“It is very important to think of integration as a two-way street,” says Wendy Ayres-Bennett.
She means that Britons should learn the languages of migrants, so as to make them feel welcome.
But she is wrong. In Britain today, integration is a one-way street. The direction it travels is toward the Muslim migrants, with no end of appeasement and accommodation of them. Integration will be complete when Britain becomes a Sharia state, as it will before too very long.
“Cambridge professor calls on Brits to learn Urdu and Polish to make migrants feel welcome,” Express, January 17, 2017:
BRITONS should learn languages such as Polish, Punjabi and Urdu to make immigrant families feel more at home, according to a Cambridge University professor.
Many more English speakers should think of immigration as a ‘two-way street’ and be able to communicate in another language to aid integration and social cohesion, said academic Wendy Ayres-Bennett.
The call folows two major reports into integration in British society which called on immigrants to learn English if they want to live in the UK.
And today it was described as a ‘retrograde step’.
Stewart Jackson, whose Peterborough constituency has suffered from the impact of high immigration, said: “It’s important that new migrants integrate into British society and support British values and that means – for their own self interest and the good of society – learning and speaking and reading English.
“This demand flies in the face of government policy and good community relations and would be a retrograde step .”
Prof Ayres-Bennett, head of French philology and linguistics at the University of Cambridge and leader of the MEITS project promoting multi-lingualism, said: “It is very important to think of integration as a two-way street.
“I would like to see more opportunities for British people to learn some of the community languages of the UK, such as Polish, Punjabi and Urdu, particularly in areas where there are high numbers of those speakers, so that there is some mutual effort in understanding the others’ language and culture.
“Even a basic knowledge would be beneficial, which might be acquired formally or through engaging in joint community projects.
“Considering the issue from the point of view of language learning, we rightly expect immigrants to learn English but, as a nation, we often don’t see the need ourselves to learn another language, and consider it to be something difficult and only for the intellectual elite.”…