Smith wrote:

> "myriad varieties" of English have existed for a long time. Mangled
> English still has no status.

Depends what you mean. Scots has an impressive literature, and there 
have been dictionaries of Scots for centuries. It most certainly does 
have status.

And to say that Hinglish has no status shows a lack of awareness of what 
is actually going on in the English-speaking world. See, e.g., "Hinglish 
is the pukka way to talk"
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1313096,00.html)

(Of course, I would deny that either Scots or Hinglish are any more 
"mangled" than standard English, but that's another matter.)

> And with all these varieties of botched English, won't they have to
> choose one to dominate? If a Hinglish speaker wants to talk to a Japlish
> speaker, wouldn't they both aim for standard English?

Again, I cannot accept the loaded nature of the word "botched", but yes, 
that's a good argument, and one I tend to favour myself, at least in 
certain contexts.

However, David Crystal (who is probably the greatest authority on "world 
English") disagrees. His view is that the lingua franca English that is 
developing across the world is frequently at odds with standard English, 
and I can see that there is certainly evidence that - at least at 
certain registers of the language - he is right.

For example, I was in an ethnically Greek shop, listening to an 
ethnically Indian/Pakistani lady chatting to the shopkeeper and to 
another lady who I believe came from Jamaica. All three of them were 
using only one question tag, "innit", as in, "We all got to live 
together, innit?"

Still, at higher registers of the language (e.g., in academic or 
diplomatic circles) what you say certainly holds water, at least at the 
moment. But I suspect that, if a Japlish speaker wanted to sell 
computers to a Hinglish speaker they would very likely settle on the 
Japlish expression "pasocon", rather than using the standard English 
"personal computer", or refer to their business trips as "airdashes", in 
the Hinglish manner.

> You sound happy about the growth of moronic English, just because it
> would annoy me. 

Once again, I have to object at your choice of words; there is nothing 
"moronic" about it. But, yes, I am happy about language change because 
it is in the nature of living languages to grow and develop 
commensurately with the needs of its speakers.  I am happy about it 
because that is the nature of the beast, though, not because it annoys 
you. If it does annoy you, I am not happy because of it; I merely regard 
your annoyance as rather ridiculous. You might as well get annoyed about 
the sun for rising, or the tide for coming in.

> Indian English dialects are NOT equally valid to proper
> English and neither is any other botched version of the language.

Smith, *every* version of every language is "botched". The language of 
Shakespeare is a "botched" and "mangled" form of Anglo-Saxon, and the 
language you and I speak is a hodgepodge cobbled together from all kinds 
of sources that - if he had the same sensibilities as you exhibit - 
would have Shakespeare turning in his grave at such "moronic" debasement.

As the Sunday Times article indicates, Hinglish combines rather quaint 
aspects of Victorian English - which are surely perfectly "valid" by 
your standards - with Hindi loan words. Standard English also has Hindi 
loan words, as noted elsewhere in this thread, so on what basis can you 
claim that one variant is "valid" and the other is not?

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com