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August 20, 2004
You are on the invidual archive page of It's not your language. Click Simon World weblog for the main page.
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It's not your language
It is a truth universally acknowledged that only bureaucrats can come up with rules as stupid as this. As part of Britain's get tough policy on citizenship it is now insisting on an English language test for new citizens from Australia, the USA, Canada and South Africa. The problem is native speakers of English cannot take the English for Speakers of Other Languages certificate, the regular way migrants prove their abilities. Instead they need written confirmation from an approved person. Except the Home Office hasn't decided who is an approved person. In response, Australia should immediately ban export of any more of our soap operas such as Neighbours and Home & Away and recall Kylie Minogue. Actually, that sounds more like a reward instead of a punishment. Double doses of both instead. UPDATE: Another interesting point from talking with Giles is a great deal of Brits themselves hardly speak the language. Welsh and Irish, even Scottish hardly counts as English. Cockney rhyming slang, Yorkshireman butchering the Queen's language, Oxbridge toffs, upper class twits who struggle to get words out between their silver spoons and plums...indeed even Fumier agrees of the poor grasp the natives have of their own language. posted by Simon on 08.20.04 at 12:33 PM in the
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://blog.mu.nu/cgi/trackback.cgi/41829 Send a manual trackback ping to this post. Truly DUMB Bureaucrats Are In All Countries... Excerpt: ...but I think the most stupid are these folks in Britain. Really. Weblog: The Moderate Voice Tracked: August 20, 2004 02:51 PM Bad English Excerpt: Simon has an interesting post on new requirements for British Citizenship. I made the mistake of commenting quickly on a form that does not have a spell check and in turn received some corrections to my spelling and grammar. Weblog: Flying Chair Tracked: August 20, 2004 08:51 PM
Comments:
why on earth anyone would leave any of those places to go to the uk is beyond me, but leaving that aside, what's your point? most aussies speak strine or greek, most americans speak spanish, a large proportion of candians speak french and there are 11 official languages in south africa(the majority of people there do not speak english as either a first, second or even third language, and of those that do the afrikaaners would rather die than admit they know a word). personally i think we should just ban the lot of you in perpetuity for being so lucky as get free transport from mud island to infinitely nicer places to live in the first place. posted by: english on 08.20.04 at 01:28 PM [permalink]To be honest, the standard of spoken English in the UK is absolutely appalling. While I was back there just recently I was mesmorised by how bad it was. posted by: Phil on 08.20.04 at 01:45 PM [permalink]mesmorised? as opposed to mesmerised? posted by: english on 08.20.04 at 01:48 PM [permalink]And you ended your sentence with a verb, which is grammatically incorrect. It would seem English as a written language is also in decline. But I have words for this, as well: British English and American English are vastly different in their uses of grammar and spellings. I am currently editing a British book. I find myself consulting obscure reference material to figure out how to utili(z/s)e certain letters. It's frustrating. posted by: hk on 08.20.04 at 02:17 PM [permalink]the other side of this of course is that languages are constantly evolving. words acquire different meanings (the word "gay" being the most glaring example i can think of) and every new generation adds their own variations as part of their attempts to define themselves as different from their parents. this is probably being exacerbated by the huge growth of sms messaging (or txting if you prefer) and email and internet usage which encourage sloppy english, such as i am using here by not bothering with capital letters because i never did work out how to type properly. if this evolution didn't happen then we'd all still be grunting at each other and hitting each other on the head with mammoth bones. the sad truth is really just that we're all old farts unable to keep up with todays "yoof". when we were kids our paprents desparied of our english, and their parents did the same of them (i can remember by grandmother telling my mother off for saying it was twenty-five past seven instead of five-and-twenty past seven). none of the above, however, is any excuse for speaking welsh, gaelic, celtic or cornish! now where are my slippers? posted by: english on 08.20.04 at 02:37 PM [permalink]"Even"? It's one reason why I left! posted by: fumier on 08.20.04 at 02:38 PM [permalink]"Gay" doesn't mean happy? posted by: Simon on 08.20.04 at 02:40 PM [permalink]only sometimes, as opposed to "the olden days" when the answer would have been "always". posted by: english on 08.20.04 at 02:44 PM [permalink]I love Neighbours! I even love Kylie Minogue. Maybe I shouldn't admit that in public. posted by: ALEX on 08.20.04 at 04:03 PM [permalink]English tests for Australians -- there's an idea that's long overdue. posted by: Conrad on 08.23.04 at 06:02 PM [permalink] |
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