Derrick Parfitt wrote in
:

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 08:17:25 +1200, Nik
wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 09:17:37 -0400, Scout
wrote:

Actually France (as in William the Conqueror) is responsible for
mangling English, at least for causing the head on collision of
French-Latin and German, which resulted in English.
Don't blame the Brits, their only sin was losing a war to the French
in 1066.
Scout

Scout, actually they were French-speaking Normans.



Scott Lowther wrote:

For REAL English-mangling, you've got to leave it to the Brits. Of
course, that's far from the worst... I've seen some Scots on TV who
sounded like they were speaking something entirely different from
English.

Whomever posted the immediately above is obviously ignorant of the
Gaelic language background of Scotland.

Nik,
They were commenting on the relative intelligibility of English spoken
by some people in Scotland.

The English spoken in Scotland derives many of its pronunciations,
some of its syntax, and a few of its words from the early Northumbian
English dialect of the middle ages that was spoken by the most
populous regions of Scotland. This dialect was referred to as Scots or
Lallans (lowlands) up to the period of Robert Burns and was, of
course, quite distinct from Scottish Gaelic, which is a different
language entirely.

Just about everybody in the world who speaks English speaks
south-eastern England English with its accompanying syntax and
language structure (including the overwhelming majority of people in
Scotland) with local pronunciations and some slang words.

The "kebab vikings" on the webpage spoke common modern English, except
for a some slang words and a very heavy Glaswegian ( I suspect)
accent.

Yorkie, fjuckwit.


Bertie