whoselanguage7.doc

“I think rather than a new international standard, what we are looking at is the emergence of a new “international attitude”, the recognition and awareness that in many international contexts in terlocutors do not need to speak like native speakers, to compare themselves to them and thus always end up “less good”—a new international assertiveness, so to speak.”

When native speakers work in an international organization, some report their language changing. Mr Crystal has written: “On several occasions, I have encountered English-as-a-first-luanguage politicians, diplomats and civil servants working in Brussels commenting on how they have felt their own English being pulled in the direction of these foreign-language patterns… These people are not “talking down” to their colleagues or consciously adopting simpler expressions. For the English of their interlocutors may be as fluent as their own. It is a natural process of accommodation, which in due course could lead to new standardised forms.”

Perhaps written English will eventually make these accommodations too. Today, having an article published in the Harvard Business Review or the British Medical Journal represents a substantial professional accomplishment for a business academic from China or a medical researcher form Thailand. But it is possible to imagine a time when a pan-Asian journal, for example, becomes equally, or more, presentigious and imposes its own “Globish” grammatical standards on writers- its editors changing “the patient feels” to “the patient feel”.

Native English speakers may wince but are an ever-shrinking minority.