Lingua Franchise

Summary
The essay opens up with Foran giving a first person account of an encounter he had in south East Asia. The man he was talking to used English as a derivative of his native dialect. There are in fact many examples of these English language inserts through out the Asian world. Foran states “If English is the region’s compromise tongue, default neutral terrain for doing deals and making friends, loan words and hybrid street dialects serve to advance its utility.” Foran goes on to invoke the works of Mark Abley saying that English has becoming a “killer language.” English as a language has become associated with power to a degree. With current globalization factors in effect, less used languages are expected to vanish as their users begin to use English. Foran concluded that English is only really impacting major cities and that the worlds other major languages are in no danger of becoming extinct. Other languages are actually killing themselves by its passive incorporation of English.

Response
Foran’s main argument in this essay is that English has become so globalized as something more than just the language that it is. It has reached a point where it is cut up and inserted into other languages as a slang composition only recognizable by those that live there. I understand this viewpoint and can to an extent see why it is happening. English is quickly rising to be the language of choice by enterprising nations. When the US was a super power and was top of the consumer food chain, countries like china along with many others learned English as a competitive means. Now through globalized communication English is slowly becoming the standard “universal language.” Two people from none English speaking backgrounds can find a lingual common ground in English. From this arises the sporadic slang seen by Foran in this essay. You have two people who learned English two different ways, there is bound to be misplaced syntax in their speech. These common errors are reproduced onto other’s speech dialects, arriving finally at a derivative of the original English version that is something completely unique, and sometimes unrecognizable by an English based culture like our own.
While agree that English posses a threat as a “killer language,” I also believe the extinction of other languages is and inevitable and rather positive outcome. How much better off would the world be if this language barrier were eliminated? The loss of certain aspect of cultural uniqueness is an unfortunate result of such a thing but does this out way what we could gain? An elimination like this would proliferate the movement of globalization even further than it already is. You may be of the opinion that this is a horrible out come but it is what the world is currently moving toward, so it responsible of us as a people to help turn it into a positive light.