Speaking English

I'm from the UK. 'That's nice', I hear you say, or 'So What?'. I grant you, it's not enough simply to announce that and stop. I'm from the UK and -

• proud of it
• unrepentant
• sometimes a bit embarrassed
• I don't bite
• I speak English

Now when I say I speak English I mean English English, not Singapore English of American English, nor Australian English. The English I speak is the Mother Tongue - a wonderful bastard language made up from every conceivable root language and freely given to anyone who wants to speak it. Canadians speak wonderful English too, and the Scots, who have a perfectly good, well-developed language of their own, also speak it, some more accurately than those of us who live in England.

Yes, everyone, well, nearly everyone, speaks English. But can you spell it? No. Can the average English person spell the language? No. Can we pronounce our own language - well, not all of us. There are many variations across a tiny little land mass. From simple differences like the north v south vowel differences so beloved by comedians - you know, 'bath' and 'barth' for a place we get clean in, to the simply inexcusable inability to pronounce 'pronunciation' which has never had a second 'o' and therefore isn't pronounced like 'pronounc i a tion', English is a language full of pitfalls for the unwary.

I cannot imagine how people whose first language is not English ever get close to getting it right, but they do. I speak two or three languages inadequately, and English really well - while there are incomers to the UK who speak, for example, German, Czech, French, Polish and English. And we regularly winge because they don't get it quite right when they are doing all the jobs in our houses that no-one else wants to do, or doesn't want a fools ransom for.

Love my language. There's nothing like it. But I will be eternally grateful that I was born to it. I might never have got to first base if I had started with French!