CyclopsRock
Member
We speak a lot about immigrants coming to the UK and failing to integrate and yet we pretty much refuse to integrate in Europe, hardly anyone is multilingual, we just expect everyone to speak English, where ever we happen to be, we take a sideways glance at any other nationally because we think they want to take from us.
There are loads of things that I don't need to know and thus haven't actually learned. Plate spinning. Heart bypass surgery. Polite dogging etiquette. English is the lingua franca. I admire people who can speak multiple languages and I appreciate that it's a skill with benefits beyond the direct usefulness of that language. But all that time that we don't spend learning other languages can be used to learn other things, which also bring their own benefits. English being the lingua franca is a benefit to be mined, not a source of national shame.