Posted on 08/02/2010 1:52:02 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
GLOBISH: How the English Language Became the World’s Language
By Robert McCrum
Doubleday Canada, 331 pages ($32.95)
The word “Globish,” as Robert McCrum uses it in Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language, refers to English as spoken internationally by people whose first language is something else. The term was invented by Jean-Paul Nerriere, who sees English as “the worldwide dialect of the third millennium” from his vantage point in international business. (He’s an IBM executive.)
English is the language of international trade (a case of “follow the money,” says McCrum) and is spoken (or partly understood) by perhaps two billion people. But purists charge that because of this ubiquity, English may not be evolving but deteriorating into an undisciplined, ragged, lowbrow lingua franca.
The English that Asians, Latinos and Africans use as a default language in order to communicate with one another is built, according to Nerrière, on a “utilitarian” core of about 1,500 words.
We are not, then, talking about literary or even necessarily grammatical English, but throughout his analysis McCrum — who earlier wrote a biography of P.G. Wodehouse — uses the terms “English” and “Globish” interchangeably.
Are they the same thing?
He begins his story of the globalization of English in pre-Roman Britain, discussing the Latinizing effect of Rome, then the development of Old English and Middle English after invasions by Anglo-Saxon groups and French-speaking Normans.
He trots us past familiar literary-historical landmarks: the Arthurian legends, Shakespeare, the King James Bible and the compiling of Johnson’s Dictionary.
He asks how the obscure tongue of a few wild islands on what was the edge of civilization in Roman times grew, over the centuries, into the world’s premier language.
If his answer traces the evolution of modern English, the subsequent spread of Globish may trace its devolution. No one would dispute that, what with instant and constant electronic communication, the world has become one village, or that with maybe two billion people speaking it (estimates vary widely) and 80 per cent of Internet home pages using it, English is the most globalized language.
The question is: Are these billions speaking real English or is Globish a lawlessly transforming, increasingly mutilated hybrid? McCrum never really answers it, continually conflating the two terms and adopting an “it’s all good” attitude to the contortions that advertising slogans, texting, techno-speak, “Hollywords” and “Anglasian” hybrids have put the English language through.
Many commentators would argue that all is not well, that the English being spoken as a “business” language is a diluted and bastardized form, and that loss of precision in language amounts to loss of precision in thinking.
Some, such as George Steiner, worry about the dialects that English is replacing.
Others, such as Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots & Leaves (a bestseller, so some people still care), are dismayed about what becoming the global language of an aliterate, visuals-based world culture is doing to English grammar, punctuation and style.
In India, according to McCrum, there is a whole “outsource culture” of bored young call centre workers learning English in order to “resolve the mindless inquiries of Midwestern American technophobes.” In China, up to 350 million people a year are studying it.
But what sort of English are they learning, and from whom? Is it what we overhear in cellphone conversations in Starbucks lineups (“So, I’m like, omigod ... and he goes, like, ‘No way’ ”)? Or is globally helmed English unwaymarked, problematized and normed through short-termist apps anonymized in retail parks for career- pathing far from de-iconized schools?
Neologisms used to take time to work their way into speech and writing but now, through the Internet, any bit of jargon may be repeated incessantly and go global within days. English is said to have acquired its millionth word in June 2009, but the Oxford English Dictionary included only 616,500 in 2005. This may be as much regression as expansion — a simplification to an inelegant tongue that Koko the gorilla might find congenial.
Some people consider “n00b” (spelled with two zeros and meaning “a newcomer to an online game”) to be the millionth word, and it is half number.
McCrum argues that the globalization of English makes it vibrant, contemporary and creative. Much of what the Chinese call “crazy English” provides material for standup comedy, but at other times it does make for vibrancy and creativity.
Apparently, a sign in a Shanghai park reads: “I love your smiles, but not your foot on my face.” Anyone would agree that, for layers of meaning, that beats “Keep off the grass” any day. (This example comes not from McCrum’s book but from a recent discussion on CBC Radio’s Q.)
McCrum’s own language is sometimes trite: India is “modernizing with a vengeance” and “culture is about identity,” he assures us. Neither historian nor linguist (he is a British journalist and novelist), he makes no attempt to analyze changes in morphology or syntax, or to separate written and spoken English in his analysis.
This book is laid out like a prequel to a TV series — one just like The Story of English, which McCrum wrote for the BBC in the 1980s. Much of the same story is told again here, divided into segments suitable for television. You can almost hear the voice of a narrator intoning the phrases as you read.
Post-structuralist literary critics used to say that “there are no texts, only pre-texts.” Today we could say “there are no texts, only pre-films,” and that may be one trend contributing to the feared erosion of English as a language of literature and scholarship.
Despite loose analysis, Globish contains interesting facts. In 2008, Rwanda officially adopted English as its “language of international communication,” as well as the language used in schools, and Singapore, Chile and Mongolia have all made it their official second language.
McCrum describes the entrance of the invigorating current of Black English into the mainstream after the slave trade brought Africans to America. He is interesting on the role played by the CIA during the Cold War in disseminating English abroad through novels and films with a message of freedom (anti-Communism), which U.S. propagandists culled, in part, from Winston Churchill’s speeches.
Following such threads, McCrum makes us want to find out more.
Canadian readers, however, will be puzzled that Canada has been almost completely left out of the story. McCrum says that with the American Revolution, the centre of gravity of English culture shifted to North America. But he ignores the part to the north of the new republic, despite the fact that it possesses the largest national land mass over which English has ever been spoken.
He says that after the British army defeated the French on the Plains of Abraham, there arose in Canada an “uneasy coexistence” of French and English neighbours, who “in turn would become culturally colonized by American English.” Were we?
Quite mystifying is his view that “the emergence of Globish may sponsor a way out of [the] linguistic impasse” caused by being “continuously fraught by Anglomania.” That makes me wonder if McCrum’s potted histories of Asian cultures are equally vague and misleading, and how much of this book can be relied on for firm information.
Canada, in fact, contains in Toronto the most multicultural city in the world, so it must be prominent in spreading English to the widest cultural array of new learners through its accredited language schools. But although he may ignore Canada, Canadians already know their place in the story of English: We’re the ones who speak it without an accent.
What a preloading with presumption
What a preloading with presumption
...and not even very accurate. English is the #2 language in India behind Hindi. Many Indians learn right along with Hindi and have not the slightest interest in talking to people who can't get the cup holder open on their Dell.
The whole article is like that.
English--mostly because you need English for business communications.
Spanish--mostly because it's pretty much the lingua franca of Latin America--and many Brazilians also speak Spanish.
French--mostly because in much of the African continent, French is the ONLY common language among the many African local languages spoken on the continent.
Arabic--mostly because in the Islamic world, Arabic is the closest thing to a lingua franca.
you forgot Russian for communication in the CIS and Mandarin for communication in China.
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