Is language power or culture? A strange contradictory feature of the global Babel we live in is, after all, the perception of a new kind of “Koiné” rather than confusion of idioms. This is the case of “Globish”, a cosmopolitan English dialect with a vocabulary of 1500 words or so (a fraction of the 615,000 of the Oxford English Dictionary), a language spoken all over the globe by non-native speakers of English. It is the way a Bolivian talks to a Russian, or a Japanese talks to an Egyptian. Unlike "Spanglish”, it's not a meld of English and a different language. It arose naturally and acquired its legitimacy through reiteration and usage.
The English writer and editor Robert McCrum has called Globish "the worldwide dialect of the third millennium." A language sometimes compared to "open source" software: available for free to anybody willing to use it for his own purposes. Is it commonly believed that language and culture go hand in hand. In the case of Globish, language underwent a process of deculturation. In a sense, Globish as a language was “abstracted” from the western, English-speaking culture. Dangerous operation: as Ruth Walker (“Christian Science Monitor”) puts it, “language and culture are so closely linked that culture-free language would be like tasteless food or colorless paint.” However, Globish is at the same time accessible and democratic. If that is power, it is the power of anarchy in grammar and pronunciation.
In many cases, language is more a basic tool for relationships than a weapon of cultural conquest. The case of immigration demonstrates that assumption, sometimes in a dramatic way. Language travels with people, but also travels through immaterial channels. In 2009, for instance, China gained 36 million additional internet users, meaning that there are over 440 million internet users in the country. English is by far the most widely used language on the internet. However, Chinese is growing fast, and is already one among the “dominant languages” on the internet.
China is currently classified, in the international and diplomatic jargon, as an “emerging country”. If this is correct from a contemporary (economic) point of view, it is completely misleading on a historical ground. In the times of Marco Polo and Matteo Ricci (the only two foreigners who appear on the wall of the World Art Museum in Beijing, in recognition to their contribution to the Chinese civilization) Europe was an emerging power, and China a superpower.
It may sound ironic that in the year of the celebration of the IV Centenary of the death of Padre Matteo Ricci (1610-2010) a program to teach Chinese in Italian elementary schools financed by Beijing became operational. Perhaps those children one day will learn Globish. Would they also speak “Globese” (global Chinese)? (First published in "Longitude", March 2011)
