25 January 2009

Globish ~ French Defeated by Simple English;-)

The BBC's Hugh Schofield reports that New lingua franca upsets French...
"That the French resent the global supremacy of the English language is nothing new, but [...] a newly evolved business-speak version is taking over. [Already] French executives draft reports, send e-mails, converse with their international colleagues -- and increasingly even amongst themselves -- in English. It is of course a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like "drivers" and "deliverables" and "outcomes" to be "valorised", but is nonetheless quite definitely not French. [One day, French author-observer Jean-Paul Nerriere] 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 [...] a new form of English is developing around the world, used by people for whom it is their second language. It may not be the most beautiful of tongues, but in this day and age he says it is indispensible. He calls the language Globish and urges everyone -- above all the French -- to learn it tout de suite."
Even an entire country, Rwanda, has joined the movement, tossing the French language into the dustbin of history in exchange for the far more global and useful English. De Gaulle and Napoleon are no doubt flipping in their graves;-) See here the creator...

2 comments:

Joost Bonsen said...

I'm tri-multaneously (1) amused by the humor of bursting the French ego-linguistic bubble, (2) appreciative of the beauty of polylingual societies (and individuals), and (3) wondering somewhat seriously: if all languages are equally good, why not settle on one emergent superlingo and move on?

Anonymous said...

You can read a couple of chapters of the real thing -- IN Globish -- in the new book Globish The World Over now at Globish.com or read reviews at Eyrolles