The Education Secretary’s recent announcement that he wants state schools to start teaching Latin again was met with a mixture of disbelief and assorted expletives. It is a predictably badly thought-out initiative. At a purely practical level the question is whether this will mean increasing total teaching hours per week. Or will some other subject […]
Write to us at editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk Why would anyone learn a foreign language just now? For the moment we can’t travel beyond our shores, and we’ve lost the freedom of movement within Europe that we enjoyed as part of the EU. Besides, doesn’t everyone speak English? Well actually they don’t, and anyway, even if you never left […]
Write to us at editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk Martin Griffiths looks at the impact of history on language transference and music. A 1986 BBC TV series and subsequent book, “The Story of English” (McCrum, Cran and MacNeil) says that: “‘Black English’ [or African-American Vernacular English] is the product of one of the most infamous episodes in the history of […]