BBC, Language, Waffle and Rhubarb

I've done it again. I keep promising to stop, but I'm weak and flawed. I really did try this time, even my wife supported me unconditionally, but I fell at the first hurdle. My name's Gregg, and I'm a radio phone-in addict.

We had a tremendous night last night with friends in Rochdale, but driving back up North this morning I listened to Nicky Campbell on BBC5Live. I know I shouldn't, the BBC is bad for the old blood pressure at the best of times, but when Nicky Campbell is on well, need I say more? But it got worse, after 9-00am up pops the dreaded phone-in. Even Mrs B was frothing like a rabid dog, and I had a terrible attack of radio rage. It was that old chestnut "we English are so lazy about learning other languages". Aaarrggghh!

You see, I don't subscribe to this terribly English habit of self-flagellation and loathing. I happen to think that by and large this is a pretty fine place to live and we are amongst the most tolerant people in the world, if anything maybe too tolerant which is why it sometime spills over into the aforementioned self loathing. We have giant parties for St Patrick's Day, we have the biggest Caribbean carnival in the world in Notting Hill. But wear a red rose or a Cross of St George on 23rd April and you're an evil fascist who wants to bring back the Empire and slavery.

So this time it was this language nonsense that got me angry. The BBC does that regularly but, as I am forced to finance the rotten organisation by the tax/theft method of the licence fee, I sometimes get the urge to sample what I'm forced to pay for, although I really shouldn't. The question of the English and foreign languages usually gets me angry because all the pseudo-intellectuals and Islington types love to thrash us with our supposed inability to master other languages. Absolute merde! See what I did there? Or are you too English?

The English are very pragmatic. If we have to do something we do it, and do it very well on the whole. Apart from sport which we do a lot of but not very well. In fact we even did world domination in a very understated way. Gradually it dawned on the world that we controlled two thirds of it. We did this very nicely and, although we were involved in regular spats, we did not do it in a violently militaristic way that led to regular world war like some people I could mention. We did it in a very gentlemanly manner as we did when we retreated to our rightful position as a small island off the coast of Northern Europe, and gave those countries back to their rightful owners. What we left behind were great bureaucracies, if 'great' is the right word, fine engineering works and the English language. Bingo! That's it. In a very strange way the Empire actually is the reason we don't tend to speak foreign languages as much as some people do.

Imagine if the Germans had actually been a nation state before 1871 and they, rather than us, had built an empire that controlled two thirds of the earth. There's a pretty good chance that the USA would be a German speaking country, as would Canada, Australia, New Zealand, much of Africa and so on. OK, they'd probably have different names too, but I'm sure you get the drift. In that case we would all be sat here, speaking numerous languages, watching US TV with English subtitles and air traffic controllers would be speaking German, the international language. There would probably be phone-ins today in Germany moaning about how bad they are at learning other languages. Or maybe not, no lazy national stereotypes here, but the Germans are not as prone to self loathing as we are.

But what language does a poor German learn when the world speaks German. Does he learn English? Spanish? Italian? Flemish? Well you need to learn a language to be nice to people when you're on holiday so they say. So it'll be Greek this year, Bulgarian next year, French next year. Poor Heinz would do nothing but learn foreign languages in case he one day has a holiday in a particular country. It would be stupid. So it is for us.

I admire people who speak other languages. I get a great deal of satisfaction when I use my very basic French or Spanish and manage to communicate effectively. But let's not get hung up on languages and use them as sticks with which to beat ourselves. It's not because we are arrogant, nor because we are lazy and it is certainly not linguistic or cultural imperialism. It's an accident of history, a by product of our past, so let's just be pleased that when we are shopping in a little village on the Amazon, as we were a few years back, the shopkeeper speaks English.

Right, now that's off my chest no more radio phone ins for me.

What Happened to the Letter 'T'?

I don't think I'm an old fuddy duddy, not yet anyway. I'm not obsessive about the English language, or anal whatever that means. Language is a living, evolving thing and we should cherish that. But certain things grate with me, others really do make me pissed off.

One thing that gets me is that really annoying upward inflection at the end of sentences. It makes every statement sound like a question and I'm not sure whether it's people just watching too much Aussie or American TV or a politically correct fear of sounding too assertive. That is linked to people who do that silly quote sign around words with their fingers. Why don't they do full stops, commas, exclamation marks and others too?

Then there's abuse of the word 'like'. "He was like, err, and I was like, errr?" I read a cracking letter some time ago in the Telegraph about that. A woman was on the train to Salisbury and a girl, as the train pulled in asked: "Is this like Salisbury?" to which the woman replied: "No dear, it's not like Salisbury, it is Salisbury".

But what has been really bugging me lately is the dropping of the letter 't'. Butter becomes 'bu'er'. Twitter becomes 'Twi'er'. I hope that makes it clear, you must be aware of it if you are not a hermit. The other day I heard a singer being interviewed who did it all the time, even saying 'a all' instead of 'at all' which sounded like it took real effort to mispronounce, much more effort than just pronouncing it properly.

But the worst for it is Ed Milibandroid. He pisses me off anyway without speaking. But when he opens his gob and I hear that 't-less' drone it makes me determined to work as hard as I can to ensure he never steps foot in 10 Downing Street. I think you should too.

Obama's Lingo

It seems there's a bit of a fuss across the pond about the audio version of Obama's autobiography. He uses naughty words like 'sh*t' with an 'i' and 'mother f*cker' with a 'u'. Aparently words that a president should not use. Well I think it is blindingly obvious that presidents have sworn, and probably will again, they are supposed to be human after all.

So,if you want to hear the offending words, being read by an actor I presume, then visit April Winchell's website and her entry for February 5th.

There's also an excellent shot of a delightful French lady baring her breasts to Mickey Rourke. It's just a shame they weren't explosive, she could have also rid the world of the Fenian bastard!

No Spikki Inglis (Part 2)

"The second half was a crazy game and when it is a crazy game you can't control things. Why was it crazy? Because it was crazy."
Rafa Benitez - not crazy about Liverpool's draw at Wigan.

Bloody foreigners taking our jobs and not even learning the language properly! Perhaps all the English football managers should go on strike against these foreign workers.

Mind you, he has been learning English in Liverpool.

No Spikki Inglis!

More than 300 primary schools in England have a majority of children whose first language is not English.

The local education authority with the most primaries where English is not the mother-tongue of 70% or more pupils was Birmingham, with 60 schools.

The statistics were revealed by schools minister Sarah McCarthy-Fry after a parliamentary question from Labour's former minister Frank Field.

Now that statistic need not be a huge worry if those speaking English as a second language are the chldren of newly arrived immigrants who have some grasp of English and are making serious efforts to learn. My worry is that many have made little effort to learn and, with growing levels of militant Islam, have parents who don't care whether they speak the language of the infidel or not.

Language is a code, a means of communicating and that code must be as universal as possible. I do not see this as cultural or linguistic imperialism, as the left claim when this issue is raised, those most disadvantaged are the people who do not have sufficient English. Nor do I blame the children or, to a lesser extent, their parents. I blame the establishment.

The root cause of many of today's problems is the socialist revolution of the 1960s. It preached that western civilization and capitalism are bad therefore all else, especially if it loathes our western civilization, is good. It preached that society was bad and should be restructured, under vile authoritaian socialism, whilst encouraging the worst excesses of individualism that have damaged the very fabric of 'society' with a 'me, me, me' philosophy.

The very people who attack those who want to encourage integration, rather than ghettoisation, are the ones who vilify British people abroad for turning parts of sunnier climes into British enclaves. The height of hypocrisy.

Immigration need not cause problems to any country. It is those, on the left and the right, who use it for their own purposes who cause the problems. Language is the first, and most crucial step to integration, tolerance and understanding for all.

It like drives me mad!

Why have people suddenly started abusing the word 'like'?

I don't think I'm a fuddy-duddy old fart, not just yet, and I accept that language evolves, if it didn't we would still all be grunting like cavemen or speaking some form of Saxon or Norman French. But occasionally evolution becomes corruption. The abuse of 'like' is as maddening as that annoying upward inflection at the end of sentences that makes the user sound like he is asking a question with every sentence, I think it came over here with Aussie soap operas, I suspect the abuse of 'like' came from the United States.

Now, when I was at school 'like' was verb, a 'doing' word: I like, you like, he/she/it likes and so on. It was also a preposition as in "the EU is like 1984 come true". There is also the combination form such as "there was a blood-like substance on the carving knife".

But suddenly we get: "I was like driving this like BMW last week". STOP NOW!

Were you driving or doing something similar? Was it a BMW or a similar car? The person was actually driving a BMW so what was the point of the completely redundant 'likes'?

STOP IT NOW!

Not So Smug Britons

One of the first signs, to me at least, of a degree of anti-Americanism in a person is when they attack Yanks for not knowing that Ulam Bator is the capital of Mongolia, or that the River Keer runs through Carnforth, England. I then usually point out that the U.S.A. is the size of Europe so we are not comparing like with like. This survey, for National Geography Week, shows that there are plenty of dense Britons too.

The other thing that really riles me is when Britons self-flagellate over our perceived lack of foreign language skills. The answer to that is that we are just as skilled as any other people but which language do we learn? Dutch? German? Mandarin maybe or French? Then how often do we get to practice and use it? The problem, if there is one, is that English, like it or not, is a universal language. If German was the universal language we would be fluent in German as others are now in English, from necessity.

In Paraguay in 1991 we met a girl who worked at the airport who was learning English. She decided to be different at college and learned French because all the others were learning English. It was a mistake, she never got to use French as the world seemed to all speak English, she was then catching up.