Elizabeth I, linguist.

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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby Random Review » Tue Jan 01, 2019 1:13 pm

William Camden wrote:Apparently one of the languages she knew was Dutch, a common second language for maritime nations at the time.
She had a rather bitter exchange with the Polish ambassador to England on one occasion - the discussion took place in Latin.


I love this idea of a heated discussion in Latin as late as the Renaissance. If that sort of thing was still happening, then it wasn't a dead language at the time.
Shame no one recorded it for posterity (I'm assuming).
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby Beli Tsar » Tue Jan 01, 2019 2:38 pm

Elizabeth was not actually that unusual for her time and family - two other very similar examples in the family are Edward VI, her half-brother, and their cousin Lady Jane Grey. Henry VIII himself wasn't a slouch at languages. Though the Tudors were a clever bunch who enjoyed study, they weren't that unusual among monarchs of the period. And Latin was certainly far from dead at the time.

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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby chove » Sat Jan 05, 2019 9:37 am

The one that's always interested me is that she spoke Welsh, which if I remember right she learned from a Welsh servant?
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby yong321 » Tue Jan 08, 2019 7:22 pm

Interesting information! I wish there was a website of biographies that only talk about the language aspect of the people, e.g. language capabilities, education, books written, etc.
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby DaveAgain » Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:19 pm

Watching a documentary about the channel tunnel (between France and mainland Britain), it included a clip of Queen Elizabeth II speaking french at the inauguration ceremony.
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby yong321 » Fri Feb 22, 2019 10:06 pm

yong321 wrote:Interesting information! I wish there was a website of biographies that only talk about the language aspect of the people, e.g. language capabilities, education, books written, etc.


An interesting finding today. If you search on Google with keywords "xxx speaks languages" (with no quotes) and if xxx's language abilities are not obscure, you'll get an answer immediately. For example, "elizabeth speaks languages" returns "Elizabeth II > Languages" followed by two buttons, English and French, and similarly, Google says Putin speaks Russian, Swedish and German, Pope Francis speaks Italian, Spanish and German, Donald Trump speaks English, and Isaac Newton spoke English, Greek and Latin. Unfortunately, if you change "elizabeth" to "elizabeth I", there's no result, although as usual Google shows multiple webpages talking about how many languages Elizabeth I spoke.
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Sep 13, 2020 8:40 am

chove wrote:The one that's always interested me is that she spoke Welsh, which if I remember right she learned from a Welsh servant?

On another thread Axon mentioned a language blogger called AZ Foreman. In one of Mr Foreman's essays he mentions Elizabeth I, and names that welsh lady in waiting :-)
I can't be sure, but she may well have been the most multilingual monarch England has ever had. She is known to have spoken at least English, Italian, Spanish, French, Greek and Latin. Some of these she spoke and read far better than she could write them. (Her spoken French was reported to be quite fluent, but her secret letters to the Duke of Anjou, which for obvious reasons couldn't be proofed or drafted by anyone else, are written in a crabbed and awkward French full of unidiomatic phrasing. This is unsurprising. When you have a corps of diplomatic functionaries and secretaries to draft correspondence for you, you only need to write things yourself on rare or personal occasions.)

More strikingly, there is good reason to believe Elizabeth also learned at least some Welsh from her lady-in-waiting Blanche Parry, who came from a family of Welsh-speaking (and highly Welsh-literate) gentry. Parry was also involved in getting the Welsh Bible project underway.

Elizabeth was interested in learning Irish, too, a language for which there were at that time no learning materials for non-natives. Whether she made much progress in the language nobody will ever know. But she did commission Christopher Nugent, the Baron of Delvin, a bilingual Anglo-Irish nobleman, to write something up for her to help get the basics of the language. He did so. The result was the Queen's Irish Primer, a little booklet roughly equivalent to today's Lonely Planet guides for tourists: a phrasebook and word list plus a basic outline of the grammar. This was the first known written attempt to explain a Celtic language to an adult learner, and it was produced at the personal behest of the English crown.

http://blogicarian.blogspot.com/2017/07 ... welsh.html

EDIT
BBC Wales article about Blanche Parry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-42805908
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Re: Elizabeth I, linguist.

Postby Montmorency » Wed Nov 04, 2020 1:10 am

chove wrote:The one that's always interested me is that she spoke Welsh, which if I remember right she learned from a Welsh servant?


I did not know for sure whether she spoke it, but I am fairly sure that it was she who first gave permission for a Welsh translation of the bible to be made.
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