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Anorak News | Mind Your Language

Mind Your Language

by | 13th, December 2006

“SHOULD all immigrants be forced to learn English?”

The Express wants its readers to respond to this question by phone.

There is number for “YES” and a number for “NO”. All non-English speaking immigrants, those unable to read the Express’s burning question, let alone ask for the use of a telephone, may care to grunt and stick out their tongues for “yes please, sah” or shake their heads in a side-to-side motion and bow for “no thank you, bwass”.

Before lifting the receiver, English speaking Express readers may care to read the paper’s story that the Government spends £110million a year on translation services for immigrants.

“Foreign murderers, a surge in migrant workers and large numbers of asylum seekers have been blamed by [police] forces for rising bills,” observes the paper. Curse those foreign murderers, meurtriers étrangers, ÷óæèå äóøåãóáû, buitenlandse moordenaars etc.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migrationwatch UK says: “These are some of the cost of political correctness.” Matthew Elliott, of Taxpayers’ Alliance, says it “undermines social cohesion”. And cosmopolitan Peterborough council reminds locals in no fewer than fifteen languages to depose of their Express in the correct recycling bin.

So it is time for the immigrant to learn how to speaka da Ingleesh. And the good news is that it is well easy, innit.

The Mail sees the work of linguists at Lancaster University. And it notes that while the over-25s use 21,391 words in daily conversation, the teenagers use just 12,682.

This seems impressive, until you realise that no less than 11,216 of those teen words are for chips. The teenage vocabulary, to which any immigrant should aspire, is pared down to 20 key words.

In order of use, these words are: “You, I, the, and, it, a, to, yeah, that, what, no, in, know, he, of, it’s, oh, but, like, on.”

Put these words together and you have a language. Sure, it might not be understood by the older generation, but foreigners and teenagers swear by it…



Posted: 13th, December 2006 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink