I continue to be amused that English is the world’s lingua franca.

For those of you not immersed so deeply in etymology: “lingua franca” is an Italian term which originally meant “the language of the Franks” (who were the Germanic people who lived near the Rhine; from their name, we get the present-day name of the nation of France). The term dates to the middle 1600s, when a pidgin form of the Frankish language was used as the main language of international commerce and diplomacy.

So we use an Italian term describing a Germanic language from which we get the name of France, all to describe the English language.