France and the French are superb. I go there regularly and never had any probs with the locals and always had a great time - apart from the time I thought we we going to get done over in a Lyon suburb! We were outside a shop and a load of neds from an estate gathered round us and all our rucksacks and camping gear. It was getting to one of those fight or flight moments and one of them said to me in broken English "You are English?" no, no. I'm Scottish. Je suis Ecossais. "Ah, Scottish? Salut!" as soon as I said that they all ****ed back off into the estate. If ever I've answered an question correctly, I think it was then!
As said if you had said you were English they would o **** themselves waved a white flag and ****ed off.
Don't make me do my big long speech about why Scots speak more Anglo-Saxon English than English people. We weren't trying to please our French Norman conquerers
I know scottish people who have literally no idea what many scots people say. You are the last people who should be talking about languages. You made your own up and then couldnt figure out what the hell you were saying.
Basically, after the Norman invasion, several "Franglicisations" happened to old Anglo Saxon. That's why English is one of the few modern languages where meat is called different names when it's alive and when it's dead (boeuf becoming beef instead of cow, mouton becoming mutton instead of sheep) because the people preparing the food spoke a different language from the people eating the food. Also, York was the capital of England previous to this, the capital moved somewhere nearer France (that Londinium) and people pronounced Anglo Saxon words in a more Norman manner to fit in and assimilate with their new French overlords. The word noo became now (still noo in Scotland) The word coo became cow (still coo in Scotland and Freisland) etc etc etc The difference in pronunciation continues to this day - Northern English people having been less affected by this and still pronounce Bath properly (for example) instead of the fake French elongated vowel sound of Baawwth. There's more but I've got a report to finish before I get out of here.
You can still see it in place names and surnames. The Norman surname Beaumont (for example) comes from the French naming themselves after the English land they owned. Also, the Scottish surname Lamont is pronounced Laaa-mont in England for some ****ed up reason (to sound more French???) London street names (Beauchamp Place) and some English towns have names which reflect this as well We don't
Didnt london get burnt to the ground.....twice. Maybe the street names were just thought up by someone? **** knows. All I know is the french are ok aslong as you dont feed them after midnight.
I knew all that anyway No seriously, I knew that about the beef/cow, I think I saw it on QI. That and I'm quite interested in history. Anyway, I never mentioned Anglo-Saxons, I mentioned the Vikings
A militant Scot who majored in medievel languages told me all of this (he went on for hours, to be honest). I love all this stuff. On the vikings, wasn't there a national DNA test done a few years ago and the areas that thought they had Nordic bloodlines (NE England, Ayrshire, Shetland, Orkney) actually had very little surviving Nordic blood with the most Nordic blood in the British Isles being found in Dublin (this entire paragraph could be half-remembered bollocks)
That can't be true. I'm pretty sure I'm about 99% Nordic. The 1% is the rogue Celtic element - the ginger in my facial hair
France is alright, I really like Paris but the rest's just a bit boring. I'd much rather go to somewhere like Italy or Spain. Also, the French are generally moody ****s, if you speak to them in French and make a small mistake they glare at you like you've just pissed on their mother.
