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It's a new Basic English. Wow! 180,00 hits and I had never before encountered it

Had you

How many Ghits places a word in common use
 
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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.
 
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It's an interesting neologism. It isn't in the OED yet.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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Thanks WordNerd, that supports my hypothesis that the term is not typically used in English.
 
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Basic English itself is a concept that goes back the the 1930s and you can find out about it here http://ogden.basic-english.org/

Churchill was a great supporter of the concept.


Richard English
 
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