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ARTS AND CULTURE

Language and prejudice

  • 22 March 2020
On the 31st of January, the United Kingdom officially left the European Union. On that day, residents of a tower block in the ancient city of Norwich were greeted by notices headed Happy Brexit Day. 

The notice stated that ‘we do not tolerate people speaking languages other than English in these flats,’ and included an invitation to people who wished to speak their own languages to return to their countries of origin. The gist of the notice was that ‘we’ are reclaiming our country, our once great island, after ‘infection’ by other ethnic groups. There was, of course, no indication of who ‘we’ might be.

It was a relief to learn that the notices were speedily taken down, and that the offence was reported to the local police, who announced they were investigating the incident as a hate crime. And local neighbourhoods protested against evidence of such prejudice, with the main messages being ‘Norwich is just not like that,’ and ‘Everybody is welcome here.’

But I have been bemused to read the result of a recent poll taken in Britain. It suggests that 26 per cent of people feel ‘uncomfortable’ when hearing foreign languages spoken. Me, I feel envious, simply wishing that I was more of a linguist. I admit I even envy my own children, who are bilingual. They switch between Greek and English so easily it is as if they have a button in the relevant part of their brains, while my own switch-over entails a definite and possibly audible grinding of cerebral gears.

As children in the monoglot Australia of the 1950s, my sister and I realised the attention-grabbing nature of foreign languages. We tried to make up our own language, and enjoyed talking it to each other as we walked suburban streets. Never mind that it was gobbledegook that even we could not understand. People at the shops certainly looked at us, and we hoped they thought we were clever.

I have just read, and it certainly makes sense, that polyglots have always been in the majority. Geography has to be a contributing factor to this; I once knew an immigrant child whose parents, from Central Europe, knew ten languages between them, and there must have been many children like him.

Circumstances also often decide the linguistic future, as I learned when a friend of mine once told me that his parents were Russian and Ukrainian, and that he had learned German
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