I used to listen to a band called Cockney Rejects when I was a young Punk Rocker back in the days. They sing in Cockney (Well it’s Oi Punk so they mainly scream I guess) 
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I will have to look them up! My Mum sounds a bit like Dick Van Dyke when she goes Cockney
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Lol no offense @RosaCanDo but latino women can hold a grudge for an eternity,
I learned proper Spanish, and I have quite a few Latino friends, and South American Spanish and European Spanish are quite different,
I learned this when I worked with a guy named Alvaro; who was from Columbia, and his English was hit or miss , some days clear others it was rough, so I started speaking with him In Spanish, he started laughing he’s like that’s not our Spanish, and taught me a lot about the South American dialect, but it’s still different depending on the location; the general is the same but slang in Mexico is different than like El Salvador, so it’s still a learning curve for me
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Hey now…not just women!
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This is fascinating. I love language too, not so much for the technical aspects (I do find grammar and syntax etc interesting, but not so much that I focus on them for their own sake), but more for the social and historical aspects.
What @RosaCanDo is alluding to here, about the Latinisation / Christianisation of place names in Central and South America over the last 500 years, is very similar to what happened to the Celts in Europe 2000-2500 years ago, as they were labelled and integrated (erased) into the expanding Roman Empire.
The Celts had clans, groups, of ethnic, family, and tribal ties (much like the indigenous peoples of this land do today); some formed large federations to fight the Romans; others made a decision to cooperate with the Romans because the alternative was violence and death. Both these stark choices were made in the indigenous communities here, in their response to the expanding European settler presence. (Patterns of history play themselves out like steps in a dance.)
You can see this impact of Roman expansion today, not only in many of the languages that are prominent in Europe today but also in the politics: the Brexit vote, for example, was pretty neatly divided along the lines of areas that had a strong Roman presence voted to remain, and areas that were more Celtic voted to leave. The battles between the Celts and the Romans ended millennia ago, but the same battles continue to be fought today, and the same sense of belonging - who is in and who is out, and what it means to belong - is still at the centre of the human (and the linguistic) experience.
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Well said and thanks for the education. I had only a general idea of how the patterns of romanization and conquest played out in Europe from movies. In fact I’ve learned so much from lots of posts here today!
I wanted to say more about this aspect and what happened to the indigenous people in the Americas, but I wasn’t sure how political my framing of it might get! I’m pretty passionate on this point. But it is what it is and it’s a history worth knowing. Anyway, thanks for that context. I will say it was intriguing to me to see the blending of European/Catholic traditions with indigenous ones in person and how much they vary across Mexico. Every village has their own annual festival that incorporates both sides in different ways, often with elaborate indigenous dress and dances. Seamlessly intertwined.
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Fascinating @Matt and @RosaCanDo Thank you for sharing. I find the history of Ancient Britain so interesting, but hadn’t really given much thought to how the Americas experienced similar. It is that blending of traditions and the evidence of that still existing today.
I won’t get political about it, but I have never experienced anything so polarising as the Brexit campaign. It was a really horrible time for this country as families and friends fell out over it. It was different from elections and people felt so strongly. We are still recovering from the aftermath of that campaign now (actual result aside). I had never realised the Roman/Celt connection so that is really interesting. It very much felt like a clear divide and the result was a pretty even split which reflects that.
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I assume you mean when he plays Bert in Mary Mary Poppins?
Love that
Well Cockney Rejects has been in a lot of controversy to say at least. And one of their members died in April this year.
I’ve seen them live once on a Swedish Punk Rock festival. I was all dressed up, piercings everywhere, and a Tank top I bought in London that looked like the British Flag.
For some reason I ended up right in front of the stage. One of the few girls who actually was there.
And then I hear someone yell with a special Brittish accent “Hey, London we love you, get up here we need a hug” so I got up on stage hugging all the members of the band, before they even started playing.
I wasn’t that big of a fan back then, I was mainly there because my friend loved them. He still mad at me for that and it’s like 20 years ago 
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It’s an interesting argument, but TBH I thought it’s the other way around Matt. And it seems to me other, more recent factors than historic Celts vs Romans play a role here. In 1975 it was like you say, the English voted overwhelmingly to join the common market, while the Scots and Northern Irish voted to remain out of it. In 2021 the vote was reversed. See here for the numbers:
And here a Celtic analysys of the Celt vs English votes of 1975 and 2021:
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Well, for me, I try to speak French here, well, I speak French here and I prefer it because like this, I can improve it and the French here have to be patient with me and not me with them. It’s very egoistic. I know. But the seem to appreciate that they don’t have to speak English.
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That’s a good point, and well taken 
: boundaries and belongings evolve over time and it’s not cut and dried at all.
And the UK (GB and NI) today is a more sharply sectioned space than it was in Roman times: it is more unambiguously divided into England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Taking a cue from your point above, I think an argument could be made that imperialism pushed opinion in Scotland and Northern Ireland toward “Stay”, but the imperialism at work here is English imperialism, not Roman (I feel like you were alluding to that in your post, please correct me if I misinterpreted, thx 
). So while imperialism and anti-imperialism are shaping opinion and belonging, the effect is, as you said, reversed in the current UK GB & NI context 
Still I think it’s interesting to note that the areas of highest concentration of “Leave” voting in England, from the map you link from the BBC above, are at the periphery of Roman rule (and here I mean England specifically, not the other countries / regions):
(Map from your BBC link above)
(From Roman Rule in Britain c.43 - 410 CE (Illustration) - World History Encyclopedia)
It’s an interesting point to ponder 
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When I’m in Italy I speak a mix of Italian/spanish/french, can’t help it everything is mixed in my head. Last time the waiter replied in english 
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This is exactly what I mean, I probably to that too more or less.
My 11 y/o is level expert on this. To the point where the school turned to us saying that we should focus on one language at a time.
My 13 y/o German teacher chimed in (She’s from Germany,now living in Sweden) telling the school that it doesn’t work that way. And as long as the kids can make themselves perfect understandable in the different languages, are able to read and write without mixing and actually knows the words, it doesn’t matter how they speak. Because that’s how the brain works.
I like her.
But I can also understand how it gives them a hard time to navigate through all that. Especially when they speak one language with their dad, two or three different ones in school, and a fourth or fifth with me from time to time.
(We both tries to avoid speaking anything but Swedish or English with the kids, but at the same time we do want them to be able to conversate with relatives and have that part of their culture as well)
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I feel it’s only good to speak and know as many languages as possible, just as long as your head can take it & you speak the language of the country you live in fluently.
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