International Law

The Future of Chinglish

By Stan

This is perhaps the funkiest Chinglish article I’ve ever read, and it is quite thought-provoking. The following is the concluding paragraph:

Any language is constantly evolving, so it’s not surprising that English, transplanted to new soil, is bearing unusual fruit. Nor is it unique that a language, spread so far from its homelands, would begin to fracture. The obvious comparison is to Latin, which broke into mutually distinct languages over hundreds of years — French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian. A less familiar example is Arabic: The speakers of its myriad dialects are connected through the written language of the Koran and, more recently, through the homogenized Arabic of Al Jazeera. But what’s happening to English may be its own thing: It’s mingling with so many more local languages than Latin ever did, that it’s on a path toward a global tongue — what’s coming to be known as Panglish. Soon, when Americans travel abroad, one of the languages they’ll have to learn may be their own.

Not sure if I like the term "Panglish," but I agree with the author’s general point. However, I do not necessarily like the trend. As I former editor, I have watched over the years as email has eroded writing skills to the point where I am actually surprised when an intern can actually string together a few coherent sentences. And those are the native speakers. Oy.

If we give in to the trend, I shudder to think what the result will be. Perhaps in the future, if everyone makes the same grammatical or spelling mistake, we will simply change the rules to fit common usage. Does anyone else have a problem with that? This is how we ended up with American English, you know, and I think the jury is still out on that.

Full post as published by China Hearsay on July 08, 2008 (boomark / email).