When You Are Rich

This is an interesting conversation (in jest) between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Enjoy!

 

 

 

The New English: Globish?

This is a good article I found on the Internet.

Read on...

"The English language was not around when Julius Caesar landed in Britain 2,000 years ago. Some 500 years later, Englisc, hardly comprehensible to modern ears, was spoken by a handful of people.
A thousand years after that, during the era of William Shakespeare, English was spoken by perhaps six or seven million Englishmen, and to quote a linguist at the time, "still of small reach, it stretched no further than this island of ours".

How times have changed. Around the 17th century, English started to be exported to all corners of the globe. By the end of the 20th century, it had become the most widely spoken and written language in the world. Today, English in one form or another is understood by at least four billion people on planet Earth, hardly 400 million of them native speakers. English is truly the first global language.

English is not perfect. In fact, its imperfections are a boon to the language. It is not guarded by any institution, such as our Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) or Academie Francaise. These are the custodians of Bahasa Melayu and French respectively. True, as early as 1660, John Dryden argued for an academy "to regulate" English usage. It did not happen.

Some 100 years later, Joseph Priestley, a grammarian, famously said an academy was "unsuitable to the genius of a free nation". According to the wisdom at the time, the best forms of speech "will, in time, establish themselves by their superior excellence" and in all controversies "it is better to wait the decision of time, which is slow and sure".

English evolved into a global language partly because of its "free spirit". English is the most fluid and democratic language because no one owns it. The users are the lords of the language. The users are reinventing the language all the time. A language needs to be dynamic to survive and English is one. After all, there are no pressures of common usage, dictates of an academy or demands of committees.

Compiling a corpus is tedious, laborious and at times, unnecessary. After all, new terms are coined at breakneck speed. No English dictionary or compendium of terminologies could keep up with new words and phrases. There is tremendous pressure on lexicographers to come out with dictionaries of new terms and phrases.

The Internet and mobile phones have given new meaning to the concept of language development. A new linguistic centaur is taking shape in cyberspace. The written language is undergoing "major shifts in form and function".

Some would argue that "SMS" is an aberrant world of abbreviations, numerals and pictorial icons. "Brevity" is the rule of the game on the Internet. Formal structures as we know them are being threatened. We are witnessing "anti-formal communication structures" being used widely.

The Internet and mobile phones have created totally different language structures. Some would even argue that formal language is on the brink of collapse.

And then there is Globish. It is a concept made famous by Jean-Paul Nerriere, a French-speaking retired IBM executive. He was observing non-native English speakers "communicating" with each other in formal meetings and conferences.

He described English "and its international deployment" as "the worldwide dialect of the third millennium". He noticed the kind of English being used by non-native speakers, especially in the Third World as no more than "decaffeinated English" with its own format and structures, most of which are informal yet understood.

Globish is as much "a subset of the English language" as it is perhaps the nuanced English being used by non-native speakers with limited vocabulary. Of course, Manglish or Singlish falls in a different category. Globish, on the other hand, is a linguistic tool for "easy English".

As Robert McCrum argued in Newsweek magazine recently, Globish is "a newly globalised lingua franca, essentially English merged with the terminology of the digital age and the international news media".

Some would hail Globish as a truly "natural language" as opposed to "constructed English". It is "a codification of a reduced set of English patterns as used by non-native speakers" of English. McCrum claimed "good Globish is correct English".

The issue is not so much what constitutes Globish, but the fact that Globish is gaining respectability as English. While formal English claims to have more than 500,000 words, Globish is comfortable with 1,500 words.

There is also a compelling argument that Globish is merely another form of language imperialism. But that simply does not hold water. English is a language that necessitates global communication in various forms and platforms.

True, there were attempts by English colonialists to change the natives through the learning of English. One Thomas Macaulay proposed in 1835 to create a generation of "new Indians" in India: "A class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste and opinion, in morals, and in intellect."

It was a perverted view in social engineering. And it is also true that English was a tool effectively used to colonialise the minds of the natives in imperial times.

Globish, the way I look at it, is one of the many varieties of English that is redefining the language in today's world. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. And perhaps it is true Globish is another manifestation of "a downward spiral in English standards".

But English survived and flourished because of its readiness to adapt and accommodate. It became a global language largely powered by its users. In the case of Globish, the Internet and global media had been instrumental in its creation.

It is certainly not perfect, nor kosher to the purists, but it is contagious and astutely adaptable. Globish is here to stay for a simple reason: the English language is forever evolving. Its formal, standardised and authorised version can coexist with a localised, non-standard and indigenous one. Just like creole and pidgin, despite vehement protests from language guardians, have flourished in many parts of the world.

That is English."

Any other point of views?

Helping My Brother

This is a good one. Many thanks to Manlin.

Two young boys walked into a pharmacy one day, picked out a box of tampons and proceeded to the checkout counter. 

The man at the counter asked the older boy, "Son, how old are you?" 

"Eight," the boy replied.

The man continued, "Do you know what these are used for?" 

The boy replied, "Not exactly, but they aren't for me. They're for him. He's my brother. He's four......and we saw on TV that if you use these you would be able to swim and ride a bike. Right now, he can't do either."

Life's Maxims

This is the reality of living life!

But is that so?

Let us think deeply and meditate on these 2 maxims.

Keep pieces of lemon on the dining table with Cloves embedded in the lemon, all flies will run away.

Try it.

Woody Allen....

Trust him to have that ever refreshing perspective on life.

Let us read his 'life in reverse' just like Benjamin Buttons.

Now a Viagra for Ladies

WASHINGTON, May 25 — Hotly debated is the idea of the new pink pill, a Viagra for ladies that could always make her “in the mood”, as the US Food and Drug Association (FDA) is scheduled to discuss approving the drug on June 18.

Boehringer Ingelheim, a German pharmaceutical company, is looking for the FDA’s stamp approval to start marketing “flibanserin,” a drug that will interfere with chemicals in a woman’s brain to increase her sexual appetite.

Many health professionals, according to the Washington Post are calling for the FDA to deny the drug saying it does no good for women by inventing “fake” disorders (hypoactive sexual desire disorder [HSDD]), harmful side effect and can even prolong unhealthy and abusive relationships.

Similar to the drug company Pfizer’s blue pill, known as Viagra, flibanserin’s “sexual” benefits are secondary. The original R&D was to create an antidepressant. However, the papers on current clinical and basic investigation by the scientific body, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on May 17, include a 24-week long study by Canadian researchers that found “North American premenopausal women with generalised acquired hypoactive sexual desire disorder who received 24 weeks of treatment with flibanserin were more likely to report a meaningful improvement in their condition than women who received placebo.” The study was funded by Boehringer Ingelheim.

The “fake” disorder, or HSDD is loosely defined as a when a female had little or no sexual desire and activity over a period of time and impact her quality of lifestyle. One concern is that the makers are not sure how it works but think it drops the level of serotonin while increasing dopamine and norepinephrine; so far only slight side effects have been noted by Sands, including, nausea, dizziness and drowsiness.

Leonore Tiefer, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine said, “women’s desire for sexual emancipation is very worthy. I fear that it’s being hijacked by a profit-oriented industry that doesn’t really try to understand women and their sexuality.”

It will be interesting to see what the FDA decides and if the pink pill will be the next big drug trend. — AFP/Relaxnews