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Saturday, May 21, 2005
The twin forces that keep us together
Jug Suraiya, repudiating the purists who are alarmed at the way English is spoken around the world, writes:
Dead right, IMHO.
[I]f there are many Englishes — Amlish, Indlish, Jamlish (Jamaican English), and so on — won't we become lingually ghettoised and unable to communicate with each other? Not if we adopt a free market approach to language, which like water finds its own level. Take the case of SMS English, a creation of cellphone technology. This variant of English is widely used and understood across generations and continents. Geeks and bloggers have their own argot, as do scientists, accountants and business managers. This doesn't mean there can't be intercommunication between such subspecies. The twin forces of globalisation and specialisation are ensuring that all of us become multilingual — even when we think we are being monolingual.
Dead right, IMHO.
