Spend any time in the region and two things become obvious. First, English still makes only a minor noise, and only in the major cities. Its consumer blandishments pale against homegrown magazines, movies, and pop singers. No major Asian language, be it Mandarin, Malay, Japanese, or any of the fourteen principal Indian tongues, is at risk of vanishing. In fact, those languages are killing off their own sub-dialects and non-standard variants. The world is everywhere too connected for the health of the linguistically vulnerable.

The second observation relates to the playfulness of inventions like Singlish. If Asians are threatened by the growing presence of English, they are express-ing their fear in the strangest manner—by inviting the danger into their homes. Linguists praise a language for its capaci—ty to acquire and assimilate expressions from elsewhere. Such openness is taken as a sign of confidence and growth. By this measure, the principal languages of nearly half of humanity are prospering. English isn’t storming these cultures to wage war on them; the locals, certainly, aren’t under that impression. They view the language mostly as a tool, one they can manipulate, and perhaps even make their own.