Time Commanders

[Barbarossa82]

Time Commanders is playing all this week during the evenings on UKTV History. Tonight is Boadicea ( I refuse to say Boudicca ) v Agricola.
Last night's was Pharsalus, and the Optimate side (the team) got creamed just like in real life.
Eddie Mair came across as a w****r as usual, although I suspect this is not his fault but because someone is writing a script for him setting him up to bait, belittle and harrass the team in order to make the show more confrontational and hence more fun. But last night he met his match in the form of the team leader, who managed to take the p*** by somehow ingeniously working in the names "West Side Massive" and "East Side Massive" into his battle plan. Mair had no clue what he was talking about, and obviously neither did the producers, as they left it in! Watching the team leader trying to keep a straight face as he said it was wonderful.

[Arrowhead]

Time Commanders is playing all this week during the evenings on UKTV History. Tonight is Boadicea ( I refuse to say Boudicca ) v Agricola.
Last night's was Pharsalus, and the Optimate side (the team) got creamed just like in real life.
Eddie Mair came across as a w****r as usual, although I suspect this is not his fault but because someone is writing a script for him setting him up to bait, belittle and harrass the team in order to make the show more confrontational and hence more fun. But last night he met his match in the form of the team leader, who managed to take the p*** by somehow ingeniously working in the names "West Side Massive" and "East Side Massive" into his battle plan. Mair had no clue what he was talking about, and obviously neither did the producers, as they left it in! Watching the team leader trying to keep a straight face as he said it was wonderful.

What time is it?

[Barbarossa82]

What time is it?

I think it's 7.00pm except for Friday when there's a double bill starting at 6

[Arrowhead]

Time Commanders is playing all this week during the evenings on UKTV History. Tonight is Boadicea ( I refuse to say Boudicca )

Why do you refuse to say Boudicca?

[Barbarossa82]

Because, as Winston Churchill proclaimed, "everyone has the right to pronounce foreign names exactly as he chooses"! I'm not going to say "Beijing" or "Mumbai", because Peking and Bombay sound more natural in English. By the same token, I have no objection to the French calling England "Angleterre" and London "Londres", so long as I don't have to say "Paree". Boadicea may well have been called Boudicca in Gaelic, but it just trips better off the tongue when Latinised and then Anglicised to Boadicea.
No disrespect to anyone who wants to be authentic by saying "Boudicca", but for the sake of consistency they should also say "Roma Total War", and "Yu-lius Kae-sar"!

[Fridge]

No disrespect to anyone who wants to be authentic by saying "Boudicca", but for the sake of consistency they should also say "Roma Total War", and "Yu-lius Kae-sar"!

Good point, well argued!

[Didz]

Hmm! my understanding was that Boudicca was her real name.

Boadicea was nothing more than an early spelling mistake in the Roman history books.

Also unless one was not born in Britain (which of course is quite possible) Boudicca is not a foreign name and so Churchill's rule does not apply.

[Barbarossa82]

Didz, you're right that Boudicca was her "real name", if by "real name" you mean that which she used herself. However, "Boadicea" is not a "spelling mistake" as you attest, but a latinisation, much like "Arminius", "Carthago", "Gallia", "Caractacus", or any number of other names. Similarly, Londres is not a "spelling mistake" for London, but an attempt to make it sound better and more natural in French.
As for the foreignness point, Boadicea was a British, Celtic queen. Since my ancestry is predominantly saxon English with only minority Celtic influences, this does make her foreign from my perspective, though were I Welsh, Irish or Breton there would be strong grounds for saying the reverse. The word "British" now has a political meaning but it is originally the name of an ethnic group of which the surviving members are the Welsh, Cornish, most of the Irish and a few of the Scots. The English and most of the Scots are ethnically Germanic and Scandinavian are not ethnically British, merely politically so.

[tai4ji2x]

ARGH... pharsalus was aired already?!? anyone happen to capture it onto video? both pharsalus and qadesh are the only battles not available on the file-shareing networks... ;)

[Didz]

Didz, you're right that Boudicca was her "real name", if by "real name" you mean that which she used herself. However, "Boadicea" is not a "spelling mistake" as you attest, but a latinisation, much like "Arminius", "Carthago", "Gallia", "Caractacus", or any number of other names.

In that case I shall use her real name rather than that used by her enemies.

As for the foreignness point, Boadicea was a British, Celtic queen. Since my ancestry is predominantly saxon English with only minority Celtic influences, this does make her foreign from my perspective,

My ancestry is Angle, my forebears being invited over to Britain long after Boudicca was dead.

So, from my point of view she was a foriegn queen, if not actually an enemy one. Even so, I shall give her the respect of using her real name rather than that used by her enemies.

The English and most of the Scots are ethnically Germanic and Scandinavian are not ethnically British, merely politically so.

I beleive mine came from Friesia in northern germany and according to Melvin Bragg our main contirbution to Britain is its language, which had it not been for us would probably have been more like Welsh or Gallic.

[Barbarossa82]

That Melvyn Bragg programme was great, especially the medieval stuff.

Getting back to the original topic, did you see this evening's TC? It was Cannae. Police officers were the contestants, and out of all the teams so far they seemed to have the best command structure and the best performance on the field. Having disabled the Roman cavalry more or less exactly as Hannibal did, they then unfortunately decided to try to just hold a line against the numerically superior Roman infantry, and got creamed. Still not a bad performance by comparison with some of the others though.
I can't believe the BBC are so tight that they even used the combat music from RTW! The music's great, I know, but you would have thought they would have done a bit more to prevent the show being just one huge RTW infomercial!

[Didz]

Getting back to the original topic, did you see this evening's TC? It was Cannae. Police officers were the contestants, and out of all the teams so far they seemed to have the best command structure and the best performance on the field. Having disabled the Roman cavalry more or less exactly as Hannibal did, they then unfortunately decided to try to just hold a line against the numerically superior Roman infantry, and got creamed. Still not a bad performance by comparison with some of the others though.

Yes, I watched it while I did my ironing (The joys of living alone).

To be honest it was difficult to see how they could have held off those Romans within the limitations of the RTW battle engine. Its alright for Nusbacher to talk about forming a box but trying to give ground slowly in RTW is almost impossible.

I thought their best option would have been to throw their cavalry into the Romans flanks and rear but there was no mention of them after their victories on the flanks.

[tai4ji2x]

if the series ever repeats again, and qadesh or pharsalus come up, could someone PM me if they're able to capture it to their hard drive?

[Arrowhead]

That Melvyn Bragg programme was great, especially the medieval stuff.

Getting back to the original topic, did you see this evening's TC? It was Cannae. Police officers were the contestants, and out of all the teams so far they seemed to have the best command structure and the best performance on the field. Having disabled the Roman cavalry more or less exactly as Hannibal did, they then unfortunately decided to try to just hold a line against the numerically superior Roman infantry, and got creamed. Still not a bad performance by comparison with some of the others though.
I can't believe the BBC are so tight that they even used the combat music from RTW! The music's great, I know, but you would have thought they would have done a bit more to prevent the show being just one huge RTW infomercial!

Yeah, they sorted themselves out all right but as soon as the battle started they panicked and the romans steamrolled over them.

[Kraxis]

Barbarossa, the problem with your stance towards names is rather simple. Should you happen to get into a discussion with locals about a place or person from their area, or even somewhere else, it is bound to get problematic. If I enter a trainstation in Shanghai and wants a ticked to Beijing chances are that the person behind the screen doesn't know what I'm talking about if I say Peking (and don't expect every chinese person to understand english so explaining that I want to go to the capital is out of the question). Of course this is only an example but it applies to plenty of situations. So do you really want to learn pretty much every name and place twice? I don't.

[HarunTaiwan]

Of course, Chinese maps have translated every foreign city using Chinese characters. These have to sound nice, and sometimes the translation is not close to the actual sound. Chicago and Los Angeles are fine examples.

Not to mention the old way of giving national names that are flattering..England is the Hero's Country, etc., but now they just do their best phonetically.

[GFX707]

The English and most of the Scots are ethnically Germanic and Scandinavian are not ethnically British, merely politically so.

Not to go too off-topic, but as far as I know only a few of the Scots are of Scandinavian descent....most would probably be related to the Irish that came over or to the original Picts....

[Didz]

So, if I understand your logic British is synonymous with Celtic, as in Ancient Britons. But even the Celts were multi-ethnic and so I don't really see the connection.

Personally, I consider the term British to be a political classification rather than an ethnic one. As fas as I can see one can be borne in anywhere in the British Isle and still consider oneself British regardless of ones ethnic background.

As John Prescott once said there never was a race called 'The British.'

[Ziu]

Yes, I watched it while I did my ironing (The joys of living alone).

To be honest it was difficult to see how they could have held off those Romans within the limitations of the RTW battle engine. Its alright for Nusbacher to talk about forming a box but trying to give ground slowly in RTW is almost impossible.

I think it is impossible. RTW units seems to miraculously be able to hold ground whilst losing. That is, of course, until they rout.

It was not unusual in ancient times for engaged armies/units to cede long distances of ground whilst still staying in combat. 90 odd percent of casualties came when units turned and bolted. So ceding ground was a much better alternative.

I don't see how with the RTW engine one could really make a fair go of Cannae.

[Barbarossa82]

Whoa, OK, let me respond to these in turn.

Kraxis, your misunderstanding is, as you say "rather simple". If I was in China, trying to communicate with a Chinese person, then I would either a) make the effort to at least learn some Chinese phrases, or b) use the place name that they themselves use. There is a difference between foreign names pronounced in their own native language, and the forms we use when importing that name into our own. Would you prefer that I always referred to Germany as Deutschland, and to India as Bharat? Do you always say "Yoolius Kaesar" when you are talking about Julius Caesar, and "Yeshua" when you mention Jesus? I would assume not.

GFX707 - There is still ongoing (and very interesting) research into the background of the various national groupings which populate the British isles. More recent DNA analyses show that the Scots have a lot of genetic common ground with Scandinavian peoples. While this is far from conclusive, it surely does constitute a degree of evidence to suggest that their descent is more Nordic than Celtic. Needless to say, no ethnic group is "pure" or "apart", we have all interbred to a significant degree, so of course the Irish and Pictish influences you mention will be there.

Didz, first of all regarding the heterogeneity of the Celts. Like most ethnic groups, the Celts had a significant range of subdivisions and subordinate identities. Some, such as the historian Simon James, have suggested that the differences were so substantial as to destroy the term "Celt" as an ethnographic concept. However, in the context of the British Isles, the Celtic population was overwhelmingly made up of Gaels, who had invaded and displaced the (also Celtic) Brythonic people some time between 500 and 100 BC. Therefore although it is true to say that the Celts were not a single unified ethnic bloc in a wider European context, on the Island of Great Britain they were a relatively homogenous Gaelic grouping.
It is not my logic that British is synonymous with celtic. I appreciate that there are two principal definitions of British. The first, and more familiar, is a political definition, and applies to anyone who holds a British passport. It is possible to trace this political use of the word "British" to the reign of James II, when it was consciously and deliberately adopted as an artificial, unifying adjective to encompass the whole of his ethnically diverse realm.
If you have studied any ethnography, you will see that the term also crops up there, as a grouping of peoples. The Celts did not constitute the entirety of this ethnic group, but were by far its largest component.
Therefore the English, seemingly most of the Scots, and those of later immigrant backgrounds, are very much British in a political sense but not in the sense in which the term is used in the study of Ethnography.
On a lighter note, it might be worth bearing in mind that it was John Prescott who gave us the pearl of wisdom: "The Green Belt is a great achievement, and now we must build on it." :)

[melvinio]

Yes, erm, Time Commanders

Did anyone see the Battle of Chanon (or was it Chalon)?

I know sweet FA about the Huns, but even i could figure out you dont use horse archers as statues.

[Didz]

Yes, erm, Time Commanders

Did anyone see the Battle of Chanon (or was it Chalon)?

I know sweet FA about the Huns, but even i could figure out you dont use horse archers as statues.

That was the episode that inspired me to start this thread. It was so embarrassing it set my teeth on edge.

[CrackedAxe]

By far the best TC, imo, was the Battle of Gaugamela. The team did incredibly well, given the task they were set. Or were they just lucky? The team was pretty animated and argumentative as well, which made for more entertainment.

Btw, Boadicea IS a roman spelling mistake and NOT a so called 'latinisation'. How could they latinise a word that was not native to their language without translating it, therefore converting it to a different word or phrase altogether. I mean, how do I 'anglicise', for example, Moa Tse Tung; Moth Eaten Tongue? Or Mahatma Ghandi; Ma hat ma coat?

[Barbarossa82]

Btw, Boadicea IS a roman spelling mistake and NOT a so called 'latinisation'. How could they latinise a word that was not native to their language without translating it, therefore converting it to a different word or phrase altogether. I mean, how do I 'anglicise', for example, Moa Tse Tung; Moth Eaten Tongue? Or Mahatma Ghandi; Ma hat ma coat?

You are already doing it!!! Although your spelling is rather unconventional, you are anglicising Mao's name as an inevitable concomitant of transliterating it. Is "Germany" a spelling mistake for "Deutschland"? Because by your logic it surely must be. Hard to see how one could get so many letters wrong though.

Boadicea for Boudicca doesn't have to be deliberate in order to be a latinisation rather than a spelling mistake. People naturally modify the sounds of foreign names and words when they import them into their own language. You are doing it yourself when you write "Moa Tse Tung", since this will never correspond adequately to Chinese, especially since it is a tonal language.

You also confuse latinisation/anglicisation with translation. Translation means converting the MEANING into your own language, latinisation/anglicisation means modifying the SOUNDS of the word so that it more accurately reflects your own language's structure and natural sound range. "Londres" is not a French translation of "London", it is a Gallicisation which makes it easier and more confortable for them to say, and as far as I'm concerned they're perfectly entitled to do it.

I bet you don't go around talking about Italia, Hellas and Magyarország when you want to refer to Italy, Greece and Hungary!

[Didz]

I think the most common example I come across are Spanish names when studying the perninsula war.

The two that always catch me out are 'Ciudad Rodrigo' which as far as I can verbalise it sounds like "Fray-dad-Rodrigo".

And 'Badajoz' which contrary to the spelling gets pronounced something like 'Bad-a-Hof.'

I have no idea how the Spanish spell the names of these cities but the spelling we use doesn't reflect the phonetic's needed to vocalise their names.

I suspect if the Romans had trouble pronouncing Boudicca they probably wrote out the letters that corresponded to what they heard. It would be a bit like me writing Fraydadrodrigo instead of Ciudad Rodrigo.

[Kraxis]

And 'Badajoz' which contrary to the spelling gets pronounced something like 'Bad-a-Hof.'

Hmm... I always though it was pronounced Bada-hros.

[Somebody Else]

Well, living in Peking, China (or, if I want to get it right, Beijing, Jongo - though even that's a horrible mispronunciation) I've only ever seen a couple of episodes. In both, the teams performed miserably. From what I understand, this is the norm. I would be interested to see what happens if a strategic level command team from the army were to participate.

[AmbrosiusAurelianus]

Badajoz is pronounced with the first d as an extremely soft sound, which is actually more like a "th" than an English "d". The j is like the sound in loch, but is even harsher. The z at the end is the "th" as in thin , as is the first letter in Ciudad. Th-ee-oo-th-ath is as close as I can get without using phonetic letters, which I don't know how to type on the forum!
It is good to know that TimeCommanders is back on. Thanks for the notification. As for the side arguments I agree with Barbarossa on pronunciation, and don't believe that the ethnographic arguments about English and Scottish populations will ever be resolved. Still, 'tis always interesting to speculate.

[Arrowhead]

Can everyone stop talking about grammar?

[CrackedAxe]

You are already doing it!!! Although your spelling is rather unconventional, you are anglicising Mao's name as an inevitable concomitant of transliterating it. Is "Germany" a spelling mistake for "Deutschland"? Because by your logic it surely must be. Hard to see how one could get so many letters wrong though.

Boadicea for Boudicca doesn't have to be deliberate in order to be a latinisation rather than a spelling mistake. People naturally modify the sounds of foreign names and words when they import them into their own language. You are doing it yourself when you write "Moa Tse Tung", since this will never correspond adequately to Chinese, especially since it is a tonal language.

You also confuse latinisation/anglicisation with translation. Translation means converting the MEANING into your own language, latinisation/anglicisation means modifying the SOUNDS of the word so that it more accurately reflects your own language's structure and natural sound range. "Londres" is not a French translation of "London", it is a Gallicisation which makes it easier and more confortable for them to say, and as far as I'm concerned they're perfectly entitled to do it.

I bet you don't go around talking about Italia, Hellas and Magyarország when you want to refer to Italy, Greece and Hungary!

So, by your reasoning, I could correctly use the japanese rendering of our prime ministers name, TAWNY BRAIR!

Cool. This would be ok would it? By your use of Boadicea, you're saying its ok (or are you ancient roman? my you're looking good for your age). Its Boudicca, BOO-DICK-A!