The Saturday briefing
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Is there anything you’re yearning to know? Send your questions, on any subject, to the contacts given below, and we will do our best to answer them...
Q
I’m writing a screenplay and hoped to show a character in London in the late 19th century enter a lift – but when were lifts first introduced and become commonplace?
Martin Richmond, Falkirk
A
Lifts, as you know, make for great scenes on screen, you only have to think of Diamonds Are Forever,Thoroughly Modern Millie, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Mad Men,Working Girl and North By Northwest.
Louis XV of France had an early version, a “flying chair”, installed at his palace inVersailles in 1743, so his mistress could secretly visit.
By the 19th century, steam powered ones were used in factories for shifting materials. But people did not dare step inside until American Elisha Otis invented a safety brake in 1853.
Four years later the first passenger lift was up and running in a five-story department store in New York. London hotels led the way here, powered by steam or hydraulics.
Several claim to have had the first one, all around the 1860s, including The Grosvenor, near Victoria Station, but it was called an “ascending room”, and The Langham, in the West End.
Electric ones came in from the 1880s, and The Savoy claims to have led the way here.
The tallest domestic buildings in London in the late 19th century were five storeys, but Queen Anne’s Mansions, between Victoria Street and
St James’s Park,
changed that – an ugly 12-storey skyscraper – which Queen Victoria hated as it blocked her views from Buckingham Palace. It was completed in 1888 and its hydraulic lifts were a big novelty factor, as they were a first for a housing block.
Lifts made the higher floors more desirable, with the best views, and away from the noise and smell of the city.
A Buildings Act came into force shortly after, limiting buildings to 80ft, so the block was a unique sight for many years. Lifts did not really become the norm until cities were rebuilt after the war.
Q
Why did the Dutch language in South Africa transform into Afrikaans when other European languages retained their identity worldwide? William Read, Stafford
A
How Afrikaans developed is a highly debated subject. More than seven million people speak it as their first language,
including Oscar-winning actress CharlizeTheron.The majority live in South Africa, where it is the third most widely spoken language.
Despite its 400-year-old roots, it is one of the world’s youngest official languages, only recognised in 1925.
Afrikaans comes from the Dutch word for African and around 90 per cent is a form of Dutch, with simplified grammar and spelling. For instance, where the Dutch use “ij”, it turns into “y”, so prijs, meaning price, becomes prys in Afrikaans.
There’s also a Portuguese and Malay influence, which was spoken by slaves, and local languages made their mark, such as Khoisan, which is used for many plant and animal names.
It dates back to when Dutchspeaking settlers arrived in South Africa in 1652, with the Dutch East India Company founding Cape Town (left), setting up a water and food refuelling station there for its ships before they travelled on to India and Asia.
The Dutch then interacted with the local Khoisan people, slaves and labourers and it grew out of that, taking off initially as a second language.
In the early days it was known
as kitchen Dutch, a derogatory term because it was spoken in the kitchens by slaves.
Other European settlers and slaves began expanding out of Cape Town, and communities blended, and it developed further.
Other European languages have morphed across the globe, as with creole languages. Creoles are formed when languages combine rapidly to allow for communication, such as Frenchbased Haitian creole, which came about due to French settlers and enslaved Africans during the Atlantic slave trade.
There’s also Jamaican and Hawaiian creole, based on English.Afrikaans is seen more as a sister language to Dutch, as creoles tend to arise without such direct and constant influence from speakers of the original language.
PLEASE SEND US YOUR INTRIGUING QUESTIONS ON ANY SUBJECT:
● By email: put “questions” in the subject line and send to kay.harrison@reachplc.com
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● Unfortunately we cannot reply individually, but we will feature the best questions on this page.