Should we call it Sina (“Chinese”) English or Standard Worldwide American Pronunciation English (SWAPE)?
Either way our new international language owes its current shape to American dictionaries. As currently featured in Expo 2010, Sina English demonstrably uses American spellings, standard headword-definition combinations, and standard Midwest pronunciation: all these available electronically to offshore learners, including audio-phonetic help. Most of us have already had plenty of telephone contact with offshore speakers of SWAPE, sometimes including troubleshooting contact of more than 10 minutes. In my own case this led to a suggestion by an affable SWAPE-fluent contact-professional (physically located in the Philippines) that what I needed was a new computer. This suggestion led step by step to my purchase of a new HP computer from the trouble shooter (now morphed into a “close the deal” salesman) before I rang off. Stunned by my pliability, it took me a couple of hours to realize that the MY language had become an international offensive weapon for anyone willing to learn it — testa
