His Slovakian father, Max, had fought for Austro-Hungary in the First World War; his mother Bertha, née Schreiber, was the daughter of a famous Hungarian rabbi. They had an arranged marriage and did not speak each other’s language.
That’s pretty arranged now, isn’t it…..
How many English royals & aristocracy were married off to people whose language they didn’t speak? More than a few I imagine.
Not with french being the established aristocratic/court/diplomatic language for Yonks in most of western Europe….
Plus with how *young* couples were betrothed at, plenty of time for language lessons… Usually the girl, since she had to up and go into Furrin’ ..
Mind… they may have been able to converse with their Hubbie and the Courtiers… The Staff generally was quite another matter.. Plenty of historical anecdata about that..
I’m sure it doesn’t take long to learn the french for “not tonight dear, I have a headache”
I know not whether Catherine of Aragon spoke English nor whether Henry VIII spoke spanish – but they likely both spoke good French.
It didn’t actually say that neither spoke German but that was the central/eastern European lingua franca. Should I be surprised that neither spoke Yiddish or was that the tongue of uneducated Jews?
I was going to say exactly that. Shirley they spoke Yiddish. Moreover Slovakia was part of Hungary until 1918 and the language was taught in schools.
Officers in the A-H army had to speak German, Hungarian and at least one of the languages of the men under their command.
“and at least one of the languages of the men under their command.”
Like the old Indian Army, then. How does the army of the Republic of India do it? Do they insist that all officers speak the language(s) of their men? Or do they try to operate in Hindi the way the Roman army operated in Latin?
The (Raj) Indian Army operated in Urdu. All officers had to be proficient within two years and the standards expected were high. I should imagine the modern Indian Army did a quiet shift over to Hindi, with a smattering of English.
This intruiged me sufficiently to look it up. Current Indian Army all written orders are in English. Hindi obvs widely used. And they also have specific language speaking regiments.
“all written orders are in English.”
What could be more natural than using a Creole language developed from German and French? Diversity, innit?
If English is a creole language, so is French (derived from celtic Gaulish, germanic Frankish and vulgar Latin) – though English and French are now a long way from any hypothetical pidgin. German derives from proto-Germanic, whatever that was…
Unsurprising, given that India is an extremely multilingual state. Hindi and English are the official languages of the Union Government. In total, c.121 major languages are spoken (by >10,000 people). About 22 of these are officially recognised in at least some states. It’s said that there are some 19,500 dialects in India…
Enoch Powell (pbuh) served in India during WWII and became proficient in Urdu.
Enoch learnt Urdu at SOAS, while studying for his degree in Classics at Cambridge. He wanted to be Viceroy.
I’m told that Urdu and Hindi are essentially the same language with different alphabets.
IIRC, Simon Heffer says Powell studied Urdu at SOAS in the 1940s, long after he left Cambridge in 1933. I forget whether he studied at SOAS during or after WW2, but, as you say, his motivation was his ambition to be viceroy.
Hindi and Urdu are essentially the same spoken language (Hindustani) with identical grammar, but they differ in script and vocabulary. They are mutually unintelligible in writing.
A thought: was it about transportation?
You wanted your daughter to marry someone who wasn’t a cousin living next door, and not one of the knuckle-dragging peasants in the village, so you hunted wider and found suitable men.
Now, people travel, go to university etc.
Possibly. But clans and tribes tend to favour inbreeding.
I bet that they both understood Hebrew!
I see that several people had already pointed out that they were probably also bilingual in Yiddish … I should have read the comments before jumping in