KHUSH RANDHAWA
Listen to an Indian businessman negotiating with a Korean counterpart, and you will likely hear a strange strain of English.
Just simple words and stock phrases with weird grammar and syntax.
They are speaking Globish.
Pronounced Globe-ish, it is the brainchild of Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerriere.
When he was an IBM executive in France, he was astonished that despite his heavily accented and lower standard of English, he could communicate more effectively with international clients than his American boss.
This was probably because his boss, like most native English speakers, would talk too quickly and use unfamiliar words and expressions, which hindered communication.
So Mr Nerriere came up with Globish, which only has 1,500 commonly-used English words for non-native speakers to transact business.
Words such as “nephew” and “niece” become “the son and daughter of my brother”. A big word like “collaboration” is replaced with “working together”.
Globish speakers also avoid all figurative expressions. So, there is no need to understand Anglophone literature and culture to grasp the meaning of what was said.
The result: Globish is much easier to learn compared to the King’s English and its 615,000 words.
In fact, the globish.com website promises: “Starting from scratch, anyone in the world should be able to learn Globish in about one week.”
It also recommends listening to popular English songs to aid pronunciation, and gesticulating when unable to find the right words.
Mr Nerriere maintains that Globish is not a language. He explains: “A language is the vehicle of a culture. Globish doesn’t want to be that. It is a means of communication.”
Many scholars predict that people won’t be bothered to learn English if they can get by with Globish.
Now, there is the rise of written Globish, thanks to the widespread use of e-mail and WhatsApp.
With spellcheck and translation software, anyone can communicate in written Globish.
While some still consider Globish to be gibberish, an estimated 1.5 billion people are already using it as a second language.
My fear is that if it does become the worldwide dialect of the third millennium, I may have to devote a full week to learn it.
