newsweek globish

7/28/2019 Newsweek Globish

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PoweredbYEnglishhastheInternetand theglobalmedia'evolved nto theworld's anguage'

BY ROBERT MCCRUMILLUSTRATION BY SERGE BLOCH

TH E ALUMNI OF TH E VAST PEOPLE'SUniversity of China are typical of theoost-Mao Zedong generation' Every'ntia"y evening several hundred gatherinformally under the pine treesof a littlesquare n-Beijing'sHaidian district' in theso-calledEnglish Corner, to hold "Eng-lish conversation."Chatting together ingoups, they discuss football, movies'Ind ielebrities like Victoria Beckhamand Paris Hilton in awkward but enthu-siastic English. They also like to recitesimple sloganssuch as Barack Obama'szoo-B ampaign catchphrases-"Yes' wecan"and "Changewe canbelieve n'"This scene, rePeated on campusesacrossChina, demonstrates he domi-nant asPiration of many contempo-rary, educated Chinese teenagers: opariicipate in the global communityf nttglittt-.peaking nations' Indeed'China offers the most dramatic exampleof a near-globalhunger for English thathas broufht the languageto a point ofno return as a lingua franca' More vividand universal than ever,English is nowused, in some form, bY aPProximatelY

+ billion people on earth-perhaps twothirds of the planet-including 4oomillion native English speakers'As amother tongue, onlY Chinese is moreorevalent, ittt t.Abillion nativespeak-ers-rso million of whom also sPeaksomekind of English'Contagious, adaptable,populist' andsubversive, the English language hasbecomeasmuch apart of the globalcon-sciousness as the combustion engine'And as English gains momentum as asecond languageall around the world'it is morphing into a new and simpli-fied versin of itself-one that respondsto ltre 2417demands of a global econ-omy and culture with a stripped-downvocabulary of words like "airplane"',,chat room,', "Iaxi," and "cell phone."Having neatlY made the transitionfrom the Queens English to the moredemocratic American version, it is nowbecoming a worldwide power' a popu-list tool increasinglyknown asGlobish'The rise of Globish first becameobvi-ous in zoo5, when an obscure Danishnewspaper called TheJutland Postpub'

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lished a sequenceof satirical carloonspoking fun at the Prophet Muhammad.The Muslim world exploded, with riotsacross Afghanistan, Niria, Libya, andPakistan; n all, r39peopledied. But per-haps he most bizarre responsewas apro-test by fundamentalist Muslims outsidethe Danish EmbassyinLondon. Chantingin English, the protesters caried plac-ards with English slogans ike eurcHoRTHOSE 'HOMOCK SLAM;FREEDOMFEXPRESSIONo To HELL;and (my favor-ite) nowx wrrH FREE PEECH.This collisionof the Islamic ihad withthe Oxford English Dictionary, or per-haps of the Quran wifh Monty Pltthon,made clear (at least to me) the dramaticshift in global self-expressionassert-ing itself across a world united by theInternet. What more surreal-and tell-ing-commentary on the Anglicizationof modern society han a demonstrationof devout Muslims, in London, exploit-ing an old English freedom expressedin the English language, o demand thecurbing of the libertarian tradition thatactually legitimized their protest?I wasn't alone n noticing this change.In zooT came acrossan article in theInternational Herald Tribune about aFrench-speaking retired IBM executive,Jean-PaulNerrire, who describedEng-lish and its international deploymentas "the worldwide dialect of the thirdmillennium." Nerrire, posted to Japanwith IBM in the r99os,had noticed hatnon-native English speakers n the FarEast communicated in English far moresuccessfully with their Korean andJapaneseclients than British or Ameri-3 2 N J U N E 1 , o 1 o

can executives. Standard English wasall very well for Anglophones, but inthe developing world, this non-native"decaffeinatedEnglish"-full of simpli-fications like "the son of my brother"for "nephew," or "words of honor" for"oath"-was becoming the new globalphenomenon. n a moment of inspira-tion, Nerrire christened t "Globish."The term quickly caught on withinthe international community. The (Lon-don) Times journalist Ben Macintyredescribed a conversation he had over-heard while waiting for a flight fromDelhi between a Spanish U.N. peace-keeper and an Indian soldier. "TheIndian spoke no Spanish; he Spaniardspoke no Punjabi," he says. "Yet theyunderstood one another easily.The lan-guagethey spoke was a highly simpli-fied form of English, without grammaror structure, but perfectly comprehen-sible, to them and to me. Only now doI realize that they were speaking 'Glo-bish,'the newest and most widely spo-ken language n the world."For Nerrire, Globish was a kind oflinguistic tool, a version of basic or so-called Easy English with a vocabularyofjust r,5oowords. As I saw t, however,"Globish" was the newly globalized lin-gua franca, essential English mergedwith the terminology of the digital ageand the international news media. Iknew from my work in the mid-r98osona PBS series called TheStorg of Englishthat British English had enjoyedglobalsupremacy hroughout the rgth-centuryage of empire, after centuries of slowgrowth from Chaucerand Shakespeare,

through the King James Bible to theestablishment f the Raj n India and hegreat Imperial Jubilee of rB9T.The mapof the world dominated by the UnionJack answered to the Queen'sEnglish;QueenVictoria, in her turn, was the firstBritish monarch to address her subjectsworldwide through the new technol-ogy ofrecorded sound,with a scratchy,high-pitched "Good evening!" In thisfirst phase, there was an unbreakablelink between mperialism and languagethat inhibited further development.In the secondphase, he power andinfluence of English passed o the UnitedStates, largely through the agency ofthe two world wars. Then, throughoutthe Cold War, Anglo-American cul-ture became part of global conscious-ness hrough the mass media-movies,newspapers,and magazines.Crucially,in this secondphase, he scope of Eng-lish was limited by its troubled asso-ciation with British imperialism and thePax Americana. But the end of the ColdWar and the long economicboom of ther99os distanced the Anglo-Americanhegemony rom its past,setting he lan-guage ree n the minds of millions. Nowyou could still hate GeorgeW. Bush andburn the American flag while simulta-neously dolizing American pop starsorsplashingout on Apple computers.With the turn of the millennium, itappeared hat English languageand cul-ture were becoming rapidly decoupledfrom their contentious past. Englishbegan to gain a supranational momen-tum that made it independent of itsAnglo-American origins. And as Eng-

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from its roots, itspread deeper into the devel-Chile andtheir intention tobilingual in English. In zoo6was added to the Mexicancurriculum asa compul-anguage.And the formerlystate of Rwanda adoptedofficial languagen zoo9.In China, some 50 million peoplea language program,as "Crazy English,"by "the Elvis of English,"teachesgroups ofmore, under the slogan "Con-English to make China strong."is part preacher,part drill ser-part pedagogue.He gathers hisstadiums, raucouslyphrases. "Howyou?" he yells through a bullhorn.are you?" repeats he crowd. "I'mpink!" he responds."I'm in thethey reply-ironically, using anbit of Edwardian slang for "feel-good."Li Yang has evenpublished acalledl Am Crazy, Succeed.The viral nature of Globish meansnot top-down. TheWalt Whitman once wrote thatwas not "an abstract construc-of dictionary makers" but a lan-hat "has its basis broad and low,ground." Ever since Englishby the Nor-in ro6 it has been theof Everyman and the commonThat's truer than ever oday.The fact is that English no longer

depends on the U.S. or U.K. It's nowbeing shaped by a world whose secondlanguage is English, and whose culturalreference points are expressed in Eng-lish but without reference to its Britishor American origins. Films like the zoogOscar-winning SlurndogMillionaire has-ten the spread of Globish-a multilin-gual, multicultural cast and productionteam creating a film about the collisionof languagesand cultures, launched withan eye toward Holly'wood. The dialoguemay mix English,Hindi, and Arabic, butit always falls back on Globish. When theinspectorconfronts Amir on suspicionofcheating,he asks n succinctGlobish: So.Were you wired up? A mobile or a pager,correct? Some little hidden gadget? No?A coughing accomplice n the audience?Microchip underthe skin, huh?"Globish is already shaping worldevents on many fronts. During lastyear's Iranian elections, the oppositionused Globish to transmit its grievancesto a worldwide audience. Cell-phoneimagesof crude slogans ike cBr eweyENGLANDnd FREE, AIRvorING Nowand innumerable tweets from West-ernized Iranians communicated thestrength of the emergency o the West.In the short term, Globish is set toonly grow. Some Zo to Bo percent ofthe world's Internet home pagesare inEnglish, compared with +.5 percent inGerman and 3.r percent in Japanese.According to the British Council, byzo3o "nearly one third of the world'spopulation will be trying to learn Eng-lish at the same ime." That means evermore voices adapting the English lan-

guage o suit their needs, inding in Glo-bish a common linguistic denominator.The distinguished British educa-tor Sir Eric Anderson tells a story thatillustrates the growing life-and-deathimportance of Globish. On the morningof tbe Zlf bombings in London, an Arabexchange tudent ried to take he Under-ground from southwest London to hisdaily class n the City.When he found hisstation inexplicably closed, he boardeda bus. During his journey his mobilephonerang. t was a Greek riend in Ath-ens who waswatching thenews of thebombings onCNN. Com-municatingurgently inthe Globish

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jargon ofinternational TV, he describedthe "breaking news" and warned thatLondon's buses had become error tar-gets.As a result of this conversation, hestudent disembarked from the bus. Aminute later it was destroyedby a suicidebomber,with the loss of many lives.This is not the end of Babel.The world,"flatter" and smaller than ever before,is still a patchwork of some 5,ooo lan-guages.Nativespeakers till cling fiercelyto their mother tongues,as they should.Butwhen an Indian and a Cuban want tocommissionmedical research rom a labin Uruguay, with additional input fromIsraeli technicians-as the MidwesternU.S. startup EndoStim recently did-the language they will turn to will beGlobish. tr

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