Chapter 14: Natural Language Has “Experience”
People need a language that has “experience”. We need to know other people have lived all their lives talking in that language. We need to know that many centuries, many parents and their children, have made it work well. Natural language is always growing. The “closed system” of Globish, of course, is a beginning definition. Over time, Globish may add necessary words as technical or international when worldwide Globish speakers are using it.
The value of having a natural language is because it has been tested with many millions of people. Its most-used words have been turned over and over, like sand on a seaside, for centuries. These words are the survivors from all the natural languages that came into English. They are strong words, and useful words.
And these rules of Globish are not something someone just “thought up.” For example, the way English deals with time through its verbs. Now all languages have different ways of communicating the order of happenings. But as much as any language, English-speakers have a proven language where events have relationships to each other in time. So timing is important to the English way of thinking, important to their communication. If they want to say something is happening “now” they use a continuous form, such as I am reading this book. That Present Continuous form means “exactly now.” If they say I read this book, it means they have read it before now, are reading it now, and will continue to read it in the future.
These things are all important to a “way of thinking.” They don’t happen by someone’s plan. Natural Language grows through trial-and-mistake-and-improvement, and that is why Natural Language works!
But why do we call Globish a “Closed System?” And is “closed” good?