I had also read this newspaper article with interest. So, those horrible tasteless Dutch tomatoes still seem to continue to get everywhere in the world, even onto the Lab site! Yuk.

I've actually been interested in this phenomenon since childhood. In Edinburgh where I grew up, the music school where I had my violin lessons were in a building shared with the Esperanto Society of Scotland. The idea of a neutral universal language (back before Babel...)always fascinated me - but as Esperanto has no literature to speak of, it seemed to me that it was too much of an artificial construct, devoid of 'culture' and therefore probably of no lasting value. This 'Globish' is different, I think, because although very clearly functional, it actually does arise out of people using and adapting a living and changing language for their own justifiable purposes. I also recall a section on what Michael Pereira termed 'Inter-gnashional English' in his great 1968 guide book on Istanbul where he observed that if British tourists asked a Turk in the street something like 'Excuse me please, do you understand English', you'd be met with a blank stare, whereas 'Scuz plizz, spik u Inglizz, no?' might have a better chance of recognition or eliciting help.

The old joke is that Britain and the USA are divided by a common language. I always find it fascinating in the US to note the far greater number of survivals of 'Settler English' there (from 17th and 18th centuries) - like the past participle 'gotten' - and elements of regional UK dialects that have become maistream in the USA, but would not be recognised by people in the UK today who only communicate in BBC/RP English. But at the other end of the scale is the ghastly, ugly spread of American business/management lingo which is now so embedded in Eurospeak. English in the Indian subcontinent and diaspora on the other hand (mostly spoken with a near Welsh accent) is often still peppered with the fashionable slang of the British Imperial ruling classes of the 1930s, which is charming if slightly quaint.

The Booker Prize comments are interesting I think - and this is not a new phenomenon either. Over the past 30+ years, much of the most innovative poetry and novel writing in English has been by writers from India, Nigeria, South Africa, West Indies, Australia... where the use of language is evolving and borrowing all the time. Language never stands still. I suspect any Academie Française hopes that Globish English may create an increased space for a resurgence of French are somewhat delusionary - but I love the belief and faith it expresses, and good luck to them! Actually, we British natives can suffer from a similar international effect. I never seem to have too much of a problem being understood in my (very imperfect) French in Switzerland, Belgium, Africa or Romania (e.g.) - or by immigrants in France. Indeed a taxi driver in Strasbourg recently confidently identified my Norwegian accent... But with native Parisians in particular it's something else. It's a strangely alienating phenomenon. Nevertheless, the common roots persist. When The Queen, whose English we are supposed to aspire to, signs new Acts of Parliament to bring them into force, she intones a very old Norman formula 'La Reine le veult'.

Christopher Gordon | 06 dic 2006