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Anorak News | The Mother Tongue

The Mother Tongue

by | 24th, August 2004

‘LOVE might be an international language but, when it comes to David Blunkett’s approach to UK citizenship, only English will do.

‘Tie me kangaroo down, sport’

The Home Secretary’s American lover, Kimberley Fournier, may be able to impress her paramour with her repartee, wit and pillow talk, but Yorkshireman Dave has noticed key differences.

So, the Telegraph says, Blunkett has decreed that under new Home Office regulations Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and any Americans seeking British citizenship must pass a language test even if English is their mother tongue.

Unsurprisingly, this has not gone too well with the thousands of future bar workers, au pairs and actress/singers/presenters in the land Down Under.

‘The poms no longer take for granted that we antipodean colonials speak anything they recognise as English,’ says The Age, Melbourne’s daily read (as translated by Anorak).

‘Who are they to stand in judgement on us?’

But this is a matter not without some substance, and the paper hears from Margaret Maclagan, a lecturer in communication disorders at Canterbury University, New Zealand.

She says that her fellow Kiwis are often speaking a different language to the British mother tongue.

‘Young New Zealanders fail to distinguish between cheer and chair, beer and bear, ear and air,’ says she.

The advice is for any wannabe Brits to drop the colloquialisms and learn to speak English the way Blunkett intended it to be spoken.

So for any non-English speaking English speakers tuning in, repeat after us: ‘Do you think the papers will ever find out about our affair?”



Posted: 24th, August 2004 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink