One in three kids in Glasgow not native English speakers, new data shows

22 comments

1. The other 2/3rds people just can’t understand them anyway.

2. don’t worry, not speaking English properly will not harm their education or have any knock-on effects later in life.

3. Global white population is now 10%

4. I didn’t realise Glasgow had such a strong Gaelic speaking community. 🙂

5. Have you heard Scottish people? None of them are native “english” speakers.

6. Data is only of interest if it also includes how many speak good English as a 2nd language too.

7. Which doesn’t mean they don’t speak English, as the Daily Star wants you to believe, just that they have another language.

8. Is that because their native language is Scots?

9. This is English as second language. My Mum has English as her second language but she is entirely fluent in English and looking and listening to her you’d be convinced she is 100% British. Absolute fearmongering of an article.

10. Potentially good news for future Scotland teams

11. Ok so two thirds are native English speakers? I.e the overwhelming majority.

    And fyi- these figures of ‘non-native’ speakers includes those born here to immigrant parents, who wouldnt necessarily have heen speaking a lot of English at home. I.e the home primary language wouldnt be English.

12. Most of the people angry at this have worse English skills than the 1/3 of kids in Glasgow who aren’t native speakers

13. I grew up in Glasgow and for everyone playing this down, I can assure you, there is a serious immigration problem.

14. I think the people who worry most about things like this are people who only speak their first language fluently. So that it some how reads as ‘one in three kids in Glasgow can’t speak/can barely speak English.

    The childhood brain is exceptional at learning languages, this is a known neurological stage. Many of these kids will be fluent in English, many who aren’t yet will be soon.

    Without getting into the Celtic language except to point out such a statistic in parts of wales would include people whose first language is Welsh AND the fact that the majority of fluent Welsh speakers would have either have been raised bilingual or learned Welsh second –

    It’s harder I suppose for monolingual people raised speaking a language that is the majority spoken language in their country to understand bilingualism or even people speaking multiple languages fluently.

15. They still speak English, regardless of what the Daily Star suggests with this shit post if it’s first or second language.

16. Alternative headline “33% of schoolchildren in Glasgow are now functionally bilingual”.

    Sounds a lot better doesn’t it?

17. The native language in Glasgow is English? They need subtitles by default.

18. This is a very interesting viewpoint and I thank you for sharing it. I’d like to point out that I wasn’t suggesting there was no other reason one might feel this way other than intolerance, only that I couldn’t think of one. You have given me something to think about in that respect but I don’t really appreciate you categorising my thought as ludicrous.

    You say that taking pride in what makes you different has nothing to do with intolerance – what makes you different?

19. Insane

20. And that’s just the Glaswegians

21. Statistics are racist! Data is a Nazi! I swear I’m gonna superglue myself to a road and stop traffic if you don’t start hiding these facts from people!

22. Are you sure? it’s a bit of a strong accent. I pretty sure it’s English…. Pish!

Comments are closed.