That moment says a lot about how English really works.

English spread through colonisation: through schools, churches, government, and media. But once it arrived, people didn’t just copy it. They adapted it, mixed it with local languages, humour, food, music, and everyday life. Over time, those local versions became the most real forms of English in those places.

We’ve seen this before. Words from Latin America and Asia have been part of English for years: macho, gringo, taco, guacamole, ceviche, reggaeton, cartel. These words stayed because English needed them. There was no better way to say what they meant.

In March 2025, the OED leaned fully into this idea with a “World English” update . It added everyday words like gigil from the Philippines, which means the urge to squeeze something cute, and alamak from Malaysia and Singapore, an expression of surprise or frustration. English didn’t have words for these feelings, so it borrowed them.

Then came December 2025, and a big moment for West Africa. The OED added words people already use daily: abeg and biko for polite requests, amala and moi moi for staple foods, mammy market for women-run community markets, and Ghana Must Go.

These words carry stories of migration , survival, humour, and community. And once they’re in the dictionary, no one can say they’re “not proper English.”

What’s changing is power. English is no longer shaped by one centre. It’s shaped by how people live. For years, speakers from the Global South were told their English was wrong. Now the same institutions are saying: this is English too.

Maybe English was never really “king.”Maybe it’s just a shared language constantly remade by the people who speak it. Global South isn’t just speaking English anymore. It’s rewriting it.

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World Reframed is produced in London by Global South World, part of the Impactum Group. Its editors are Duncan Hooper and Ismail Akwei.

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The conflict has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than 12 million people, including 8.6 million within Sudan. Many more are seeking safety in neighbouring countries like Chad, Egypt , South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Ethiopia.

However, millions of Sudanese professionals are fighting against this conflict in their own way, miles away from their home country. 

One of them is Dr Suliman Ahmed, who has worked as a paediatrician in Saudi Arabia, a medical interpreter in the U.S., where he is based, a health insurance broker and now the founder and CEO of Dr Suliman Advisory Group.

Speaking to Ismail Akwei on Global South Conversations, Dr Ahmed shared his personal journey from Sudan to the United States and reflected on the conflict that has reshaped the lives of millions in his home country.

He recalled his childhood years in Sudan despite being born in Yemen to Sudanese parents who were both physicians. He returned to Khartoum for medical school, and although he grew up mostly in Saudi Arabia, he said Sudan shaped his earliest memories.

“I spent the first two years or the first few years of my life in Sudan communicating with my aunties, uncles, a lot of friends. And I even went to the first grade school and the preschool. So I spent a good time in there and I have a lot of memories. I carry a lot of love to my grandma who passed in 1998 or 1999. And I had actually a very colourful, prosperous memory. Sudan was doing good. Sudan really was doing good,” he said.

For Sudan to feel like home again, Dr Ahmed said three things must happen: “Maintain national unity and prevent further fragmentation, exclude perpetrators of civilian atrocities from future political processes, and hold those responsible for destruction accountable and mobilise funds for reconstruction.”

He believed Sudan has the intellectual capacity to rebuild, but not the resources. “Sudanese people are capable of making the country stand again,” he said. “All we need is funding to actualise our ideas.” 

He shared the hope of one day retiring in Sudan, once peace returns. “Living among your people… is a blessing. I see myself retiring in Sudan,” he said.

He acknowledged the works of community groups such as the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA), which has been providing medical support to hospitals inside Sudan. “They had a tangible impact… raising funds for medical centres, helping trauma patients move to Egypt, Germany, the US, and the UK,” he said. 

“All of them feel the tragedy… everyone is trying to donate, to help, to alleviate the misery... We are generous by default. If we utilise this momentum and turn it into practical plans, we can make a great impact,” he added.

To those still living through the war , he offered encouragement: “Stay your ground, don’t lose hope… we will go through this all together.”

“The United Nations , for example, people tend to forget that it is a bunch of governments, and it's only going to be really as good as those governments allow it to be or demand it to, and fund it to be. I think we can't rely on those institutions. We want them to be there. They're important, but we can't wait for them to act. 

“We have to be creative as civil society activists and we have to look to regional cooperation. We have to build new institutions. We have to be working with each other. We can't spend too much time bemoaning the dysfunction. We don't have that kind of time. So we have to be, you know, we have to be aggressive in finding new ways of working,” she said.

She also highlighted the declining human rights situation in the United States and how civil society has to learn from other countries that have gone through similar phases in their democracy to fill the void created.

“The authoritarians are sharing the playbook. They are learning from each other. They are perfecting their evil plans. And we have to do the same thing because so many of the challenges that we're facing are similar...I think activists in the United States have enjoyed such freedom of movement and freedom of activism for so many years, and that is also changing now with attempts to outlaw protest, the intimidation of protestors, the infringements on academic freedom and just the sense of fear that's being instilled through the actions against immigrant communities.

“We have a lot to learn from people who have been through this before and know what the next steps are going to be, because this is, in my lifetime, at least, relatively new, this kind of, ignoring the courts, deploying the military in domestic enforcement. But a lot of our friends and colleagues in other countries have dealt with that. And so I think the way for civil society to fill that void is gonna be through learning from each other,” she advised. 

Watch the full interview attached to this story.