Perhaps only a cosmopolitan Frenchman can see Yasser Arafat as the face of future English. Jean-Paul Nerrière is a retired IBM vice president who has angered many of his countrymen by suggesting that a sort of pidgin English has now become the lingua franca of the world. Rather than fight it, he has advised Frenchmen (and every other nationality) to learn a subset of English he’s codified called globish. The BBC describes Nerriere’s key insight into both the dominance of English and the need for a functioning subset:
Monsieur Nerrière is a retired French businessman who one day in the course of his work made a fascinating observation. In a meeting with colleagues from around the world, including an Englishman, a Korean and a Brazilian, he noticed that he and the other non-native English speakers were communicating in a form of English that was completely comprehensible to them, but which left the Englishman nonplussed.
He, Jean-Paul Nerrière, could talk to the Korean and the Brazilian in this neo-language, and they could understand each other perfectly. But the Englishman was left out because his language was too subtle, too full of meaning that could not be grasped by the others. In other words, Monsieur Nerriere concluded, a new form of English is developing around the world, used by people for whom it is their second language.
Nerrière’s globish site asserts that you can say most things using a vocabulary of 1,500 words or less. His website say that the
globalised version of English is now so common that Britons, Americans and other English-speakers should learn it too. “The point is that Anglophones no longer own English,” he told The Times in Paris. “It is now owned by people in Singapore, Ulan Bator, Montevideo, Beijing and elsewhere.” He says that in multi- national meetings, Anglo-Saxons stand out as strange because they cling to their original language instead of using the elementary English adopted by colleagues from other countries. Their florid phraseology and grammatical complexities are often incomprehensible, said Mr Nerrière, who added: “One thing you never do in Globish is tell a joke.
The inability to express jokes in globish is probably why, according to the BBC, Nerriere regards the late Yasser Arafat as one of the prime examples of globish in action. This YouTube video shows Arafat speaking English shortly after the September 11 attacks. The Frenchmen who watch it may conclude that the bad news is that in the future everyone will speak English. The good news for the French is that all the English speakers will be doomed to sound like Yasser Arafat. But maybe things won’t work out that way at all. Instead of the emergence of one, simple English it is possible that dozens, even hundreds of very complex Englishes will emerge, all of who share a basic vocabulary and grammar. There may be enough commonality for the different English speakers to understand each other without ever resorting to a simplified common vocabulary. Wikipedia lists dozens of English dialects, including Jamaican, Burmese, Indian, Pakistan, HongKong Englishes to name a few. This is in addition to many other pidgins which have arisen. In which case, maybe Edwin San Juan, not Yasser Arafat will be the sound of English in the future. (Here’s part 2 of the Edwin San Juan video).
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28 Comments
1. PA Cat:Don’t forget Lolcat English, aka Lolspeak. There is an ongoing project to translate the entire Bible into Lolcat: Here’s the opening verses of the Gospel of John:
Teh Cat Macro Becamded Flesh
1 In teh beginz is teh meow, and teh meow sez “Oh hai Ceiling Cat” and teh meow iz teh Ceiling Cat.2 Teh meow an teh Ceiling Cat iz teh bests frenz in teh begins.
3 Him maeks alls teh cookies; no cookies iz maed wifout him.4 Him haz teh liefs, an becuz ov teh liefs teh doodz sez “Oh hay lite.”5 Teh lite iz pwns teh darks, but teh darks iz liek “Wtf.”
6 And teh Ceiling Cat haz dis otehr man; his naem iz John.7 He tellz teh ppl dat teh lites is tehre, so dat teh doodz mite bleev”8 Him wuz not teh lite; he jsut sez teh lites is tehre.9 Teh tru lite ov lotz of lite wuz comes, k?
10 He iz liek, “Oh hai, I mades u,” but teh wurld duznt sees him.11 He iz comes to his stuffs, but his stuffs sez “Do not want!”12 And sum guyz did want, and sez “Teh Ceiling Cat pwns,” and deez guyz iz liek his kidz—13 But not liek reel kidz, k? Iz liek teh Ceiling Cats kidz.
Main page of the Lolcat Bible project: http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
It has more of a sense of humor than globish, at any rate.
Jan 26, 2009 - 3:35 am 2. nelson:In a single generation a simplified, basic pidgin can become a creole with all the grammatical complexities of a regular language.
Jan 26, 2009 - 6:21 am 3. Bob Sykes:There is something called “scientific english” that occurs widely in engineering and scientific journals. It is not quite standard English and grates on a native English speaker’s sensibilities, but it is understandable. Apparently, “globish” is even more wide spread and simplified. A thousand years ago, English was German and French was Latin. Empires generate new languages.
Jan 26, 2009 - 6:45 am 4. Fat Man:Bug? No. It’s a feature.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
James Nicoll
Jan 26, 2009 - 7:06 am 5. NahnCee:The French telling everyone else how it’s best done again. Evidently the Frogs have given up on protecting their own language and insisting that it be used in the UN, the EU and NATO, and now they’re trying to invent a new language and insist that *that* be used instead.
Hint to this poppinjay – “globish” is a redundant term for something that’s been around for centuries. Everyone else just calls it “pidgin English”.
I love it that the French keep coming up with new ways of being insufferable.
P.S. BTW, Americans have been using devices in Iraq that automatically translate, a la Star Trek. I guess if you’re a Third World country like France, though, you wouldn’t be able to afford them.
Jan 26, 2009 - 7:28 am 6. Asher Abrams:Of course, globish is already alive and well on the internet. I agree with RF that the likely outcome will be simply a larger number of English dialects. And yeah, as NahnCee said, it’s basically just pidgin English which has been around forever.
The idea of a regularized, simplified, international English isn’t novel either:
Jan 26, 2009 - 7:43 am 7. Brock:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_english
Globish will fail and disappear just as French fell off the world stage as long as it’s being regulated by a Frenchman. Languages cannot remain both static and common to all men. Only living things stay on top of the heap.
Jan 26, 2009 - 8:01 am 8. F:Many variants of international trade languages exist. Two that I have used with varying degrees of fluency are Camerounian Pidgin (largely English) and East African Swahili (Portuguese, Arabic and English). Pidgin works well; Swahili works better and is even a written language. Former Tanzanian President Nyerere translated Shakespeare into Swahili, newspapers publish daily, radio stations exist that carry nothing but Swahili language broadcasts, and the language has supplanted local languages in Kenya since it is widely used in school. Globish also (and obviously) exists: close friends in Peru used it in daily business and it always made me cringe when I heard it. In fact I would dispute Nerriere’s comment that his British colleague did not understand Globish. A more likely explanation is that his ears were so offended he refused to listen. Better to learn the local language. F
Jan 26, 2009 - 9:12 am 9. Neil:That’s just typical passive-aggressive Frenchness on display. I’m an American, and while I know exactly what the author means by “globish”, I’ve never had any trouble understanding it or shearing vocabulary and grammar from my speech to make myself understood in it.
More to the point, “French”, “German”, even “Italian” are (or were) all forms of pidgin Latin, but well-educated Europeans learned real Latin until, what, 100 years ago?
I don’t think English is going away any time soon.
Neil
Jan 26, 2009 - 10:18 am 10. Peter:This is pretty standard for just about any language. Many years ago when I was first traveling in Poland in the 1970s I met a Nigerian student who like me was visiting the police (Peoples’ Militia) to sort out a visa matter. We had a lovely conversation in our broken Polish. It only occurred to me later that we probably would have been able to converse in English perfectly well, but it never occurred to either of us that the other was probably proficient in English.
Jan 26, 2009 - 10:53 am 11. Cosmeau Bugleweed:Another anecdote is that when I took a civil engineering class in college, the Iranian professor began the first lecture, “Ladies and gentlemen, I speak a universal language…broken English!” Everyone laughed and his thick accent was never an issue thereafter.
My American friends are mostly unaware of the linguistic cleansing program of the series of secessionist governments in Quebec.
They are also unaware that an “anglophone” as well as a “francophone” (hate the jargon) native of Quebec could, notwithstanding said linguistic cleansing, roll his car to the local garage and say:
“Leve le hood, je pense que mon strap de fan est luss”.
And be perfectly understood.
Love it.
Jan 26, 2009 - 11:33 am 12. RWE:A friend of mine married a lady from the Panama Canal Zone. That is a whole different culture, not North American and not South American.
He said that he had somes kids from that area visiting and that they spoke a nearly incomprehensible dialect of English. They could not speak Spanish even though that sounded like what they were speaking.
Things like this always bring to mind Omar Shariif in “Johnny Dangerously”, speaking with an accent that made the words sound completely different, like other English words. Nonetheless, his meaning was clear. Example: “Yoes Farr’gin Iceholes.”
Of course, I also used to think of that movie when I wrote Congressional testimony.
Jan 26, 2009 - 11:35 am 13. Roderick Reilly:I’m bastardizing the history here I’m sure, but I understand that Old English started out as a pidgin trading dialect between Anglo-Saxons and Danes when the Danes occupied the Danelaw.
I also read that the effect of French on Old English after the Norman invasion is exagerrated.
Jan 26, 2009 - 12:01 pm 14. Bill Chapman:What’s wrong with making wider use of Esperanto. In a way, Esperanto can be seen as a pidgin. It does a fine job for international communication. I’ve used Esperanto in a dozen or more countries.
Take a look at http://www.esperanto.net
Jan 26, 2009 - 12:44 pm 15. NahnCee:You are a kind and giving person, Mr. Chapman. I am not, especially when it’s a person of the French persuasion telling that I need to change.
Jan 26, 2009 - 1:24 pm 16. RWE:I think that Espernato will become more popular after the Esperantese win a few major wars.
Having a bunch of heavily armed guys with a Sherman tank sitting in your front yard is a more effective bilingual teaching method than Berlitz or anyone else has ever devised.
In the Ambrose book Citizen Soldiers he describes an incident in a German village late in WWII. American armored forces were rolling through the village and our troops were posted along the way to keep the locals from being run over. A small German boy and an old German man were among those watching the convoy. As each American tank would roll by the boy would say “Deutch panzers ist better.” Each time he would be shushed by the old man. Finally, the American soldier turned around and said to the boy “If the German tanks are better, then where are they?”
Jan 26, 2009 - 2:00 pm 17. twobyfour:If I were to pick a lingo that would make most sense, I’d pick Aymara as a template. All the other artificial languages are variations on the same theme, Aymara is one of a kind. It is based on trinary logic, while all the other language today in existence are based on binary logic.
Non-Aymara: yes/no
Aymara: yes/intermediate/no
It is agglutinated structure, using roots as suffixes in its syntax. The trinary logic enables extremely precise expression of relationships and tenses. One linguist used this particular characteristic to create a program that was able to translate binary logic languages between each other with grammatically correct results (unlike what you get when you use babelfish).
I know that Evo Morales is an Aymara and is an idiot, but that does not bear any reflection on his mother tongue, it simply proves that every village has its own idiot (or more of them thereof).
Jan 26, 2009 - 2:55 pm 18. whiskey:Wretchard this assumes global trade and so on.
Bad assumption. We are probably seeing the end of globalization.
America will no longer provide security of the seas and a global nuclear umbrella. American consumers will no longer power world trade. Europe faces a crisis of it’s own and cannot power global trade. Same with Japan. Same with China, or India, or the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China).
Add to that the inevitable shipping container based nuke attack, and you will see a new isolation and economic autarky.
Very likely a return to non-English in most parts of the world, as trade collapses. The global aristocracy, the Davos Men, had their day. But it’s done. All over but the shouting.
And with it, the end of globish. Who cares about Arafat and the Palestinians now? With an economic collapse and hate/fear of the Muslim masses inside and out of Europe, there is no more money or effort being wasted on the Palestinians. The EU has denounced Hamas as a terrorist organization. Likely for budgetary reasons — they cannot afford to send money anymore when Europe is collapsing.
Jan 26, 2009 - 4:32 pm 19. Bart Hall (Kansas, USA):Cosmeau — it works the other way in Quebec, too. I lived there for 13 years and it was not uncommon to hear anglos say things like: “Will it derange you if I don’t assist at your reunion?” Meaning will it bother you if I don’t go to your meeting?”
My kids’ English to this day remains quietly salted with francicisms, and it’s been nearly 20 years since they lived there.
Jan 26, 2009 - 4:38 pm 20. twobyfour:@ 19. Bart
Funny, just the opposite in my case. I don’t import Czech loans into English, but when I speak Czech (very rarely) I spike it with anglicisms so it’s like a shish kabob and have to watch my language when talking with someone in the old country.
Jan 26, 2009 - 4:56 pm 21. exdem13:The funny thing is that a highly educated & respected professional is finally catching on to a meme established by Gibson, Williams, and Sterling about 25 years ago. Global government and global economy may never happen, but global speak, sure thing!
Jan 26, 2009 - 7:15 pm 22. Starling:“…1500 words.” According to several sources, that’s the number of words that Shakespeare is believed to have created. His vocabulary, as evidenced in his writings, is estimated at about 18,000 words- more than double that of all of his contemporaries, twice that of Milton. One may be able to communicate in globish, but if the size of ones vocabulary is any indicator of the refinement of thought, I’d not expect any great literature to be written in globish.
Jan 26, 2009 - 8:01 pm 23. cellec:Take a stroll into any gas station, 7-11, or ethinic restaurant in Los Angeles and “globish” is all you’ll here. As a native English-speaker it occasionally drives me nuts, however people from all over the planet seem to be able to make themselves understood to each other using this “globish”. At least for the purposes of buying a slurpee or a tank fo gas.
Jan 26, 2009 - 9:05 pm 24. olde fogey:For those of us who spend too much time in a Taco Bell, it’s iroic to read about Pidgin English when I listen in to many teen conversations and can not even understand what they’re talking about much less what they say.
I guess it doesn’t help that I don’t watch TV.
Jan 26, 2009 - 10:53 pm 25. Fat Man:It took a couple of days, but the meme finally shook loose in my brain. Globish is not original at all. The Voice of America was in front of this by about 40 years:
Link
Jan 27, 2009 - 8:37 pm 26. Starling:Thanks FatMan. Do you have a link for this quote?
Jan 28, 2009 - 4:04 am 27. barry 0351:Learn Arabic and get it over with.
Jan 28, 2009 - 6:40 am 28. Fat Man:Starling: its is right above the date right above your name at 26.
Jan 28, 2009 - 7:41 am