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media' PoweredbY the Internet and the global English has evolvedinto the world's language'
BY ROBERT MCCRUM
ILLUSTRATION BY SERGE BLOCH

THE ALUMNI

two + billion people on earth-perhaps 4oo planet-including the of thirds University of China are typical of the a As speakers' English native Zedong generation' Every million oost-Mao 'ntia"y more is tongue, onlY Chinese evening several hundred gather mother *ittt t.A billion native speakorevalent, informally under the pine trees of a little ers-rso million of whom also sPeak squarein-Beijing'sHaidian district' in the "Eng- some kind of English' so-called English Corner, to hold Contagious, adaptable, populist' and in together lish conversation." Chatting subversive, the English language has goups, they discuss football, movies' becomeas much a part of the global conInd ielebrities like Victoria Beckham sciousness as the combustion engine' and Paris Hilton in awkward but enthua And as English gains momentum as siastic English. They also like to recite second language all around the world' simple slogans such as Barack Obama's simpliwe it is morphing into a new and zoo-Bcampaign catchphrases-"Yes' responds fied versin of itself-one that can" and "Changewe can believein'" to ltre 2417demands of a global econThis scene, rePeated on campuses omy and culture with a stripped-down across China, demonstratesthe domivocabulary of words like "airplane"' nant asPiration of many contempo- ,,chat room,', "Iaxi," and "cell phone." to rary, educated Chinese teenagers: Having neatlY made the transition pariicipate in the global community from the Queens English to the more f nttglittt-.peaking nations' Indeed' democratic American version, it is now China offers the most dramatic example popubecoming a worldwide power' a of a near-global hunger for English that list tool increasingly known as Globish' has broufht the language to a point of The rise of Globish first became obvino return as a lingua franca' More vivid ous in zoo5, when an obscure Danish and universal than ever, English is now pub' newspaper called The Jutland Post used, in some form, bY aPProximatelY
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lished a sequenceof satirical carloons poking fun at the Prophet Muhammad. The Muslim world exploded, with riots across Afghanistan, Niria, Libya, and Pakistan;in all, r39 people died. But perhapsthe most bizarre response was a protest by fundamentalist Muslims outside the Danish Embassyin London. Chanting in English, the protesters caried placards with English sloganslike eurcHoR THOSE w'HOMOCK ISLAM;FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION Go To HELL;and (my favorite) nowx wrrH FREE SPEECH. This collision of the Islamicjihad with the Oxford English Dictionary, or perhaps of the Quran wifh Monty Pltthon, made clear (at least to me) the dramatic shift in global self-expressionasserting itself across a world united by the Internet. What more surreal-and telling-commentary on the Anglicization of modern society than a demonstration of devout Muslims, in London, exploiting an old English freedom expressed in the English language,to demand the curbing of the libertarian tradition that actually legitimized their protest? I wasn't alone in noticing this change. In zooT I came acrossan article in the International Herald Tribune about a French-speaking retired IBM executive, Jean-PaulNerrire, who described English and its international deployment as "the worldwide dialect of the third millennium." Nerrire, posted to Japan with IBM in the r99os,had noticed that non-native English speakers in the Far East communicated in English far more successfully with their Korean and Japaneseclients than British or Ameri-

can executives. Standard English was all very well for Anglophones, but in the developing world, this non-native "decaffeinated English"-full of simplifications like "the son of my brother" for "nephew," or "words of honor" for "oath"-was becoming the new global phenomenon. In a moment of inspiration, Nerrire christened it "Globish." The term quickly caught on within the international community. The (London) Times journalist Ben Macintyre described a conversation he had overheard while waiting for a flight from Delhi between a Spanish U.N. peacekeeper and an Indian soldier. "The Indian spoke no Spanish;the Spaniard spoke no Punjabi," he says. "Yet they understood one another easily.The language they spoke was a highly simplified form of English, without grammar or structure, but perfectly comprehensible, to them and to me. Only now do I realize that they were speaking 'Globish,'the newest and most widely spoken languagein the world." For Nerrire, Globish was a kind of linguistic tool, a version of basic or socalled Easy English with a vocabulary ofjust r,5oo words. As I saw it, however, "Globish" was the newly globalized lingua franca, essential English merged with the terminology of the digital age and the international news media. I knew from my work in the mid-r98os on a PBS series called The Storg of English that British English had enjoyed global supremacy throughout the rgth-century age of empire, after centuries of slow growth from Chaucer and Shakespeare,

through the King James Bible to the establishment of the Raj in India and the great Imperial Jubilee of rB9T. The map of the world dominated by the Union Jack answered to the Queen's English; QueenVictoria, in her turn, was the first British monarch to address her subjects worldwide through the new technology ofrecorded sound, with a scratchy, high-pitched "Good evening!" In this first phase, there was an unbreakable link between imperialism and language that inhibited further development. In the secondphase, the power and influence of English passedto the United States, largely through the agency of the two world wars. Then, throughout the Cold War, Anglo-American culture became part of global consciousness through the mass media-movies, newspapers, and magazines. Crucially, in this second phase, the scope of English was limited by its troubled association with British imperialism and the Pax Americana. But the end of the Cold War and the long economicboom of the r99os distanced the Anglo-American hegemonyfrom its past, settingthe languagefree in the minds of millions. Now you could still hate GeorgeW. Bush and burn the American flag while simultaneously idolizing American pop stars or splashingout on Apple computers. With the turn of the millennium, it appearedthat English languageand culture were becoming rapidly decoupled from their contentious past. English began to gain a supranational momentum that made it independent of its Anglo-American origins. And as Eng-

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lish became liberated from its roots, it began to spread deeper into the developing world. In zoo3 both Chile and Mongolia declared their intention to become bilingual in English. In zoo6 English was added to the Mexican primary-school curriculum as a compulsory secondlanguage.And the formerly Francophone state of Rwanda adopted English as its official languagein zoo9. In China, some 50 million people are enrolled in a language program, known colloquially as "Crazy English," conducted by "the Elvis of English," Li Yang, who often teaches groups of lo,ooo or more, under the slogan "Conquer English to make China strong." Li Yang is part preacher, part drill sergeant, part pedagogue. He gathers his students in football stadiums, raucously repeating everyday phrases. "How are you?" he yells through a bullhorn. "How are you?" repeats the crowd. "I'm in the pink!" he responds. "I'm in the pink!" they reply-ironically, using an arcane bit of Edwardian slang for "feeling good." Li Yang has even published a memoir calledl Am Crazy,I Succeed. The viral nature of Globish means that it's bottom-up, not top-down. The poet Walt Whitman once wrote that English was not "an abstract construction of dictionary makers" but a language that "has its basis broad and low, closeto the ground." Ever since English was driven underground by the Norman Conquest in ro6 it has been the languageof Everyman and the common people.That's truer than ever today. The fact is that English no longer depends on the U.S. or U.K. It's now being shaped by a world whose second language is English, and whose cultural reference points are expressed in English but without reference to its British or American origins. Films like the zoog Oscar-winning SlurndogMillionaire hasten the spread of Globish-a multilingual, multicultural cast and production team creating a film about the collision of languagesand cultures, launched with an eye toward Holly'wood. The dialogue may mix English, Hindi, and Arabic, but it always falls back on Globish. When the inspector confronts Amir on suspicionof cheating,he asksin succinctGlobish:"So. Were you wired up? A mobile or a pager, correct? Some little hidden gadget? No? A coughing accomplicein the audience? Microchip underthe skin, huh?" Globish is already shaping world events on many fronts. During last year's Iranian elections, the opposition used Globish to transmit its grievances to a worldwide audience. Cell-phone images of crude slogans like cBr ewey ENGLAND and FREE, FAIRvorING Now and innumerable tweets from Westernized Iranians communicated the strength of the emergencyto the West. In the short term, Globish is set to only grow. Some Zo to Bo percent of the world's Internet home pages are in English, compared with +.5 percent in German and 3.r percent in Japanese. According to the British Council, by zo3o "nearly one third of the world's population will be trying to learn English at the same time." That means ever more voices adapting the English languageto suit their needs,finding in Globish a common linguistic denominator. The distinguished British educator Sir Eric Anderson tells a story that illustrates the growing life-and-death importance of Globish. On the morning of tbe Zlf bombings in London, an Arab exchange student tried to take the Underground from southwest London to his daily classin the City.When he found his station inexplicably closed, he boarded a bus. During his journey his mobile phone rang. It was a Greek friend in Athens who was watching the NEXT > news of the BLOWBACK bombings on How can the U.S. battle Muslim extremists without creating CNN. Commore ofthem at home? municating BY MARK HOSENBALL AND EVANTHOMAS urgently in the Globish jargon ofinternational TV, he described the "breaking news" and warned that London's buses had become terror targets.As a result of this conversation,the student disembarked from the bus. A minute later it was destroyed by a suicide bomber,with the loss of many lives. This is not the end of Babel.The world, "flatter" and smaller than ever before, is still a patchwork of some 5,ooo languages. Native speakersstill cling fiercely to their mother tongues, as they should. Butwhen an Indian and a Cuban want to commission medical researchfrom a lab in Uruguay, with additional input from Israeli technicians-as the Midwestern U.S. startup EndoStim recently didthe language they will turn to will be Globish. tr

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