Parlez-vous Globish?
Speak with people around the world in a 1500-word version of English.
The French and the English have fought many, many wars over the centuries, on battlegrounds throughout Europe. But the latest war, over linguistic superiority, is being fought all over the world, and the winning side appears to be (the) English.
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There has long been a dream of a universal language that would allow any two people in the world to talk with each other and be understood. There are some special purpose universal languages: for example, a Chinese Catholic bishop and a Mexican Catholic bishop can carry on a conversation in Latin.
In the 1800s, French became the international language of diplomacy, and the French language was spoken all over the world. However, it was replaced in this role by English in the 1900s. This has been and continues to be a source of enormous frustration and anger for the French, but I would argue that they have no one to blame but themselves, by conquering England in 1066.
Although there are many European languages, most of them fall into two major categories:
- The Romance languages of southern Europe, descendants of Latin. The principal ones are French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian.
- The Teutonic languages of northern Europe, descendants of Old German. The principal ones are English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Icelandic. (As an interesting side note, there is a Teutonic language in southern Africa, the Afrikaans language, introduced by the Dutch in the 1600s.)
These two language groups collided in England in 1066 with the French Norman conquest. Suddenly, the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon language had to coexist with the Romance old French language. It was not a happy time.
But it did have a remarkable result. The English language became enormously simplified as a result of this comingling. Let’s take a look at some of the features of the English language that make it much simpler than other languages:
- One of the most crazy-making things about learning a foreign language is getting the genders of the nouns straight. French has two genders (masculine and feminine), while German has three (adding neuter). These genders rarely make sense to non-native speakers. In French, the nose (le nez) is masculine, while in German (die Nase) it’s feminine. In French a woman (la femme) and a girl (la jeune fille) are feminine, but in German, a woman (Die Frau) is feminine, while a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter.The French Normans and the English Anglo-Saxons just couldn’t keep those genders straight, and so the incredible happened: In English, males are masculine, females are feminine, and other things are neutral. Much easier to remember!
- There is only one “the”. Adjectives are not declined. So, “the tall boy loves the tall girl” and “the tall girl loves the tall boy” use the same forms of all the words, while there would be differences in German and French.
- Nouns have limited declensions (book, book’s, books, books’). It’s true that English has a number of irregular (“strong”) nouns, but there’s only one additional form to learn (child-children, woman-women). Other languages have nouns with multiple irregular forms.
- Verbs have limited conjugations (work, works, worked, has worked). Once again, it’s true that English has about 200 strong verbs, but there are only two additional forms to learn (awake – awoke – awoken, cost – cost – cost). Only two verbs (to be and to have) have multiple irregularities. German is only a little more complicated than English in irregular verbs, but French irregular verbs are a nightmare.
We should mention that there are two areas where English is considered more difficult than other languages: First, English is a very large language, with tens of thousands of words taken from other languages around the world. And second, English spelling and pronunciation rules are inconsistent.
A third criticism of English is that it’s very Euro-centric, and much harder to learn for Asians, and it’s worth remembering that more people speak Chinese today than any other language on earth.
On the Continent, French and German have remained distinct languages, with little signs of merging. But in England they did merge, creating an English language that’s much simpler grammatically than either of them.
Some historians claim that English replaced French as the international language in the 1900s because Britain was more successful in colonizing. But I would argue that the converse is at least as true: Britain’s success in colonizing at least partially occurred because their language was easier to learn by the colonists than the French language.
The rise of Globish
Now a remarkable new simplification of the English language is beginning to take hold. Apparently this new language was born out of necessity. People from different countries needed to do business with one another. They may have studied English in school, or they may have learned a few words from television, so a Korean and a Mexican would speak or e-mail to each other using the English words that they both know.
The existence of this language was discovered by Jean-Paul Nerrière, an IBM executive working in Paris with colleagues of about 40 nationalities. He discovered that foreign language speakers were successfully conversing each other using what he called a “perverted form of English.”
The irony is that the foreign language speakers could speak and understand each other this way, but native English language speakers never understood a word.
Nerrière became a champion of this “perverted” language. He formalized and wrote instruction books for native speakers of different language. His web site (mostly in French) is http://www.jpn-globish.com/, but English speakers should read his partner’s web site, http://www.bizeng.net/globish.htm.
It’s just as hard (or easy) for a native English language speaker as it is for a native foreign speaker. Here’s an example:
- In English: I went to my niece and nephew’s party the other weekend. I played the piano and we were all singing along when a mouse ran out from behind the sofa with a piece of peach in its mouth.
- In Globish: At the party of my children’s brother the other day, I played an instrument with black and white keys and we all sang along. Then an animal chased by cats ran out from behind the seat with a piece of fruit in its mouth.
As you can see from this example, you have to speak in very short sentences, and you have to restrict yourself to the list of 1500 words. You must avoid humor or metaphors. If the word you need isn’t among the 1500, then you have to find another way, as in using “instrument with black and white keys” for “piano,” and “an animal chased by cats” for “mouse.” As you can see from this example, this can be as difficult for native English speakers to learn as for others.
(Comments: For reader comments, questions and discussion, see the Geopolitical topics thread of the Generational Dynamics forum.) (26-Jan-2009)
