I don't have to look at a map of central York. I lived there for two years.
And have been to the Yorvik Viking Centre many times. I didn't like it when they replaced Magnus Magnusson's voice over with Michael Wood.
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a post war history of the Scandinavian Union
- Thread starter Kungsholmen
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And have been to the Yorvik Viking Centre many times. I didn't like it when they replaced Magnus Magnusson's voice over with Michael Wood.
Many of the reference books that I use for my posts were purchased from a shop on The Shambles and its sister store The Barbican Bookshop on Fossgate.I don't have to look at a map of central York. I lived there for two years.
Barbican Bookshop to close after 53 years of trading
A FAMILY-run York bookshop is closing today after more than half a century.
www.yorkpress.co.uk
Devvy
Donor
I don't have to look at a map of central York. I lived there for two years.
And have been to the Yorvik Viking Centre many times. I didn't like it when they replaced Magnus Manusson's voice over with Michael Wood.
Many of the reference books that I use for my posts were purchased from a shop on The Shambles and its sister store The Barbican Bookshop on Fossgate.
Barbican Bookshop to close after 53 years of trading
A FAMILY-run York bookshop is closing today after more than half a century.
I miss living up north.
We can roughly understand the chit chat in the Jorvik Centre; the characters' Old Norse is similar enough to Icelandic to understand the gist of the conversation.
Apologies in advance to all Scandinavians.
This masterpiece from Smallfilms (the company that also brought you Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and Bagpuss) is the best television programme ever made about the Vikings.
This masterpiece from Smallfilms (the company that also brought you Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and Bagpuss) is the best television programme ever made about the Vikings.
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IIRC the voices were modern people from York. Well they were modern in the middle 1980s which is when they were recorded.
Devvy
Donor
Last time we were there must of been circa 2014ish, and I’ll admit I can’t remember the specifics, but I remember a fair bit of Norse either by the characters, in the background or by the narrator (or something).
Whip-Ma-Whop-Ma-Gate is my favourite York street name. It's not far from The Shambles.I don't to look at a map of central York. I lived there for two years.
And the city's gates are called bars, e.g. Monk Bar, Bootham Bar, Micklegate Bar and Walmgate Bar.
Then there's thorpe which means village in Old Norse and throop which means village in Old English. The part of York that I lived in was Clementhorpe. The Archbishop of York's palace was (and still is) down the road at the appropriately named Bishopthorpe.
No, as Devvy said, it is generally to try eliminate any misunderstandings.
The reason we can do it is that we tell ourselves and each other that we've been teached to talk English good.
And that is because we're, even collectively, small languages.
And so on.
Spoken like someone who has never shopped in Denmark.
Devvy
Donor
i work in a European team. Most of them, especially the Southern Europeans, I simplify my grammar, words, etc etc. With the Nordic contingent, I speak like with another Brit, slang and all, and everything is understood - not just the words but the meaning. Excellent English.
Granted....my only trip to Denmark was for work to a place near Odense for a few days. No time for shopping!
From reading the above you weren't taught to write English well. I wrote "you" in the third and not the second person, so I meant Scandinavians in general and not you personally.
That was the Ed Reardon in me coming out. People knock Wikipaedia for its inaccuracy. However, whoever wrote this is spot on.
Would it be a correct assumption that you also wouldn't have been talking non-Danish Scandinavian if you had
done so?
I was also speaking about Scandinavians in general - we may on average have a decent grasp on English,
but the key phrase is "on average" and since people are always talking about how everybody here
speaks so good English, it is easy to tell ourselves that our English is better than it is.
Not to mention the difference between reading comprehension, listening comprehension,
text composition and speaking.
Furthermore, what Analytical Enqine posted, and also "WOOSH!"*.
*The sound of a joke going over someone's head.
Been there. Done that. Nobody understands my "bone dry" sense of humour. They can't tell if I'm joking or being serious.
@Analytical Engine and @Lord High Executioner, now you've learned me I'll just done it.
I prefer "Definition of the week: TV set — the box in which they buried Morecambe and Wise."
AIUI British comedy is popular in Scandinavia. For example this is very nearly an armful of a show written by two Britain's greatest comedy writers.
The British version.
The Norwegian version.
As far as I know the Scandinavians don't dub British TV programmes into their languages. Unlike these nations.The narrator is Nigel Hawthorne of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minster fame. Plus an honourable mention for The Knowledge.
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I remember watching the New York branch of the East Enders fan club on the TV once. They said that they liked the show but asked if it could be subtitled because they couldn't understand what they were saying.
Which reminded me that Stephen Lewis who was Blakey in On the Buses and Smiler in Last of the Summer Wine wrote a play called Sparrers Can't Sing which was made into a film called Sparrows Can't Sing. When it was shown in the USA it had subtitles. Someone said, "Cobblers!" the subtitle said, "Shoemakers!"
Several of the New Yorkers were doing very bad impersonations of Samantha Butcher. Which is an excuse to post this.
Re the different pronunciations. This is the infamous one. Although I think it's not a very good example of Taggart's catchphrase.
These are some of the parodies.
I couldn't find a clip of Glasgow's greatest philosopher asking directions to Sidcup, but this is a good one.
And I had to post this one as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YuFlCJ_rA0
Tim Brooke-Taylor who is the second from the right in that sketch died on 12th April 2020 from Covid-19. He is credited with writing The Four Yorkshiremen sketch
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This is the last one because I've dragged the thread way off topic.
"Did you kill Alf Roberts?" Priceless!
"Did you kill Alf Roberts?" Priceless!
I was originally going to release this part later but I thought it would be appropriate to release it now with all this talk about accents
The following is a transcript of a youtube video by youtuber Jens Sabroe (a J.J Mccollough-esque youtube channel in this alternate universe)
Hello friends, Jens here. If you're anything like me you probably spend way to much time on twitter and have been seeing all those "British people be like..." posts going around, you know sorta highlighting how weird some of their accents are so I thought it would be nice to talk about a certain Scandinavian accent phenomenon.
Politikermålen or the politician accents.
The politician accents were accents of Danish, Norwegian and to a lesser degree Swedish which developed gradually shortly after unification. They were developed for the new federal Scandinavian public service radio programs that were appearing, it started with the news but later seeped into other parts of the radio and tv. The intention was to change the pronunciation of certain words to make them understandable to those who spoke any of the other two languages. They never bothered with Icelandic because they thought it was to far removed from the other languages. For a long time these were the only accents you would hear on tv and radio, local accents were seen as provincial and uneducated.
The accents got their name from the fact that a lot of federal politicians adopted the accents when addressing the whole country. But I may have overstated the accents importance, nobody ever spoke it at home or with friends or in any non-formal capacity and it had already started declining by the mid-nineties. Conventional knowledge says that it was the internet that finally killed it in the early two thousands with youtube and all that jazz. So today you basically only hear it on certain news programs and it works fine.
That was it for today, see you all next week.
The following is a transcript of a youtube video by youtuber Jens Sabroe (a J.J Mccollough-esque youtube channel in this alternate universe)
Hello friends, Jens here. If you're anything like me you probably spend way to much time on twitter and have been seeing all those "British people be like..." posts going around, you know sorta highlighting how weird some of their accents are so I thought it would be nice to talk about a certain Scandinavian accent phenomenon.
Politikermålen or the politician accents.
The politician accents were accents of Danish, Norwegian and to a lesser degree Swedish which developed gradually shortly after unification. They were developed for the new federal Scandinavian public service radio programs that were appearing, it started with the news but later seeped into other parts of the radio and tv. The intention was to change the pronunciation of certain words to make them understandable to those who spoke any of the other two languages. They never bothered with Icelandic because they thought it was to far removed from the other languages. For a long time these were the only accents you would hear on tv and radio, local accents were seen as provincial and uneducated.
The accents got their name from the fact that a lot of federal politicians adopted the accents when addressing the whole country. But I may have overstated the accents importance, nobody ever spoke it at home or with friends or in any non-formal capacity and it had already started declining by the mid-nineties. Conventional knowledge says that it was the internet that finally killed it in the early two thousands with youtube and all that jazz. So today you basically only hear it on certain news programs and it works fine.
That was it for today, see you all next week.
So, it's like the Scandinavian equivalent to BBC English, or the accent that only US tv news people use.