Globish cuts English down to size

The Times ^ | December 11, 2006 | Adam Sage

[TomSmedley]

Caterpiller Technical English (CTE) was developed in the early 70s from E. I. Richard's BASIC English. Technicians anywhere in the world could master CTE in a month, and read the Caterpiller manuals.

As any programmer knows, you can achieve incredible complexity with a small vocabulary of "reserved words."

[Smokin' Joe]

Cool! (Could also be the guide to insulting everyone with a gesture....)

[mc5cents]

Whatchatalinabout Willis?

[Robert A Cook PE]

And I enjoyed my time in Bratislava, looking up my great-great-father and great-great-grandmother's homes and vilages!

Execellent communication, after good effort by both sides.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Ebonics is a slurred inner-city (often black-dominated culture) spoken (miss-spoken) form of English used by illiterate Americans who refuse to discipline themselves.

It does not follow grammatical rules nor spelling rules(often deliberately breaking them!) and (when spoken quickly) cannot be easily understood outside that culture. It is entirely verbal, and cannot be used in writing. More correctly, people who CAN read and write English do NOT use ebonics.

Combined with bad schools and lazy parents, that sense of "oneness" and opposition to real culture seems to be the underlaying reason for using it.

[bert]

Taco mon ami?

[horse_doc]

It appears that the French want the entire world to sound like Jar-Jar Binks.

[-YYZ-]

I revel in the full complexity of the English language, which is probably the language most cluttered with excess vocabulary, idioms, and figures of speech. That very complexity, however, makes it a particularly difficult language for non-English speakers to attain a full grasp of. I work with many people for whom English is not their first language, and often have to remind myself to restrict my vocabulary and keep the figures of speech to a minimum if I want to avoid confusion.

[Mrs Ivan]

Thank you. I wasn't aware that being too lazy to speak properly now had an official name.

[ASOC]

LOL - Jar Jar Binks must die was a popular site for some time.

Globish?


HOW MUCH IS THAT? TOO MUCH!

Always worked for me..... then I had to figure how to convert the local medium of exchage into / out of dollars. Of course these days it is pretty simple, what with the dollar being so much TP.

[RightWhale]

Most of my posts are short, but the Globish words convey only 10% of the meaning. 90% of the meaning is carried by Globish hand gestures.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I always crack up when Americans use the term fanny!

Fill me in. I take "fanny" to be a baby word for arse. (Pardon my French.) How do use it, or like the French purportedly treat ketchup, do you not use it at all?

It's not a word I ever use; I sorta tolerate it. I grew up in Noo Yawk where the equivalent term is "tush", apparently a Hebrew/Yiddish loan word.

[Mrs Ivan]

Fill me in. I take "fanny" to be a baby word for arse. (Pardon my French.) How do use it, or like the French purportedly treat ketchup, do you not use it at all?

Lol, it is a slang term for the female genitalia - when I hear things like "He touched my fanny" "she needs a good kick in the fanny" or even simply "fannypack" I cannot help giggling - before I learned that it meant bum I was utterly baffled.

[untenured]

I argued awhile back that English actually has structural advantages that give it advantages as a global language, apart from the role played by American commercial, cultural and scientific power and the historical legacy of the British Empire. English is, conspicuously unlike French, also not a language managed from the top down, which is a strength in terms of its global appeal.

Just thinking aloud about so-called "Globish," I am not too impressed with the author's thesis. Most of the people who are nonnative in English but need it to speak with native speakers of third languages are movers and shakers who will spend the time to master a decent core of the language. You'll need "Globish" to speak with your cab driver in Cameroon, but anyone you are likely to interact with above that level who has taken the time to learn English - business execs, diplomats, scientists - will find it worthwhile to learn more. This is especially true for written English, which is less intimidating because of error-correction software.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Is it like Ebonics?

[Lazamataz]

Avoid all humour

Won't be an issue with the left.

A more humorless lot, you will never find.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Now I know why Inspector Barneby never says "fanny".

Thanks.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

In America, bum, unless pronounced with a very heavy British accent, means "hobo", "tramp".

[SabrinaG]

Why do u seem so conservative with an international background like yours? why do u hate French so much?

[Bob Loblaw]

This language -- Globish -- was developed in part by one of my brothers:

Glob Loblaw