Migrants to the UK are to be quizzed about their English skills before being able to claim income-related benefits, the government has announced.

In a move to “protect the integrity(完整性)of the benefits system”, people will also be asked what efforts they have made to find work before coming to Britain. Work and Pensions Secretary Duncan Smith said people should not be able to “take advantage” of British benefits. Job centres in England, Scotland and Wales will use the “more mighty” test. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said the test would ensure “only migrants who have a legal right to be in Britain and plan to contribute to this country can make a claim for benefits”.

“For the first time, migrants will be quizzed about what efforts they have made to find work before coming to the UK and whether their English language skills will be a barrier to them finding employment,” the DWP said in a statement.

Income-related benefits include council tax benefit, housing benefit, income-based jobseeker’s allowance and pension credit.

Mr. Duncan Smith said British people were “rightly concerned” that migrants should contribute to the economy and should not be “drawn here by the attractiveness of our benefits system”.

“It is vitally important that we have strict rules in place to protect the integrity of our benefits system,” he said. He said the new test would help create a fair system which provided for “genuine” workers and jobseekers but “does not allow people to come to our country and take advantage”.

To claim the benefits, migrants will have to pass a “habitual residence test” including more than 100 extra questions compared to now. This will be overseen by an “intelligent IT system” which will ensure questions are “tailored to each individual claimant”.

Migrants will be allowed to claim benefits if they can prove they are legally allowed to be in Britain and are “habitually resident” of the country. As part of this they might be questioned about what measures they have taken to “establish” themselves in Britain and what ties they still have abroad.

“They will also have to provide more evidence that they are doing everything they can to find a job,” the DWP said.

These days, young people in some English-speaking countries are speaking a strange language, especially when communicating on social media.

Look at these words chosen by The Washington Post: “David Bowie dying is totes tradge” and “When Cookie hugged Jamal it made me totes emosh.” Or this sentence: “BAE. let me know if you stay in tonight.”

What on earth do they mean? Well, “totes” is a short form of “total if Similarly,” “tradge” mean: “tragic” and “emosh” means “emotional”. It seems that, for millennials, typing in this form is no only time-saving but fashionable.

As you can see, many millennial slangs are formed by so-called “totesing”— the systematic abbreviation of words. The trend might have started with “totally” becoming “totes”. but it now has spread to many other English words.

The origins of other millennial slangs are more complex than “totesing”. “Bae”, for example, has been widely used by African-Americans for years. It can be an expression of closeness with one's romantic partner or, like “sweetheart”, for someone without romantic connection. After pop singer Pharrell used the word in his work, “bae” became mainstream.

Some people might think millennial slangs lower the value of the English language, but Melboume University linguist Rosey Billington doesn't agree. She says when people are able to use a language in a creative way, they show that they know the language rules well enough to use words differently. Two other linguists, Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, share the sane view. The two analysed hundreds of examples of totes-speak and discovered totesing has complex roots. It isn't simply an adult version of baby talk, nor a clever way to minimize your word count. Rather, it is a highly organized system that relies on a speaker's mastery of English pronunciation. It is about sounds, follows sound system of English and has strict rules.

Just as in the Caribbean, the English language arrived in South Asia as a result of colonization (殖民). Unlike its history in the Caribbean, however, English has always co-existed in the Indian subcontinent alongside thousands of local languages. So for most of the population, it has only ever been a second language.

The British first arrived in India in the early1600s and soon established trading posts in a number of cities under the control of The East India Company. By 1765 the company’s influence had grown to such an extent that the British were effectively controlling most parts of the country. This date is often taken as the start of what is referred to as The Raj — a period of British rule in India that lasted until Independence in 1947.

At first, English was only taught to the local population through the work of Christian missionaries (传教士) — there were no official attempts to force the language on the masses. But by the 1700s, English had firmly established itself as the language of administration and many educated Indians were demanding instruction in English as a means of social advancement. By 1857 universities had opened in Bombay, Calcutta and Madros. English was increasingly accepted as the language of government, of the social elite (精英), and of the national press.

After Independence, India became a nation state, and it was intended that English would be phased out as the language of administration. But there was no simple solution as to which language should replace it. At first Hindi, the most widely spoken language, seemed to be the obvious choice, but since violent protests in 1963 in the state of Tamil Nadu against Hindi as a national language, opinion has remained divided. In a country with over 1.3 billion people and more than a thousand languages, it is difficult to choose a single national language, as mother tongue speakers of that language would automatically enjoy greater social status and have easier access to positions of power and influence.

Despite continued pressure from nationalists, English remains at the heart of Indian society. It is widely used in the media, in higher education and government and therefore remains a common means of communication , both among the ruling classes, and between speakers of mutually unintelligible (难以理解的) languages.