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
As any programmer knows, you can achieve incredible complexity with a small vocabulary of "reserved words."
Cool! (Could also be the guide to insulting everyone with a gesture....)
Whatchatalinabout Willis?
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.
Taco mon ami?
It appears that the French want the entire world to sound like Jar-Jar Binks.
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.
Thank you. I wasn't aware that being too lazy to speak properly now had an official name.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Is it like Ebonics?
Won't be an issue with the left.
A more humorless lot, you will never find.
Now I know why Inspector Barneby never says "fanny".
Thanks.
In America, bum, unless pronounced with a very heavy British accent, means "hobo", "tramp".
Why do u seem so conservative with an international background like yours? why do u hate French so much?
Glob Loblaw
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