it's quite ironic that English became the lingua franca

Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.works to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 72 points –
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Yeah, furthermore (from Wikipedia):

In Lingua Franca (the specific language), lingua is from the Italian for 'a language'. Franca is related to Greek Φρᾰ́γκοι (Phránkoi) and Arabic إِفْرَنْجِي (ʾifranjiyy) as well as the equivalent Italian—in all three cases, the literal sense is 'Frankish', leading to the direct translation: 'language of the Franks'. During the late Byzantine Empire, Franks was a term that applied to all Western Europeans.

So if anything, it’s (roughly) Italian, Greek, and Arabic for “language of the Western Europeans”.

Yes, because that used to be the situation back then. It's whatever language all involved parties speak. So English being a lingua franca doesn't even contain trace amounts of irony.