Not to be argumentative with the OP, but it probably didn’t matter. What mattered was that the officers could understand each other and make themselves be understood by the men in their own units.
‘Do you call this a bloody breakfast, man? Dym bacon, dym sausages, dym herrings, dym bloody anything! Nothing but bloody bread and jaaam!’
(from Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That)
If the language barrier was difficult for the British, it was even more so for the Austro-Hungarians, but they got by with their officers all knowing German as well as whichever one of the 13 totally different languages of the empire spoken by their men. And they were able to hold off both the more monolingual Russians and Italians (with less propping-up from the Germans than is commonly believed).
Actually, the English-speakers in World War I probably had it easier than the speakers of many other languages. There are many different languages spoken in Italy:
Wendell Wagner, taking a look at France, most people would speak French and one of the other languages listed. And Deaf people wouldn’t have been in the army.
At what times would that “most” be 70% and at which would it be 99%, I don’t know. But if you meet someone who is from France, of good hearing, and claims inability to speak French, he’s either making a political point or pulling your leg.
Also, many of those languages are more mutually intelligible than Jamaican, Mumbay English and Highlander.
Fair point, I think that’s perhaps why I wondered whether any anthropologists or similar had examined what happened when ‘the men’ encountered one another.
I realise most of the other powers in WW1 were more distinct with regard to language and dialect, but none of them was as geographically scattered as the native English speaking world. I’m just guessing but I think people from the Po valley and Calabria would have been more likely to encounter each other before the war than people from Derbyshire and Alabama.
Nope. Many people didn’t even visit the valley beyond his own, there’s still people like that nowadays.
My parents were born 500km apart. In Spanish terms and in their generation, that makes them an “exotic” couple; they were from two different cultures and three regions apart. Nowadays, someone from Sweden is almost home-brewed. Not only is it much easier physically for people to travel, but it’s a lot more expected and viewed as normal.
For a while I was friends with a Scots “lass” who, while she had a quite pronounced accent, was quite easy to understand. One day I dropped around her place with her and she called out to her mother who was upstairs. They carried on a loud conversation for a while and the only word I could pick up was my name in the middle of it. She was only letting mum know that I was with her. When her mother came downstairs and spoke to me I had no trouble understanding her either.
Concur on that! A friend of mine back in Virginia is from the Midlands. Dunno which small to mid sized town other than he said I’d not likely ever hear of it. Simple enough.
However, Ken was educated at Oxford and had been in the US business community for many years. His accent was pronounced but clear. Not a London accent but clearly British somehow.
His mom came over once and it was like he was speaking a different language altogether when they spoke between themselves. To others they were perfectly clear but that one line of communication was perfectly opaque.
I’m living in England right now, from the upper midwest US, and when I’m doing secretarial work I am frequently asked to call people. Most of the time it’s okay…they tend to pause a little while when I first talk, “What’s this American doing calling us?” Sometimes, though, they will ask me to repeat almost everything. For instance, my last name is pretty easy to understand, and they will almost always ask me to spell it out (funnily enough my last name is MORE common over here than in the states).
I have trouble as well, but only for the first sentence or so. Greetings around here vary widely, and I haven’t really adjusted yet to “Y’arright?” meaning “Good morning to you.” So sometimes it’ll be me pausing to place the sounds to words, but after that it’s usually easy enough to continue the conversation.
I can’t really think of anyone that I couldn’t understand after a few sentences though. The cab driver up in Thurso may as well have been choking the entire time he talked to me, but it was intelligible choking.
People with thick Indian accents in call centres…no clue at all on either side.
I used to work with a guy from Vietnam who was famous at work for having a thick accent. At best, I understood half of what he said until the day that he explained that he was taught English while living in Vietnam from someone who was born in France. His teacher didn’t explain that English had plosives, so “police” was pronounced more like “bvoleezh” (I think that Vietnamese itself is a little short on plosives, which didn’t help.) It took a little effort, but I pretty much understood him from that point onward.
I remember watching some extreme challenge show a few years ago that was produced for the American market, to my total and absolute chagrin one of the New Zealander’s, speaking totally clear and understandable english was subtitled.
I couldn’t believe - I had to go and drag my wife from the bedroom to point it out to her.
I’ve seen Jamaicans speaking with each other and I can’t understand a word they say, but when they slow down and talk to me direct, I can make it out.
Same with Scots accents. Same with Ebonics (or whatever it’s called). I hear people on the street where I live, I don’t understand any of that, but I can talk to them one on one and figure most of it out.
I think it’s a matter of adapting, I recall seeing Sheena Easton (Scottish) on TV, in the early 80s. I could barely understand what she was saying without concentrating. Now if you hear her talk, she’s sounding American.
I don’t think the different English accents, whether is, Australian, South African, English, Scots, Yorkshire, Welsh, make for much of a barrier if you put in some effort.
My father was from Yugoslavia and so was my mum. But my dad came to the USA via England and my mother came directly. So mum spoke “American” and dad spoke, “English” But I don’t remember anything of him, as being spoke with an English accent, you just get used to the difference and adapt fairly quickly.
