Learn Plattdeutsch!!

[Gary C.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-4KGpST ... L&index=16" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[frenchie]

wo ist den plattdeutsh gespracht ?

[Gary C.]

Plattdeutsch stammt aus Nord Deutschland.

[basisfunction]

Looks like Jerry has compromised our borders...

[frenchie]

Looks like Jerry has compromised our borders...

jerry ........

[Gary C.]

In World War II,the British referred to the Germans as "Jerries".

[frenchie]

In World War II,the British referred to the Germans as "Jerries".

didn't know ....... ! .....pretty cool pseudo for an enemy in fact ....i'd rather have thought there would have been other bird names standing for "jerries" at the time .....kinda weird ..... but oh well , yeah .... fast and simple ...... the thing is ... we weren't even ennemies and were called froggies ( and i guess we still are ) WTF ! shit now that's kinda unfair no ? ......... maybe V2s inspired more respect ...dunno

[Gary C.]

With enmity between England and France,I think you have to remember the near-constant 800-or so years of war between them.
Another thing is that the Norman Conquest is still a bitter topic for English people.
I have both English and Norman ancestry-which I think is cool.

[frenchie]

With enmity between England and France,I think you have to remember the near-constant 800-or so years of war between them.
Another thing is that the Norman Conquest is still a bitter topic for English people.
I have both English and Norman ancestry-which I think is cool.

yeah reconquest of norman ok i know , saw a documentary not too long ago about this period , but it's the move of only one king and before that it was perfectly cool , man there have been a bunch rainy days since , visit britanny in france summertime and you'll see they reconquered all they could hope for

i mean ; it's quite mad about the french atred in some places , i've been in Exeter some years ago when i was really younger and we've been told not to go out friday night cuz local students had their traditionnal "french hunt " , a friend or two ignored the advice , man they've been slaughtered to the point that we all have been called for help to make block for protection ..... i mean ahem ... 1200 years of bitterness for a 100kmX200km field ......man don't wanna know the type of bitterness you have against the loss of india which has a " bunch of square kilometers more " and happened not too long ago ...what do you do to indians who live in england ? emasculation with a rusty old knife covered with tabasco ?

[demonufo]

...what do you do to indians who live in england ? emasculation with a rusty old knife covered with tabasco ?

Tabasco?
Mais non! Us roast beefs prefer to use,
http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgur ... N%26um%3D1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Personally I don't know of any bad feeling towards any of our former colonies. It's not as if we had any real claim to them in the first place. Maybe I just live in a bubble?

[Gary C.]

Frenchie-it's not because of a loss of continental lands.
It's because of the overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon kings,and their replacement with Norman rule.Invaders,taking over.
Type in "harrying of the north" in Google and do some reading.

Before the Norman Conquest,the English weren't very involved with Continental Europe,with the exception of countries that were in the greater Germanic sphere.
Denmark and Norway and Northern Germany,mostly.
Even though these people would fight among themselves,they still thought of each other as "extended family".

The Norman Conquest did away with that mind-set,because of the imposition of what the English would consider "foreign" rule.Britain also became involved in Continental European affairs,for the next several hundred years,because of their Norman rulers having lands on both sides of the Channel,and their ambitions to expand their holdings,wherever they may.

When Edward the Confessor died without issue,the Saxon nobles were keen on keeping one of their own kind in power,so they let Harold Godwinson become king.
Actually,Harold was a commoner,and had no legal right to be a king.
Edward the Confessor's closest living relative that could be considered an heir was Duke William of Normandy.
Edward had also promised the throne to William,on more than one occasion.
William actually had the best legal claim to the throne,and was definitely the successor chosen by Edward.
The French-haters in England will deny this,but a study of history will prove what I've said.

There was sporadic organized resistance in Britain for some time after William's accession to the throne.He put down all rebellions mercilessly-which plays a large part in England's enduring hatred.

The old form of English that was spoken at the time had about 24,000 words.
The Normans brought their form of French with them,and as a result,about 12,000 Norman French words were merged into the native tongue-eventually morphing and resulting in the English that we speak today.
As a result,almost all the words of legal and military power and authority are French words.Also the words for luxury items tend to be French.
The words of everyday life and its necessities remain Anglo-Saxon.
English is in the Germanic language family,but it is the Germanic language that has been affected by outside influences to the greatest extent.

So basically,with the English,you had a Germanic people with a long history of their own culture,that had a foreign elite gain dominance over them,and eventually effect a cultural blending.
All this being achieved via lots of suffering,starving,and bloodshed-well,you can understand their mindset about this issue,if you think about it.

[frenchie]

nevermind ...i forgot the most part of the documentary ( i saw it long ago )....sounds right gary added to that you seem to have done a lot of personnal research on this subject ! highly interesting ....as far as french words in english , yeah definitely along my learning in english i 've always been astonished by the HUGE number of french words i encountered , that's why english is soooo easy to learn , grammatical structure is pretty much the same and composition of most words is easyly retraceable from their latin/french roots .....german is much more complex to learn ( got real crappy german skills compared to my english but i don't have the chance to speak with germans so often too )....i really wan't to learn russian and spanish when i'll have the time too.... chinese don't seem to be as much of a piece of cake , surely usefull too but surely requires at least 5 years to be able to speak something else than gibberish ....

[Gary C.]

I used to attend a kung fu school,run by a Chinese man from Malaysia.
Being interested in languages,he and I both attended Mandarin classes.
From what little exposure I had with the language,its' basic construction is pretty easy,as there aren't a lot of verb conjugations and tenses,etc.
The hard part is that there are 4 different ways to make every sound,and you have to be VERY careful how you stress and accent the sounds.
"Ni hao ma" means "how are you",but if you say "ma" the wrong way,you are asking how their horse is.

Then with Cantonese,you have 7 ways of saying each sound,so it is infinitely more complex.
The languages aren't mutually intelligible,but I believe they can understand each others' writing,as the characters are the same.

I've heard it said that a world-traveller needs to be able to speak English,German,French,and Spanish.One or more of those languages will come in handy,most places that you go-and it also makes it easier to understand somewhat related languages.

Most native English speakers don't have a need for another language,because their language dominates in the places that they live.
Because of that,most English speakers aren't very aware of where the words they use came from.A casual study of either German or French or both languages will make it very obvious where most of our speech comes from.

It's all good,to me.
I like studying up on people and countries,all over the world.
If we could just stop killing each other,the world would be a better place.

[frenchie]

yeah languages are cool to learn ..but talking about that , pretty much the same as plattedeutch in germany there's the intriguing case of the language spoken in the part of france i live in (britany) the breton language , in fact my region of france was separated from france until 1532 and spoke a TOTALLY different language than french , french kings and administrations have done their best to erradicate this culture to normalise the whole country , but the "near death" of this language happened just 80 years ago approx , a lot of bretons still speak this language and never felt totally french cuz of the bitterness related to their cultural collapse , my granmothers used to speak to me in breton often when they were alive , but it has not a single root in common with any latin language nor with english or german , but rather with gaelic types of languages (even though if it's very different from gaelic ) , if you'd hear it you'd think it's arab at first but it's not , real singular language , us bretons have our own flag and all no kidding man ......wan't to see it ( you'll be stunned guaranteed )
http://www.portailbreton.net/image/webm ... nnhadu.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Gary C.]

If memory serves,Bretons left Britain when the Angles,Saxons,and Jutes took over-correct?
There is a fighter I really like,called Jerome Le Banner.
He's from Le Havre,Normandy,but I read somewhere that he was really a Breton.

If you ever get interested in genetic genealogy,you might want to take a DNA test and see which Y Chromosome DNA Haplogroup you belong to.
Every man on Earth has an identifiable package of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms that he inherited from his father,grandfather,etc.-back into antiquity,in a direct male line.
There are only something like 1 of 50 basic packages that a man can have,and they can help to tell you what your deep ancestry is.
If you are Breton,there is an excellent chance that your DNA is like that of the Celtic peoples of Britain.In western Ireland,more than 90% of the Y DNA is in haplogroup R1b.There are many subclades in R1b.If you also test Positive for M222,then you are just about guaranteed that your male-line ancestors were Irish.

I am in R1b.
My furthest-downstream SNP is called U106.
It has proven itself to be one of 2 main markers that Northern Germanic people carry.Wherever R1b-U106 is found in great numbers,we also find I1A-AS.
They are considered to be "brother" clades.
R1b-U106 is exceptionally common in England,but isn't found much in the Celtic countries of Scotland,Wales,and Ireland.It is rather common in Northern Ireland.
The best guess for its arrival is that it was carried to England by Germanic invaders-Angles,Saxon,Jutes,Normans,Danes,Norwegians.
There is also a certain variety of R1b-U106 that is found in most men in The Netherlands.

What you say about the authorities trying to wipe out Breton language and culture is something that truly annoys me.
Every culture and family group on Earth is interesting,and our differences are one of the things that make us interesting.
Nobody should be trying to erase that.

There used to be 500 different Indian tribes in the Americas.
Now,most of them are completely gone,and nothing is known of them except for their name.
What a shame.