We've just launched the pamphlet As You Like It: Catching up in an age of global English.  You can download a pdf here.  In it, we argue that Engish has developed around the world into something called 'global Engish' - which is best described as a family of language rather than one, single language with roots in one particular space.

There are lots of different forms spoken around the world, for lots of different purposes - people use English to communicate for business; some have taken on the language and developed national or regional variants such as Singlish, often embodying nationalistic or identity-based responses to the presence of English.

We recommend in the pamphlet that we should use the open nature of the Internet to track these developments with additions, entries and comments from people describing the words they use, where, and what they mean.  Using 'tagging' we could track the links and associations amongst different forms, and using the geographical information track trends over time.  We envisage a map of how the language is developing across the world, called Democtionary.org, that could complement dictionaries designed to record particular standards.

We're developing this idea into reality over the next months - if you're interested and / or would like to help out, drop us a line at englishlanguage@demos.co.uk.

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