How is British history taught in schools?

[Chris_Sleeps 10]

(even the English language is Americanised)

I enjoy how you wrote that and kept the British spelling.

 

[Harleyman 12]

The English language, written using Roman letters, as are the languages of Spain, France Germany, Italy & most other European countries. Britain, a country named by the Romans as are numerous other European countries.

America, a country whose political system includes a Senate invented by the Romans.

 

Not bad for an Empire that fell over 1,500 years ago.

 

Will we have had the same impact on history 1,500 years from now? Who knows?

 

Personally, as far as Britain is concerned, I think we will play the part that the Greeks played in the Roman story.

We will be regarded in a similar light in the American story, influential in the beginning, inconsequential in the end.

 

Obviously, it will all depend on whether or not we can sort out the giant Ponzi scheme which is currently referred to as the Western financial system.

 

If we cannot, then American hegemony may go down as the shortest lived 'Top Dog' status in history.

 

Well it dont really matter one way or another what history will say about America one hundred years from now. I wont be around to read it

[mjw47 10]

Well it dont really matter one way or another what history will say about America one hundred years from now. I wont be around to read it

 

Yes, well that's what I thought, the first time around.

[Harleyman 12]

I enjoy how you wrote that and kept the British spelling.

 

 

How about "programme" (English) and "program" (American). Is it some kind of elitism that an extra "m" and an "e' should be added at the end of the word and which serves no purpose whatsoever?

 

 

"Labour" as opposed to "labor" or "harbour" as opposed to "harbor"

 

Why the letter "u" in the words. English people dont pronounce the words as 'lay-bower" or har-bower" but the word "our" is pronounced as "ow-er" though

 

It's no wonder that most foreigners find English pronunciation of words as completely baffling.

 

Let's eliminate the redundancy and all go American

[Chris_Sleeps 10]

"Labour" as opposed to "labor" or "harbour" as opposed to "harbor"

Blame the french for the first one.

 

I'm all for spelling reform. Bring back some old anglo-saxon words too. I jest ye not.

[Harleyman 12]

Blame the french for the first one.

 

I'm all for spelling reform. Bring back some old anglo-saxon words too. I jest ye not.

 

I had an aunt who used to finish every conversation on the phone with "au revoir" although those were the only two French words she knew.

 

Poor lady! miles above her social station

[mjw47 10]

I had an aunt who used to finish every conversation on the phone with "au revoir" although those were the only two French words she knew.

 

Poor lady! miles above her social station

 

I can assure you that those were not the only French words she knew, she knew hundreds, & used them every day, as do you & I, and anyone else who speaks English.

 

The reason why English is such a brilliant language is that, like a sponge, it absorbed bits of virtually every language that it came into contact with.

The reason for so many French words however, isn't so much absorption as coercion. Following the Norman Conquest the French replaced the entire aristocracy with French speakers & continued to speak French for centuries afterwards. By the time English came to be spoken it had thousands of French words included into it by common usage.

If you wished to remain healthy it was a good idea to know what the nasty git on the horse with a sword in his hand was on about.

 

Programme is Greek, programma & both are underlined in red by my spell checker, bloody Yanks

 

English originally of course is a Germanic language.

[callippo 10]

It's not so long ago that many US citizens could trace there ancestry back to these Islands and within a generation that has changed

 

that is not really true. The US has never been like an 'annexe' of the UK and the white gene pool there has always been varied. Plenty of Spanish, French and German and also a lot of other European. Even in about 1970, when Alistair Cooke made that seminal documentary 'America', he estimated that about 25% of Americans could trace a British bloodline. High, yes. Maybe even the highest of all especially if you include Irish. But nowhere near as much as in Australia, where you can tell, just by reading the names of the cricket teams in the 1950s and compare to them to today, how much has changed. Back then they almost all of them had British or Irish names. Now they are much more cosmopolitan sounding.

[Harleyman 12]

I can assure you that those were not the only French words she knew, she knew hundreds, & used them every day, as do you & I, and anyone else who speaks English.

 

The reason why English is such a brilliant language is that, like a sponge, it absorbed bits of virtually every language that it came into contact with.

The reason for so many French words however, isn't so much absorption as coercion. Following the Norman Conquest the French replaced the entire aristocracy with French speakers & continued to speak French for centuries afterwards. By the time English came to be spoken it had thousands of French words included into it by common usage.

If you wished to remain healthy it was a good idea to know what the nasty git on the horse with a sword in his hand was on about.

 

Programme is Greek, programma & both are underlined in red by my spell checker, bloody Yanks

 

English originally of course is a Germanic language.

 

Thank god for Geoffrey Chaucer otherwise we might all be speaking some kind of barftadized French today. At least the Canterbury Tales showed us the way to the true light

 

Some claim that the Saxon language survived after the conquest because while many common soldiers in the Norman army married Saxon women they spent a lot of time away from home serving their barons, warlords and masters and meanwhile their wives brought the kids up speaking Saxon

[Waltheof 10]

Thank god for Geoffrey Chaucer otherwise we might all be speaking some kind of barftadized French today. At least the Canterbury Tales showed us the way to the true light

 

Some claim that the Saxon language survived after the conquest because while many common soldiers in the Norman army married Saxon women they spent a lot of time away from home serving their barons, warlords and masters and meanwhile their wives brought the kids up speaking Saxon

 

English was never in danger of being lost because the ruling Norman class consisted of only a few thousand at the most, in a population of perhaps 1.5 to 2 million English. Norman French was a dialect of French and was spoken by the elite, but gradually faded out, especially with the loss of the Duchy of Normandy in 1203, and the prestige of Central French replaced it. By 1300 there is evidence that French had to be taught to the aristocrats and was not their first language. However, most English kings up to the time of Richard II (who was brought up in Bordeaux) did use French. Many government records can be found both in French and Latin, but from the second half of the 14th century written English begins to replace them. It's a complex picture and I've simplified it somewhat.

[Annie Bynnol 612]

 

The reason why English is such a brilliant language is that, like a sponge, it absorbed bits of virtually every language that it came into contact with.

The reason for so many French words however, isn't so much absorption as coercion. Following the Norman Conquest the French replaced the entire aristocracy with French speakers & continued to speak French for centuries afterwards. By the time English came to be spoken it had thousands of French words included into it by common usage......

 

Totally agree.

Pre Norman (Old English) is not understood by the untrained.

Hwät! we Gâr-Dena in geâr-dagum

Chaucer (Middle English- 1350) is not understood by most.

Ye seken lond and see for your wynnynges,

Shakespeare (Early modern English- 1450) is understood by most. This was the time of greatest change and the practice of using, seeking out, creating new, and absorbing foreign words created the language with by far the biggest vocabulary of any language. Literature also allowed the classes to understand each other- well nearly as some have supper and some have dinner.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Annie Bynnol

[Harleyman 12]

I wonder sometimes if people of my grandfathers generation could understand half of what people today are on about.

 

Tweet, twitter, text, fax, lower case, upper case, online, offline, uppers and downers....pop divas...

 

It would seem a strange kind of Englsih to them on occasion. If they were alive today it's quite possible they'd believe that an alien invasion had taken place