One of my English students is quite a talker. He does not formulate his sentences grammatically correct, but he gets his ideas across, all the time scrutinising your face and looking for signs that he has been understood. When he concludes that you did not get him, he tries again in a different way. He is not easily put off.
His English is clearly of one who has acquired enough knowledge of the language to get by but who never advanced beyond the stage of throwing nouns and verbs at you without connecting them in the right way. He knows his deficiency and one day he confessed to me that he had made a big, a very big mistake. At asking what he meant he replied that he should have attended English courses 25 years ago, when he first arrived in the UK. Now his memory was full and it was very difficult for him to unlearn the broken English which he had picked up during all those years of trying to converse with neighbours and colleagues.
His big mistake would not have mattered so much, he added, within 50 years time or so, but alas he would not live that long. I did not know whether I understood him correctly, but apparently I had, because he continued to explain half-jokingly that by that time the UK would be mostly populated by Asians and he would not need English anymore. I started to say that migration was getting more difficult, but he cut me short and made it clear that he did not have migration in mind. "We big families", he said, "many children". And making a wave with his hand indicating a few generations he said half-jokingly again: "the UK will be ours".
I did not begrudge him his little enjoyment of being in power one day, even though I don't believe for a second that it will ever happen. I rather expect birth rates of cultural communities to fall with the rise in education, particularly of the women, as has been the case everywhere in the world. But why bring in sobering remarks? After all, as a member of a minority grouping he is rather powerless and he knows it: his limited English is a constant reminder.
Ton
L-R: Mark Van Beeumen MSC, Ton Zwart MSC and Con O'Connell MSC
Tuesday 24 May 2011
Tuesday 3 May 2011
Royal wedding
The wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton last Friday was a great success. According to the BBC 24 million people in the UK alone tuned in to see the wedding on TV and another 10 million viewed at least part of the ceremony. The streets of London were busy too: it is estimated that a million people took the trouble to go out in the streets and catch a glimpse of the newly-wed couple and the royal family. It was great entertainment indeed.
Still these figures do not tell the whole story. It was obvious to me that in the Westminster Abbey most of the people present were white, with black and in particular Asian people being underrepresented. Perhaps this comes as no surprise: the elite of British society are still mostly the old ensconced classes, in spite of Kate herself being of middle class origin and further down the line of miners’ descent.
Changes are indeed taking place. Not just that one day a commoner may become the queen consort of the King, but also a shift is taking place in the ownership of economic enterprises. From steel makers (former Corus is now Tata Steel) to football clubs (Blackburn Rovers) investors from the Indian subcontinent have come in to make their economic clout felt in the home land of their former coloniser.
I wanted very much to estimate the Asian portion of the people lining the streets of London. It was simply not possible: the camera’s, not surprisingly, had another focus. My hunch, though, is that the Asians among them were very few and not only that but also that they did not watch the TV coverage of the event in great numbers.
My hunch is based on two small incidents which took place some months ago. During one of the English classes I’m assisting in the tutor asked the learners: who is the head of state of the UK? To my astonishment the learners, all Asian of long stay in England, did not come up with the answer. They only knew it was a woman, it was a queen, but even their combined effort did not provide the name of the queen!
The other incident involved primary school children of Asian descent. A few of them came into our house and right at that moment the queen was shown on TV walking towards her car to go back to Buckingham Palace. We asked the children: do you know that lady? Their faces showed it all; they had no clue whatsoever. They did not even know that they were watching the queen.
These incidents made me think that Asians seem to have their own media from which they get their news and entertainment. These are not in the English language and apparently their contents are far from the English scene as well.
Ton
Still these figures do not tell the whole story. It was obvious to me that in the Westminster Abbey most of the people present were white, with black and in particular Asian people being underrepresented. Perhaps this comes as no surprise: the elite of British society are still mostly the old ensconced classes, in spite of Kate herself being of middle class origin and further down the line of miners’ descent.
Changes are indeed taking place. Not just that one day a commoner may become the queen consort of the King, but also a shift is taking place in the ownership of economic enterprises. From steel makers (former Corus is now Tata Steel) to football clubs (Blackburn Rovers) investors from the Indian subcontinent have come in to make their economic clout felt in the home land of their former coloniser.
I wanted very much to estimate the Asian portion of the people lining the streets of London. It was simply not possible: the camera’s, not surprisingly, had another focus. My hunch, though, is that the Asians among them were very few and not only that but also that they did not watch the TV coverage of the event in great numbers.
My hunch is based on two small incidents which took place some months ago. During one of the English classes I’m assisting in the tutor asked the learners: who is the head of state of the UK? To my astonishment the learners, all Asian of long stay in England, did not come up with the answer. They only knew it was a woman, it was a queen, but even their combined effort did not provide the name of the queen!
The other incident involved primary school children of Asian descent. A few of them came into our house and right at that moment the queen was shown on TV walking towards her car to go back to Buckingham Palace. We asked the children: do you know that lady? Their faces showed it all; they had no clue whatsoever. They did not even know that they were watching the queen.
These incidents made me think that Asians seem to have their own media from which they get their news and entertainment. These are not in the English language and apparently their contents are far from the English scene as well.
Ton
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