Matt Goodwin

Maremia

It has been scientifically proven, and is an educational reality, that speaking another language is intellectually beneficial.

Only people who can speak another language with some degree of fluency can understand that our thought processes are, to some extent, limited by the language we have at our disposal.

People who understand other languages are able to be more creative in the way they express themselves and can describe states for which some languages do not have the vocabulary.

It's no surprise that bilingualism has cognitive benefits.

I have to laugh I’m afraid, what effort did the “ex-pats” make to learn the language of the people’s countries they invaded, sorry. Chose to live in!

I have a really good friend living in Spain, her parents moved there when she was 21, she chose to stay in the UK and only moved there about 8 years ago.

Her mother, in her 70’s speaks little Spanish, shops at Lidl’s and once a month gets a coach into Gibraltar for fish & chips and to shop at Morrisons, her coach is full of Brits living in Spain.

Maria, my friend, enrolled in Spanish classes the moment she arrived, mixes with both locals and ladies from across the globe and is totally integrated.

Cossy

foxie48

Children from English speaking families go to Welsh medium schools and cope easily becoming bilingual. It is said that being bilingual improves cognitive skills. MG's book is neither properly researched nor based on fact. IMO it's designed to appeal to those who want their racist opinions validated by someone pretending to have written an academic book.

Exactly! Our nephew is about to start school here, he’s 4, he’s lived here all his life with his Turkish Dad and British Mum, he and Dad are both fluent in English and Turkish, Mum, despite being a bright academic person, speaks “pigeon” Turkish.

A perfect case study. Your nephew will probably continue to be able to speak Turkish all his life, although he will need to be taught to read and write it.

As he he starts school, he will make new friends and speak English with them and English will be the medium of instruction. Eventually, he will leave school, hopefully get a job and maybe start his own family. Speaking Turkish will probably not be an advantage in the workplace and it's likely that he will have a relationship/marry a non-Turkish speaker. Any children are unlikely to learn how to speak Turkish, although their grandfather might teach them the odd word.

The grandchildren will be to all intents and purposes be British (if they stay in the UK) and their skin will probably be pale. They will count as White British. Who cares that they will have one Turkish grandparent? It doesn't take long to go through a family tree and find one foreign-born ancestor (even if the "foreign" is Irish).

The melting pot of backgrounds is what makes the UK the unique place it is!

It has been scientifically proven, and is an educational reality, that speaking another language is intellectually beneficial.

Maremia

If the author cannot support all of his 'facts' with authentic references, why should we bother to believe any of his writing?

Why indeed! Perhaps that’s why many of us won’t be wasting our lives reading his words?

twaddle

Thank you Cossy. I was beginning to think that I'd written something different.

You’re welcome, at times I feel I’m in a parallel universe!

twaddle

I dare say that nobody knew very much about the background of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, Jews from Central Europe and many others who arrived over the years.

None of the people arriving now are arriving in bigger concentrations than in the past. They're not bringing axes and displacing whole villages either.

It is a myth that huge numbers of people are arriving undocumented.

But we don’t know these people? Whatever that might mean?

If all my neighbours were to suddenly all moved house and new neighbours arrived, I wouldn’t know them or where they came from!

It’s a pointless comment

Thank you Cossy. I was beginning to think that I'd written something different.

foxie48

Children from English speaking families go to Welsh medium schools and cope easily becoming bilingual. It is said that being bilingual improves cognitive skills. MG's book is neither properly researched nor based on fact. IMO it's designed to appeal to those who want their racist opinions validated by someone pretending to have written an academic book.

Exactly! Our nephew is about to start school here, he’s 4, he’s lived here all his life with his Turkish Dad and British Mum, he and Dad are both fluent in English and Turkish, Mum, despite being a bright academic person, speaks “pigeon” Turkish.

sundowngirl

"Within two or three generations, immigrants are fully integrated linguistically"

It shouldn't take two to three generations to learn the language of the country they're making their home in. They should want to integrate.

That’s not what was said! What was said was children learn our language very quickly and integrate quickly, but by the third generation their original mother tongue is no longer readily spoken!

Graphite

Exactly, CLG. Andy Twelves made that point in the debate but Goodwin didn't want to hear that. It's a very odd stance for someone who claims repeatedly to be a serious academic, to want to ignore evidence.

It reminds me of the Simon & Garfunkel lyric: A man he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

There was a strange bit in the debate when Twelves quoted a sourced statistic about EAL pupils performing better than the average. Goodwin dismissed it as an opinion, which it wasn't - it was a fact.

foxie48

Children from English speaking families go to Welsh medium schools and cope easily becoming bilingual. It is said that being bilingual improves cognitive skills. MG's book is neither properly researched nor based on fact. IMO it's designed to appeal to those who want their racist opinions validated by someone pretending to have written an academic book.

Spot on!

I dare say that nobody knew very much about the background of the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings, Normans, Huguenots, Jews from Central Europe and many others who arrived over the years.

None of the people arriving now are arriving in bigger concentrations than in the past. They're not bringing axes and displacing whole villages either.

It is a myth that huge numbers of people are arriving undocumented.

BlueBelle

Meanrogrog having family in NZ I was reading up the other day on how the young are all leaving NZ May have to think that through again 🤣

All those so afraid of immigration don’t forget this whole country has been built by immigrants, mostly coming here in boats, I for one have proud ‘Viking’ genes.
USA another continent built by immigrants

Yes this country has been built by immigrants who came in dribs and drabs over centuries. They were able to slowly integrate. They did not arrive in the huge numbers we are now seeing. We don’t know anything about many people coming here.

Children from English speaking families go to Welsh medium schools and cope easily becoming bilingual. It is said that being bilingual improves cognitive skills. MG's book is neither properly researched nor based on fact. IMO it's designed to appeal to those who want their racist opinions validated by someone pretending to have written an academic book.

Exactly, CLG. Andy Twelves made that point in the debate but Goodwin didn't want to hear that. It's a very odd stance for someone who claims repeatedly to be a serious academic, to want to ignore evidence.

It reminds me of the Simon & Garfunkel lyric: A man he hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Absolutely Maremia.
With regard to children speaking another language at home, my seven year old GC in Norway speak English at home, but in a recent year - wide language screening in school, they equalled, and, in some cases, out performed, their peers .

If the author cannot support all of his 'facts' with authentic references, why should we bother to believe any of his writing?

Families who have settled in the UK, who have wider family in their homeland won’t want their children to lose their mother tongue entirely else they will struggle to communicate with, say, grandparents who have stayed behind. That is the case with my neighbours referred to upthread. There is always the possibility that they may want to return to their homeland if the war ever ends or a British government does not give or rescinds ILR so they need their children to retain their mother tongue.

In my experience, and I volunteer-teach English to refugees, men, women and pre-school children, they do want to integrate and would do more but for the barriers and hostility they can sometimes face.

I don’t think one can become fluent in a second language unless immersed in that language. No amount of Duolingo or weekly classes will do that. One has to hear language spoken regularly with all its errors and colloquialisms. Radio and television helps. I speak a decent amount of French and German but am not fluent. I listen to French and German internet radio stations, watch TV dramas (Walter Presents on C4) and can follow about 70%-80% of what is said but it can be challenging depending on the complexity of the subject and speed of the speakers.

Children are remarkably good at language acquisition and want to blend with their classmates. Accents are soon lost. Code -switching may be common in bi and tri-lingual families. It’s very common in near-Asian families, adults and children alike, who switch easily between Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali etc and English depending on context. The younger the speaker, the more English is used.

I doubt Goodwin read any books on sociolinguistics before he wrote his book or knows anything about language development in children or adults else he would or should have referenced them.

sundowngirl

"Within two or three generations, immigrants are fully integrated linguistically"

It shouldn't take two to three generations to learn the language of the country they're making their home in. They should want to integrate.

Even people who want to integrate often find there are barriers stopping them from doing so, created by people who don't want them to integrate.

Have you ever learnt a foreign language from scratch? If so, how long did it take you to become fluent? Fluency usually takes about seven years. Even then, people usually have trouble with a few sounds and sound slightly foreign until the day they die.

Children growing up in a foreign country learn language from their peers at school. They don't have a foreign accent. They usually have the advantage of learning the language spoken at home, which is why they are bilingual. So-called EAL children very often are fluent English speakers. Goodwin is wrong!

Their children often lose the bilingualism, unless parents make a special effort to speak the original native tongue at home. That's why it takes two or three generations to become fully integrated.

"Within two or three generations, immigrants are fully integrated linguistically"

It shouldn't take two to three generations to learn the language of the country they're making their home in. They should want to integrate.

Throughout history, immigrants learn the language they need for necessary transactions. Often they go further, if they want to integrate more and/or gain promotions or for social prestige. Their children are usually bilingual, but grandchildren and succeeding generations usually lose the ability to speak the immigrant's native tongue and adopt the language of the host country. Within two or three generations, immigrants are fully integrated linguistically.

Source: "The Stories of English" by David Crystal who was a Professor of Linguistics and knows a lot more about languages than Matt Goodwin.

Foxie. I recorded and watched it. I saw a very angry Matt Goodwin utterly demolished by Andy Twelves in a heated debate, well-chaired by Miriam Cates. It’s worth seeing if it’s available on catch up. Dewbs & Co Friday 27 March at 6:00pm.

Goodwin could not explain why his many quotes could not be verified, only said that any “typos” would be corrected in the next 48 hours.

When asked about peer review, he claimed that all his population projections had been verified by “world-leading demographers”. When Twelves asked him to name them, he couldn’t.

It was a common theme, that he couldn’t reference what he’d written. He was at pains to point out that he was an experienced academic. So why hasn’t he?

A key plank of his argument is that he doesn’t accept that children whose first language is not English (EAL) can also be fluent English.

Now we all know how quickly children’s language skills develop. Two years ago, my own neighbours came to the UK from a country at war. They have two delightful boys, now 9 and 5. I can barely get my tongue around their first language, though the boys try to teach me words across the garden fence for ant, bee, beetle, butterfly, ladybird, spider, slug, snail and worm. Little one is learning about "mini-beasts" at school. I hear them speaking in a mix of English and their mother tongue with their parents but they are fluent in English with me, understand what I am saying to them. Their parents say they are doing very well as school.

Just one anecdotal story but Twelves statistics, given during the debate, suggest this is the case across the country and that EAL pupils soon learn to equal and even exceed those with English as a first language in proficiency.

I won't watch GB news so I didn't see the Andy Twelves/Matt Goodwin confrontation, however I did come across the following review by AT of "Suicide of a Nation". link below. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing I've pasted a copy below. tbh it tells me exactly why I don't watch GB news!
www.thenerve.news/p/matt-goodwin-suicide-of-a-nation-reform-uk-chatgpt-ai-errors-hallucinations-andy-twelves

"Among these were a false report about Bradford classrooms that appear nowhere on the internet and aren’t credited elsewhere, an Ofsted inspection report quote that doesn’t exist, a string of invented or misattributed quotations from Cicero, Livy, Hayek, Burnham, Noah Webster, Walker Connor, even Sir Roger Scruton, someone Goodwin claims was one of his biggest influences. Add to that basic factual errors, one claim that Boris Johnson’s was in Opposition in 2019, mistakes about visa breakdowns, misunderstandings about how institutions actually function, and what you’re left with is something far more troubling than polemic or spin. This is a body of work that repeatedly attacks the credibility of those in authority, but collapses under even light scrutiny, revealing a patchwork of half-truths, distortions, and, in several cases, claims and quotes that simply don’t appear to exist."

Thanks for posting that link, Graphite. I remembered the story, but I couldn't remember the man's name. How sad that the mother didn't want to talk about the "black man" in front of the children.

The truth is that we all have foreign DNA. Most people, in time, become integrated. It's nonsense to talk about "White British" as though some people are thoroughbred racehorses.

Some form of common culture with common aims is more important in forming social cohesion and an idea of common nationhood. It seems that Goodwin and Co are determined that there should be divisions.