Geopolitical topics

[Tom Mazanec]

Globish reminds me of Basic English.

[The Grey Badger]

I once defined minimal linguistic competency as being able to read the street signs and find the restroom. Then you should have seen me trying to ask a hotel employee for help bringing my baggage to the car when I did not know the word for luggage, baggage, or bags, and my only term for car was the Spanglish "carro." without the ability (then) to roll my rs. Finally resorted to drawing pictures. Competency there was minimal as well. I DID know the terms for "please: and "thanks you," though.

[protagonist]

I have been traveling on a project for about one year, mostly to Europe.
It's true and strange to see two non-native English speakers conversing in broken
simplistic English, but that's what you see (hear).

Even stranger is India, which has many local (regional) dialects,
and the common national language (Hindi) has a core of English words.

Sooner or later this could form the basis a universal language.

I wonder if the basic major forces in the clash of civilizations conflict with
be English (non US standard) and something else (what)?

Also 1500 words is more than most of the U.S. business travelers speak of French,Spanish or German.

That's not the point. If I wanted to say something like "mouse" in French, and the word "souris" was not in my very limited vocabulary of less than 1500 words, then I'd use the English-French dictionary to look it up.
Whereas with this ridiculous "Globish" you get 1500 words and you stick with it, if they made a dictionary of Globish you couldn't find the word "mouse" in there, so you'd have to use "an animal chased by a cat". So if you wanted to say something like "aardvark" it'd be very difficult - the intelligent thing to do is to use a picture, and then describe its features. Which is what people probably used to do until the word was invented, so that they didn't have to make such long-winded time-wasting and exhausting attempts to communicate themselves.

And India is a former British colony, by the way. Just thought you'd like to know, because the world does not consist solely of Britain and its former colonies.

The point of inventing words is that you express what you want to express easily. Taking them away when they're still necessary does not make expression any easier.

[MarshAviator]

And India is a former British colony, by the way. Just thought you'd like to know, because the world does not consist solely of Britain and its former colonies.

Of course India was colony of England.

That is the point, India, is choosing to use English (actually it's the American form not the UK form) because it is global in spite of their pride in National identity.
Mahatma Gandhi campaigned to create a national identity sans England.
A number of alternatives or amalgamations could have been used,
or one of the Regional languages could have been used.

This approach is used in other countries, in Germany after reunification formal German
has replaced local dialects such as Schwabian.
The Germans also speak,read,write English and not only Globish.

Using a small pallet of words makes it easier to gain the skills.
Of course you can expand the pallet as time permits, but you have to pause to look it up etc.

It appears that this (Globish) is an Emergent Property rather than a rational plan.
This is exactly the kind of thing expected in an internet driven world.

In communication with unknown persons, we more often prefer operating with a higher confidence of poor (to moderate) conveyance
rather than a lower confidence of a high level of communication.

we prefer certainty of the simple rather than a uncertainty of the complex, even when using the same language.

How many times do we really know we have our point understood?

[protagonist]

Yes, but my point is, limiting the vocabulary to 1500 words is a ridiculous idea. Maybe making the 1500 words the "beginners list" for learning English would be a good idea.

Also, people only learn another language so that they can communicate with each other, i.e for business. Maybe for business you can design a "English Business Basic Words List" of 1000 words, consisting of words like "Hello" and "Buy", but as a practical everyday language that would be completely inadequate.

[MarshAviator]

Yes, but my point is, limiting the vocabulary to 1500 words is a ridiculous idea. Maybe making the 1500 words the "beginners list" for learning English would be a good idea.

You are right, but it's not a plan, it just happened.
The person who is credited with it's discovery didn't invent it.

There are a lot of these kind of things happening.
Very much like what happened when the Berlin wall came down,
one day people just started dismantling it, no plan.

[The Grey Badger]

Linguists speak of creoles and pidgins as emergent languages in multilingual communities. The first generation of the language is a pidgin, which is extremely simple in vocabulary and syntax. The second generation and subsequent ones gives you a fully developed creole language, whose grammar and syntax probably resemble that of other creoles rather than those of the parent languages, but whose vocabulary is richly developed.

Globish, then would be a first-generation Pidgin, unless there was a move on to artificially restrict its vocabulary and development. And it will very naturally develop into an international Creole English, of which tere are many specialized variaties already existing. The original French-English Creoles, notably in Haiti. Spanglish. Etc.

[rarename]

I have something to add about Globish, actually there're only 2 main differences to English.

1st is Sequence, in English when you say "I ate an ice-cream at the mall", in Globish the sequence is reversed, and would be "In the mall I ate ice-cream".

2nd is range of vocabularies, the example given by the article is slight exaggerated, Globish speakers do know simple words like road, piano, cups. The difference is that they won't know the word for variations of these objects, e.g avenue, grand piano,flasks. Instead they will say "small roads", "big piano" and "tall cups"

Happy Globishing ....

[John]

A comment from a web site reader:

> I thought I'd comment on your blog "Parlez-vous Globish?"

> You make a few common mistakes. First, there are in fact three
> major language groups in Europe, the third being the Slavic group
> that relates languages such as Russian, Polish and Serbian. The
> linguistic dividing lines of Europe also tend to be cultural
> dividing lines. English is a Germanic language with Romance
> influence. Similarly, England has a Germanic culture with Romance
> influence.

In response to this, I changed the text to specify "western Europe."

> Second, you assume that because English grammar has fewer forms
> than other languages', it is a simpler language to learn. Not
> quite accurate. English has some particularly complicated
> features that can make it difficult for many people to learn. Not
> all are eliminated by Globish.

> First, pronunciation. Spanish has five distinctive vowel sounds,
> Italian has seven, and very few languages internationally have
> more than about 10. English - depending on dialect - has 15-20 or
> more, including some pairs that are indistinguishible to those not
> used to hearing them. Further, English allows combinations of
> consonants that speakers of most languages would consider
> unpronounceable. For example, even a simple word such as
> "baseball" is very difficult for a native Japanese-speaker because
> Japanese does not allow a syllable to end with a consonant.

> English does not have any marked distinction between accusative
> and dative cases - that is, in the sentence "he gives the dog the
> bone", native speakers of many languages could be confused about
> whether the dog is being given a bone, or whether the bone is
> being given a dog. English may not change the word "the", but it
> strongly relies on word order to carry the meaning of phrases.
> So, instead of having to learn the endings of the words, you have
> to spend a long time learning what order the words have to go in.

> The most extreme example I can think of is English adjective
> order. English adjectives have to be placed in the correct order,
> otherwise the sentence sounds stilted, and a wrong order may
> impede understanding. For example, if you said "an old big
> house", people might assume that you are talking about something
> called a "big-house", rather than a house that is big and old.

These are interesting points.

Sincerely,

John

[malleni]

Since here obviously, everybody can(NOT) say own opinion and "predictions" about future geopolitical trends - it looks also that "the collapse of Europe" is - very popular... Especially between our "generational dynamic theorists"...
OK.
Here is something other - from one Russian professor Dr. Igor Panarin who made predictions ten years ago at conference about "information war" in Austria (Wien).
This time - the map with USA divided in 6 parts after enormous economic collapse - was some scary, fanny and unbelievable.
(map available:)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html

Still today - with unprecedented crises just starting in USA - they are many "unbelievers", but much much fewer "laughers" now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sITkziA- ... www.mahalo

There are obviously some who taking seriously a "stupid professor", former KGB analyst:
http://dprogram.net/2009/02/05/increasi ... vereignty/


Dear fellow Americans,
Please, try to think little bit "non American way"...
Still, USA is quite big country - but definitely NOT "the most important one", and there is definitely NOT "end of the World" if you are in deep economical sh.... and try to drag a completely World to the bottom with you (as Titanic)...
Sooner or later - the other country will stop trying to "help" Titanic and search for own help.

So with other words - it would be very interesting to see some more "predictions" about USA future, like:
- USA will have 10 years strong deflationary depression (hopefully for all creditor lands since they have enormous $$$ reserves at home!... Unfortunately - this does not look to be a case... understandably...)
- It (deflationary depression) will be even very good for USA - until we talking about USA s enormous (pyramidal) DEBT! (Deflationary depression means with other words - USA MUST PAY back this enormous DEBT with STRONG dollar, and with virtually DESTROYED (already) week production!!! - Mission impossible...!?!)
- In 20 years USA will be again "the most important country" on the World regarding economy... (if not the "strongest" ... military ... of course...)
- ......


Those predictions would be nice to read.
Not because these will be correct, but then the other than American readers of this forum can see that people who discuss here are not JUST and ONLY - pro-American... but also - independent.

Thanks
Malleni