Monday, April 12, 2021

Globish

Globish is a neologism for global English and it is a generally difficult to fully achieve holy grail, much like what tends to be called neutral Spanish rather than global Spanish. Neutral Spanish is one that avoids terms used only in some countries or understood differently across countries, such as la guagua for the bus or the many country specific terms for white person. The term Globish is often used broadly to refer to English that is more accessible to L2, L3, L4 speakers (those who speak English as a second, third, fourth language). Though technically Globish only refers to, as wikipedia puts it, "a subset of the English language formalized in 2004 by Jean-Paul Nerrière. It uses a subset of standard English grammar and a list of 1500 English words." It points to how much of English use around the world is between non-native English speakers. The chart documenting this here (only 4% of English use is between native speakers!) is from this article about Globish.