Globlich - a Global language with a local identity

by S. Pathiravitana

Regrettably, the British on their departure from this pretty island left behind a box similar to Pandora’s. Curious as we were we opened the lid and out flew prepositions, conjunctions, finite verbs, subjunctives and also a different linguistic problem, said to be ethnic in origin. over which, horrible as it may sound, thousands have been killed up to now and the problem remains unsolved. But, that is not the theme of this article, my immediate concern is the difficulty that these different parts of English speech are troubling the many who are trying bravely to master them. Right now a vast industry has sprung up in this country as a result of this desire to read and write English quickly and the solution these tutors of English are offering to overcome them is, just two months.

English is a complicated language. Take, for instance, the advice you are given when starting to write. Never begin a sentence with ‘But,’ and for heaven’s sake avoid ending your sentences on a preposition.

School of thought

That’s one school of thought, but there are others that think there is nothing wrong in doing so. They will give you the comment Churchill made while making fun of it by saying that it is something he ‘will not up with put.’ Fowler who kept a close watch on the English language for years, narrates the story of how an editor tried to put his foot down on the use of ‘But’ and a writer who was equally adamant on refusing to accept the editor’s advice.

This is what the editor said. “It is wrong to start a sentence with ‘But.’ I know Macaulay does it, but it is bad English. The word should either be dropped entirely or the sentence altered to contain the word, ‘however.’ Fowler’s comment on this is even sharper. “That ungrammatical piece of nonsense” is how he chastised the speech of the editor of a scientific periodical to a contributor “who had found his English polished up for him in proof, and protested. Both parties being men of determination, the article got no further than proof.” Fowler was making this comment under the entry ‘Superstitions’ in his compendium titled Modern English Usage.

The other superstitions he included in this entry were, as he declaimed them, “It is wrong to start a sentence with ‘And’! It is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition! It is wrong to split an infinitive!”

Today, by and large, these restraints have been removed, though there may be many who may still continue to stray. The preposition at the end of a sentence was believed to make writing inelegant, although nearly all the great writers in English literature in the past, including Shakespeare, is said to have ended sentences on a preposition. Then came a time when the ‘inelegance’ idea got around and a writer like John Dryden, who had earlier ended his sentences unreservedly with a preposition, relented. He took it so seriously that he sat down to recast the sentences ending on a preposition that appeared in the in the prefaces he wrote to the first editions of his books.

By the twentieth century, however, the final blow on the prepositional ending seems to have been delivered. There has been, I am told, a competition held in America to see who can pile up the most number of prepositions to end a sentence meaningfully. The record is now held by an American poet with the following entry. Try to see whether you can improve on it:

I lately lost a preposition
It hid, I thought, beneath
my chair
And angrily I cried, “Perdition!
Up from out of under there
Correctness is my vade mecum
And struggling phrases I abhor
And yet I wondered, What
should he come
Up from out of in under for?”

But to get back to the subject of the difficulty of teaching English, many brave minds have invented devices to overcome the too many eccentricities in the English language. I remember towards the end of World War 2 a simplified method of teaching English appeared, which was welcomed by a great admirer of the English language, Winston Churchill. He thought that by using this simplified method it would enable nations to achieve better understanding.

C.K. Ogden, the inventor of the method had made some sacrifices on the part of the English language. He had chosen only 850 words from the wealth of English words as the absolute minimum for effective communication. The rest he thought were redundancies. His invention was called Basic English and we as students at that time made fun of the name Basic and flung the word around as a term in disdain.

In spite of Basic English being recommended by a greatly respected teacher, especially in Ceylon, Professor I A. Richards, Basic English never made much noise here. As I was going through some of its published work recently, I came across Gulliver’s Travels written in Basic. What can you do with only 850 words? was our reaction when we first heard of Basic. But here was the Swift story written in Basic for children, an equally good introduction to the English language as the AL Bright Story readers were in our childhood.

Here for example is a sampling of it:

A Long Sea Journey and a Great Blow

“I grew up in the quiet English countryside and might never have left my country, but for that my father had five sons and not much money to educate them. So, as quickly as I got to be a man, I went to work with a well-experienced expert in medical operations in London, designing to be a medical man myself. [within 850 words]

At the same time I learned all the fields useful for long sea journeys, because I had always desired to make journeys.
“For three years I did sea journey to other countries and made enough money to marry, but as a young medical man I had a small number of persons to care for and came to a decision to go to sea again in order to support my woman and a boy and a girl. On May 4, 1699, I set sail from Bristol with Captain William Prichard, chief of the Antelope. “Our sea journey went very well till we got to the South Seas, by which time our sailors were ill with overwork, and bad food. Then a violent weather drove us onto a great stone which separated the ship in two.

Six of us managed to lower a boat into the sea and moved the boat forward with what little power we had till a sudden blow of wind overturned us, and all the others went to their death in the sea.” [All within 850 words].

Global and English

Globlish, the other simplified method of teaching English is quite different from Basic. The word Globlish is formed by fusing the two words global and English. The general idea, as the inventor, a Frenchman, Jean-Paul Nerrier, explains, Globlish is only a tool of communication, not a language. A language, he says, brings along with it, its culture.

The world is now virtually, to use an old word, drowned by the spread of English; and local cultures are at great peril now of losing their identity. Being a Frenchman he has experienced this best. Already the Office du Vocabulaire Francais has identified nearly 3000 illicit English immigrants who are now waiting to be repatriated.

How he got the idea for Globlish is interesting. While working for IBM as its marketing manager he was holding a conference for about 40 delegates from different parts of the world and while they were waiting for two Americans whose flight had been delayed “they started shop talking,” shoptalk is what NerriŠre calls ‘une certaine forme d’anglais perverti.’ Then the Americans arrived and beyond their opening phrases, ‘Call me Jim,’ ‘Call me Bill,’ no one understood a word. And Jim and Bill, needless to say, did not understand perverted English.”

We have two possibilities for those who are struggling to learn English. It’s either Basic which has asimplified grammar and can be done in two months or Globlish which has 1500 words, the needed grammar and takes six months. I would cast my vote for Globlish. If learning a language means a loss of identity, Globlish is the answer. When I think of what Macaulay has done to us with his infamous, educational minute, we don’t need to breed yet another group of human beings “Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinion, in morals and in intellect.” Or as Jean Paul Nerriere may put it, a class of ‘deracines.’