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Monday, September 11, 2017

I Have Seen The Future


Cultural Offering gives some examples from a BBC site that uses pidgin English. 

Some of you know that I am reading at least one Shakespeare play a month. I wonder how The Bard would regard modern English. 

Anyway, the rise of tech-speak (u 2 bz?) and the adoption of English as a universal language may produce even more pidgin in the future.

There is a utility to pidgin that's hard to deny. I wish I could speak pidgin Russian or Chinese. The series of books by Benny Lewis on "language hacking" - where you plunge into speaking the language without worrying about perfection - are in that practical mode.

One of many downsides is that a person who can read Shakespeare can usually read pidgin but one who can only read pidgin will have a hell of a time with Shakespeare.

And that would be a loss.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:27 AM

    Not only can they not read Shakespeare, they can't read Jefferson. - Bobboccio

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bobbocio,

    Reading Jefferson and "Julius Caesar" is good for us all.

    Michael

    ReplyDelete