I am 42 next Sunday, and my Mrs has just given me 4 nights on the coast and 2 days fishing! Wonderful surprise and off Monday night. Off for Gallo Wed and deep-sea Thurs. Seems strange, to some, to go on my own, but it's the time alone I need now and again. Complete disconnect. Just not sure how my Mrs had the captain's number but won't complain!!
Hope we get a good fish or 10. Good time of year, currents are favourable. Marlin, Sailfish, Dorado and Tuna around.
I would think that a PM should be bilingual at least Frenchie. According to a questionnaire of the house of Commons 10% of MPs feel they are fluent in French and 56% feel they can get their meaning over in the language. Apparently 20% can speak German (after a fashion) - as if to justify a commonly held stereotype that they are detached from the real World more can speak Latin (5.5%) than Italian (4.5%) or Spanish (3%) (amazed that this one is so low). 7% want to learn Arabic but never got round to it and 3.5% can speak some Russian. Punjabi is also spoken The most linguistically talented are the Lib Dem MPs with 25% being bilingual as opposed to Tories 18.5% and Labour 15% - SNP members can't speak English So what do we know about Starmer - a lawyer (so probably one of the posh Latin brigade).
Cheek - most Scots are bilingual, able to speak English and Scots - my MP is a polyglot, able to speak Gaeilge, Gaelic, Scots, Doric and English .
I knew you'd bite on this BB I know the rest but was is Gaeilge ? Anyway you must realize that the majority of Scots are lowlanders and, to English ears, sound like Kenny Dalgleish or Gordon Brown. I am half way there having had a mother from Kirriemuir (Ogilvy country). But it's no hinderance to political discourse because politicians the World over have developed the international language of Blaaah Blaaah - which is the art of speaking without actually saying anything, and of completely ignoring questions by changing the subject back to Blaaah Blaaah. Also the use of words which nobody understands actually impresses lots of people - a bit like Doctor language (which is also internatioal). So German Blaaah Blaaah is not materially different from English Blaaah Blaaah in as much as the hearer goes away asking himself ''Yes, but what did he actually say' ?
It's one of the official languages of Ireland - probably more commonly known as Irish. My MP is actually Irish, but has spent a great deal of his life in Scotland - bides in The Broch where the Doric is strong, but listening to him speak in Westminster or to the press is remarkably different to speaking with him personally. Yes, the majority of Scots live in the lowlands, but that doesn't mean they don't speak Lallans - they are bilingual remember...
You say that the Lowland Scots are bilingual BB. As I understand it different pronunciation can be used to describe an accent eg. the difference between the way natives of different towns say the same words. Dialect refers to a case where different vocabulary is used. Language refers to a separate grammatical stucture being used. So rural Somerset English would be using only a different accent when called a foreigner a faarrner, a different dialect when saying 'thas got a girt big nesstletripe there'' (nessletripe = belly), but would be moving into a different language when saying about a late bus ''Where bee err to then'' ? Thus changing the grammar in a multitude of ways including ascribing a sex to the bus (from old German). So rural Somerset English is probably the best place to hear the remnants of a language ie. Wessex English. But could I describe them as bilingual because they can talk in another way ? Does Scottish English have grammatical structures which are different from those in standard English and are the lowland Scots able to change those structures at will ? If so they are bilingual (but some people in Somerset, parts of Yorkshire and the North East may be as well). The importance of having a separate grammar is the reason why Flemish is not seen as a language in its own right but as a dialect of Dutch (although Ghent Flemish is ununderstandable in Amsterdam).
Scots has very few, if any, grammatical structures - anything goes really, yet people understand each other as well as English speakers. In written language, quite a lot of Scots words have multiple spellings which are all acceptable, but a nightmare for teachers. Not because they teach Scots but because spelling is deemed important in English - kids fail to see that, and many can't be bothered with it. Schools here in Aberdeenshire don't actually teach Doric, but they encourage it in storytelling, poetry, song and in stage plays - sitting through a class production of the Nativity is an experience!! One of my favourite Doric poems was submitted by a P4 girl during a school competition a few years ago - A mannie fa cam fae The Neuk On his bum hid a fashious plook Bit the answer he socht Was the Dyson he bocht For he'd heard o' it's poo'erfu' sook. No-one can tell me it's not a language.
Something about a laddie coming down from , or going to, the nook (corner of fife) with a pimple on his bum. Searching for an answer to his woes, the answer was there all the time with the Dyson ???? he'd brought with him which had some kind of powerfull (sook) ???? If I am right I would maintain that this is more intelligable than eg. reading a text in another language such as Danish. If completely wrong then I hold my hands up in submission
Ir is currently 11°C, damp and windy in rural France. Not the type of morning to be doing things outside. All oi our street lights are coming on at 6 pm until 10 pm, except for the one outside my house. I think the lamplighter needs to come and put a new bulb in it. When I was growing up in England, our street had gaslights that a man with a ladder would light every night. Times changed, and they came on automatically, before a few years later being replaced with brighter electric ones. That is progress for you!
Half your luck - it's 1C up here and sleeting - even colder 10 miles inland. I feel really sorry for those pensioners who have had the Winter Heating allowance taken away - how they cope in this, with worse to come, I really don't know.
Woke up this morning in South West Herts to a carpet of snow and still snowing, by eleven o'clock it was rain and by midday snow was no more
Gales all day, with trees being blown over, as I found out when going to the post office. It took me and a much younger farmer plenty of effort to move one that had blocked the road. Then just before 6.00 pm our electricity disappeared. I hadn't brought any wood in for the fire, so the temperature dropped quickly, and we had to find candles for some light. 9.30 pm it came back on, so a hot meal quickly in case it should go again. You feel just how bad it can be when power lines are brought down and people are without for a couple of weeks.
My wife and daughter, who both work at the same school, enjoyed a needless snow day yesterday. Councils require school management to notify any closures/delayed opening times on the Council website by 7:30am each day - their school's management acted on the weather forecast and decided to close - my wife was just a mile away when the she got the notification, so turned around a came home. Although the skies were decidedly threatening, the forecast was wrong, it didn't snow at all. To be honest, that was irrelevant though. We live in a little coastal bubble which virtually has its own climate - whilst we had none, travel 10 miles east, west or south and it snowed heavily. Roads were blocked and every school was closed. The issue is not so much whether the local kids can get to school, it's more whether the teachers can - no teachers, no point in opening. Management were a bit more sensible today - they announced a delayed opening time, just to ensure that they had enough staff.
