Why don't you speak English?

There are more than 6 million immigrants living in the UK and this figure is steeply rising. Almost 1 million of these immigrants hardly speak the English Language. These statistics lead to the question, how do they get jobs? The answer is with great difficulty.

Why don’t you speak English? Is a two-part series on channel four which followed the lives of four immigrants, trying to make a better life for themselves and their families in Britain. They were each paired with an English family who they visited and then hosted at their own home. On these visits, the British families tried to teach as much English as they could and give advice about interviews and jobs, whilst learning about their background.

This eye-opening series allowed the British public to delve into the lives of immigrants and see how difficult their lives really are. It will make you think about serious modern-day problems, such as immigration, minor community groups and the importance of English in society.

Website link to the first episode - http://www.channel4.com/programmes/why-dont-you-speak-english/4od#3553255

Bill Bryson’s ‘Mother Tongue: the English Language’.

This is very different from Bryson’s travel writing; however, he pulls it off. Following his earlier book ‘Made in America’ he devotes a few chapters to American English, but more about the language rather than culture influences as seen in his other works.

He covers many topics from ‘the dawn of language’ to ‘the future of English’ showing the accepted academic opinion without being afraid of sharing his own. For example, his unique theory how Homo sapiens was able to succeed Neanderthal Man through more sophisticated language.

He [homo sapiens] possessed a linguistic system sufficiently sophisticated to deal with concepts such as: ‘Today let’s kill some red deer. You take some big sticks and drive the deer out of the woods and we’ll stand by the riverbank with our spears and kill them as they come towards us’. By comparison Neanderthal speech may have been something more like: ‘I’m hungry let’s hunt.’

 Nearing the end of the book he explores many light-hearted topics including ‘swearing’ and ‘wordplay’. You will learn many surprising facts as he addresses a mass of topics and is able to string them together effortlessly.

Despite its’ popularity, I must criticise this book for the amount of factual errors it contains. Since it was published in 1990, it does not show modern research and therefore many ideas are outdated. But Bryson did not sell this as a reference book, instead a lively introduction to language. He uses humour to set this book a part from more academic works, making this accessible to anyone with no prior knowledge on language.