Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [66]
Most of the lishes described here are new in a historical sense, since they are essentially products of America’s worldwide hegemony and cultural invasion since World War II. But three—Hinglish, Spanglish, and Singlish—are in a class by themselves as the oldest.
Hinglish is a mixture of English and Hindi. It goes back to 1617 when the British West Indies Company received permission to trade with India. As trade expanded, the British sent military forces there and eventually obtained control of the country. That control extended to the imposition of the English language in government and the educational system of the country.
THE CULTURE FACTOR
In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, American cultural invaders, mostly from Hollywood, started to put an American accent on the common parlance. The massive outsourcing of U.S. jobs in recent decades has added further to American influence.
The Spanish portion of Spanglish in the Western Hemisphere was seeded by Spanish explorers and a notable Italian, Christopher Columbus, when they set foot in North America beginning in the fifteenth century. But it wasn’t until the early eighteenth century that English was added to the mix when the eastern colonies began to expand into the far reaches of the continent.
The Spanish discoveries eventually led to successive waves of conquistadores who moved from South and Central America into the western parts of what would become the United States. Their descendants are still on the move into almost every community in the country as their Spanish language constantly sinks deeper into American English.
Singlish, the third oldest lish, emerged in the early nineteenth century when British traders landed in Singapore, the tiny nation that has always been a major port for international merchants. The term began with a mixture of British English, Malay, Hokkien, Tamil, and Cantonese.
It wasn’t until 1965, when the British ended 146 years of colonial rule there, that Hollywood films and TV shows ramped up their incursion in the tiny nation. Many well-to-do families in Singapore have added to the American influence by sending their children to schools in the United States.
EMERGING LISHES
New lishes are being formed so fast and in so many places that it is impossible to keep current with them. For example, young Tibetans are in the process of creating their own merger of Tibetan and English, according to Andrew Grant, an American teacher of English in the Volunteers in Asia program. He adds that for them, sound is far more important than spelling.
He says he had to give each student an American name because it was so difficult to remember their native names, the sounds of which did not resemble anything in English. He also says a typical Tibetan male knows four languages: Tibetan, Chinese, his own dialect, and English. Most of their English apparently comes from American TV shows.
The only continent lagging in a strong English presence is Africa. But that is starting to change in a hurry, particularly since the 2011 uprisings in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and other places.
Tunisia has become the center of a movement—English for Development in Africa—to promote English as a first foreign language for all parts of Africa that do not already have it. For many North Africans who are native speakers of Arabic, that means switching from French to English as a second language.
Following are summaries, in alphabetical order, of some of the various lishes, including more details about the three oldest ones and others mentioned elsewhere in the book.
ARABLISH/ARABISH
Arablish (or Arabish) is one of the most exciting branches