English as a second language

[peredur_glyn]

More or less explicit in this hateful article (front page today) in the red top The Sun is the supposition that anyone living in the UK who does not have English as a first language is automatically less intelligent, or at least less worthy, than those who do. (Edit: the headline was 'Broken English'. Make of that what you will.)

Comments

[dyddgu]

I'm also first-language Welsh, and recall absolutely zero difficulties age 4 and under growing up in Scotland, ffs. (though there was apparently a cute moment when I told the teacher at playgroup that her phone was singing).
One thing that did happen, though, was my mam talking to a German woman who was saying how her kid was bilingual. Mam was enthusiastic, and said hers was too! German woman was a bit put out at not being so special any more, and asked what else other than English I spoke. When she was told, the reaction was "Oh, well, Welsh, that doesn't count at all."
Oy.

(I do wish I could swear better in Welsh, though. English has such pithy swearings.)

[peredur_glyn]

I partially suspect that people who scoff Welsh think it means "a Welsh dialect of English" rather than a different language, but largely I think there's still a prevalent thought amongst people who know no better that it's somehow not a real language. But I think your Mam's German acquaintance was just jealous about something.

I would say that it's impressive that you were bought up Welsh in Scotland, which it is, but we both know it happens all the time with all languages. My dad's brother married an Englishwoman and they lived in Cheltenham, where they bought up two children speaking fluent Welsh. Some things are not that hard, I don't think, it's just that for monolingual English speakers to comprehend this is nigh impossible :(

Swearing in Welsh may not be pithy, but God gave us two languages so we could swear twice as much ;)

[ashkitty]

I saw that article! I didn't actually read it; more like 'someone on the bus near me was reading the Sun and I could see the headlines on the front', but at least I knew it existed. ;) I imagine they mean England for the same reason you do; I rather think there are more than 1 in 7 first-language Welsh speakers running around here

[muckefuck]

This is borne out by census reports, which show mastery of English growing even in areas which experienced increased immigration, and in longitudinal studies of by the Pew Hispanic Center, which show that nearly 90% of second-generation Hispanic immigrants are completely fluent in English. The sad part is that their mastery of Spanish drops precipitously, with only a small minority still comfortable with it by the third generation. As far as I can tell, all the nonsense about Hispanic immigrants "not learning English" is nothing but nativist alarmism at--ZOMG!--having to tolerate incidental exposure to a foreign language.

[ashkitty]

Yes. It's basically stupid. :(

[peredur_glyn]

That doesn't surprise me at all. I've read a number of studies on Spanish speakers in the US and, if anything, the trend seems to show, as you say, a worsening in Spanish and an increase in English, which is rather sad. But I'm sure that if Spanish weren't so stigmatised in the US then children growing up with balanced bilingualism in Spanish AND English would become commonplace.

[ceirdwenfc]

>if I were a teacher with a class where not everybody understood the same language, life would be difficult.I'm not sure that it's difficult at all. The teacher will still continue to only teach in English and the students will pick it up because they will see the common things in the classroom and start relating those to English words. It's also not as though the entire class won't speak English - I would be surprised if more than a quarter of the class (if that many) is ESL (English as a second language), so of course, the other native-English speaking kids will help them to learn

[peredur_glyn]

I'm not sure that it's difficult at all.

I agree in retrospect. My ex's mother worked at a playgroup, the language of instruction of which was Welsh (primarily), but wherein many of the children were from non-English and non-Welsh families. Sometimes even the parents could not speak either language. But her experience was that if she spoke Welsh to all the kids they all tended to pick things up speedily.

Is The Sun the best newspaper for this kind of information? I got the feeling that it was low on the food chain. I mean, it's not the NY Times, is it? Or am I wrong?

You're right. The Sun is a tabloid par excellence, with topless woman on page 3 and everything, and it's about as reliable a source of unbiased current affairs reportage as Fox News, but it's the most popular newspaper in the UK by a fair margin (last time I checked), and its targeted readership will believe anything they're told, including what their opinion should be. If The Sun tells its readers (it's aimed at adults with a reading age of 7, purportedly) that ESL

[baron_scarpia]

anyone who doesn't speak good English is presumably unsuitable to live here.

I didn't think The Sun would say such a thing. It would mean a good percentage of its readership would have to leave the UK.

[peredur_glyn]

HE MADE A FUNNY!!1

It is odd that The Sun would run this story like this. It's the kind of thing you expect a saliva-stained shitrag like the Daily Mail to vomit forth on its unholy papyrus, but The Sun, I thought, was (relatively-speaking) more moderate. I'm even hoping the paper will run some sort of apology soon when/if they realise they've missed the mark, but then again I also keep a constant lookout for aviative porcine, so I may be onto a disappointment there.

[baron_scarpia]

Yes, the Daily Mail would have been a more fitting place. But I don't think it's outside the Sun's boundaries either.

Goodness, we have a depressing collection of newspapers in this nation.

[peredur_glyn]

The article, such as it is, has no ground to stand on unless it can prove that, for example, 4-6 year olds who are L2 English are somehow less clever than 4-6 year olds who are L1 English, and it provides no such stats.

Of course. I'm sure The Sun, if it looked, could find kids who are 5 years old and whose parents speak only English, but who are not very proficient themselves. But that wouldn't prove that immigration is evil, I suppose, so it doesn't make good front page material.

The thing that surprises me is that, out of all the noteworthy stories that broke today (Fritzl confesses; man released from prison after 27 years), this is what The Sun went with as their leader. Maybe nothing interesting happened until after 4am this morning...