean or Sabir ("know") was a pidgin language used as a Lingua franca in the Mediterranean Basin from the 11th to the 19th century.

Based mostly on Italian and Provençal in the eastern Mediterranean, it later came to have more Spanish and Portuguese elements, especially on the Barbary coast. It also borrowed from French, Greek and Arabic. This mixed language was used for communication throughout the medieval and early modern Middle East as a diplomatic language. It was the language used between slaves of the bagnio, Barbary pirates and European renegades in pre-colonial Algiers.

The name "lingua franca" means "language of the Franks (in the sense of 'Roman Christians')". The generic description "lingua franca" has since become common for any language used by speakers of different languages to communicate with one another.

Some samples of Sabir have been preserved in Molière's comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Hugo Schuchardt was the first scholar to investigate the Lingua franca systematically. According to the monogenetic theory of the origin of pidgins he pioneered, Lingua Franca was known by Mediterranean sailors including the Portuguese. When Portuguese started exploring the seas of Africa, America, Asia and Oceania, they tried to communicate with the natives by mixing a Portuguese-influenced version of Lingua Franca with the local languages. When English or French ships came to compete with the Portuguese, the crews tried to learn this "broken Portuguese". Through a process of relexification, the Lingua Franca and Portuguese wordstock was substituted by the languages of the peoples in contact.

This theory explains the similarities between most of the European-based pidgins and creole languages, like Tok Pisin, Papiamento, Sranang Tongo, Krio, Chinese English Pidgin. These languages use forms similar to sabir for "to know" and piquenho for "children".

Lingua Franca left traces in today's Algerian slang and Polari. Polari from Italian parlare ("to talk") was a cant used by Fairground Travellers/Showpeople, London variety artists and gay people.

English words like "savvy" (from sabir) and "pickaninny" can be traced to Lingua Franca.

• John A. Holm, Pidgins and Creoles, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0521359406, p. 607
• Henry Romanos Kahane, The Lingua Franca in the Levant: Turkish Nautical Terms of Italian and Greek Origin, University of Illinois, 1958
• Hugo Schuchardt, Pidgin and Creole languages : selected essays by Hugo Schuchardt (edited and translated by Glenn G. Gilbert), Cambridge University Press, 1980. ISBN 0521227895.

• A Glossary of Lingua Franca, fifth edition, 2005, Alan D. Corré. It includes articles about the language from various authors.
  • Sample texts from Juan del Encina, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Carlo Goldoni's The Impresario from Smyrna, Diego de Haedo and other sources.
  • The glossary itself