London (PTI): English, the language of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, is evolving into a new, simplified form called "Panglish", spoken by billions of people around the world.

The changes are not being driven by Britons, Americans or Australians, but the growing number of people who speak English as a second language, New Scientist reported on Thursday.

According to linguists, Panglish will be similar to the versions of English used by non-native speakers. As the new language takes over, "the" will become "ze", "friend" will be "frien" and the phrase "he talks" will become "he talk".

By 2010 around two billion people or a third of the world's population will speak English as a second language. In contrast, just 350 million people will speak it as a first language.

As English becomes more common, it will increasingly fragment into regional dialects, experts said.

Braj Kachru, of Ohio State University, one of the world's leading experts in English as a second language, said that non-native English dialects had already become unintelligible to each other.

Singaporean English, for instance, combines English with Malay, Tamil and Chinese and is difficult for English-speaking Westerners to understand.

"There have always been mutually unintelligible dialects of languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Latin. There is no reason to believe that the linguistic future of English will be any different," he said.

Most interactions in English now take place between non-English speakers, according to Dr Jurgen Beneke of the University of Hildesheim, Germany.

By 2020 the number of native speakers will be down to 300 million. That's the point where English, Spanish, Hindi-Urdu and Arabic will have the same number of native speakers.

Unlike French - which is from corruption by the Academie Francaise, there is no organisation to police the English language.