English and Proud.

RE: Palaeolithic Brittania etc: “Not Many People Know That” (Peter Sellers) attributed to Maurice Joseph Micklewhite.

Re. post #70

John,

Yep we have a lot of words that sound alike, but are spelt differently (homonyms), however, there is no such thing as an easy language to learn. I speak adequate German and at one time spoke very good Spanish. Sadly, knowledge of a foreign language corresponds to the life expectancy of the male (not mail) reproductive organ...use it or lose it.

All other languages have a very large problem that the English language no longer has: and that's gender of nouns and adjectives. Other languages (even Zulu) have masculine, feminine or neuter words (different words changing the definite article (the) and the indefinite articles (a and an, (not quite so bad, no plurals...wow!)), and gender endings changing the endings of adjectives.

Which means if you want to say wine in German, first you have to memorize its gender (1 of 3 possibilities), then it changes depending where in the sentence it stands (1 of 4 possibilities), the same again if there are two wines (plural) then God forbid you want a red (adjective) wine up comes the same choice of endings on the word red. I guess that's why foreign speakers seem to learn English so quickly.

It's a bleddy nightmare.

We can thank the conquering Vikings for us English speakers not having to do that. Prior to them, and supposedly good King Canute, the Saxons et al had that gender based language structure too (also the Vikings had them in their respective languages). The Vikings were too lazy to learn it, to speak with mere subjugated vassals, so they just up and left it 'the', 'a', and 'an', and said forget about that stupid gender and adjective stuff....And they picked up English very quickly and I guess our ancestors dropped it pretty quickly too.

Adding to the above, the Germans have the nasty habit of connecting nouns together, so you end up having to memorize three, four, five etc. words all running together, looking much like that little town in Wales with the long name: daunting to say the least.

What cracks me up are these old 'B' movies where our hero goes to school for a month to learn a foreign language and then is parachuted into an occupied country and can pass as a native speaker, no grammatical errors and perfect local accent..."yer! dream on!"

Any Barbarians on here.???!!!

Celts were named after the Greek for barbarians, "keltoi"

Last week on BBC2 The Celts:Blood,Iron And Sacrifice. missed it so will have to iplayer it, did anybody see it ?.

F.

#1, Thank you Fred, Missed it last night but it's on again next Monday, BBC2 19th October at 9pm. Hope I remember:)
The Celts: Blood, Iron, and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver

Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver conclude the series in which they go in search of the Celts, one of the world's most mysterious ancient civilisations.

The Celts: Blood, Iron, and Sacrifice with Alice Roberts and Neil Oliver
In 43AD, the Roman army turned its attention to Britain, an island of rich resources, powerful tribes and druids. Their conquest of the land was swift, but pockets of resistance remained. In the Celts' last stand against the Romans in 60AD, the warrior Queen Boudicca led the Iceni against the might of the occupying forces. Her army captured and destroyed the towns of Camelodunum, Verulamium and Londinium - modern-day Colchester, St Albans and London - before the rebellion was eventually crushed

Good,!
That got rid of the Ities.
Cheers
Brian

No it got rid of the Iceni ! (before the rebellion was eventually crushed - by the Romans.) K

The Battle of Hastings was fought on this day in 1066. In this print from 1804, William Bromley presents his imagining of the battle.

Attachment 18939

British museum

As I said , you cannot trust those Europeans, 2000 years ago they were shifty and nothing has changed.
Brian

The Battle of Hastings

I'll tell of the Battle of Hastings
As 'appened in days long gone by
When Duke William became King of England
And 'Arold got shot in the eye

It were this way - one day in October
The Duke - who was always a toff -
'Aving no battles on at moment
'ad given his lads day off

They'd all tekken boats and gone fishing
'Till some chap in to' Conqueror's ear
Said "Let's go put breeze up Saxons"
Says Bill "By gum, that's an idea"

Then turning around to his soldiers
He lifted his big Norman voice, shouting
'Ands up who's coming to England?
That were swank 'cos they 'adn't no choice

They started away about tea-time
The sea was so calm and so still
And at quarter to ten the next morning
They arrived at a place called Bexhill

King 'Arold came up as they landed
His face full of venim and 'ate
He said If you've come for Regatta
You've got 'ere just six weeks too late

At this William rose, cool but 'aughty
And said: Give us none o' your cheek
Tha'd best have thee throne re-upholstered
I'll be wanting to use it next week

When 'Arold 'eard this 'ere defiance
With rage he turned purple and blue
And shouted some rude words in Saxon
To which William answered - And you!

'Twere a beautiful day for a battle
The Normans set off with a will
And when both sides was duly assembled
They tossed for the top of the hill

King 'Arold he won the advantage
On the hill-top he took his stand
With his knaves and his cads all around him
On 'is 'orse with 'is 'awk in 'is 'and

The Normans had nowt in their favour
Their chance of a victory seemed small
For the slope of the field were against them
And the wind in their faces an' all

Kick-off were sharp at two-thirty
And soon as the whistle had went
Both sides started banging each other
Till swineherds could hear 'em in Kent

Saxons had best line of forwards
Well armed with both buckler and sword
But Normans had best combination
And when half time came neither had scored

So Duke called his cohorts together
And said - Let's pretend that we're beat
Once we get Saxons down on t' level
We'll cut off their means of retreat

So they ran and the Saxons ran after
Just exactly as William had planned
Leaving 'Arold alone on the hill-top
On 'is 'orse with 'is 'awk in 'is 'and

When the Conqueror saw what 'ad 'appened
A bow and an arrer he drew
He went right up to 'Arold and shot him
He were off-side but what could they do?

The Normans turned round in a fury
And gave back both parry and thrust
Till t' fight were all over bar t' shouting
And you couldn't see Saxons for dust

And after the battle were over
They found 'Arold so stately and grand
Sitting there, with an eye-full of arrer
On 'is 'orse with 'is 'awk in 'is 'and

Yes the battle was fought and lost by the English. William said to Harold, 'eye, eye that's your lot mate'

He then went on to build fortress, Tower of London, hat as to become one of the scenes of some of the bloodiest murders and exectutions ever seen in London.