Our changing future

The Oldest Member

I - regrettably - cannot agree more, Sean. A vicious cycle of the worst kind.

Having been educated (in a private English school) abroad, albeit in the Commonwealth, it was always clear to me how local (British) approaches to the language seemed half-hearted, casual and almost negotiable.

Proper expression is surely the first and vital stepping stone towards better understanding.

The Chocolate Orange Intifada

It doesn't matter what their parents speak. The languge of this country is English and every child born to immigrant parents should have it banged into their heads. Children learn fast.

Immigrants to the United States made absolutely certain that their children had complete control of English to get thm integrated as quickly as possible. The result was an energetic, cohesive, creative society.

There should be no classes in their own languages for children whose parents have catapulted forward from the Stone Age.

The Chocolate Orange Intifada

PS - re the immigrant children referred to in Sean's post Our Changing Future.

We owners of the country don't have a changing future. The Stone Agers do, if they're energetic enough.

Angry of SE1

the quickest way to ensure all inhabitants of the UK have to speak and understand english is to stop the expensive and insulting practice of translating all public notices into about 52 different languages.

It is only if people cannot get through life here without mastering English that they will be motivated to learn.

Does any other country translate officila document as much as we do?

Verity

And they even put messages in Urdu and a bunch of other useless languages on their official websites, paid for, of course, by local ratepayers, the vast majority of whom are British. If these people can't speak the language of the country, how are they going to thrive? On the other hand, why bother when the left is determined to accord them infant status?

That said, the US has developed an irritating new habit in big corporations and government departments, that runs, "For English, press one. Por Espagnol, marque dos."

Oddly enough, I've never heard a similar recorded message in Mexico. If you can't quite manage to explain what you're calling about in Spanish, they hang up on you. It's very motivating.

BTW, isn't all this translating into Urdu and similar junk languages a little patronising? I note they don't have it in French, German, Italian, Greek, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese ... Do they figure Europeans are smart enough to learn English?

Verity

PS - My comment above about them not catering to Anglosphones in Mexico was meant in the context of everyday life. People engaged in the vast tourist industry all speak fluent and absolutely correct English. No one should be afraid of coming to Mexico as a tourist and not being able to make themselves understood in English.

Anon

In America, labels and product leaflets are aggressively multilingual. Refusing to plough through for info I want, I put most stuff back on the shelf. Let illegal immigrants buy it. They probably aren't literate in their own languages, anyway.

Anon

Oh, and Choccy Orange a-I: "Immigrants to the United States made absolutely certain that their children had complete control of English to get thm integrated as quickly as possible. The result was an energetic, cohesive, creative society" ..... not so much, any more. I would argue that the literacy situation in Florida, for example, has deteriorated as a result. On one hand, I think I see that Hispanics excel in English language and US culture -when they come from literate backgrounds. On the other hand, large numbers of Hispanic and other illegals and/or illiterates (or their children) do seem to coincide with lower test scores.

Fergus Pickering

Spanish in the USA? Ridiculous! Did the blokes in the Alamo die in vain? The thing that pisses me off even more is all this bloody welsh over here. TACSI for God's sake! If the welsh want to live here, I mean the welsh bit of England, they should learn a proper language.

TGF UKIP

"These numbers show that Britain is changing. Our society is becoming more diverse in face and tongue." Wrong Mr Martin, absolutely wrong. Your metropolitan society may be so, together with that of a few other large cities but the majority of Britons live in an overwhelmingly unicultural and uniethnic society and are likely to continue to do so for generations to come.

May be tough for you metropolitan hacks to accept but London ain't Britain - thank God!

Angry and Verity spot on, but if you're looking for relief from all this absurd political correctness and sucking up to every alien minority, for God's sake don't expect anything from ultra PC Dave.

Callie

Britain is inded changing but not with the consent with the majority of its population.

Adam

The result of Labour's open door immigration policy, complete lunacy and one of many reasons I will be voting Tory at the next election.

Verity

Adam, the aberration led by David Cameron is no different. He's as lefty as Brown. Quicker witted, better dressed, more polished, quicker witted. But a clone.

Verity

I'll be reading the literature of UKIP and the BNP very carefully. I'll be voting for one or the other. I like UKIP, but I think the British Parliament would benefit from a bunch of British nationalists on the benches scaring the knickers off them.

The Conservatives are so smug, but no one wants David Cameron as a prime minister - saving David and his missis. There is no enthusiasm for him. Have you read any post, anywhere, that says, in effect, "When Cameron's prime minister, we'll ..."? No. They know Cameron would be just a socialist prime minister with different colouration.

He's a one trick pony. He can give a speech without electronic cues. Well, whoop-de-doo. That's certainly a qualification to govern the fourth (as of this writing) largest economy in the world, which he has diminished.

Cunedda Wledig

Mr Pickering,

Dos i'r Diawl, hen Saison.

HJ

My wife works in a reception class in an independent prep school.

Because of where it is, they regularly get children with little or no previous experience of English - either because their parents come to work at a nearby European HQ for a few years (they can be from other European countries or Japan) or where their parents are of (for example) Indian origin and the parents don't speak English at home.

After about a term, the children can speak English just fine, thanks to exposure to the staff and other children. What exactly is the problem?

Paulinus

Cunedda Wledig

There's not much point in telling Mr Pickering to go to the Devil in Welsh as he won't understand you. Which rather proves his point doesn't it?

Still you'll get to feel all smug that he doesn't understand you and that's all that matters, isn't it?

Verity

HJHJ - As you note, children quickly absorb languages - as they absorb everything else. There is no excuse for immigrant children not to be fluent in English within six months. I noted in France that English children, even after only a month at school in France. were joking around with their playmates in French.

I knew two sets of English parents and one set of Dutch parents who had been in France for some time and they all had a rule (despite the parents being fluent French speakers) that only their native tongue be spoken in the home. There are too many examples of children losing their native tongue, they absorbe a new language so quickly.

There is no excuse except sheer malice against the British to school alien children in their own tongues. It preserves them as a running sore, which is useful to the socialists, though.

TGF UKIP

Verity, I expected better, much better, from you than putting UKIP and the BNP in the same sentence.

This is a trick of the BBC, the Labour Party and the Daveist Tory SocDems on this blog. The very same sort of trick the Left always pull when describing Hitler's National Socialists as right wing.

I must again point out that the BNP are a left wing nationalist party whereas UKIP are a conservative party of the right.

The Oldest Member

To The Chocolate Orange Intifada:

That children of minorities learn their own language(s), whether at home or at school, is of absolutely no consequence to this argument. Children pick languages up remarkably quickly. The problem lies in the poor standards demonstrated and sustained by the Education boards. To blame polyglottism (or future polyglots) for the falling standards of teaching the English language in England (I don't know about Scotland and Wales) is a spectacular failure of logic.

Sean Martins says “ [the children...] need to be equipped with the language skills that are required to flourish both educationally and in the workplace."

This does not, to my mind at least, signal the active exclusion of other languages at all.

To Angry of SE1: it would seem appropriate to equip the language teachers with more language training rather than the blaming society for... being diverse?