Posted on 12/11/2006 1:58:29 AM PST by Mrs Ivan
If you plan to travel the world expecting to get by on English, think again.
The language you need is Globish, according to a French author who says that the British are failing to seize the mother tongue of international communication.
Globish is a simple, pragmatic form of English codified by Jean-Paul Nerrière, a retired vice-president of IBM in the United States.
It involves a vocabulary limited to 1,500 words, short sentences, basic syntax, an absence of idiomatic expressions and extensive hand gestures to get the point across.
Mr Nerrière, 66, originally sought to help non-English speakers — and notably his compatriots — in the era when business meetings are invariably held en anglais. He advised that instead of struggling to master the Queen’s English, they should content themselves with Globish.
His two books, Don’t Speak English, Parlez Globish and Découvrez le Globish, became bestsellers in France and were also published in Spain, Italy, South Korea and Canada. They are also being translated into Japanese.
“Globish is a proletarian and popular idiom which does not aim at cultural understanding or at the acquisition of a talent enabling the speaker to shine at Hyde Park Corner,” he wrote.
“It is designed for trivial efficiency, always, everywhere, with everyone.”
Mr Nerrière says that his 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 only jokes which cross frontiers involve sex, race and religion and you should never mention those in an international meeting.”
The fast-talking Mr Nerrière has developed software to help English-speakers to acquire written Globish.
The program checks English words and eliminates those not included in the 1,500-strong Globish list.
Mr Nerrière said: “English- speakers need to make the effort to speak like everyone else. If they do, they will not be seen as arrogant and they might even become popular.”
He said that commercial ventures could depend upon the mastery of Globish. “If you lose a contract to a Moroccan rival because you’re speaking an English that no one apart from another Anglophone understands, then you’ve got a problem.”
Aware that purists may baulk at his ideas, Mr Nerrière insists that Globish should be confined to international exchanges. Other languages — French, German, Italian as well as orthodox English — should be preserved as vehicles of culture.
In other words, he believes that we should learn French for Molière, Italian for Dante, German for Goethe, Spanish for Cervantes, English for Shakespeare and Globish to discuss the price of steel in China.
Talk the talk
Use only words in the Globish glossary
Keep sentences short
Repeat yourself
Avoid metaphors and colourful expressions
Avoid negative questions
Avoid all humour
Avoid acronyms
Use gestures and visual aids
Don’t say Siblings
Say The other children of my mother and father
Don’t say Eerie
Say Strange
Don’t say A bun in the oven
Say Pregnant.
Don’t say Globish is the gateway to international conversation
Do say Globish helps you to talk to people from other countries
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
The real last name of my Analytical Geometry professor!
French envy explosion alert...
Funny, when I was in school, that was called "pidgin." I guess "pidgin" couldn't be trademarked to sell books and take a swipe at Anglophones. None of this is new, and none of it is rocket science.
Simple words, simple sentence structure, hand gestures where they help, and maybe a few words of French, Spanish or the local language if you know them and they help. Avoid jokes and especially sarcasm, because they don't translate. When I was in Thailand, I fell into it in a day or two.
It's fine for telling a cab driver where to go or ordering a meal, but I don't see a 1,500 word vocabulary being sufficient for complex business dealings.
There was a passage in Orwells classic book "1984" where the IngSocs were boasting of the fact that their language was actually losing words each year.
Leave it to the French to be proud of doing just that.
L
“One thing you never do in Globish is tell a joke."
It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Sounds as though the Germans will be adopting it soon! ;)
He confirms what I always suspected: They all understand English, if you speak loudly and slowly enough. Even the French. Now, if only the Brits...
"A German joke is nothing to laugh at." - Mark Twain
Ach! Du Lieber Himmel!
There is a microsoft Word plugin floating around call either Bullshitfigher or Bullfighter that strips out all Clintonesque mealy mouth language and also corporate middle management meaningless trivial language.
It's quite fun to take a C Span transcript and put it through the Bull filter.
Lol.
What would we do without our common language misunderstandings?
I always crack up when Americans use the term fanny!
Twits!
Absolutely right. My German is by no means fluent and I survived five years in Germany using this technique!
Ok, so there is also the opposite to the free Bullfighter software.
http://www.whitesmoke.com/ is software made to increase the meaningless catch phrases in your Word documents, as a design feature. And they want you to pay for it.
Now if we can make it run backwards we'll all be promoted to the Board of Directors someplace.
L
I spent 1.5 years in England fifteen years ago, in the East Anglia region. I spent lots of time in Cambridge and London as well. Churchill said that the British and Americans were one people separated by a common tongue, but I was disappointed by my lack of adventures with our common tongue.
Everybody I met were easily understandable, with only a few exceptions, even in Scotland.
Boardroom here I come!
L
Here in Slovakia, I teach English conversation in private and company lessons.
English is the international business language, and there is a great demand for native speakers.
I can find all the work I want.
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