In many respects they speak more traditional English than we do, because to some extent the core of the language evolves less the further you go from the centre of it.
Not just language manners also. Descriptions of tudor banquets describe meat being cut up into "fair gobbets" and the knife then being put away, none of our modern nonsense of eating with both knife and fork simultaneously which seems to have come in here from the continent. Some say that the discarding of the knife was to prevent fights breaking out with lethal weapons.
The French imposed their language after 1066 over the German dialect that we had been previously speaking.
Braveheart would have been a lot better if Mel Gibson had played William Wallace by speaking in his first language - Norman French. Cheers, Jeff
Saxons = Saxony = southeast Germany. Not one of the more popular dialects since it's a bit to closely tied up with GDR and party officials..........Or have I missed the irony? Lynn
Like they did in France, Holland, Belgium, Poland, Czechoslovakia, The Channel Islands, Norway, Denmark...?
A polarising figure, Winston. I was surprised to overhear a fellow English immigrant's comment about him, when the news of his death was in the newspaper. This person was definitely not a fan.
Neither am I... The English £5 note features the redeemingly-witty white supremacist and I have defaced every single such £5 note that I have possessed, in protest.
