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There are a lot of commentators around at the moment, blaming a lot of the world’s ills on ‘globalisation’. Perhaps they are right, but does it end there?

A few weeks’ ago, someone called Paolo left a comment on this blog which brought a new language called Globish to my attention. It just goes to show: just because an editor’s paranoid doesn’t mean that there isn’t a conspiracy to stop us all from understanding the words.

But then take a closer look at the Globish site. Globish turns out to be one man’s vision of the plainest English possible.

That man is Jean-Paul Nerriere, a retired French businessman who, according to the BBC, had a flash of inspiration one day after a meeting at work.

I had the impression from the BBC article that Globish would be:

“…a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like ‘drivers’ and ‘deliverables’ and ‘outcomes’ to be ‘valorised’… “

But then I went to the Globish website. I tried the ‘fun quiz’ and discovered that I’m a Globish speaker. I read the Globish translations of Barack Obama’s inauguration speech and Mark Antony’s famous speech from Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’.

Globish is just the same as ordinary modern English really, only without the big words.

But what was really entertaining was “Globish explained in American and in Globish”.

I particularly like the ‘American’ version because it says it’s for English speakers. Now, I’m no American and I’ve only been to the United States once, so may be I’m wrong but this doesn’t sound authentic to me. It begins with a description of a book about Globish:

“This little tidbit of literary joy is amiable and a slam dunk to peruse, notwithstanding the fact that it has the overwhelming gall to propose a revamping of our methods of verbal exchange around the world.”

It goes on to say that those who don’t speak English as a first language are “hung up in a major way”, “bummed out” “feel their just not getting it” and “don’t feel they’re on the proper wave length”.

I love the idea of a “proper wave length”, the mix of hippy slang with the word “proper” as if there’s a rigid etiquette around tripping and opening the doors of perception.

Read the American version and the Globish version and you will learn loads of (allegedly) American expressions. “Shoot the breeze” means “to discuss” and when a “wicket isn’t sticky”, well that’s obviously not a good thing is it?

After looking at the Globish website in such detail, I was elated. The future’s bright, I thought, the future’s Globish – simple standard English with a vocabulary of only 1,500 words that everyone can understand.

And then I woke up – literally – in a hot sweat one night as the nightmare reality of all this suddenly made sense in my dreams: this Nerriere may not be laughing at editorial staff everywhere, but is it possible he’ll wipe us out?

He’s destroying our raison d’etre. He will make us redundant, annihilate us. We will go the way of coopers and scriveners and that will be that.

Social media networking will have a clear path to take over the world and all those amateurs really will be journalists and publishers.

We are doomed.