Globish is a portmanteau neologism of the words Global and English. It is a simplified version of the English language that uses only the most common English words and phrases. It is used by non-English-speakers of various native languages.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about it. It sounds kind of like a pidgin, however it also mentions 1500 words, which seems quite a bit larger than what you would normally see in a pidgin, and in fact, a large vocabulary for someone to learn when they aren't actually learning the language.
With 184,000 ghits, I would say it is certainly close to common usage. Still, I've never heard it before. I wander if it is most common outside of places where English is the native language, that is, outside of the USA and UK.
Speaking as a certified (and some days certifiable) linguist, I would be very surprised if there are 1500 words held in common among all of the variations used in all of the places where "English" is kinda-sorta used but not really spoken. I'll wait and see, but I remain suspicious until I see documentation.
Sean, your google preferences are set to "any language". Limit them to "english sites only", and you're down to 20,000 ghits, which strikes me as substantially under the radar screen.
