Historical text: Mind Your Language

Mind Your Language was a British comedy television series originally shown on ITV, between 1977 and 1979. Produced by LWT and directed by Stuart Allen, it was set in a language school in London, with Barry Evans as the night school English language teacher for a group of assorted foreigners.

The series was known for its humorous take on national stereotypes: the German woman was dour and humourless; the French woman was sexy and flirtatious; the Swedish woman was liberated and straightforwardly sex-mad; the Chinese woman a rampant Maoist; while the Sikh and Pakistani men were often on the brink of war, and the Spaniard, the Greek and the Italian were macho. Much of the humour also stemmed from the trouble the students had with the English language, their often outrageous speech patterns and the students' hilarious mispronunciations of English. In the politically correct days of the late 1990s the show was criticised, but in its day the show was popular with people of many backgrounds because of its light-hearted take on multiculturalism and because it gave some otherwise unrepresented minorities a television presence.

It was cancelled in 1979 by Michael Grade, then LWT's Deputy Controller of Entertainment, who considered the stereotyping offensive. Nevertheless it was sold to other countries where it found amazing popularity, including Pakistan, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia and Singapore . It was also one of the first British TV programmes shown in South Africa after the end of the boycott by Equity. It was even resurrected, briefly, for the export market by an independent producer, in the late 1980s. Only Granada Television transmitted the final 13 episodes consecutively as a complete series. Some ITV companies didn't show any of the episodes made in 1986. The programme was remade for US television as What a Country! In India, a comedy serial based on Mind Your Language was aired on DD2. In the program Zaban Sambhal Ke (Hindi for Mind Your Language) people from diverse regional Indian background studied Hindi.

Even though it has a "light-hearted take on multiculturism" it most definetley tapped into real anxieties of the British people which was further fuelled with the rise of the National Front. in the 1970s.