Communications between Allies with different languages

[Readie]

For anyone with a genuine interest in the history of English, I recommend "The Adventure of English," by Melvyn Bragg; it's actually very readable, even entertaining in places. He maintains that English has survived by basically being a thief, and pinching words from other languages, then making them its own. He also says that it was the Black Death which ensured the language survived, since all of the educated types, like monks, were either killed, due to living in close proximity to each other, or ran away. This left only native English-speakers available for court duties, etc., so the language continued.

I can also recommend,
Michael Wood 'The Story of England' which charts the extraordinary story of the English community over 15 centuries from the Romans to today.
John

 

[Readie]

Prior to WWI French was the language standard of Europe. Almost all diplomats spoke French. International treaties were negotiated in French and translated into other languages only after the original copy was signed. European nobility such as Czar Nicholas spoke French and I suspect many senior business executives did also. Things changed after WWI but there would still have been many people fluent in French scattered across Europe during the 1940s.

What about the modern day EU? Is French still the language standard of Europe?

Dave,
Not anymore. Much as the French dislike it English has superceeded French as the international language.
The last 'international' bit was on C16 Mayday radio calls which started 'Seelonce...seelonce' the rest of the distress call was in English as that is the global maritime language.
John

 

[JoeB]

As do many European countries. I have friends from Hamburg who pretend not to be able to understand a Bavarian accent,much as I might have difficulty with a Geordie (North Eastern) English accent.

Yes but my understanding is that in case of Italy these differences are, and especially *were*, more profound than the variations in accents in even remote parts of the UK as they sound to American ears (as I've heard), or in German dialects (as explained to me by my German speaking daughter), but rather there's actually a traditional distinction between people who 'speak Italian', and people who 'speak dialect'. At Italian reunification in the 1860's, only a few % of educated people in Italy 'spoke Italian' and could communicate with one another directly in spoken word. Today something like 15% of Italians speak dialect as their first 'language' but most are considered 'bi lingual' enough to get along in standard Italian. In the WWII era it was somewhere in between. And besides the acclerated homogenizing effect of radio and TV, simply being literate was a great homogenizer because a single written language was taught. But a lot of WWII Italian common soldiers didn't have good literacy. So it wasn't just a matter of mulling over strange pronunciations or missing key words here and there as German or British Empire soldiers might in speaking to comrades from different regions, but closer on the spectrum to poorly literate WWII Chinese soldiers of different dialects, who basically could not communicate by spoken word at all.

Joe

 

[Vincenzo]

italian dialect are hard to understand, myself don't (full) understand my town dialect, luckily is near exticnt in its true form, talking with people of few hundreds kilometers away is impossible in dialect (each with own dialect). I don't understand my cousin wife, she came from a town around 150 miles southern (they are american so she don't known italian).

 

[yulzari]

This was recognised as a problem in WW1 with Belgian largely Walloon (French speaking) officers unable to readily communicate with Flemish speaking troops and Bavarian officers from higher social ranks were known to use French more readily than their German speaking soldiers. I recall my unit doing an exchange with the South Carolina National Guard and interpreters had to be found to translate English into local American and vice versa. Some found French useful where both groups knew some French. Even in France, in the call up for the Franco-Prussian war, only 140 odd years ago less than a third of the soldiers spoke or understood standard French. Most spoke a local patois or dialect, often nearly another language. The wife of one of my older neighbours here has to translate his patois into French for anyone not local.

The comedian Spike Milligan wrote of occupying a small bunker on the south coast of england in 1940 with a Pole and they could only communicate in bad German and I remember meeting in Switzerland a chap from Hamburg who was on an exchange with a Swiss brewery. The Swiss couldn't understand his North German Plat Deutch and he couldn't understand their Schweiz Deutch so they used English.

I think the answer to the original question is that they used whatever worked irrespective of the language. This is why European scientific papers were printed in Latin until well into the 18th century as Latin was the lingua franca and British chemistry students at the beginning of the 20th century had to be able to read technical German.

As a last piece of useless information, English and Welsh law required the use of debased Norman French until less than 200 years ago and they are still trying to winkle out the remains of French and Latin today.

 

[Readie]

As a last piece of useless information, English and Welsh law required the use of debased Norman French until less than 200 years ago and they are still trying to winkle out the remains of French and Latin today.

That made me laugh yulzari..it's quite true of course. England /British English is a bastard tongue with influences from more places than most realise.
Maurice Druon: Writer and pugnacious defender of the French language - Obituaries - News - The Independent
This is an interesting article.
John