Mayday! Mayday!

What a strange conglomerate the English language is. It is a rich tapestry of linguistic colours that are derived from so many languages around the globe.

It is not, in historical terms, so long ago that Britain, as a Nation of fourteen million souls, ruled a third of the land masses of the World.

We have mentioned previously that the American War of Independence involved no Americans and that titular reference to them is for convenience and their own pride only.

No, the American War of Independence was fought between the armies of King George III and the thirteen British Colonies. The Colonies had, on their side, Spain, France, Holland (The Dutch Republic) as well as sundry Indian tribes. King George had some tribes with his armies, too.

Benjamin Franklin went to London and spoke of the unfairness of the British Parliament—his parliament, taxing the colonists heavily to fund the wars with France and Spain (note that Britain was already at war with these two so it took little pushing for them to get involved!). He told Parliament that they, the Colonists, had already contributed heavily in terms of money and men to the British cause in these wars. The cry was, “No taxation without representation!”

That was just one Colony, of course. There has only been one Colony since that fought for Independence and that was Rhodesia when the Rhodesians, now Zimbabwe, set up a Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ (UDI).

America is the only ex-Colony of Great Britain that is not a member of the British Commonwealth.

The mixture of language that has entwined itself into English started a long time before the ‘Empire’. The Empire brought words into the language that were from farther afield but no less colourful.

Britain has been invaded many times by foreigners from Europe. Being an ‘Island State’ helped it little in those bygone days. Indeed, the Germans call us ‘insel äpfen’ (island apes) to this day.

Even the names of Britain began as foreign terms.

When the Romans arrived under the banner of Julius Caesar they beheld the white cliffs of what is now Dover and exclaimed ‘they are white!’ The Latin for ‘white’ is ‘alba’ and so Britain started out as ‘Albion’.

Ultimately we were invaded by Angles and Saxons so we became ‘Anglo-Saxons’ that gave us the name ‘Angle-land’ or ‘England’. Savage attacks from the Vikings occurred on a regular basis especially down the east coast.

The Vikings also attacked and settled in the North of France where they became the ‘North Men’ or ‘Normans’ and they, in their turn, invaded and set up house.

The Vikings, under Oleg, also settled in Kiev. His tribe were called the ‘Rus’ and so the land there became ‘Russia’.

After the Romans, but before the Normans, the north of France belonged to Britain. That was Brittany. It is known there as Bretagne. It was the small part. The big part was ‘Grande Bretagne’—Great Britain.

We clung on to that part of France for quite a time; we fought battles there at places like Creçy and Agincourt, amongst others, in order to keep it.

It is understandable that many words in English are derived from Latin and French but what about German?

We take our children to ‘kindergarten’. ‘Kinder’ means ‘children’ and ‘garten’ is clearly ‘garden’. Thus we send the children to a kindergarten where they will play and be looked after.

Perhaps we might visit a delicatessen. ‘Delikat’ is ‘delicate’ and ‘essen’ is ‘eat’. So a delicatessen is a place of ‘delicate eats’.

Ultimately we spread around the World. We collected words from many sources. We got ‘bungalow’ from India, ‘amok’ from Malay and ‘boomerang’ from the indigenous tribes of Australia.

Liverpool football ground has an end called ‘The (Spion) Kop’ from South Africa where a battle was fought there.

More locally we have adopted a French phrase that means ‘Help Me’ as, now, an international cry for assistance.

‘Mayday’ started life as “(vous) m’aidez,” which means ‘(you) help me (please)’. The ‘please’ is inferred!

This is just a tiny sample. There are thousands of words in the ‘Oxford Concise Dictionary’ that have an etymology with echoes in far-flung lands with strange sounding names.

English is, indeed, a rich tapestry of linguistic colours. It is up to you, as a writer, to make the patterns.