English Spoken Here
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
Last week I wrote a post about disappearing languages. This post is about something different–the evolution of a new one.
Being the dictionary person at Booklist, I’m often asked to review books on language. Recently, I reviewed Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language. The author, Robert McCrum (he also wrote The Story of English), writes that a flat world needs a flat language, and thanks to events ranging from the Norman Conquest to the IT revolution English has become the “universal lingua franca.”
Strictly speaking, Globish is a list of about 1,5oo English words compiled by an IBM executive to facilitate communication at international meetings. According to McCrum, however, Globish is a much larger phenomenon. And it’s much more than an embrace of British and American linguistic norms (and values). At the same time, it’s more than the sum of Chinglish, Hinglish, and other local adaptations. An article in today’s New York Times discusses the efforts of the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use to clean up Chinglish street signs, restaurant menus, and more to make them understandable for tourists in preparation for Expo 2010. (Several web sites, such as ChineseEnglish.com, are devoted to documenting examples of “funny Chinese English.” ) In 2003, the government of Singapore launched a Speak Good English Movement to promote the use of grammatically correct English instead of Singlish, an amalgamation of English, Malay, and other tongues. These official attempts at systemization don’t mean Chinglish and Singlish will be joining the list of endangered languages any time soon. Rather, they are efforts by global players to encourage communication in a way that is globally understood.
May 3rd, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Globish reminds me of another project called “Basic English” Unfortunately this failed, because native English speakers could not remember which words not to use
So it’s time to move forward and adopt a neutral non-national language, taught universally in schools worldwide,in all nations.
As a native English speaker, I would prefer Esperanto
Your readers may be interested in the following video at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator with the United Nations in Geneva.
A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net