Globish --- Simplified English For Everyone

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Why do people all over the world feel the need for a lingua franca? They want to communicate, they want to be able to do business with each other. They certainly don’t want to master English so that they can read Shakespeare plays in the original. At least the overwhelming majority doesn’t. This has led to a simplification of grammar rules and vocabulary and to a language free of allusions, quotations, sayings, puns and jokes. The Frenchman Jean-Paul Nerriére, a retired IBM executive, noticed in the 1990s that non-native English speakers understood each other much better than non-native speakers understood native speakers and vice versa. Instead of, say, ‘niece’ they use ‘the son of my brother/sister’, instead of ‘oath’ they say ‘word of honour’ etc. Two fewer words to learn! Nerriére compiled a vocabulary of 1.500 words, enough to communicate with anybody regardless of their mother tongue. It’s basic or essential English but contains all the necessary terms of our digital age. This non-native English is also called ‘decaffeinated English’. It quenches the thirst but hasn’t got spark. The site introduces Monsieur Nerriére and his concept - you can click on a video and hear him talking - and offers books on Globish for learners with different first languages. A special service is also advertised, namely to help rewrite any text in Globish. “Not sure if your text is Globish compatible? Our Globish Word Scanner highlights any non-Globish words in red so that you can rewrite your text.” This is the point where Globish may be useful for native speakers of English, too. If you write an article and want it understood worldwide, you should scan it to find out which words are not included in the 1.500 word list of Globish and then substitute them with simpler expressions. Globish may not be rooted in the British or American cultural heritage any more, but it can’t be denied that it stems from there. This is the reason why some people are against it and propagate a completely artificial language like, say, Esperanto which is composed of elements of different languages and doesn’t prefer just one. Some artificial languages are already quite old, Esperanto, for example, was invented at the end of the 19th century. But obviously they aren’t serious contenders for Globish. The opponents of unifying languages claim that cultural diversity will suffer and maintain that preserving cultural diversity is as important as preserving biodiversity. The funny thing is that native speakers are excluded from Globish. If you haven’t learnt to *listen* to your mother tongue, you don’t know how many figures of speech, images, metaphors, puns, proverbs etc. you use. You may think that you can speak in a simple way and be convinced that even foreigners with a limited knowledge of English can understand you, but that isn’t the case. You just don’t know which words are ’simple’ for a foreigner and which are to be avoided or rather substituted by simple synonyms. My English is far above Globish (I scanned this text and found that I would have to substitute quite a lot of words). Yet, after teaching it as a second language to foreigners for 40 years I can adapt to any standard because I know where the difficulties are. I’m glad, however, to be able to understand and use all the ingredients that must be omitted to simplify it and make it a means of universal communication. I wouldn’t want to miss the joy of understanding a pun or even using one myself.