what would constitute a particularly "evolved" language?
Cultures and languages evolve together, as a rule, so that every living language is "evolved" within its cultural context, unless it is a 'dead' language, which is to say one that stopped evolving at some past date and so cannot easily address newly arisen circumstances.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:00 (twelve years ago) link
One pointer to where "communication in English" is going:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2006/dec/03/features.review37
Then Nerriere came to his radical, perhaps revolutionary, conclusion: 'The language non-Anglophones spoke together,' he says, 'was not English, but something vaguely like it.' In this language, he noted, 'we were better off than genuine Anglophones'. This language, he decided, 'was the worldwide dialect of the third millennium'. In a moment of pure inspiration he called it 'Globish' (pronounced 'globe-ish').Globish is not 'pidgin' or 'broken' English but it is highly simplified and unidiomatic. Nerriere observes that in Globish you could never say, 'This erstwhile buddy of yours is a weird duck who will probably put the kibosh on all our good deeds.' That might make sense in Acacia Avenue but it will not play in Buenos Aires or Zurich. In Globish you would express this as: 'Your old friend is too strange. He would ruin all our efforts.' Globish, says Nerriere, is 'decaffeinated English, or English-lite'.
Globish is not 'pidgin' or 'broken' English but it is highly simplified and unidiomatic. Nerriere observes that in Globish you could never say, 'This erstwhile buddy of yours is a weird duck who will probably put the kibosh on all our good deeds.' That might make sense in Acacia Avenue but it will not play in Buenos Aires or Zurich. In Globish you would express this as: 'Your old friend is too strange. He would ruin all our efforts.' Globish, says Nerriere, is 'decaffeinated English, or English-lite'.
― sean doily, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:30 (twelve years ago) link
globish rip
― R.I.P.iest (Hungry4Ban) (є(٥_ ٥)э), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:39 (twelve years ago) link
sort of curious as to whether the cultural position of english right now is unprecedented (n.b. no one mention latin)
relatedly that nerriere person seems like he sucks a lot
― thompp, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:48 (twelve years ago) link
from that description I think most americans speak globish and not very many of us speak english
― iatee, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:53 (twelve years ago) link
In the sense that nobody has ever said 'This erstwhile buddy of yours is a weird duck who will probably put the kibosh on all our good deeds.', that is certainly true.
― sean doily, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 01:59 (twelve years ago) link
^^^ posts of missing louis jagger
― R.I.P.iest (Hungry4Ban) (є(٥_ ٥)э), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 02:00 (twelve years ago) link
I greatly doubt that 'globish' has much presence outside of well-educated elites. I expect that people still live, work and love in the dominant language of the place where they were born. The apparent 'ascendancy' of english probably doesn't connect much with non-native speakers at an emotional level.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 02:00 (twelve years ago) link
I guess there's an interesting point in that beyond a certain level of competence, fluency in a language involves taking on board a lot of cultural knowledge. An American might not get the finer points of an Englishman's allusions to blood sausage and the poll tax, despite them having a lot in common relative to the rest of the world. For someone from a completely different culture, the amount to learn from scratch will be much greater.
― sean doily, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 02:05 (twelve years ago) link
that was an xp, I guess
― sean doily, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 02:07 (twelve years ago) link
ENGLISH PEOPLE HAVE NEVER SAID 'BLOOD SAUSAGE'. IT'S AN AMERICANISM. GRAAAARGH.
(sorry for taking ilx in-jokes too seriously)
― Illia Rump (emil.y), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 03:22 (twelve years ago) link
eee ecky thump
― Leave town with an orange, and pretend you're laughing at it. (Trayce), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 11:12 (twelve years ago) link
Anecdotal evidence from the sub-editorial floor: I feel like I've been fixing a lot more run-on sentences in submitted copy over the last year or so. More people are just comma splicing, I don't know why that is, it could just be a fluke, maybe it has something to do with breathless internet style (etc etc you get the idea).
― woof, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 11:21 (twelve years ago) link
One thing that's particularly interesting to me is the role corporations will play in shaping how English is learned and used in other countries. The one i work for has just taken over two of the biggest private language chains in China and works extensively with the sistema schools in Brazil. The question of what kind of English the students will be learning has a lot to do with local conditions and exptectations but publishers and education companies will also have a huge say in the future.
― ShariVari, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 11:24 (twelve years ago) link
typos have become commonplace even in respectable publications like the NYT and ILX
― nice catch cuauhtemoc blanco niño (dayo), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 12:20 (twelve years ago) link
please switch over to twitterspeak the day after I retire/die
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 12:53 (twelve years ago) link
"chinese"
― miranda lambo (dealwithit.gif), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:25 (twelve years ago) link
i read or heard this thing once when i was growing up about how <b>"chinese"</b>
― miranda lambo (dealwithit.gif), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:26 (twelve years ago) link
Eh?
― The Artist Formerly Known As Teh HoBB, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:28 (twelve years ago) link
schoose
― dog latin, but cool (dog latin), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 14:29 (twelve years ago) link
lol @ whiney
― nice catch cuauhtemoc blanco niño (dayo), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 15:02 (twelve years ago) link
what are you getting mad about, doggie
― nice catch cuauhtemoc blanco niño (dayo), Wednesday, 21 December 2011 15:09 (twelve years ago) link
dude i put it in quotes b/c aside from the written form, there are a bunch of completely diff. languages that get subsumed under "chinese"
― dell, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 17:10 (twelve years ago) link
Anecdotal evidence from the sub-editorial floor: I feel like I've been fixing a lot more run-on sentences in submitted copy over the last year or so.
interesting. not sure if it's my imagination, or if i've just been paying more attention to this kinda stuff, but it seems like it's much more acceptable these days to use sentences that in the past would have been rejected as "incomplete"
― dell, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 17:15 (twelve years ago) link
The incomplete 'mini-sentence' wormed its way into broad use via advertising, where we have long been treated to such ad copy as:
Big. Bold. Refreshing.
― Aimless, Wednesday, 21 December 2011 17:44 (twelve years ago) link
"Chinese"
http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/12/chinese
― dell, Friday, 30 December 2011 03:38 (twelve years ago) link
The uncertainty surrounding the status of Beijing Mandarin at the time is highlighted by a meeting of linguists in 1913 to decide upon the new official language, at which the standard of choice was not the speech of the capital, but an artificial language incorporating the maximum number of distinctions found in the major dialects (including voiced stops, the entering tone, and the apical/laminal distinction before the palatal glide), envisaged as a compromise between north and south. But it soon became clear that no one, not even the linguists themselves, were capable of speaking this linguistic Frankenstein, and the movement failed miserably.
― dell, Friday, 30 December 2011 03:58 (twelve years ago) link