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A clap for calquers

ALDaily has again wormholed me into another world.

So I have belatedly recently discovered the calque and a breathtaking array of other fresh linguistic neologisms and concepts from the clashes, enjambments and entanglements of English living with other languages. The source is an engaging article in European Review of Books called Beamer, Dressman, Bodybag by Alexander Wells. 

If you love words please read it. I fancy you too will enjoy it and be as enchanted as I.

Unexpectedly, Wells turns out to be an Australian, which may be one of the reasons I immediately felt comfortable with his tone, self deprecatory yet probing, but his piece sings a many layered and complex song that rises above its locality, Berlin, and its subject, English and Deutsche. 

It seems that the global conquest of English as a linqua franca has now moved well beyond the realm of "globish", the pidgeon in which business people who are non native English speakers from different nations communicate with other.  English is now systematically syncreticly inhabiting most other modern languages, mostly due to the Web and social media, and in intriguing, humorous and startling ways. 

These continuous conceptual collisions produce debris in multiple directions. I now have to explore this minefield further.

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