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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

> the Queen’s family, which came from a corner of England

First time I see Germany classified as “a corner of England”, lol.

(To be fair, before the current crop, the English aristocracy spoke mainly French, and I guess France could be classed as “a corner of England” by people still a bit hung-up on the loss of Brittany...)

RP English is heavily influenced by French and Germanic tones. Local dialects are very different. I still find it hard to compare British languages with what developed in North America, where the influence of non-English-speakers was clearly massive. Isn’t it more interesting to look at Australia and South Africa, where direct links with English natives are way more recent, and still the language departed markedly...?

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> (To be fair, before the current crop, the English aristocracy spoke mainly French, and I guess France could be classed as “a corner of England” by people still a bit hung-up on the loss of Brittany...)

Normandy, not Brittany. Brittany was never part of the English crown, and it was independent from the French crown for a long time as well (de jure not until the French Revolution, although it was de facto part of France for about 250 years prior).

> Normandy, not Brittany.

Fair point. In my head the two tend to merge into an unicuum, but that's not the case.

The South African accent has a much stronger Dutch influence (from Afrikaans), despite the language being English.

Not quite that simple. Yes, SA English follows after certain features of Afrikaans, but some of those Afrikaans features were local innovations, not brought from the Netherlands (centralization of /i/ is one example).

Hence "influence".

My point is that that influence is not necessarily Dutch if the features in question happened in Afrikaans only after its arrival on the Cape.

That's only one of the English accents in SA. There are many others including an RP-like accent (which I and my friends use), the Cape Coloured accent, and the accent which most of the country's people use (as seen initially in this video https://youtu.be/KfIvbVLuCh8?t=3)

I thought primary Norman French speaking died out with the Plantagenets. I'm sure almost all the royals after the first few Plantagentes were at least bilingual in English/French. George I could not speak English IIRC. His first language was German. Do you have a reference for the Tudors and later houses speaking primarily French? James I (of England, VI of Scotland), yep, I'll believe that without reference.

A modern example of English aristocracy speaking French is that English uses Anglo-Saxon words for animals, but French words for prepared food--which was very expensive. cow/beef pig/pork sheep/mutton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_with_dua...

Isn’t South Africa a former Dutch colony?

Yip, and a former British colony.

Hence… 'A' is for aardvaark.

also by Danish..where do you think Anglo came from? yes, the term is Roman for what they called brits but the actual group that was not Saxon(Saxon ie German Saxony) came from the middle of Denmark..

Anglia (which is currently in Germany) wasn't a Danish speaking region until well after the Angles settled in Britain. Which was well after the Roman period. They spoke Old English.

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