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Polish now second language in England

sudanglo :lta, 1. helmikuuta 2013

Viestejä: 11

Kieli: English

sudanglo (Näytä profiilli) 1. helmikuuta 2013 12.14.47

Yes folks, it's true according to the 2011 census. Look at this

Oijos (Näytä profiilli) 1. helmikuuta 2013 13.56.27

"In all, four million people in England and Wales have a main language that is not English.

Among these, 726,000 said they do not speak English well and 138,000 speak no English at all."

So English is overtaking them. This is in contrast to many other countries, where immigrants are not learning the country's language. And the numbers aren't that big. Yet the comments in the article are uncivilized.

For example: Finland has descendants of Swedish colony, who are still speaking Swedish over 200 years on. We have also high-skilled immigrants, who have zero intentions of ever learning Finnish. Their children go to a non-Finnish-language (usually English) schools.

pdenisowski (Näytä profiilli) 1. helmikuuta 2013 15.19.56

sudanglo:Yes folks, it's true according to the 2011 census. Look at this
Wspaniale!

ContextSwitch (Näytä profiilli) 1. helmikuuta 2013 16.08.52

Ahh the Daily Mail, always a source of considered and balanced journalism.

Timtim (Näytä profiilli) 1. helmikuuta 2013 21.13.40

The report isn't perfect because of a notable omission which should be in second place.

The qualifier for "Main Language" in the census is "English (English or Welsh if in Wales)", which produces the figure for English, then there's a separate column "Welsh/Cymraeg (In England Only)" which generates the result for Welsh. Understandably that produces a tiny figure (8248) with the Wales-dwelling Welsh-speakers inexplicably counting as English-speakers.

To get the real stats for Welsh you have to look in the census under "Welsh Language Skills", in which case you find that 672,828 people in Wales declared that they could understand it when spoken, 562,016 that they could personally speak it, 539,245 that they could read it, and 459,824 that they could write it.

So Welsh should be ahead of Polish but because of the stupidity in the census which sees native Welsh-speakers' scores count as English if they live in Wales it doesn't appear on the list.

sudanglo (Näytä profiilli) 2. helmikuuta 2013 11.07.39

It seems to me perfectly reasonable to count Welshmen in the UK as native speakers of English. There would only be a minuscule number of Welsh speakers who had a greater command of Welsh than English, and their command of English would be native speaker like.

The situation for the Poles in the UK is quite different. Their command of Polish would be greater than their command of English, and their command of English unlikely to be comparable to that of a native speaker.

hebda999 (Näytä profiilli) 2. helmikuuta 2013 18.41.23

If you go to the Antarctica during the worst winter time, then drink up a bottle of red wine (white one will also do) and throw it away into the dark, you are certain to hear:

"Patrz, gdzie rzucasz, głąbie"
"Look where you throw the stuff, moron"

Think of that.

pdenisowski (Näytä profiilli) 2. helmikuuta 2013 21.29.38

hebda999:If you go to the Antarctica during the worst winter time, then drink up a bottle of red wine (white one will also do) and throw it away into the dark, you are certain to hear:

"Patrz, gdzie rzucasz, głąbie"
"Look where you throw the stuff, moron"
Maybe someday they'll revise Kaszubski ...

Tam gdzie Tamiza od Londynu
W północnie morze płynie
Polska wiara, polska mowa
Nigdy nie zaginie ridulo.gif

Amike,

Paul

[This is a play on a famous Polish verse that reads :

Tam gdzie Wisła od Krakowa
W polskie morze płynie
Polska wiara, polska mowa
Nigdy nie zaginie

Where the Wisla flows from
Cracow into the Polish sea
The Polish faith, the Polish language
Will never disappear

but substituting the Polish place names with "Thames" "London" and "North Sea".]

robbkvasnak (Näytä profiilli) 2. helmikuuta 2013 22.32.01

I just did the census in our household and came up with the following figures: 1 native speaker of Portuguese who can understand and speak Esperanto and fuŝe write it and 1 native speaker of German who commits "Germanisms" when speaking English and speaks almost fluent Esperanto. If taken together, Esperanto is the majority language in our house since it is a little over 1,25 compared with 1 and 1 (German and Portuguese as native speakers) - this is, of course, an average attained by adding all speakers together and dividing by the number of inhabitants.

jchthys (Näytä profiilli) 3. helmikuuta 2013 0.05.07

It's still correct to say that Polish is the second language in England. I don't think the Daily Mail article obscures the fact that Welsh is still second in England-and-Wales—though not by much.

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