Show caption Boris Johnson before a hustings event with leadership rival Jeremy Hunt in Cardiff on 6 July 2019. David Metcalfe points out that Welsh was being spoken in these islands before English ever was. Photograph: Reuters If there is a ‘native’ language of Britain, Boris Johnson, it certainly isn’t English Letters David Metcalfe and Andrew Cranmer respond to the report that the Tory leadership frontrunner has pledged to make immigrants learn English so that they ‘feel British’ Mon 8 Jul 2019 17.36 BST Share on Facebook

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You reported Boris Johnson saying at a hustings event for the Conservative leadership race that he wanted “everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be, and to feel, British – that’s the most important thing – and to learn English” (Johnson pledges to make immigrants learn English so that they ‘feel British’, 6 July).

To acknowledge the fact that being British is historically, culturally and linguistically more nuanced than simply being or speaking English, perhaps Mr Johnson may wish to consider expanding his pledge by encouraging the English (Anglo-Saxon) immigrants to the British Isles to learn the languages of those who preceded them to these shores, the Cymru (language Cymraeg) and the Gaels (languages Gàidhlig and Gaeilge), and to better respect the languages of their fellow immigrants who have arrived subsequently (from British empire territories, British Commonwealth countries and elsewhere).

Perhaps if he demonstrated a fuller appreciation of the depth, breadth and dynamics of the human backstory to multi-indigenous, multi-ethnic, multicultural, multilingual Britain, Mr Johnson might be able more convincingly to present himself to the peoples living in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland today as having prime ministerial potential.

Otherwise, he may well find himself presiding over the disintegration of a relatively short-lived (just over 300 years) constitutional consensus in the ongoing political journey of the British Isles.

David Metcalfe

Bath

• Most press coverage suggests that Boris Johnson’s recent comments on immigrants learning English were about them improving English as a foreign language. But, as you report, what he actually said was: “Too often there are parts of our country … where English is not spoken by some people as their first language and that needs to be changed.”

There are many, many people who have lived in the UK for perhaps decades and who speak English as well, or better, than those born here. However, English will never be their first language. Which points to forced repatriation as being the only way to satisfy Mr Johnson. Straight out of the extreme right playbook.

Of course, Mr Johnson, the master of obfuscation, will say that’s not what he meant, and all he wants is that people who move here learn to speak English. If that’s really what he meant, he could have said it. But he didn’t. And I strongly suspect that he didn’t because what he actually said was what he actually meant.

Andrew Cranmer

Woking, Surrey

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