Globish

Globish is not supposed to be a new language, but a tool. It does not have pretences of being a whole new idiom, as it's not a vehicle of a culture, but a decaffeinated version of English. Neither it is like Esperanto, which is an artificial language. It is a simple adaptation to be used by businessmen and tourists to get round their difficulties. Korea and Italy are already interested in this new jargon, and China is also going to publish the instruction's book "Don't Speak English, Parlez Globish".
Is this another utopian language, as Esperanto and Volapuk were?

Gibberish? Globish? It's all Dutch to some
By Geoff Strong

"du yu no vear dha laaybrari iz?"
"sar, yuwar baegej did naut kam baay dhis flaait …"

If you can't understand these sentences, don't worry — there's a translation at the end of the story. Meanwhile, you could just try reading them out aloud. It's not gibberish — it's Globish. Correction: one form of Globish. In the search for a language that can be understood across the planet there are now two new English-based offerings under the Globish name, one from France and the example above from India. The quest for universal communications is nothing new. Latin was spoken across the Roman empire until it gradually broke into separate languages such as French, Italian and Spanish. Arabic is widely used in Islamic countries and Mandarin was an attempt to unite the Chinese dialects. Then there were artificial languages such as Esperanto, Kosmos, Volapuk or Novial that fizzled. In the 20th century, English spread across the globe — partly on the back of US films, songs and popular culture. This has sparked anger among other aspirants for linguistic domination, particularly the French. So, about a year ago, retired computer engineer Jean-Paul Nerriere published his book Don't Speak English — Parlez Globish. It is essentially a stripped-down, simplified form of English with a vocabulary of only 1500 words, compared with 615,000 in the full Oxford English Dictionary. To support his case Mr Nerriere points out a phenomenon that has the guardians of his country's language at L'Academie Francais, boiling with anger. When, say, a Korean strikes up a conversation with a Colombian at an airport lounge, they are likely to do it in limited English with their own pronunciation. A native English speaker might have difficulty understanding. In 1998, another engineer, Indian Madhukar Gogate, put up a proposal to iron out irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation in a form friendly to non-native speakers. Melbourne University linguistics professor Michael Clyne thinks such efforts are doomed because English has established itself as the international means of communication.
- Translations: Do you know where the library is? Sir, your baggage did not come by this flight.