Even if you don’t know it, you probably already speak Globish
Posted on March 12, 2009
Filed Under Discussion, Globish |
Here’s a question I bet you get asked all the time, ‘do you speak Globish?’ No? Well, maybe it’s time to think again:
‘If your English is limited, but you know enough for the business you’re in and your contacts around the world, you almost certainly do without realizing it’ exlaims Lynda Hurst in the ever influential Toronto Star.
‘Fear not, Globish isn’t another Esperanto. It’s a form of simplified English that non-native English speakers from different countries use with each other to surmount linguistic barriers. “English-lite,” as it’s been called, has become the global dialect of the global village, spoken and emailed daily by multiple millions of people who can’t otherwise communicate with each other.’
English-lite, eh! Sounds like an invention of the French, if you ask me. Indeed it is, kind of. ‘Anglophones no longer own English,’ rants Jean-Paul Nerrière, the man who coined the term. ‘It’s now owned by people in Singapore, Ulan Bator, Montevideo, Beijing and elsewhere.’ In 2004, Nerrière took it upon himself to formalise the rules of Globish, the sly old bugger, publishing ‘Don’t speak English, Parlez Globish‘, and a year later, a handbook, ‘Discover Globish‘, both of which have been translated from the original French into Korean, Italian and Spanish, though not yet English, obviously.
My students seem to have gotten hold a dodgy copy of the original publication, one with half the title missing.
Sphere: Related Content
Comments
Leave a Reply