Over 137,000 in the UK, can not speak English
 

[Almost one million people in England cannot English well or at all, new figures have shown.

Official statistics reveal that 10 per cent of the country's residents that were born overseas - equivalent to 932,208 people - speak little to no English.

A total of 794,332 people (8.6 per cent) cannot speak English well, while 137,876 people (1.4 per cent) are unable to speak it at all.]



This Costs a Fortune

They should learn to speak English - by Law


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...k-English.html

The NHS waste millions on interpreters

scandal

There is such an opportunity here to save probably millions for the NHS by asking people to bring their own interpreters, in the main people will end up bringing family members or friends.... so the cost will be low to the patient but save the NHS ...I wonder how many times interpreters are booked and the patient fails to show up for an appointment

It is totally free to learn English in the UK. Totally free... English for Speakers of Other Languages and English as a Second Language courses are not only free but available all over the country. I remember Shamima Begum's father speaking out against the government because his daughter had been radicalised in this country. He had to speak through an interpreter because he couldn't speak English after being here for more than 20 years. We're a ****ing joke.

Yes
but they refuse to go.......................

They have no choice

There should be no choice.

Tell that to the Labour Party.................

Its not just Labour it's been like this through 14 years of Tory rule and Labour before that, they have a choice, all they have to do is give notice that they will no longer be providing interpreters and people will have to bring their own, with AI translation apps its not a big deal any more anyway

Your colonisers forced people from other countries to speak English instead of learning their language. Also it takes a very long time to learn a language. I'm sure a lot of people counted are in the process.

I bet you speak Portugese and if you dont you have to take an interpreter with you to hospital appointment :shrug: why should it be any different in the UK

The Portugese colonised Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique so by that logic Portugal should be stumping up for interpreters as well

And if they are not speaking English I'd imagine they are on benefits

Yeah it reminds me a bit of 90 day fiancé,where people travel overseas and don't even bother to learn for e.g Spanish or Filipino .

So they proceed to rely heavily on & lazily on Google translate, it's definitely difficult to learn a new language. And takes a long time ( I wish I was multilingual myself it's actually a regret of mine that I didn't learn) ,but I understand it takes patience & time to put in .... especially when communication and adapting is important.


I think some people get so used to having translators,that they end up solely depending on that... which just makes life more of a struggle unfortunately.

Yes Cherie
it goes back many years

PM Starmer - The Fool

Is more worried about Ukraine,

So nothing will change

The UK remains the wrong kind of coloniser, obviously.

Those people don't want to speak english. They want to speak their own languages.
They should know English as well.

I worked in southern Italy for a while and I leaned the language.

Yes could be

Yes working is a great way to learn the local language.

Yeah, I worked very hard to learn Portuguese but it took me a long time, even now I struggle with tenses. I didn't know a lick of it when I moved here.

There are so many in my workplace who don't know English at all. Others don't want to speak English, they only speak in their own language.
Which is rude in front of those who don't
.

I already knew a bit of English, but really learnt it watching EastEnders :joker:

While I accept that when living in a country, people should at least attempt to learn the language - I would say that us Brits are notorious hypocrites when it comes to this, and there are Brits living all over the world in non-English-speaking countries, who don't speak a word of anything other than English.

i've always attempted to speak in the language of the country i'm visiting, some times i failed spectacularly. I remember one time when i was in a french hotel at breakfast, and i replied to the waitress in russian and they looked at me like i was crazy :laugh:

Hence why it should go both ways , there's no way I'd emigrate to say ... France or Italy and not even attempt to learn the language. You can't go around 24/7 with Google translate in your hand.. it's not always practical,and I'm sure the locals would just laugh at the Brits .