"Languages spoken at Waterloo" Topic

"This is a fun little exercise. A clip of the climax of the battle from Bondarchuk's Waterloo, with characters speaking their own languages. It doesn't have English subtitles, but most of us have probably seen the film so many times that we know much of the dialogue off by heart not to need it. Apart from which, I'd bet our hobby interest has given us a reasonable smattering of French and German, and especially military vocabulary."

YouTube link

Horse and Musket Gaming

link

Armand

I can think of English, Scot, Irish, Dutch, German, French, Swiss, Dutch troops from the colonies in the Indies. Welsh, Polish, Italian, Spanish and maybe Portuguese.

Fleishman?

Even today, "German" covers a lot of ground.

You forget the Spanish of Alaba…

Armand

French, English, German (various), Italian (various), Dutch, Flemish, Polish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Spanish, Corsican and even Lalands Scots. And I am sure there were more.

It is a brilliant find. Far better than the original, once you know the script off by heart. The Youtube page then led me to War and Peace, the Henry Fonda version, again far better than I recalled.

Both make me realise just what Ridley Scott managed to do

You could add Russian to the list, but, like Alava, I doubt Pozzi etc used his native tongue. He was on his own!

link

Luxembourgish?

An awful lot of regional dialects, too, in the absence of universal public education.

I believe many of the French troops in 1815 would not have spoken French as their first. Language, if at all. Lots of local patois, including Breton and Occitan, among many others.

Thanks

Armand

Deadhead
I think you mean Pozzo.
I doubt that Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo would have known all that much Russian. He could have nipped across the valley and had a natter with his fellow Corsican though.