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Emma
Captain
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 487
Location: Devon, UK
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 Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 3:46 pm Post subject: Is Globish the new lingua franca? |
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7844192.stm
An article principally examining the fall of French as a major world-wide language and the growing use of anglicisms within France. However, it also documents the existence of a new lingua franca amongst business users of English.
David, wasn't sure where to put this so please move to somewhere more appropriate if you need to. |
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Chimp Guevara
ELT General
Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Posts: 918
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 4:10 pm Post subject: |
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If you're interested, Emma, read this book. It's among the most influential academic texts describing the use of English as a lingua franca. It's not uncontroversial.
| Quote: | Globish has only 1,500 words and users must avoid humour, metaphor, abbreviation and anything else that can cause cross-cultural confusion.
They must speak slowly and in short sentences. Funnily enough, he holds up the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an excellent exponent. |
The problem here is that either M. Nerrière is being prescriptive in his description, or is being misreported. I really doubt that 'Globish', or ELF or whatever you want to call it has only 1,500 words.
Doesn't it just sound like he's describing pre-intermediate level English speakers with bad pronunciation?
Why was the native English speaker nonplussed in the story? The reason proffered is that his language was too 'subtle' and 'full of meaning', which is a non-sequitur.
For the context of Globish Barbara Seidlhofer, Luke Prodromou, Henry Widdowson, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skuttnab-Kangas. There's also an intere3sting article from the Guardian here:
| Quote: | | A good European, Nerriere describes Globish as a device that will 'limit the influence of the English language dramatically'. He says: 'I am helping the rescue of French, and of all the languages that are threatened by English today but which will not be at all endangered by Globish. It is in the best interests of non-Anglophone countries to support Globish, especially if you like your culture and its language.' |
It's interesting to note that he doesn't make speaker identity claims with regards to Globish, which distinguishes it somewhat from ELF. |
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David
Site Admin
Joined: 24 Aug 2007
Posts: 2439
Location: Turkey
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 6:28 pm Post subject: |
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Anyone have a good link for 'basic English', which claims to be able to communicate any message with a vocabulary of only 800 words?
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Chimp Guevara
ELT General
Joined: 18 Sep 2007
Posts: 918
Location: Scotland
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| Posted: Sun Jan 25, 2009 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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http://ogden.basic-english.org/
I'd like a large, round, green fruit in the shape of an egg with a sweet taste, please.
(That's a watermelon, in case you were wondering)
I quite like BASIC. One of its basic premisses is that learners meet a lot of words but never really practise using them and never master the subtleties of meaning (the same can be true for some words for NSs). The 800 words of BASIC are then to be considered the absolute core of the English language and should be studied intensively over a year, if I remember correctly.
The page I linked also has a downloads section, where you can download Open Office dictionaries for BASIC. Very useful for writing BASIC texts. |
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