LL-L "Language use" 2008.08.22 (01) [E]

Fri Aug 22 18:08:02 UTC 2008

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L O W L A N D S - L - 22 August 2008 - Volume 01
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From: clarkedavid8 at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2008.08.21 (02) [E

From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Art" 2008.08.19 (01) [E]

I've often wondered what language(s) Holbein spoke when he first came to
England. Certainly no English; nobody outside the Anglo-Scots area of
Britain did.  Would he have used Latin, or some form of Court French? or
maybe a Continental lowlands language would have been similar enough until
he learned English?

In fact, both George I and George II had problems with their English and
spoke it with a heavy German accent. Their inability to understand it
properly was constitutionally important, as being unable to follow cabinet
meetings of their ministers, they stopped attending them, leaving the prime
minister and other ministers to determine policy without royal interference.
When George II's grandson, George III, who was a native speaker of English,
tried to become involved again, he was accused of undue interference ("The
power of the king has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished")
and caused a constitutional crisis.

David Clarke

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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2008.08.21 (02) [E]

The only German communites in England in late Mediaeval/eraly modern times
that I know of were German miners in Derbyshire, though they seem to have
assimilated pretty quickly.  Fixed surnames weren't widespread amongst
common people then, so there aren't even name traces.

The Derbyshire term "toadstone" for basalt is possibly from *totstein*, i.e
it was "dead" because it had no ore in it, though a more plausible origin is
"t'ode stone" -  "the old stone"

Lowlanders were widespread in East Anglia, bringing their skills as drainage
engineers and dam builders, and we have English Van Dykes etc. to this day.
I also read that "nitwit" for a foolish person was from "niet weet", though
I don't know how true that is.

Paul

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From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Language use" 2008.08.21 (02) [E]

Hi Paul, Ron!

Subject: LL-L: Language use

Referring to how the Continental luminaries managed when they came to
England:

I wouldn't attribute a specific animus against English, except that until
very recently indeed that small island race lay very low on the cultural
horison, but no local speech enjoyed the patriotic backing of a 'nation'! A
man who was literate was presumed to be literate in Latin, & we do them
wrong to suppose that body was a rarified elite throughout the Late
Middle-ages even. Desidarius Erasmus presumably had no trouble whatever
communicating with Thomas More or his entire family, not to mention his
total circle of friends. I expect the same applied to Hans Holbein & all the
rest until well into the eighteenth century.

Even so it appears that as late as Caxton's day there was not a notably
greater distance between the dialect of the Flemings of Ghent & the burghers
of London than there was between the same of Edinborough or even Nottingham.
Englishman weren't always monoglots - they could muddle through, & the same
to the foreigners, though a man from the next shire might be deemed
'foreign' in the 'provinces'. It doesn't seem to me that it would be all
that much of a strain to the reader, let alone the printer, to recast 'Van
Der Vos Reynarde' or 'Til Eulenspiegel' (Howlglasse) in a more local tongue.

I'm willing to bet, as well, that the the native English staff of the Hansa
'Steelyard' in London no more than merely (metaphoricaly) kincked their
tongues to the left when they went to work each morning, & back to the right
on the way home. 'Business Hansaeatic' *can't* have been harder than
Scottish, after all.

Then let us bear in mind that the Plantagenets planted Flemings in the
Insular territories they were determined to dominate, like South Wales &
Southern Scotland. English was surely close enough at that time for a high
degree of mutual intelligibility.

Pardon my penny-worth.

Mark

•

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