The Globlish solution

A couple weeks ago, I'd suggested NCEA ought to make things simpler for students who do not know basic words like trivial by restricting itself to the 3000 most commonly used words.

Globlish takes it one step further by reducing the language to the 1500 most commonly used words and simplified grammatical structures. It is intended to be the minimal vocabulary necessary to conduct global business among people who are not native English speakers.

Just think about how New Zealand's measured literacy scores could improve if we restricted assessment to only those words that the students really need to know, instead of all those extra ones.

HT: Sam Hammond, who imagines a fun movie based on it. You should follow him on twitter.

Movie idea:

Mandarin speaking Singaporean on a business trip falls in love with a Gujarati Indian girl, & must win her heart from her overbearing Aussie boyfriend.

Set 30 years in the future, they can only communicate in Globish.

It's a romantic dramedyhttps://t.co/crcMHYkXDh pic.twitter.com/EJ2zlfSg00

— Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛 (@hamandcheese) December 10, 2018

The comedy will revolve around the inscrutability of Australian slang.

The Aussie's fluency in english ends up alienating their relationship, due to frustration at their differential ability to communicate.

The Singaporean's narrower fluency in Globish is a Schelling point.

— Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛 (@hamandcheese) December 10, 2018

The deeper theme is "love is universal and ineffable." It's conveyed by the semantic constraints of Globish. Even tho the Indian and Singaporean have a limited shared vocabulary, it doesn't matter. Their communication is *felt,* and in a sense language just gets in the way.

— Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛 (@hamandcheese) December 10, 2018

The even deeper theme is the inefficiency of non-tariff barriers to trade.

— Samuel Hammond 🌐🏛 (@hamandcheese) December 10, 2018