Globish

Formally constructed artificial languages like Esperanto and Volapuk have their supporters; English is spoken widely in many varieties across the world, but for some a pidgin - a mixture of two or more vocabularies with a very basic grammar - is the most likely creation to become a universal language.

Esperanto may be easy for Indo-European speakers as it is based on Italian in many ways, but an Arab or an Inuit would not find it so easy to relate to.

A pidgin constantly adapts to practical circumstances, typically while trading between members of different language groups, and Globish is the most recent to hit the news.

it is simple, inelegant, not intended for writing literature but for basic communication. It has been described as the linguistic equivalent of the Swiss Army Knife.

Supporter Jean-Paul Nerriere recommends that users gesticulate when words fail and listen to popular songs in English to aid pronunciation.

It is claimed that Globish is just a step on the evolutionary ladder with some 1500 basic words compared to the 613,000 in the Oxford English Dictionary.

English Next

English Next was commissioned by the British Council and written by researcher David Graddol. The report argues that we are already in a very new kind of environment and a new phase in the global development of English. Read English Next (1.89MB - PDF) and find out why global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language.