l'm not overfamiliar with Cllr. Roberts stance on funding English teaching to, it's presumed he means, foreigners. But judging by your article in last week's Press he seems to want it both ways. How can you argue for the withdrawal of funding and then expect 'foreigners' to speak it as their main language? Would you argue the same for 'homegrown' kids that need their rudimentary understandings guided in the classroom? Perhaps funding and the runnings of education are further matters for discussion.
What is 'english' anyway? It does seem to be a form that can adopt others and continuously adapt itself. Spend some time checking the roots of words, their meanings and use and we find that they come from all over. This continues today and new words and expressions are always arising. Not sure whether this is the case with other languages though - l recall a welsh speaking couple sounding completely alien until hearing 'supermarket'. Likewise Croatia's Franjo Trudjman coming out with 'device for holding up trousers' when divorcing Serbo-Croat.
l take the point that English should be the main language when used in this country. This is even established in much of global trade and in diplomatic circles, having replaced French.
But what of when we 'Brits' go abroad? How many of us speak the lingo? Erm . . . ? not many. Even when some of us do make the attempt we find our efforts appreciated but generally our continental counterparts speak more than adequate english, french, spanish, etc. This seems to be even more so at the lower end of the jobs market. I wouldn't put myself high up the pecking order but have often been embarassed by those of lower 'status' who demonstrate command of many languages and myself struggling with the basics.
Bloody tourists, eh?
l'd counter Roberts' point about a reluctance on the part of others to learn and say it's more one of traditional resistance to the 'other' in this country. Compounded today by the multicultured approach to societal realtions accepting the 'other' as 'always other'.
Given Cllr. Roberts leanings it's presumed that his bottomline is 'they' should go home yet immigration to this country and the mobility of its occupants has always been a feature of its make up. lf any of us trace our family hisory then we find it's been a long and winding road to get to this point.
Despite geographically being an island Britain cannot be other than part of the bigger picture. We have a global economy with goods and people travelling far and wide. (The latter should be considered to be the most basic of freedoms.)
Regardless of Cllr Roberts' approach and the shilly-shallyings of mainstream politicos immigration and mobility will always make the world go around with benefits and challenges for all. lt seems that despite a wealth of cultural differences we find there are more things that bind us than not and assumptions made about people expected to conform to tradition don't actually fit the stereotype.
Maybe there are forms and nuances of expression that just don't translate via language so an understanding of other forms of expression enhances our own to the point that words or phrases become accepted, thesaurusised (made that one up) or adapted. Our understanding and language given some ad hoc je ne sais qois, so to speak.
Much can be learnt from the study of other language and culture. l profess to not having much understanding of other languages let alone script. Looking at eastern forms with odd symbols written fom right to left is incomprehensible to me but does suggest another side to learning. Perhaps the mere ability to read in this manner has an effect on comprehension and the ability to do both in many languages opens up far more than the seperation. Which ought to go without saying really.
Maybe in the future language will reflect an absorption and filtering of the lot into one common but enriched 'english' or other. Further than that though, our eastern contemporaries seem a lot less encumbered by the insularities of mainstream western thought and the world may come to speak in a modern eastern form. Somehow doubt that but Cllr Roberts may yet speak from the other side of his mouth.
(1)http://www.thepressnewspaper.co.uk/NewsDetails.asp?id=801
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