Eurofile

The influence on English of the Old Norse language of the Vikings is still up for debate, says PETER TRUDGILL. When people are learning English as a foreign language, it is generally very useful for them to learn three main forms of every verb: the present tense, the past tense, and the past participle. Past participles occur […]

It wasn’t only the English language that spread around the globe during Britain’s age of imperial expansion, says PETER TRUDGILL.   The three major surviving indigenous languages of the island of Britain are English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic. We are very familiar with the fact that, since the beginning of the 17th century, English has spread far […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how similarly-sounding words can come to have such different meanings. A word with two or more different meanings is technically a polyseme. An English example is wood, which can refer to wood as a material as well as to a tree-covered area of land. Neck is also polysemous: it refers to the part of the […]

A new exhibition showcasing the works of Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal, dubbed Canaletto, is set to open in Bath.  To begin when Covid restrictions permit, Canaletto: Painting Venice will run at the city’s Holburne Museum until September 5.   As Claudia Pritchard reports, such was Canaletto’s importance to our understanding and appreciation of the historic Italian city that his work is now helping assess its vulnerability […]

Like most British people of my age, I first encountered spaghetti in a tin, in tomato sauce. In our house it was kept in the pantry alongside the tins of baked beans, and we ate it in the same way as the beans: on toast, for breakfast. When I was a child, spaghetti on toast […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the famous names inspired by water courses. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) was one of the greatest composers who ever lived, and his sublime music is much loved and still very frequently played today, 270 years after his death. His sons Carl Philipp Emanuel, Johann Christian, Wilhelm Friedemann and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach […]

As the classic cult film turns 40, Roger Domeneghetti considers the legacy of Flash Gordon and how the character has been a constant influence on sci fi, from Star Wars to Marvel. Say the name “Flash Gordon” and most people will think of the camp, garish cult film with an iconic rock soundtrack by Queen, released 40 years ago […]

PETER TRUDGILL on how long it took for the accent to appear after English arrived in Australia. In 1788, during the reign of King George III, the English language made a very long journey indeed, penetrating deep into the southern hemisphere. This was on the occasion of the foundation of the British Australian penal colony of […]

PETER TRUDGILL on some seldom used festive terms. When I was at school, some children thought it was very funny, around Christmastime. to ask the trick question: “How many letters are there in the alphabet?” The correct answer, they said, was not twenty-six but “twenty-five, because the angel said Noël!”. Noël barely qualifies as an English word. For […]

Shane MacGowan is a challenging subject for a new documentary film. JASON SOLOMONS talks to its director about a hard to love character and staying the right side of romanticism With his rotten-looking mouth, pallid grey skin and slurred speech, Shane MacGowan is the alternative face of Christmas. The Pogues singer and drunken Anglo-Irish poet […]

Claudia Pritchard on a festive masterpiece which – as a result of technology and the requirements of being covid-secure – can now be viewed as never before. “A Foreign Gentleman has brought into England a picture that astonishes every person who has seen it… It is to be viewed.. from ten in the morning till […]

TIM WALKER reviews Love Letters, at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, until February 7 (run currently paused). Theodore Roosevelt got it right when he said that it’s not the critic who counts, but the man who’s actually in the arena. I found myself recalling the American president’s words when I saw Bill Kenwright in his socially-distanced seat at the opening […]

PETER TRUDGILL on a cheering Christmas tradition. One of the best-loved spoof Christmas carols recorded by the Norfolk-based parody folk-duo the Kipper Family is called Arrest These Merry Gentlemen! Another song in the same vein (from their album The Ever Decreasing Circle) is the Trunch Wassail Song, a folk tune purportedly native to the North Norfolk […]

Theatre critic TIM WALKER reviews a new production of Jack and the Beanstalk, which can be viewed at selected cinemas and online Heaven only knows what Peter Duncan’s neighbours made of what they saw going on in his garden in recent months. The former Blue Peter star got it into his head to make a Christmas panto that […]

Not knowing other languages is one thing. Not knowing about them is quite another, says PETER TRUDGILL. I once happened to be visiting the linguistics department of a well-known university in the American Midwest when a phone call came in from the local police station. An officer enquired: “Do you have anyone there who can […]

The paintings of JMW Turner tell the fast-paced story of the modern age bursting into being. Claudia Pritchard reports on a new exhibition which recounts this gripping tale. At first glance, the silvery mound of fresh-caught fish in the foreground looks ready for pan and the plate, but the pilchards in Joseph Mallord William Turner’s […]

Jason Solomons finds actor Viggo Mortensen in characteristically ebullient mood in their over-running Zoom catch-up. Although still best-known to audiences as heroic Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings films, actor Viggo Mortensen has a reputation in the business as cinema’s Renaissance Man. He acts, writes poetry, composes music, sings, paints, runs a publishing imprint, […]

Not knowing other languages is one thing. Not knowing about them is quite another, says PETER TRUDGILL. I once happened to be visiting the linguistics department of a well-known university in the American Midwest when a phone call came in from the local police station. An officer enquired: “Do you have anyone there who can speak […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on Cardiff’s considerable musical credentials. “Singing is in my people as sight is in the eye,” says the protagonist of How Green Was My Valley (1941), John Ford’s sentimental cinematic portrait of life in a 19th century Welsh village. The South Wales valleys have indeed rung with “the sound of many voices”, as […]

A new film about three giants of football, who not only revolutionised their clubs, but galvanised communities, defined cities and shaped modern Britain. Footballing dynasties feel like a thing of the past. Certainly these days, when football itself plays out in empty stadia around most of Europe, vast bowls echoing to the sound of bellowing […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the lost links that gave us surnames like Nelson, Hobson, Hodgson and Dodgson. There are not too many men about nowadays who are called Peter, but those of us who do still bear this name are quite liable to get called Pete, especially by family and friends.  In the same way, women […]

For both Brahms and the Beatles, Hamburg provided a hothouse to develop their talent and character, says SOPHIA DEBOICK. “I cling to my native city as to a mother” wrote Johannes Brahms in 1862. The devastating emotion of his German Requiem, inspired by his mother’s death three years later, proved this comparison was no small statement. […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the likeliest roots of perhaps the world’s most used word. OK is one of the most successful English words of all time. It is a relatively new word – the first recorded usage dates from the mid-1800s – but it has now spread to all varieties of English around the world, and […]

Tim Walker on how online is not what theatre should ever be about. The great theatre impresario Bill Kenwright used to get cross with critics who, having requested two tickets for an opening night, showed up on their tod. On such occasions, he took empty seats as an insult and understandably so. I thought about […]

SOPHIA DEBOICK on the Minnesotan city and its most famous musical son. Minneapolis has always taken its own path. When Bob Dylan arrived in the city in 1959 from Duluth, 150 miles further north, he discovered that Minneapolis – the ‘City of Lakes’ – and its twin city Saint Paul were “rock and roll towns” […]

The Tate Modern and three US galleries have postponed a major exhibition of Philip Guston’s work, alarmed at his depictions of the Ku Klux Klan. Claudia Pritchard reports on a raging art controversy. In November 1970, the American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman went to see his artist friend Philip Guston’s new exhibition at the Marlborough […]

John Kampfner, author of the much discussed Why the Germans Do it Better: Notes from a Grown-Up Country and a regular contributor to The New European, has written in the New Statesman that “monolingualism is one of the enduring motifs of British mediocrity”.  It is hard to query the basic accuracy of his observation, but we should probably […]

Peter Trudgill on Antarctica, and its most famous story. Antarctica has been called “the continent without language”. True languages are spoken only by human beings, and although there are many visiting scientists and support workers in Antarctica these days, this is a modern situation: the continent has never had indigenous languages because it has never had […]

Sophia Deboick on a modern music phenomenon and his creative hometown. Maastricht is a name that looms large in the history of the European Union. As the place of the EU’s birth with the 1992 Treaty it is forever associated with grey diplomacy and has been a four-letter word in the mouths of Eurosceptics. But […]

Sophia Deboick on the fascinating story of the star’s often self-destructive obsession with the US, 50 years after the release of the foreboding album which marked its beginning. David Jones was hardly the only baby boomer to adore all things American. The schoolboy was one of millions who had come through austerity Britain to find rock ‘n’ […]

The nation-states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are located in Caucasia, the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, no more than 350 miles across at its narrowest point, which is mostly taken up topographically by the Caucasus mountain range. These three countries are widely, but by no means universally, considered to be […]

An archipelago of 10 islands 350 miles off the coast of Senegal, Cape Verde is a place that was made by slavery. Its islands of jungle, mountains and volcanic landscapes were uninhabited until the Portuguese arrived in 1462, but it then became a key staging post in the transatlantic slave trade, developing a population of […]