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The Night Mail


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1 hour ago, Doncaster Green said:

When I was at school the language you learnt was chosen for you.  If they believed you had an Oxbridge chance you took Latin. 

 

I've never understood the logic there. As an Oxford undergraduate, I never found myself struggling through lack of Latin. There was a nominal requirement for an O-level pass in a language; one of my peers scraped a C at his third attempt, only to be told "in your case the requirement would have been dispensed with" (he'd won a scholarship). We moth read physics, a subject for which a slight acquaintance with German was marginally useful.

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11 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

The English language originated in Northern Holland and was brought to the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxons.

not entirely

Quote from Wiki..

 

Nearly 60% of the vocabulary in the English language comes from Latin and its descendants, mainly French:

Langue d'oïl (French): 29.3%

Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin and Frankish (Germanic language): 28.7%

Germanic languages: 24% (inherited from Old English/Anglo-Saxon, Proto-Germanic, Old Norse, etc. without including Germanic words borrowed from a Romance languages)

Greek: 5.32%

Italian, Spanish and Portuguese: 4.03%

Derived from proper names: 3.28%

All other languages: less than 1%

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50 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

The English language originated in Northern Holland and was brought to the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxons.

 

Just to pile on the rivet counting, that's hardly where even Old English originated, merely where some of the speakers of its earlier forms were living before they crossed the North Sea. Even the Anglo-Saxon that we have is heavily influenced by Latin, which is hardly surprising since it was all written down by churchmen who were pretty much bilingual. 

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I once heard Alan Coren on the Radio 4 The News Programme when something about relations with Germany came up. He mentioned his army service, saying, "Our training was really quite simple; if someone put the verb at the end of the sentence we were to shoot them."

 

Dave

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1 hour ago, PhilJ W said:

The English language originated in Northern Holland and was brought to the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxons.

English derives from Frisian whilst Dutch derives from German.  Then Frisian and German are West Teutonic languages whist the Scandinavian languages are North Teutonic.  (And can we keep the LNWR out of the discussion?)

 

Bill

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2 hours ago, rodent279 said:

German is said to be a bit daunting because it has lots of rules. So does English, but German has rules, and as you'd expect, largely sticks to them. English has rules that seem to be there only to be observed in the breach.

 

I also rather like the way that word order (in some cases) does not matter in German.

"The dog bit the postman" in English on really makes sense that way round (unless the postie is a bit odd).

"Der Hund biss den Brieftrager" means the same thing as "Den Brieftrager biss der Hund".

 

It's der/die/das that I never really mastered.

Simples Rodent - der Hund has to be nominative and den Brieftrager has to be accusative.  So it only really works with masculine nouns because "das" and "die" are both nominative and accusative. 

 

Because English ditched the different articles, it is forced into subject - verb - object.  Bill

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11 minutes ago, bbishop said:

Simples Rodent - der Hund has to be nominative and den Brieftrager has to be accusative.  So it only really works with masculine nouns because "das" and "die" are both nominative and accusative. 

 

Because English ditched the different articles, it is forced into subject - verb - object.  Bill

 

See.

This is where I go wrong 

 

I don't even understand the English for the various grammatical gymnastics, so what chance do I have learning a foreign language when I have no idea what the English explanations  of grammar mean? :dontknow:

 

I have to resort to the what sounds right method and dont even start me on the instrumental case in Polish 

 

:o:blink::dontknow:

 

Andy

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Well I've listened to you lot telling us all the languges you speak I feel envious. When it comes to speaking furren I have a tin ear - I tried to learn French in school but was so appalling I did something else at O level :mellow:

 

In unrelated news today Cardiff celebrates 66 years of being the capital of the Principality. I was in my first year of Junior School and we were each given a certificate - I still have mine somewhere!

 

Dave

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10 minutes ago, SM42 said:

 

See.

This is where I go wrong 

 

I don't even understand the English for the various grammatical gymnastics, so what chance do I have learning a foreign language when I have no idea what the English explanations  of grammar mean? :dontknow:

 

I have to resort to the what sounds right method and dont even start me on the instrumental case in Polish 

 

:o:blink::dontknow:

 

Andy

I believe that your use is conversational, which is surely the most practical form of any language. 

 

I was appalled recently when a thoroughly decent modeller with a very popular thread was taken to task for his imperfect use of English. By someone 'senior' who I believe was once a teacher, who then claimed he doesn't know how PMs work.

 

Most of us speak and write imperfectly at times. It doesn't stop the world rotating.

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2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

I've never understood the logic there. 

There was no logic, only tradition!  One went to Oxford or Cambridge to study Classics and become a politician or senior Diplomat.  If a more practical and/or useful career was wanted there was always Manchester, Nottingham, et al.  The school was older than Methuselah, the earliest buildings known to have housed it are dated 1558 and local historians believe it grew out of a choir school founded in the early 13th century and, if my memory is correct, it had only been part of the state system since the 1944 Education Act.  Most of us pupils were firmly of the opinion that most of the staff had actually been present at the opening of the buildings in 1558!  In fact, the Headmaster during my time there was the first Head not to be an ordained Minister of the Church of England - and he was a Doctor of Divinity!  When I attended (1960's) the most famous old boys were Sir Donald Wolfit, the Actooor, and Gonville Bromhead of Rourkes Drift.  Things went downhill from there with William 'Dusty' Hare (RU afficiandos of a certain age will be aware of him) and Norman Pace of Hale and Pace.

 

John

 

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In my 1960's school there was French Set 1, French Set 2, then French Set 3. For the small remainder - for whom French was a lost cause- there was: Economics! They mostly failed the "O" level, and, having progressed to the "A" level and failed it, went out into the wide world. I feel I understand why UK financial policy is incomprehensible - they started to run the country having been selected only by an inability to learn French.

 

The relegation of the bottom history set to learning History of Yorkshire may explain the continuance of the God's Own County myth.

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3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

The English language originated in Northern Holland and was brought to the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxons.

Not really, no. 

 

English is an agglomerative language with numerous unrelated roots. This is why it has so many words which sound similar, have similar meanings but very different spellings. Guarantee / Warranty would be a case in point - they are essentially the same root transposed into two alternative traditions. It is why cough / tough / bough look the same but are pronounced differently, but bough / bow are pronounced the same. It is why its plurals vary at random - house / houses vs mouse / mice, for example. It is why some words are of visibly Latin origin, and others clearly aren't. 

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Studying Classics did, at one time serve a quite important purpose. The Romans didn't have an education system as such, but they DID write down a lot of detail. If you were a military officer planning a campaign and wanted to know how far an infantryman marches in a day, what he can carry, Marius will tell you. He will tell you how much area you need to forage cavalry, too. 

 

The Greeks and Romans developed a lot of practical mathematics. They produced political systems and studied them in great detail.

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1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

I believe that your use is conversational, which is surely the most practical form of any language. 

 

I was appalled recently when a thoroughly decent modeller with a very popular thread was taken to task for his imperfect use of English. By someone 'senior' who I believe was once a teacher, who then claimed he doesn't know how PMs work.

 

Most of us speak and write imperfectly at times. It doesn't stop the world rotating.

I know the exact post you mean and I remember when it was posted, I considered in my head the correct word and read the sentence as with it's desired meaning.  Given the topic of the thread at the time it was a really nice sentiment being offered by said thoroughly decent modeller and completely on point.  For someone else to pick it apart a couple of month's later and the manner in which was done was quite upsetting, that saying 'read the room' comes to mind.

 

Quite often I make spelling and grammatical errors when posting and the likes I get back are evidence that people know what I meant to say and take it as such.  Our ability to read and understand words nd sntncs is dpr thn smply th spllng

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6 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Studying Classics did, at one time serve a quite important purpose.

 

I'm not saying I'm against it, just that the association with being in an "Oxbridge stream" is unjustified. I never had the opportunity to learn Latin at school myself but both my sons did. The elder is a talented linguist and got the top grades in Latin, French, and German at GCSE and in French at A-level; he went on to do Geography at Durham, where he is now looking to see what is under the Antarctic ice sheet (of great importance for the rate of retreat of key glaciers). The younger gave up Latin as soon as he could, "only" got a 7 in German, and is now at Oxford studying Music. But they had the privilege of a school rather like @Doncaster Green's:

 

1 hour ago, Doncaster Green said:

The school was older than Methuselah, the earliest buildings known to have housed it are dated 1558 and local historians believe it grew out of a choir school founded in the early 13th century and, if my memory is correct, it had only been part of the state system since the 1944 Education Act. 

 

... except that it claims its year of foundation as 1125.

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1 minute ago, woodenhead said:

 Our ability to read and understand words nd sntncs is dpr thn smply th spllng

Indeed. Hebrew, for one consists of the consonants and leaves the reader to fill in the vowels. The Ancient Egyptians did something similar, it's a common format over time. 

 

There were, at one time a range of "speed writing" systems which served as "shorthand for people who don't know proper shorthand" which operated in a similar fashion. 

 

There is also a demonstration piece which I've seen in Ripley's Believe It Or Not, which consists of (as the late Eric Morecambe described it) "the right letters  - but not necessarily in the right order". This doesn't work for music but it's surprisingly easy to decipher written texts in which the words are correctly arranged and contain the correct letters, out of sequence 

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French?  Forget it; Bear had to do this for a couple of years - I was lined up for an O-level class but body-swerved it by taking English Literature instead.  That was cr@p too.

German?  Achtung, Hande Hoch, Nien...Nien is about my limit.

Italian?  A little - only tourist stuff, but most tourist areas are pretty fluent in English and they'll speak that as soon as they realise you're a Brit.  I'd love to be fluent in Italian, but without constant use my memory just isn't up to the job of remembering it all.

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4 minutes ago, polybear said:

 

Italian?  A little - only tourist stuff, but most tourist areas are pretty fluent in English and they'll speak that as soon as they realise you're a Brit.  

I remember a gift shop in Sorrento where the proprietor addressed everybody in English until it came to Mrs DG and me - 'Gute Morgen' said he (???!!!???). Gross Gott, was it something I said?

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34 minutes ago, Doncaster Green said:

I remember a gift shop in Sorrento where the proprietor addressed everybody in English until it came to Mrs DG and me - 'Gute Morgen' said he (???!!!???). Gross Gott, was it something I said?

 

A little different in Sirmione del Garda, where the majority of tourists are Austrian or German. I started my ice cream purchase in my limited Italian, which got a reply in German, before we homed in on English. This was around the time I was working in Paris, so I'd got into the habit of bread with every meal. This perplexed one waiter: we evidently weren't German but he had to ask, were we French or English? he just wasn't sure. So I was pleased when the secret ingredient for his salad dressing, prepared at the table, turned out to be Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce: "questa è la mia famiglia."

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6 hours ago, Happy Hippo said:

Probably why the Belgian dialect is known as Flemish!

 

A sensitive area. I worked for a company that made typesetting terminals and we would customise the keyboards, some of which were multilingual. You hit a key to change language and the key illuminated to show the selected language.

 

We sold some in Belgium through an agent in Brussels. We were going to engrave the mode keys "French" and "Flemish" but our agent nearly had a thrombo when he saw that and insisted we use "Dutch" rather than "Flemish".

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Having spent most of my working life in the Far East (Hong Kong, Vietnam, India, Singapore, South Korea and Japan) looking back on it I just wish I had taken a greater interest in speaking the local language. As most of my local colleagues spoke English I got lazy and mainly spoke in English.

 

From my short time in Hong Kong I can still count from one to ten and ask for a cup of coffee in Cantonese. Reminds me of my time in Singapore, when after a few months I asked for a cup of coffee (yat boi gafe or something similar) and the office went quiet. It was apparent from the looks on their faces they were scared, he can speak Cantonese, what has he heard when they were speaking about me etc.). Singapore English was great, "what to do la" , what should we do?

 

Can't remember any Vietnamese, Indian or Korean but my brainbox obviously took in and has retained a lot of Japanese. Realised that when I was in Germany a few years ago when trying to speak some German the brainbox was telling me what the equivalent word in Japanese!

 

Written Japanese is interesting - you've got a choice of three - kanji for Chinese characters, hiragana for writing authentically Japanese words and katakana for foreign words.

 

When you are listening to someone and they end with a "ka" it means they are asking a question, when you hear "desu" they are making a statement.

 

There are also some variations of the language depending on who is speaking. Feminine Japanese is slightly different to male Japanese and then you have "keigo" - polite Japanese of which there are many versions of who is talking to who. I used to buy my rice from the local rice store and one day  mentioned (in Japanese) to the owner that I was going on home leave but I could not understand his response. He then rephrased what he said and I understood it. He was originally using "keigo" as I was the customer and he was the salesman. When he used standard Japanese I could understand it.

 

Keith (Ki-chan to my friends, Keith-san to others)

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Morning all,

 

First proper post in a while, I cite high school Christmas parties. Not that I'm complaining of course...

 

We also went to Philbrook Museum of Art a few days ago which is more or less an enormous stately home right in the middle of Tulsa with an exceptional art collection and extensive gardens. These gardens have alight show during Christmas time so the grandmother invited us to go with her. Afterwards we had a very fancy dinner, so we had to dress appropriately. The outcome was this very 1893 Worlds Fair photo my sister took of me. Here are a few other photos, they don't do the place justice.

 

IMG-8495.jpg.dc39cbc4e8eee0b1633217abc15bb8d9.jpg

 

IMG-4560.jpg.69cadd0e8f631db750ee95ac3a894762.jpg

 

IMG-4557.jpg.38b9fdb66f1b18939d85fb04f7a56a87.jpg

 

Douglas

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2 minutes ago, Florence Locomotive Works said:

Morning all,

 

First proper post in a while, I cite high school Christmas parties. Not that I'm complaining of course...

 

We also went to Philbrook Museum of Art a few days ago which is more or less an enormous stately home right in the middle of Tulsa with an exceptional art collection and extensive gardens. These gardens have alight show during Christmas time so the grandmother invited us to go with her. Afterwards we had a very fancy dinner, so we had to dress appropriately. The outcome was this very 1893 Worlds Fair photo my sister took of me. Here are a few other photos, they don't do the place justice.

 

IMG-8495.jpg.dc39cbc4e8eee0b1633217abc15bb8d9.jpg

 

IMG-4560.jpg.69cadd0e8f631db750ee95ac3a894762.jpg

 

IMG-4557.jpg.38b9fdb66f1b18939d85fb04f7a56a87.jpg

 

Douglas

I've just gone outside and pulled down our feeble Christmas lights in disgust!:laugh_mini:

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