English language around the World

Now that we've reached the year 2018 there isn't many places around the world which are still completely untouched by the English language. With the presence of the English language growing around the world, countless countries are injecting their own local 'flair' by adopting bits of English into their own languages.

Fun Fact: Did you know that the number of people who speak English as a second or third language far outnumber actual native English speakers in the world?!

Hinglish

India is the country with the second largest population in the world, and it is also the country with the second largest number of English speakers. Although India has many different languages spoken all over the country including Tamil, Panjabi, Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi and Telugu, to name just a few, a very large part of the population can speak and understand both Hindi and English to some extent. This is something I definitely picked up on during my time working on-board the cruise ship - a wonderful (yet confusing) mix of the two languages.

For example: “My sabse best friend bahut nice hai!” = My best friend is very nice!

Singlish

Singapore is a real cultural mix with large communities of people speaking lots of different languages. Besides English, most people here can also understand and speak various Chinese languages. Locals often mix up words and grammar from these languages to create the unique and fascinating Singlish.

Chinglish

Chinglish can describe the meeting of English with any of the Chinese languages. There are many Chinglish expressions in English such as “Long time no see!” but increasingly common are English words creeping into Chinese, often with a quite different meaning from the English.

Japanese-made English

Perhaps one of the most creative Englishes of the world is Japanglish or wasē-ēgo (Japanese-made English). The Japanese have come up with a wonderful range of ‘English’ words uniquely understandable to themselves.

Two of my favourite wasē-ēgo words are:

マジックテープ Magic tape = Velcro.

スキンシップ Skinship = Bonding through physical contact.

Talk Pidgin

Any idea which country has the most languages in the world? No? It’s Papua New Guinea. This small Oceanian country is home to around 12% of the world’s languages (852 of them to be exact).

These were pidgin languages, aka, languages with very simple grammar and pronunciation used between speakers of different languages for communication. Papua New Guineas’s two pidgin languages are Hiri Motu and Tok Pisin.

Tok Pisin has just a few simple words which are used as the foundations to creating more complicated meanings.

For example:

Grass bilong hed (grass belong head) – Hair.

Sop bilong gras (soap belong grass) – Shampoo.