McCabe's World: Same Same But Different

Chancers such as Jean-Paul Nerrière believe that a minimized global dialect of English – Globish – can swing the balance in favour of non-native speakers, but at 1500 words it sure as hell won’t be able to convey the flood of global nuance and idiom currently transforming the world’s most inclusive language. In India, global players such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s are already embracing these hybrid lingos in their advertising. “Life ho to aisi”. Yes, of course, “Life should be like this”. “What your bahana is?” You mean, what’s my “excuse” for choosing McDonald’s? Technically known as discoursal nativization, this kind of code-switching facilitates local communication at the expense of global understanding. And that, my dears, is the real story behind the English language. Sind Sie fit genug für die Karriere? The American poet Walt Whitman once wrote: “Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race and range of time and is both the free and compacted composition of all.” The Swedes will continue to “hop over” (skip) lunch just as the Indians will keep trying to do a “hazaar” (thousand) things at the same time. Or as they say in Tinglish, same same but different.