Where in the world are you from??

@Messi Wow!! Do you have citizenship in all 3 countries?

 

I have the brazilian and argentinian citizenship. Next year I will try my Italian citizenship, if not works I must learn luxemburgish to apply for a test and get the citizenship for this country. But the language its very hard and will take some.years to learn. I am now studying french because is the most spoken language here.

 

Brazilian here too. Abraços!

Where did you grow up??

 

Floripa. SC.

Abraços.

 

Kanab, Utah, where just about every western was filmed. The Gunsmoke set is about ten miles east of town, The Apple Dumpling Gang set is about five miles south. The Lone Ranger television series was shot about ten miles north. The local hotels brag about which famous movie stars slept there.

That little town will always be home for me, but I've lived in San Antonio, Texas, for the past eleven years.

 

Portuguese, Spanish, and French - all of them are just bad Latin

 

Well, I speak a little bit of english too.

 

OK let me teach you the luxemburgish language:
- take the german language and remove all vowels
- add a bag of big and rusty nails
- mix it with 1kg of rotten hyena viscera
- lock all of it in a glass jar and let marinate for three months with olive oil

.. there you get luxemburgish.


(ps) YES. This is a completely gratuitous attack on the Luxemburgish language, and as a genuine French, I am very proud of that.
(pps) Of course there is nothing real in my above description.

 

Moscow, Russia.

And I am very unhappy about that, but what can you do. Here's hoping that our government won't ban The Cantina too.

 

Kansas, United States.

 

... said it 'fore ... sayin' it again ..
just Here-n-Now ...
Rural Western Penna.
(Pennsylvania, 'fer them that don't' can't follow)

Northern Appalachia ...
...yep.

 

Modesto, California

 

Leeds, England and still living in the city

 

Friesland, The Netherlands.



The Friesians are a bit like the Scotsmen of The Netherlands.
Friesland (Frisia) used to be a seperate country. At its full might, it ran along thwest-european coast from Normandy well into Denmark! About a 100 kilometres land inward. Later on it dwindled till it spanned just what are now the Dutch provinces of North Holland, Friesland, Groningen and Emsland in Germany (which is still called Ost-Friesland).
The Romans tried to conquer us, but did not succeed!
The Spanish and the French though, did...
Several peoples (some had been mortal enemies for centuries...) were thrown together to form "The Kingdom of the Netherlands".
But we still have our own flag...

Our own anthem and our own language, that is only officially recognised language within the Netherlands besides Dutch.

And yes, this is where the worldfamous Frisian horses come from!



This is what it looks like around here...







It's a bit flat, but beautiful!

 

What a great excurse - never knew that history part and culture west of the border although living very close the German part of Frisia.


So here’s the mark where I’m hailing from in Ost-Friesland, as I learned. Note that in Germany, Ostfriesland and the Emsland are neighboring, but separate regions with the border between Papenburg (being the most northern town of the Emsland) and Leer (the next nearest town in Friesland), with a distance of 25 km between the two).


When thinking about it, I met some ‘Friesen’ 2 weeks ago at a Viking historical fair, where some acquaintances of mine represented Frisians from the 10th century with their historical garment and weaponry.

The flatness of the country around here, being close to sea level +/-, actually is still echoed in some mundane terms such as Netherlands, lower Saxony (the federal state I'm living in) and the language (not a dialect!) spoken throughout the regions: Low-German (Plattdeutsch). Low-German has its own dialects, with some close resemblance with Dutch and English in parts.

The Saxons (together with neighboring Frisians, Angles and Jutes), moving from here to settle the British isles sure had an impact on the forming of Britain’s culture and language during the 6th to 10th century.

Edit: A note about the Romans not able to conquer the northern regions. Most probably 17 km away from my original hometown, some German tribes, led by a guy nowadays called Arminius, wasted 3 full Roman legions and their Tross (20,000 + people) under the command of ‘General’ Publius Quinctilius Varus, an event that became known as the Varian Disaster.

Citing Wikipedia on this:
Varus' forces included his three legions (Legio XVII, Legio XVIII, and Legio XIX), six cohorts of auxiliary troops (non-citizens or allied troops) and three squadrons of cavalry (alae). Most of these lacked combat experience, both with regard to Germanic fighters, and under the prevalent local conditions. The Roman forces were not marching in combat formation, and were interspersed with large numbers of camp followers.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Teutoburg_Forest

 

Consider it noted.

Scholars have indeed postulated that modern Frisian and English have a common origin (ancient Frisian). And the language that closest resembles it today is Danish. I myself have experienced signes of this myself, because a long time ago (I must have been around 10 or 11), I went on vacation to Denmark and while staying on this campsite I met with a Danish boy about my age. We hung out a lot while we were there.

He spoke Danish and knew only a few English and German words... I spoke (modern) Frisian and knew some German and quite a bit English. And with some hand and footwork (as we say here in NL) we were able to communicate fairly effortlessly! Yes, there were some strange words, but like I said, with some English, German and a bit of gesturing, we could hold entire conversations. To the amazement of both his family and mine...

Today my understanding of Danish isn't what it was back then, alas.


At some point, officially (in name) Frisia was considered part of the Roman Empire, but in reality that was an empty claim.
They did some trading and paid some hides and donated a few horses for the army, in tribute.
But usually Roman occupied lands were obligated to give up their young men for military service, but the Frisians outright refused. So the Romans performed razzia's to collect the men. They were promptly freed with the combined effort of the stricken villages and even some neighbouring ones.

Then the Romans sent a garrison, to reclaim the prisoners and to show them who was boss. The younger and the older men and even the women, took up arms and chased them, overhauled them, freed the prisoners and followed the remaining soldiers to their fort. which they subsequently, utterly destroyed. Killing every occupant but a few. They were released to bring that message back to Rome...
After that no more razzia's were held and even the lacklustre tributes in the form of hides and such was not reacted upon after that. The Frisians went back to handling their own affairs, without much difficulty.

As you might have guessed, I'm a proud Frisian!

"Leaver dea, as slaef!" ("Rather dead, than slave!") Is a famous Frisian saying.

 

I’m totally with you on this front (see my “Arminius stopped Roman expansion near Osnabrück“ post above)!

Romanus eunt domus!

Romani ite domum!

Regarding your mentioning of the Danish language: I strongly recommend reading the novel series about Uthred, The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell. Although purely fiction, in most parts it’s historical correct and nonetheless it gives a great impression on the impact of the Danes in British history. And especially the language. In addition, those books are really fun to read (this does not go for the TV series)!





Maybe it’s only a bit over exaggerated, but if in 878 AD in the Battle of Ethandun (Edington), the host of Alfred the Great wouldn’t have beaten the Danelaw (Dane) Vikings (it was supposedly a close match), all of the English Kingdoms of that time would finally had fallen to the Danes. I wonder what impact that would had have on the battle of Hastings in 1066 with the Normans (also with Viking roots) coming over for conquest.


The shield wall must hold firm or Saxon England will fall!

Developing this theory further, if the Danes would have won that battle against the Anlo-Saxons, their language (which was Old Norse during that time), could had develop into the “world” language instead of English as we know it today.



In three weeks from now, I will visit Denmark again for the summer holidays (as I do once a while since my very early childhood). And the knowledge of English (more) and German (less) really helps sometimes when it comes to the written form of that language.

Unfortunately, this is the 1st year since 2007 that no Uthred novel will travel with me as that series had come to an end last year. And it had become a 10 year lasting ritual to read a book about the Saxon – Dane conflict in Britannia while sitting in the dunes at the Danish coastline.

@Addi Ras, @Lazarus Dei, @Maximus and @The Hud : What about you guys from the UK being native Danish speakers (see above)?!

Edit: I was blind, but now I can see @Master_Farkaz: The usage of the ae in ‘slaef’ really reminds me of primordial norse dialects, in Danish ‘æ’ even had become a character on its own (as in the day-to-day word ‘mælk’for milk), I think it was wide spread throughout the saxon language too (as in the name Æthelstan for example). Now I would love to hear more about Frisan!

 

A wretched hive of scum and villainy in the United States known as Washington, DC