Saturday 15 November 2014

bread, butter and green cheese

Aside from the better-known Anglo-Saxons that were displacing the Celtic-speaking and Romano-Briton populations of parts of the Isle of Britain, honourable-mentions ought to go to the cadet tribes of the Jutes and Frisians who joined them. Frisian is still spoken on the fringes of Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany along the North Sea and along with Scots is the closest living relation that modern English has among languages. “Bread, butter and green cheese is good English and good Fries,” is often cited as an example of the relation between the two languages but it is not a statement of mutual intelligibility. Rather, it demonstrates that each language departed from continental German and Scandinavian languages is some of the same ways. Bรปter, brea, en griene tsiis, wa’t dat net sizze kin is gjin oprjochte Fries.