great interviews on the debt ceiling as well as the g.o.p. primary debates and the dying middle class you can also follow me on twitter at laurent with her am please do have a great night and up and has dick week and we'll see you again next week.

the latest in some instances. the harvard. live. today in harlem says once again flared up little these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. for a shelter all day. hello

and welcome to cross talk back you talk about the english language continues to flourish does it threaten other languages with one in three people speaking english does this promote western values and with the rise of asia the english maintain its a period position in the world. to discuss the language question i'm joined by robert phillips and in copenhagen he's professor emeritus at the copenhagen business school in paris we go to john paul nidia he's the author of the book don't speak english parlayed globish and in hong kong we have david read all he is a distinguished visiting scholar at city university of hong kong and another member of our cross talk team yell on the hunger all right gentlemen this is cross talk we can jump in anytime you want and jump on i'd like to go to you you have

a new i suppose a language or posse language that you're introducing to the world and it's called globus and how is it different from english and if you could for partly could you answer in globish for us oh there is english isn't even meant to be very correct english but it is the record english light it is a simplified from a piece with miss words you would see it's another fifteen thousand words and you know it's not easy surely that's way too much so you may get the most efficient it with fifteen hundred words and the children know those words and they make use of those words you can express all you need in the world for business purposes or is it boys so it is in english lite it's still a great thing that i will give us an example given his example what it sounds like and what words you like to use go ahead. maybe i made one eat it or you in english this is not only to being brothers in these are going to write

words is not slick comprised of me and my siblings you might understand that if you are in istanbul or i'm on t.v. or most people will not understand that so you want to get the message or cause you to say this is our company the top management new government we have mostly me and over two hundred my parents and you get the same message across the world are seem very to belong to my limited release and everybody would understand you better so you he trait in terms of understanding we tend i was better if you used nice caring or formulation ok robert if i go to you in copenhagen is this just jibberish bad english. i think it's very clear that. when you are in the real world you obviously have to communicate as best you can i am worried by the idea that a simplified form of english like that. isn't it's a bit like mcdonald is asian it's a package version which apparently will give you the satisfaction that you need

whereas in the real world. people don't really function like that they negotiate meaning they try to get through and as an educational goal i think they need to be exposed to relinquish as it is used in a whole range of contexts so i'm a bit worried that this is a quick fix in some way whereas learning english you have to be culturally sensitive depending on who you're speaking to which part of the world you are what your goals are it's a much more complex task than what globish claims to be a capable of achieving ok david i mean well it's a very good point you know the mcdonnell ization of english but that's the trend in the world that everything's getting it done alive i think john paul's point is that you know if you want to be able to communicate in communicate is better here and i think if i'm i should we make it clear i should make it clear to my audience here. this is a this is a kind of close the language of non-native speakers speaking to each other like dean speaking to japanese japanese speaking to koreans and things like that it's

not really actually doesn't have anything to do with needed speakers of english i actually agree partly with both robert cone john paul here and i think this is not really so much a question of mcdonald eyes ocean as the struggle to communicate in the real world by people who actually have a lot of english but i think it's quite right john paul is actually on to something here and saying that people need some guidance as to how to best ploy the limited resources of the language they have to communicate clearly and this is actually something which perhaps native speakers need to learn about as well so it's not entirely just a matter for non-native speakers ok i'll jump all in if then why not just learn english i think i'm going on line with robert was saying and if you want to use english when you do speak it properly. well we should make clear that there are additional b. are there will be two kinds of family the english which gives you access to the culture of the anglo-saxon culture which is immense very each outstanding green

from shakespeare to knock wayne and if you like bill gates so this is great and if you want to enjoy it if you want to read that we should all use content you need to re an english which for a person like me is a life that is fraught and if you want to cause a deal in must call or to kill or in c. or. if you speak laypeople speak in venice takes us must we look at the people who will not understand you and this is no use their vision when i went to japan in one thousand nine hundred ninety four does business decisions i observe some americans go to in the me from a team there was a vice president with a b. in usa then and i observed that the japanese there and then the koreans and soon and the chinese in beijing to far east where much better and he's always me and doesn't need it or understood that better than what i could observe between them and americans and that's why i said we thought we were speaking english we are not

we are speaking a different kind of language and them saying different so what is correct as fast concerns her current business is concerned internationally he's not and given god or the moment the i to meet wrote the book for the british council which i quote extensively in my book and in these people there are many things which are worse and want to hear one of them is that in ninety six percent of the cases in international communication there is at least one known native english speaker who is involved and it's up to you needed english speakers to adjust to the river of despair sun or not be as good in worshipping as least because like me could be ok example i mean i could agree with you maybe if you're talking about your childhood or buying a ticket at a train station or ordering in a restaurant or something like that. you bring a business i mean most businesses you have contracts and you have very specific laws and clauses and things like that this this language can't work without it i go

to robert on that i mean it's for chit chat it's just to get you know get through something if there's something you wouldn't sign a contract with using this kind of language it's too imprecise i mean it has nothing to do with english as a school subject or you're trying to equip people to function in a range of ways and i want one of things that worries me about the whole promotion of different types of english worldwide is that the assumption morris is that the only language you need worldwide these days is english you don't get far with english in latin america or even in southern europe or in most of asia so that when for instance danish companies are asked why they have failed to achieve a business deal in japan or in italy they tend to say oh it's because they don't speak english well enough there whereas what companies ought to be doing in order to trade with japan and italy is to have enough people in their country who can actually function well and understand the culture as well as the language of japan

or korea or or italy so that so far as education is concerned it's a totally different ballgame and i agree really with the mystical bell here that the the the idea that you can do complex negotiations with a simplified register is misleading milk a jumbo you were shaking your head you disagree go ahead. where i'm sorrier i think . illustration of. the speaker as you might have released already. so wonderful are different you have a pretty strong country. go to me go ahead. no so i could go on many people who do that as far as contacts are concerned you have experience that can have the contacts and cons the den from american english to begin with from into u.k. english so that you don't have to do when you're negotiating what you have to do is discuss what he got from and so your products or your services understand you so your customer and you don't need a full english product he did you can do it with

a limited english providing you for all of the rules you he from your age you use their sentences and you check that your people in front of you are understanding you which most native english speakers don't think they should do and then running a foreign language to do business in d.c. in a foreign land is valid in only one instance if you are living in destroying lands or are used to be here you know many here for say stop with all who would have got me so as soon as they assigned a frenchman two hundred company that is the answer he was expected to be able to get and speak bitching for months so you had to take a guy who's were going to german and english and in four months he was you know if you discuss we scour the schools out early in english not in his announcement in a country they don't so that's true but when you are discussing international business you meet with people who are understood that the waterway language was going to be some kind of condition and there would be no step back because well on the first. part i have my content in here they could jump here and go to david here

i don't put issue on the other foot i mean should native speakers of english maybe delve into this because it'll it'll make it easier for them to communicate with people and then i'm saying just for a limited purposes if you want to go travel around the world as we just it was pointed out in some places than in europe in asia and in south america there's very limited english it wouldn't be a bad idea for native speakers say take a real short course in that and you can get by a lot easier. i'm not i'm all in favor of native speakers being talked how to use their language in a more effective ways when talking to non-native speakers i don't think it actually needs to learn it's an english light a special kind of english i think it's more about strategies and principles hold for using the language that you already know but i think that we are talking about piffle things here i think that i agree a tyler with with robert on this that a broader service and characters just doing business so the low level then find

some kind of english like work but that's not how the global economy works now and increasingly you have multinational companies for example working in a number of different countries you have research or technicians and so on who have to work as a global team and communicating at very high level of subject within that team across the world and that really does mean look everyone has to show a very high level of english i only jump in right here after a short break we'll continue our discussion on what some people call imperialism to stay with her to. take a. stance. that you can see from the.

wealthy british. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with meit's cause or no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds of reports on our cheap.

download the official r.c.m.p. cation two hundred phone or i pod touch from the i choose our store. life on the go. video on demand copies of mine broadcasts and r.s.s. feeds now another part of your. question on the cauchy dot com. hey tom our been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. if

you. want to. welcome back to. remind you we're talking about global language.

but before let's see what foreign languages are most popular among russians global language over the years english has. global status being a language of business culture and a clumsy however english is not the only language used for international relations and communications the united nations for example has six official languages arabic chinese english french russian and spanish the public opinion just russians knowledge of foreign languages sixty seven percent they speak english twenty percent durant and another five percent can speak french though english today has a dominant position other languages are taking a stand so what language will the world speak in future and will we all ever speak

the same language. i usually if i go back to you first one of the things i think is interesting is that you actually kind of maybe correct me if i'm wrong kind of a linguistic nationalist yourself you want to preserve good french how do you balance it with. someone that really is a a connoisseur of the french language. where people in france used to be very proud because. of diplomacy. you have your say which was mostly discussing movies and then from there on. the supremacy and people are very happy about it it was he praised by english for each and every purpose for us and these there would be no two on that because english is now our language which is spoken around the world not very well after very poorly even for researchers or people that seemed out how to vote but it is the language we use but when you see the common behavior for international communications and there would

be no step back because for the first time in history the languages war widely and the communication is instantaneous these never have been in the roman times square let you know he could wear a community around them to get their own land but now this is the case so that would be good on back and when the french people are just going to guard the situation they are wrong french will never get back where did he and as they used to say many years ago in english we're listening we could be good i didn't know you and your actions this is finishing this will be easier but if we're going to be tingly spoken like by david then being poor like me and because of people like that and you think it's a very interesting point if i go to robert on this one here i mean if we look at what the impact of the internet on english and you know you can go to so many websites that purportedly are in english but they're in awful english there is the grammar is awful the spelling is awful the word choice is awful the syntax is awful

but what is stopping this inane and really i had agreed with you before before you know why don't you just learn proper english while the world is this way ahead of us here i mean they're going to use english anyway they want so i mean what direction we go in or can we discuss can we control it in any way probably not. the internet when it was launched meant that a lot of people felt that this would mean that english would expand at the expense of other languages in fact there are hundreds of languages used on the internet even very small ones demographically speaking and this means that obviously it's makes a lot of sense in the modern world for anyone to want to have a very high level of proficiency of english the interesting thing for me at least when researching language policy is whether english is being added to people's repertoire which is great or else where the english is replacing other languages and this is where you mention the word imperialism obviously under the soviet system the people of the three baltic states knew what linguistic imperialism was

because i legalism then was a dirty word for basically dropping your own language and shifting into russian and that's exactly what happened in a lot of the colonial world where there was definitely a major focus on colonial languages like like french and english and english does open lots of the walls worldwide but one also needs to look at every particular context and see to what extent it actually closes doors for a large number of people while opening for the few david what do you think about that i mean we call it the imperialism element that i mentioned at the end of the first part of the program i mean it for all of the learning of languages in english is i'm a predominant one now we'll talk about it later if it's going to stay that way we have to think of a child with chinese but is it is it just is it does it destroy languages that we place in languages because in talking to some of my young people who work on cross talk you know. even when they speak russian the russian english is invading their

language and they're in russia you know working with me and it's all a mixture of speaking of variety of languages even when two of them are throwing in french at the same time i mean is this good or does it or does it matter. what you know i find it very difficult to get sort of terribly worked up about them and i would just look at how the english language came to being of the sort of mongrel language that we have anyway really sort of current preaching purity i think that it is true and i absolutely agree with robert that you have to look at particular situations this is a very dangerous area in which to generalize just because there appear to be these big global trends going on but doesn't mean that actually the situation in different countries is not very different particularly in terms of whether languages are actually being injured or perhaps i mean there's an argument to say here in hong kong but the role of english in hong kong is actually helping protect cantonese as a sort of a past to root against encroaching quit and go on mandarin ok john paul if i can go

to you a lot of people in and i want to go into a big discussion here but it is easier is global value free does it have any values because we there's a large a great argument in linguistics that you know it will take the english language for example has a lot of built in values in and and what a world view and how to look at values in society it is global. or is it completely devoid of any kind of value in terms of having values. well you need her. being what i call english you know for intervene leash has devalue of being enough and we have nice and negative will say you can say it was easy you want for reasons a to president obama's inauguration speech you can see it in my websites and put it in english and saying exactly the same seeing what you think where her somewhere into g.q. still ten times more people would have to stand it out do you know gratian species

for americans but nonetheless they are people outside who would like to listen to it and it doesn't what he says without any translation which is always distorting the meaning so the value is that it is efficient it is not a language at all since nobody could. communicate and use a tool to me business and in that event it is enough but it doesn't carry devalues of the anglo-saxon culture it doesn't qaeda values of democracy doesn't go there use this is not the gold to go there is a simple rule that we make it efficient and they do it people who speak good enough english don't have. people like get there and they need it be there indeed very seldom speak with people who don't speak good english because those words who don't they are not people who needed english speakers when you think about that robert i mean is it isn't as i'm glad. i'm a bit puzzled by that because i think that immigrants like myself i live in denmark although english is my mother tongue i mean i use four languages every week all the

time and clearly once you have learnt several languages there are vast advantages but to go back to your point about whether globish is intrinsically impregnated with the cultural values which english has evolved during its development over fifteen hundred years well i think i would say that very clearly english spread worldwide because of the british empire because of the colonization of america and australia and so on and this means that the idea that any language can be culturally neutral depends entirely on context any language can serve either good or evil purposes but a lot of the thrust behind global english at the moment is connected with globalisation with americanization and with consumerist values so in that sense very definitely just as john kerry has just said globish is connected with commerce and this commerce at the moment is dominated by american interests and other european and japanese and other conglomerates where the chinese of bought into the

same game and who knows where the chinese are taking us ok well i'm glad that's a good point here david what do you think i mean we were talking about being which language is evolving and you mentioned how it is a barrier to or protecting cantonese there but i mean one hundred years from now we may be talking having the same program a different set of characters obviously but how chinese mandarin chinese is invaded the world and how it's either promoted its language or polluted other language we could see people like ourselves you know speaking a pigeon chinese. well i'm not too sure about that some and i think there's no doubt that mandarin is increasing in importance in the world and more and more people across the world are getting interested in learning it as a foreign language but it's not going to displace english really i can't see that happening for at least another sort of a hundred years or more and i doubt it is going to happen i think that the world of

languages is being rebalanced at the moment that's for sure and i think the manner you see there are more important things are actually going on in the world and english is implicated in the eye for example in china and most primary school children are learning english now from really quite a young age in the big cities it's as soon as they go into primary school now right across the world this is happening this means that we have a younger generation going through schools just reaching secondary schools now in some countries like china who are going to be really fairly good english speakers now this the world has never seen this before these already these children these young adults are able to communicate directly to each other we were talking earlier about english on the internet they can actually communicate directly to each other in a way that could never have been done before and i think that that is actually for instance contributing to making the world slightly more unstable slightly more dangerous and before so this fred of english is

a global language has many many imply mentions more than just business now the interesting question for me is what if in fifty years time china decides to stop teaching english in its schools would it have the clout then to start forcing countries around it begin with to learn more mandarin start using more moaned or and i'm gradually turning to the right time indeed we should do a program on the cultural and linguistic in germany of mandarin chinese thanks mike yesterday in paris copenhagen and in hong kong and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time. remember prost are.

a charming here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. we'll. bring you the latest in science and technology from around for. the future of coverage. he.