The world's current lingua franca picks up words and phrases from other languages and sends them back again. Leslie Dunton-Downer, author of The English is Coming!: How One Language is Sweeping the World, explores some of these.
We want your suggestions! Nominate a word that should be a part of "global English" here.
Comments [6]
Well, lol is definitely becoming more nuanced like "lawl" sort of replace the old "badum-tshhh" you say after an obvious joke, or when snickering smugly you might give a "lul". Seems like regular "lol" is just used like a smile now after every short thing that is said lightly.
Oh, I didn't hear the whole segment but did she mention how Chinese use numbers for things like "88" can be "bye-bye" as 88 in Mandarin is ba-ba, there are a bunch more but I forgot them all...lol.
Forget Americans learning another language. We can barely handle English.
how about a number? the Thai word for the number 5 is "ha." so when a Thai person wants to text LoL or hahaha, s/he simply texts "555." OK, too esoteric, I guess.
When someone uses LOL to convey that they are are joking, it's like they are laughing at their own joke -- which is not cool. The :) emoticon is a better option.
I have not seen this usage of "LOL" as described by this lady.
Is one effect of the globalization of English the almost universal disinterest in and failure of foreign language instruction in the US? When I was a graduate student, the foreign students used to tell a joke: What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? An American.
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