Humour time
- Thread starter Silent Earth
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Love the funeral sign!
A one liner for y'all " My Grandpa the bus driver passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday............... unlike his passengers."
Another one liner for Y'all " What is the last thing to go through a flies mind as it hits your windshield?........................................its feet!
I'll let y'all draw your own conclusion..
Damn, couldn't copy and paste an image I saw just now. It was a picture of a beautiful young woman in a bikini, with her arms wrapped around an old fat rich man at the beach. This is the picture to show your son when he doesn't want to do his homework. This is also the picture to show your daughter when she doesn't want to do her homework.....
My Wife is always correcting me if it isn't spelling it's sentence structuring and can be annoying as hell. I admit, I use commas more than I should and yes, Lisa is a grammar nazi.
Isnt language amazing,
Dont Joke, my family is noted across Europe for getting language totally wrong EG My Dad who could speak German fluently thought he would try Spanish, So a few months later after much studying Spanish went on holiday to.............................Portugal, It gets worse when he finally visited Spain it started to rain (on the plain) so he wandered into a shop / chemists and asked in his best Spanish " Please can I have a telescopic umbrella because its raining cats and dogs out there " The Chemist looked him up and down and realised (guessed he was English) and asked in perfect English " But Senor why does one want to wallop yonder donkey with an umbrella ? "
Even John F Kennedy got it wrong, when he was in Berlin he proudly announced "Ich Bin Ein Berliner " which if my memory from serving in the Berlin Brigade means something like " I am a Doughnut" a popular local delicacy in Berlin.
Dont Joke, my family is noted across Europe for getting language totally wrong EG My Dad who could speak German fluently thought he would try Spanish, So a few months later after much studying Spanish went on holiday to.............................Portugal, It gets worse when he finally visited Spain it started to rain (on the plain) so he wandered into a shop / chemists and asked in his best Spanish " Please can I have a telescopic umbrella because its raining cats and dogs out there " The Chemist looked him up and down and realised (guessed he was English) and asked in perfect English " But Senor why does one want to wallop yonder donkey with an umbrella ? "
Even John F Kennedy got it wrong, when he was in Berlin he proudly announced "Ich Bin Ein Berliner " which if my memory from serving in the Berlin Brigade means something like " I am a Doughnut" a popular local delicacy in Berlin.
Isnt language amazing,
Dont Joke, my family is noted across Europe for getting language totally wrong EG My Dad who could speak German fluently thought he would try Spanish, So a few months later after much studying Spanish went on holiday to.............................Portugal, It gets worse when he finally visited Spain it started to rain (on the plain) so he wandered into a shop / chemists and asked in his best Spanish " Please can I have a telescopic umbrella because its raining cats and dogs out there " The Chemist looked him up and down and realised (guessed he was English) and asked in perfect English " But Senor why does one want to wallop yonder donkey with an umbrella ? "
Even John F Kennedy got it wrong, when he was in Berlin he proudly announced "Ich Bin Ein Berliner " which if my memory from serving in the Berlin Brigade means something like " I am a Doughnut" a popular local delicacy in Berlin.
Lisa speaks and writes russian and spanish fluently will tell ya Mexican spanish and Spain spanish has it's differences and sometimes confusing, she worked with a few Ukrainians who wanted her to speak Ukrainian and not Russian for the sake of clarity though she suspects it was more a pride thing, she ended up self teaching given the school didn't offer Ukrainian language classes. Then we have British English and American English...
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LOL, yesterday we were watching a Canadian-Chinese detective show called "Blood and Water" which is billed as trilingual (English, Cantonese and Mandarin)
My wife speaks Mandarin although it's not her native tongue (she's Hakka) and she was criticizing some of the Chinese actors on their Mandarin which she said was horrendous because the actors were Cantonese.
She told me that there is a saying about that:
"I'm not afraid of heaven or hell, only of Cantonese trying to speak Mandarin."
My wife speaks Mandarin although it's not her native tongue (she's Hakka) and she was criticizing some of the Chinese actors on their Mandarin which she said was horrendous because the actors were Cantonese.
She told me that there is a saying about that:
"I'm not afraid of heaven or hell, only of Cantonese trying to speak Mandarin."
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- Messages
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Well, don't forget Northern English, East Midlands English, West Midlands English, East Anglian, Southern English (talking about British, not American), West Country English. And within those dialects, you have regional sub-dialects. In Southern English you have Received Pronunciation, Cockney, Essaxon, Pompey, Kentish, and Sussex...not to mention Multicultural London.
And then you have Welsh English, Ulster English, Ulster Scots, Highland English, Scots, Manx and Hiberno-English and all the different flavors thereof...
And then you have Welsh English, Ulster English, Ulster Scots, Highland English, Scots, Manx and Hiberno-English and all the different flavors thereof...
All derived from ingvaeonic? least that's what my Wife told me, please tell me she's wrong so I can claim superiority over her.
Ingvaeonic, Thats Northern Germanic roughly which is a major contributor, especially when its now generally accepted that the UK WAS connected to Europe by dry land which WAS inhabited and called Doggerland, it appears that we were all inter-related BEFORE the melting ice caused the creation of the North Sea. Then we migrated hither and thither over the following 10,000 years til you got the Modern Brit
Our alphabet is based upon Hindu Arabic and the English language is derived from about twelve other languages and dialects including Angle, Assorted Norse, Saxon, Hun, Goth, Norman French and even Roman latin. Then the Celts have their own assorted languages ( Cornish, Welsh, Irish, Scots which I think originated in Iberia !!)
Ancient English was evolving gradually on its own until the Norse came over and settled in the north of England ( the Danegeld) thats why so many northern villages have Norse based names, whilst down south the old essex, wessex, saxon, village names dominated.
In the end just about everyone added words to our language, Picts, Celts, Scottis, Jutes, Angles, Saxons, Norse, Northmen, Danes, Goths, Roman you name it we cherry picked the best bits from their language and culture.
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And how it COULD have been
Doggerland’s Impact on History
All of human history would be completely different.
The Mesolithic people who originally inhabited Doggerland 10,000 years ago would not have had to retreat from the advancing sea. They would likely have stayed and multiplied in situ rather than redistributing their genes to the areas surrounding the North Sea. By the same token, the persisting landbridge linking Europe together would have made population migration more free flowing – both internally within northwestern Europe and externally by migration/invasion to and from the east and the south. The result would have been a much more complex genetic picture. The effect would have been to erase virtually every human being born since then; the human population will have thrived, but every historical figure that we are familiar with, plus ourselves, our families and our ancestors, will never have been born.
The cultural impact of changing the movement of tribal groupings within northwestern Europe would be immediately evident in terms of language. It is by no means obvious that the current Indo-European family of languages would come to dominate this altered world. Or they may be Indo-European, but not as we know them. All subsequent influences on modern European languages, especially on English, would occur differently. The languages spoken in modern Doggerland and its neighbouring states may sound vaguely familiar to us, but we wouldn’t understand them.
The nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Mesolithic would very likely have still given way to the more settled farming lifestyle that came in the Neolithic, but with less rainfall the pattern of agriculture in northwest Europe would have been different. Successful cereal cultivation would have been more difficult than the keeping of grazing herds, so the forest clearances undertaken for growing crops would not have occurred in the same way leading to further changes in the geographic laydown of distinct territories occupied by different tribes. Furthermore, Doggerland’s more sheltered, lower-lying peninsula may have been a more agreeable farming region than the windswept highlands of the British Isles, leaving them with a much lower population distribution. Stonehenge, or something like it, may have been built on the plains of Doggerland rather than Salisbury Plain.
Stonehenge – image by Simon Cassidy
The skills required to manufacture copper and then bronze would probably have transferred around Europe at a faster rate, usherring the Bronze Age into Britain earlier. The accessible reserves of tin, required for making bronze, found in the modern areas of Devon and Cornwall would still exist, so there would still be a trade boom from the export of British tin across Europe. What may change are the trade routes for exporting it. From ancient ports in Devon and Cornwall it would be possible to hug the southern English coastline then navigate the Rhine deep inland without making any type of sea crossing. The presence of Doggerland may generally hinder the acquisition of the seamanship skills and primitive maritime technology that would have been required to navigate around the North Sea area, though sea crossings from the south coast of England may still have been the preferred route for trade with areas around the west coast of France and the Iberian Peninsula.
Moving into recorded history, the changes caused by the presence of Doggerland become too complex to judge. Would there still be a Roman Empire in a classical world where Doggerland hadn’t drowned? Even if there was, it wouldn’t give rise to a Julius Caesar who crossed the English Channel twice in 55 and 54 BC to invade Britain. The ‘barbarians’ of Doggerland would join those of Brittania, Germania and Gaul at the northern end of the Empire. This may have led to the overstretch of occupying Roman forces in northwestern Europe and an earlier retreat back to the Mediterranean, or the construction of a ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ from Somerset to Norfolk to hem in the most troublesome elements. Alternatively, these barbarians may have fully welcomed these Romans with open arms when they saw the benefits of their civilisation, prolonging the existence of this Western Roman Empire into the Middle Ages, as occurred with the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Centre of the Roman Town – image by Peter Urmston
An alternative Dark Ages would not see the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons crossing the North Sea to settle a post-Roman Britain; their Völkerwanderung would have involved a land trek across southern Doggerland itself and may have stopped short there, as the cold climate that they were fleeing in Denmark would not have been any better in the British Isles.
Similarly, even if an alternative Norse people could flourish immediately beyond the southern extent of a Scandinavian ice sheet, their seafaring prowess and technology would be curtailed by the presence of Doggerland; also, the glaciation of Iceland, Greenland and Vinland would put them out of bounds for any Viking colonisation. Any move into what would have become Normandy, northern England and Ireland would have also involved a movement by land across Doggerland. No Viking settlement of Normandy would mean no Norman invasion of England in 1066 and so no Norman kings thereafter.
The alternative Middle Ages would be similarly unrecognisable. Would Christianity and Islam, or variant religions, have arisen and shaped the world in the way that they did? Would Europe have adopted a feudal system complete with peasants, lords and kings? Would something like the French Revolution have gone on to overthrow it?
Would the Age of Discovery have begun when it did, or have happened at all? The inhabitants of the British Isles may not have developed the maritime capability to establish a variant of the British Empire, now that they weren’t wholly an island people. The landlocked Dutch certainly wouldn’t have had the ability to develop their global trade links, unless the coastlines of Doggerland became theirs by natural extension. What impact would this have had on the European colonisation of America? Without a York in England, there wouldn’t be a New York in the US (or even a New Amsterdam, without the original Dutch trading posts). Would there have been a slave trade? How would civilizations in Africa, Asia and Australia have developed differently without European intervention, or alternatively with the imperial ambitions of a powerful Doggerland state and its mighty navy venturing forth into the Atlantic from the mouth of the conjoined Thames, Meuse, Scheldt and Rhine rivers?
Would the Industrial Revolution have happened in England in the 18th century? Britain’s great deposits of coal and iron ore would still exist, but without northern England’s damp climate for the manufacturing of textiles, fast flowing streams as a source of power, and a British Empire to provide a source for raw materials and a marketplace for manufactured goods, would industrialisation have happened elsewhere at a different time?
Would the conditions leading to the major European wars of history still be in place and how would they play out in a theatre containing Doggerland? If World War 1 was rerun, a German Imperial Navy and British Grand Fleet would be marginalised without the North Sea, but the control of Doggerland would be a strategic centre of gravity for any invading or defending land forces. It may have been the plains of southern Doggerland that became pockmarked by high explosives, scarred by miles of trenches and the scene of the bloodiest battles in history. In an alternative World War 2, there would have been little to prevent the momentum of a Blitzkrieg pushing all the way to the western coastlines of the UK.
Doggerland – the Northern Front?
Assuming that an alternative northwestern Europe managed to stabilise in a modern era and become the peaceful alliance of wealthy, industrialised states that we are familiar with, Doggerland would be a key economic player. Rich deposits of oil and natural gas would still exist under its land and off its shores. In our world, oil was found in the North Sea in 1965 and production started in 1967; 40 billion barrels of oil have been extracted since then and an estimated 30 billion barrels still remain.
The currently productive fields of oil (red) and natural gas (blue) have earned billions of petrodollars for the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Doggerland would be in for lion’s share of that revenue.
So whether the citizens of Doggerland today would be happily surfing the internet and watching satellite TV, or out gathering crops for some feudal overlord, or even clinging on for survival in a nuclear wasteland, their world would still be totally alien to us. Whatever their circumstances, they would no doubt be fretting about the threat of global warming and an advancing North Sea which, in our world, drowned their homeland over 8,000 years ago.
Only a few degrees of temperature separate us.
Doggerland’s Impact on History
All of human history would be completely different.
The Mesolithic people who originally inhabited Doggerland 10,000 years ago would not have had to retreat from the advancing sea. They would likely have stayed and multiplied in situ rather than redistributing their genes to the areas surrounding the North Sea. By the same token, the persisting landbridge linking Europe together would have made population migration more free flowing – both internally within northwestern Europe and externally by migration/invasion to and from the east and the south. The result would have been a much more complex genetic picture. The effect would have been to erase virtually every human being born since then; the human population will have thrived, but every historical figure that we are familiar with, plus ourselves, our families and our ancestors, will never have been born.
The cultural impact of changing the movement of tribal groupings within northwestern Europe would be immediately evident in terms of language. It is by no means obvious that the current Indo-European family of languages would come to dominate this altered world. Or they may be Indo-European, but not as we know them. All subsequent influences on modern European languages, especially on English, would occur differently. The languages spoken in modern Doggerland and its neighbouring states may sound vaguely familiar to us, but we wouldn’t understand them.
The nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Mesolithic would very likely have still given way to the more settled farming lifestyle that came in the Neolithic, but with less rainfall the pattern of agriculture in northwest Europe would have been different. Successful cereal cultivation would have been more difficult than the keeping of grazing herds, so the forest clearances undertaken for growing crops would not have occurred in the same way leading to further changes in the geographic laydown of distinct territories occupied by different tribes. Furthermore, Doggerland’s more sheltered, lower-lying peninsula may have been a more agreeable farming region than the windswept highlands of the British Isles, leaving them with a much lower population distribution. Stonehenge, or something like it, may have been built on the plains of Doggerland rather than Salisbury Plain.
Stonehenge – image by Simon CassidyThe skills required to manufacture copper and then bronze would probably have transferred around Europe at a faster rate, usherring the Bronze Age into Britain earlier. The accessible reserves of tin, required for making bronze, found in the modern areas of Devon and Cornwall would still exist, so there would still be a trade boom from the export of British tin across Europe. What may change are the trade routes for exporting it. From ancient ports in Devon and Cornwall it would be possible to hug the southern English coastline then navigate the Rhine deep inland without making any type of sea crossing. The presence of Doggerland may generally hinder the acquisition of the seamanship skills and primitive maritime technology that would have been required to navigate around the North Sea area, though sea crossings from the south coast of England may still have been the preferred route for trade with areas around the west coast of France and the Iberian Peninsula.
Moving into recorded history, the changes caused by the presence of Doggerland become too complex to judge. Would there still be a Roman Empire in a classical world where Doggerland hadn’t drowned? Even if there was, it wouldn’t give rise to a Julius Caesar who crossed the English Channel twice in 55 and 54 BC to invade Britain. The ‘barbarians’ of Doggerland would join those of Brittania, Germania and Gaul at the northern end of the Empire. This may have led to the overstretch of occupying Roman forces in northwestern Europe and an earlier retreat back to the Mediterranean, or the construction of a ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ from Somerset to Norfolk to hem in the most troublesome elements. Alternatively, these barbarians may have fully welcomed these Romans with open arms when they saw the benefits of their civilisation, prolonging the existence of this Western Roman Empire into the Middle Ages, as occurred with the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Centre of the Roman Town – image by Peter UrmstonAn alternative Dark Ages would not see the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons crossing the North Sea to settle a post-Roman Britain; their Völkerwanderung would have involved a land trek across southern Doggerland itself and may have stopped short there, as the cold climate that they were fleeing in Denmark would not have been any better in the British Isles.
Similarly, even if an alternative Norse people could flourish immediately beyond the southern extent of a Scandinavian ice sheet, their seafaring prowess and technology would be curtailed by the presence of Doggerland; also, the glaciation of Iceland, Greenland and Vinland would put them out of bounds for any Viking colonisation. Any move into what would have become Normandy, northern England and Ireland would have also involved a movement by land across Doggerland. No Viking settlement of Normandy would mean no Norman invasion of England in 1066 and so no Norman kings thereafter.
The alternative Middle Ages would be similarly unrecognisable. Would Christianity and Islam, or variant religions, have arisen and shaped the world in the way that they did? Would Europe have adopted a feudal system complete with peasants, lords and kings? Would something like the French Revolution have gone on to overthrow it?
Would the Age of Discovery have begun when it did, or have happened at all? The inhabitants of the British Isles may not have developed the maritime capability to establish a variant of the British Empire, now that they weren’t wholly an island people. The landlocked Dutch certainly wouldn’t have had the ability to develop their global trade links, unless the coastlines of Doggerland became theirs by natural extension. What impact would this have had on the European colonisation of America? Without a York in England, there wouldn’t be a New York in the US (or even a New Amsterdam, without the original Dutch trading posts). Would there have been a slave trade? How would civilizations in Africa, Asia and Australia have developed differently without European intervention, or alternatively with the imperial ambitions of a powerful Doggerland state and its mighty navy venturing forth into the Atlantic from the mouth of the conjoined Thames, Meuse, Scheldt and Rhine rivers?
Would the Industrial Revolution have happened in England in the 18th century? Britain’s great deposits of coal and iron ore would still exist, but without northern England’s damp climate for the manufacturing of textiles, fast flowing streams as a source of power, and a British Empire to provide a source for raw materials and a marketplace for manufactured goods, would industrialisation have happened elsewhere at a different time?
Would the conditions leading to the major European wars of history still be in place and how would they play out in a theatre containing Doggerland? If World War 1 was rerun, a German Imperial Navy and British Grand Fleet would be marginalised without the North Sea, but the control of Doggerland would be a strategic centre of gravity for any invading or defending land forces. It may have been the plains of southern Doggerland that became pockmarked by high explosives, scarred by miles of trenches and the scene of the bloodiest battles in history. In an alternative World War 2, there would have been little to prevent the momentum of a Blitzkrieg pushing all the way to the western coastlines of the UK.
Doggerland – the Northern Front?Assuming that an alternative northwestern Europe managed to stabilise in a modern era and become the peaceful alliance of wealthy, industrialised states that we are familiar with, Doggerland would be a key economic player. Rich deposits of oil and natural gas would still exist under its land and off its shores. In our world, oil was found in the North Sea in 1965 and production started in 1967; 40 billion barrels of oil have been extracted since then and an estimated 30 billion barrels still remain.
The currently productive fields of oil (red) and natural gas (blue) have earned billions of petrodollars for the UK, Norway, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. Doggerland would be in for lion’s share of that revenue.
So whether the citizens of Doggerland today would be happily surfing the internet and watching satellite TV, or out gathering crops for some feudal overlord, or even clinging on for survival in a nuclear wasteland, their world would still be totally alien to us. Whatever their circumstances, they would no doubt be fretting about the threat of global warming and an advancing North Sea which, in our world, drowned their homeland over 8,000 years ago.
Only a few degrees of temperature separate us.
She said you broke it down in language family of sub-groups, she listed one primary group to modern English being Ingvaeonic that comprises of old saxon, old frisian, old english and their sub-grouping for each language as will of northwestern germanic. She said because of the divergent anglo frisian (frisian) didn't play as big a roll because of the heavier influence of older Norman and Norse.
I'm trying to type as she is talking clear across the room, so, if I made a mistake it is her fault
I'm trying to type as she is talking clear across the room, so, if I made a mistake it is her fault
Cant fault her findings TBH I bet she is just another Geologist who wished the North Sea could be drained so she can dig everything up ANYWAY its way beyond my pay grade I'm a Northumbrian with Wessex roots
I bet she is just another Geologist who wished the North Sea could be drained so she can dig everything up ANYWAY its way beyond my pay grade I'm a Northumbrian with Wessex roots
Cant fault her findings TBH
You know, you may be right and that’s scary as hell!
SE, you and Lisa were talking way over my head... I have a hard enough time with American English much less understand the origins
SE, you and Lisa were talking way over my head... I have a hard enough time with American English much less understand the origins
Thats cos she is educated and I am an old fossil
SE, you and Lisa were talking way over my head... I have a hard enough time with American English much less understand the origins
I remember being asked / told by some kids at a school in Liberal KS that the Americans introduced English to Great Britain during the war of Independence in 1776
Ask Lisa if I can be her English igneous intrusion ?
I remember being asked / told by some kids at a school in Liberal KS that the Americans introduced English to Great Britain during the war of Independence in 1776
Ask Lisa if I can be her English igneous intrusion ?
“certainly”
Merci mon ami.
An interesting tidbit....prior to the revolutionary war, what we think of as a "British" accent, didn't exist. They spoke exactly like we do, or what we think of as an "American" accent. So all those movies, where medieval folks are speaking with an "English" accent...it's pure rubbish. LOL...
I know most don't believe it, but it's perfectly true.
https://www.livescience.com/33652-americans-brits-accents.html
(just one example article on it)
