Globish: How English Became the World's Language

A small island in the North Atlantic, colonized by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbours, becomes the dominant world power in the 19th century. As its power spreads, its language follows. Then, across the Atlantic, a colony of that tiny island grows into the military and cultural colossus of the 20th century. These centuries of empire-building and war, international trade and industrial ingenuity will bring to the world great works of literature and extraordinary movies, cricket pitches and episodes of Dallas, the printing press and the internet. But what happens next is quite unprecedented. While the global dominance of Anglo-American power appears to be on the wane, the English language has acquired an astonishing new life of its own. With a supra-national momentum, it is now able to zoom across time and space at previously unimaginable speeds. In Robert McCrum's analysis, the cultural revolution of our times is the emergence of English, a global phenomenon as never before, to become the world's language. In the 21st century English + Microsoft = Globish.

Globish takes us on a riveting and enlightening journey of the spread of a global English, from the icy swamps of pre-Roman Saxony to the shopping malls of Seoul, from the study of 'Crazy English' TM in China to crowds of juvenile wizards mobbing bookshop tills across the world. Along the way it gives new meaning to a faded old brown parchment (the Magna Carta), a 272 word presidential speech (the Gettysburg address) and a scratchy black and white film of a couple of men in space suits.

Robert McCrum is the associate editor of The Observer and lives in London with his wife, Sarah Lyall. His books include the bestselling The Story of English, My Year Off, Wodehouse: A Life, and Globish.

Prologue: ‘Crazy English’
 
PART ONE  FOUNDERS
1. In the Beginning: Four Invasions and a Cultural Revolution
2. Defeat into Victory: The DNA of Self-Expression
3. ‘Lighte Englisshe’: Medieval Mass Communications
4. Eating Paper, Drinking Ink: Shakespeare & Co.
 
PART TWO  PIONEERS
5. ‘A Whole Country of English’: Re-inventing Freedom and Originality
6. ‘Common Hopes and Common Dreams’: Lighting Out for the Territory
7. ‘The Audacity of Hope’: From Slavery to Redemption
 
PART THREE  POPULARISERS
8. Rule, Britannia!: How England Became British
9. East, in a Western Voice: The People’s Empire
10. ‘At the Top of the World’: The Imperial Swan Song
 
PART FOUR  MODERNISERS
11. ‘A Willingness of the Heart’: The American Century I
12. ‘The Unity of the English-Speaking Peoples’: The American Century II
13. ‘The World At Your Fingertips’: From Google to Globish, 1989–2009
 
PART FIVE  GLOBALISERS
14. One World, One Dream: ‘Conquer English to Make China Strong’
15. ‘Virtually Running America’: India, the Far East and Beyond
 
Epilogue: ‘A Thoroughfare for All Thoughts’
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index