Parlez Vous Francais?

[sarlania]

I'm working on my alphabet soup fic and it got me thinking about foreign languages.

We know Hornblower spoke French, initially not very well but after the events Flying Colours he would've known enough to speak relatively fluently. We also knows that he speaks Spanish, after being held captive in The Duchess and the DevilBush obviously hasn't got

Comments

[esmerelda_t]

Archie's meant to be fairly fluent in Spanish, it's the reason Horatio gives to the men for why they should wait till he gets better in Duchess and the Devil.

I think if Horatio knew French and Spanish his bases would be fairly covered for the early 19thC and the type of work he was doing, perhaps he'd learn something when he was older just to keep his mind active though? Russian perhaps if he'd had contact with Russians during the War.

[sarlania]

Archie's meant to be fairly fluent in Spanish, it's the reason Horatio gives to the men for why they should wait till he gets better in Duchess and the Devil

Oh damn. It's been ages since I've seen that episode.

Russian sounds plausible. Or German, I think, given that Prussia and Austria were world powers then.

[mylodon]

I've always assumed that Archie also speaks French - not sure why. (Maybe it's Jamie being fluent in French, although I suspect if he'd been taught Spanish he'd have learned French, too. No evidence to back that up, though.)

If Hornblower was a Grecian at school did that mean he'd done either ancient Greek or Latin?

[esmerelda_t]

If Hornblower was a Grecian at school did that mean he'd done either ancient Greek or Latin?

That's not why I assumed he was known as a Grecian at school.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :P

[charliecochrane]

I sort of knew you wouldn't...

[gayalondiel]

I've always assumed Archie can speak French too, since he'd gone to the trouble of learning Spanish, but that might be my modern UK education talking - French tends to be the default.

Still, if enough of us assume that he does, we can make it fanon and win the debate.

[sarlania]

Yay for fanon indeed!

[esmerelda_t]

Russian does not seem plausible as the Russian elites of that time spoke French and German (being German in part). I would say Latin, Greek, French for sure and some basic Spanish, maybe. French was the common language of the European elites then, wherever they were from. So HH speaking German sounds highly improbable.