April 25, 2005

• [this good]
• Meh. Some French guy woke up in the middle of the night with euro signs in his eyes: "Zut, everybody is speaking zee Eengleesh, badly... I can make money off zees!!" I admire his entrepreneurial spirit, but come on -- people are supposed to speak the same bad English they've been speaking, except whipping out his list of 1,500 approved words first to make sure they're using his patented Globish? "Ah, fuck, I cannot say 'fuck'..." I don't think so. But people will buy his books for a few years and he'll get rich; it's all good. I wouldn't expect great results from this, though: There is one possible hiccup in this scheme. The fluent Globish speaker will not be understood by native English speakers. No problem: Nerrière already is preparing a Globish version in English in addition to the Italian and Spanish editions, which will be out shortly. So he is not only protecting French from invasion but he is getting Americans to become, so to speak, bilingual.
• Or, as Mark Liberman says in Language Log:

  Mary Blume has an article in Friday IHT about Jean-Paul Nerrière's "Globish". Read her article, read about Charles Kay Ogden's "Basic English", and then tell me what's really new here. It's easy to see why Nerrière doesn't tell us about the history of this concept, since he's trademarked "Globish" and is selling various products based on it. But it's harder to understand why the IHT would essentially reprint Nerrière's press release, without giving the context that any culturally literate person should know about... Benjamin Zimmer sent email to point out one difference between Ogden and Nerrière -- Ogden could write reasonably well. In Nerrière's English explanation of Globish, we're invited to "Read the two documents below, in sequence as presented here, and then ask yourself the one and only key question: 'if I wanted to help someone in Zanzibar or Oulan-Bator understand what is the idea behind globish, which of the two documents should I send?'". Here's the start of the so-called "American version": This little tidbit of literary joy is amiable and a slam dunk to peruse, notwithstanding the fact that it has the overwhelming gall to propose a revamping of our methods of verbal exchange around the world. Here's the equivalent portion in "Globish": This book is easy to read and with pleasure. Still, it proposes a complete change in the way we communicate around the world. Here's a comment in a more genuinely American idiom: "bullshit". I apologize for using a philosophical term of art, but you can find an explanation by following the links.

• Got to be agreeing with the languagehat there, nothing to see here...move on.
• Indeed. One thing that puzzles me, incidentally, is why Nerrière thinks Globish will be incomprehensible to native speakers.
• I'm working on La Mondaise.
• I'm working on La Mondaise. Forget it -- she'll never put out.
• Plegmund- Because it's all pronounced with spackle-thick accents. And jeez, does he think that all "Anglophones" are enamoured with prolix corp-speak? That we pepper our discourses with hapax legomena? Certainly, he presents a view of Americans as bibliolaters,
• Fuck était bien comme vous le dites gravé sur un écriteau cloué sur les portes, mais seulement les portes des jeunes mariés pour qui la règle de la "prima nocte" ne s'appliquait pas. FUCK signifierait alors "Fornication Under Consent of King". haha. Sounds like someone needs to pay a visit to "le Snopes."
• Au delà d'une réflexion sur la communication internationale, et les moyens d'y être efficace, l'ouvrage publié chez Eyrolles démontre que le développement volontaire du globish laissera au français le beau rôle de langue de culture servant de référence dans le monde. Bwahahaha!
• Is one of the approved words "cuntlebus?"