Sylvester

That one doesn't have Mary's portrait on it though!

I still don't get why they withdrew that coin. The reverse was way different to the half sovereign. If it really was due to confusion then how did the shilling manage to survive? Victorian shield back sovereigns were being issued concurrently with St. George right up to 1887, so enter the jubilee head people might have though they had St George and a shield reverse again, albeit a different one! Mind boggling stuff.

We never learned anything about the Genitive or Accusative cases in English. In fact i didn't think English actually had them. Don't remember them in French either, i seem to remember the first time i ever came across these terms was at the age of 16 when doing German at school. And we certainly never declined and congugated knowingly. The terminology was never taught to us. Which i think was a bad move. I only learned that stuff proper when i started trying to learn latin (self taught). I'm on my fifth attempt now in 7 years. It's very difficult. The grammar terms lose me far too much. Gets too complex. And this is beginners? I found the dunce's guide to it though and it's helping alot more. I wonder if they do an idiot's guide to it? Hopefully i can enrol for Archaeology with beginner's latin next year. I will learn this blasted language if it takes me a life time to get beyond simple sentences to ones that include atque.

I have to same feeling towards post-1399 coins that don't fall into the 1663-1799 period. I find decimal a little more alluring than Elizabeth II predecimal though, never rated the Gillick much.

Don't forget Oli i had a comprehensive school education. We focused on themes (and i never did Romea and Juliet anyhow), we never did grammar or explaining what archaic words meant. It wasn't until about four years ago that i knew what heretofore meant. The teacher had to explain it to me in great depths because i didn't have a clue. Here to fore, sounds like it's here right now. I heard no previously anywhere in that word. Definately no afore. Other words i dislike, 'ere' (before), and thou. What's wrong with 'you' and 'before'? 'immediately preceeding' sounds much better more technical. More scientific. I think my problem with literature and heaven forbid poetry (and why ididn't get top grade in history) is because i see things as either right or wrong. It either is or it isn't, it's black or it's white... ambiguity really doesn't feature much. If it's provable through empirical means then it's correct. Maths i liked, but i was crap at it. But the theory behind it was good. Same with grammar, it's got concrete rules... i like rules. Pity poetry doesn't have rules and a guide to understanding it definitively.

Shakespeare was so complicated i find. It took me ages trying to translate everything he said to actually enjoy what he was on about. Don't get me started on Chaucer he was even worse he totally lost me, hook, line and sink. I find modern literature to be much better crafted anyhow. It's probably the only time when i would back modern over medieval. Give me Stephen King or Terry Pratchett any day of the week. If you haven't read Good Omens i heartily recommend it. A philiosophical book written with twists of humour about Armageddon and some angels that aren't keen on implementing it. The ineffable nature of God being a key theme. Truth be told though i never liked English at school. I enjoyed it at college though when we were doing stuff like language acqusition, accents, dialects, mutual divergence/convergence, occupational discourses, a spot of simple grammar. Oh and my favourite gender theories in language. Etymology was good too. We covered the termination of v/u interchangability and the dropping of the medial s. This is the English i like, if i must do English. Story writing was my favourite though. As you can tell i was a language student through and through, literature i was either indifferent to or i abhorred. Although i never really liked English, chemical sciences was my buzz. Nuclear physics! Oh baby... and space... i'd give anything to be studying those again. I regret doing history sometimes.

As much as i hate to admit it, i still don't get why 'where for art thou Romeo' means why are you Romeo? Maybe i'm missing something fundamental here. The only Shakespeare play i ever liked was Merchant of Venice, i've read that one three times. Midsummer's Night Dream was dire. I hated that so much it was unbelievable. My favourite author though has to be Terry Pratchett, sarcasm... love it. I also like Robert Louis Stevenson too. And Arthur Conan Doyle! Now he was one hell of a writer i loved reading his stuff. As for Tolkein well i loved his imaginative style but i found him a little long winded, although i did like his Homeric style. Ah the Iliad, now there is a book!

And that's why i don't get pedantic! Someone will pull you up Geoff. My typing is my weakness. Must have caught the 'c' twice there. (I never re-read what i've typed anyhow!) I hate Shakespeare anyhow. England's greatest writer? Rubbish... England's greatest plageriser. Charles Dickens is probably a much better writer all round.

Britain is returning to a class based society i believe, which is probably a bad thing. Chav class, goth class, yuppie class... etc.

Wind, rewind, So shouldn't evolution be revolution? Watchout for the Chav revolution... coming to a high street near you!

Ah the Auld Alliance lives on!

Wot u sayn' am n't ac'dem'c, uh [innit]? Still you can't help worring that the language is going down hill. If any of those spellings make it into the dictionary (and lets face it the word Chav is now in the dictionary) it will mean they are then officially recognised (be it either formal or informal), language could get very complicated if that 'txt spk' ever takes off in a more formal way. Accronyms are all the rage (and formal) and they are just as bad. I mean i won't stand in the way of an evolving language as long as evolving means it easier and more sensible and coherent, but i wouldn't call text speak any of those!

I have heard it said many times that Scots were tight fisted with the dosh... now i know!

Wot iz ths i c b4 me? R'meo, o r'meo where the f*k r u? Ah progress, alot to be said for progress.

I've always fancied one of those Mary portrait Testoons. Never seen one for sale though.

True but i've always wondered about that one. How safe can having a silver threepence in Christmas pud be? Someone might choke on it!

How long will it be before you can walk into a bookshop and see the following dictionaries on the shelf; French English; English French Spanish English; English Spanish German English; English German Italian English; English Italian Latin English; English Latin Chav English; English Chav Imagine a page out of the Chav dictionary; English - Chav Am i? - Am A? Are You? - R U? Is It/he/she? - Innit?* Int he? Int she? Are We - R We? Are You - R U? Are they - R They? Verb = To be - 2 b *Innit is also required where there is another verb in the sentence. Do you sometimes worry? Me Chav spk innit? (I speak Chav?) D' U Spk Chav innit?** (Do you speak Chav?) **Presence of question marks is not required, neither is punctuation. Grammar and word order is flexible, spelling is fixed however, the minimal being the correct and accepted way.

What would you do if you got 20 fake £1 coins in change? Henry III? Ha that's laughable... that design wasn't introduced till 1279! Those have got to rank at number 2 in the list of worst fakes i've ever seen. Number 1 being dominated by those crude George IV sovereigns where he looks more like Iulius Caesar.

Edward VII silver was very uncomfortable to touch without fire tongs a while back. You know i would have thought that Brass Threepences would have had a rather large following. They were very popular in their day, many pensioners and the like speak of the brass threepences with much fondness. I once tried to do a set of them, i was fascinated by them as a kid. Absolutely loved them. Until PVC/Verdigritopia took control of my collection a few years back. That fact that the silver threepences are unpopular is no surprise. Too bloody small.

A coin album is even more convenient i should think, alot lighter and not as bulky to carry under your arm...

I like haggis myself, but it has to be from the butchers, if it's from the supermarket then i'll not touch it, there's a major difference between the two. My father sometimes goes to Scotland on work related business (or one of his colleagues does) and they always fetch a haggis back.

Oy! Play nicely. I'm like you Peter but the only social group i refuse to come to terms with are Chavs. I agree with Geoff about the Political Correctness issue. By not using the term 'queer' i wasn't falling into the PC trap, it's not a term i'd use anyhow. Why? Well way before PC came along it was used as a derogatory term against homosexuals, since i've got nothing against homosexuals and i've hung round with gay people before why would i want to insult them? So i don't use it for that reason (personal preference), not because an evil doctrine from US college campuses says i cannot use the term. If i wanted to use it i would, make no mistake. I openly shun Political Correctness. Bloody do-gooders, like Mary Whitehouse, now she should have been shot. It's alright for her to watch any film she likes and to dictate what the rest of the British population can and cannot watch. People like her are what get up my nose... my advice to her if she wasn't dead is to go and get a life rather than trying to run and ruin everyone elses. Sidenote everytime someone says PC i automatically think Pubically Challenged, our double entendre injoke, a derogatory way of referring to annoying children and teens (you know the really hard types, thugs that think they're the first one to think of forming a gang, the first one to think smoking's cool), and at the same time taking the mick out of PC.

Homosexuals are endeavering to turn the word 'queer' from an insult into a term they can use themselves. Although i don't know how successful that will be, i find it hard not to see it as derogatory, but then perhaps it's because i still see it by it's original definition. Going around calling yourself "odd", "strange" or "irregular" can't be good no?

Personally i hope not. I think there's something to be said for retaining a little individuality you know. Our £ sterling represents over 1000 years of both our history and culture and that of Europe, mainly France. Whereas that part of their cultural identity has been consigned to the history books it still lives on in Britain. Our Decimal currency if you think about it has a Franco-American twist (being that it works in 10s) but still has it's foundations in the Roman coinage that came eons ago. When it came to the euro though, Greece lost the most.

I still sometimes find myself counting ten pences as 'two, four, six, eight, ten... eighteen and one pound" It's from the days of dealing with two shilling pieces. It's a very rare occurence these days though. Way back in Anglo Saxon times there used to be 240 silver pennies to a £ and these silver pennies weighed 1lb, now i don't know whether that's Troy or Avoirdupois (sp?). So 1lb in weight was one Livre (French from Latin). The d originally came from denarius, however more correctly the d actually came from the French 'denier' (which came from Denarius). In the 760s the French king introduced a new broad and thin silver coin known as a denier. In the 780s this new type of coin spread to England when it was adopted by Offa of Mercia (Mercia was the kingdom territory that roughly covers the midlands and Offa was the king of this territory), and they thus coined their own variants and these became known as pennies (from German pfennig). Why did they keep the Lsd shorthand though? Well that's because of 1066, the Normas arrived and they spoke French (English was for low life scum, i.e the conquered peasants). In turn in 1154 the Norman line was succeeded by another line straight from France, the Angevin line (from Anjou, also known as Plantagenets), and thus French continued as the official language of England till sometime in the Fourteenth/Fifteenth Century. Even after that period French was still more prestigous and important than English and was until the Welsh took over in 1485 (the Tudor) Henry VII straight over from France (a pattern emerges no?). Then of course the Reformation put paid to French once and for all (well until 1714 at any rate when it became the language of the Government, due to the German Hanoverian kings not being able to speak English and the MPs not being able to speak German). English generally though became more predominant from the 1530s onwards. Latin went into decline too because it was seen as Popery. So naturally the French variants, Livre and Denier stuck.