UK, Ireland /
An Englishman's View on Polish flocking to the UK [53]
i know there's a lot of Poles ..... but the most spoken language in Britain being Polish ?
I kind of agree with this point, and I live in a town without a huge amount of Polish. Many other towns have far more Polish as a percentage of the population than where I live.
Although it all depends on what you do or work at, or where you live. Speaking about only my small perspective, and that perspective is most certainly PRO-Polish, when I get on the bus in the morning, the most common language I hear is Polish. I have worked on shifts where I was the only native English speaker and spoke more Polish during that shift than I did English.
If I go for a cigarette break, most people there are Polish.
If I go for a beer in a certain pub after work, I can buy a Zyweic and sit and natter with the Poles. If I went around the corner from this pub, the street is mostly Polish.
The common factor in all of these points? I'm an agency worker and so are many Poles. I smoke, and it seems (though maybe wrongly) that more Poles smoke than English, I don't have a car now and get the bus to work, as do many Poles. The pub I drink in is a WetherSpoons and is very cheap...which is great if your a low paid worker, as are many of the Poles who also work on the agency. The street around the corner from the pub is mainly B+B's and are cheap to rent.
Like any other influx of people into this country, initially they'll group together in low paid jobs and low cost housing. Like the Asians did in the 1960's. As time goes on, they'll become settled, make friends who are natives, get better jobs and integrate and disperse amongst the wider society.
But yeah, to return to the point, even in this town, Polish can be the predominant language... AT TIMES. (but that's great for me as I'm learning the language!)
