The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh: Old Pictures and Videos


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Absolutely gorgeous. Thank you so much. Precious links.
He is extremely fluent in French, except the British accent, and seems fluent in German also. Gorgeous. This generation of royals were really deeply polyglots.
He is gifted and this came also from his parents. His mother knew to read the lips in 3 languages. And his father spoke around 5 languages.
yukari said:
Here's three occasions where he spoke French:




Edit:
And here's when he spoke German

It's also said that he's fluent in Danish, but I don't remember ever watched any (then again, I'm not an avid follower of Philip in the past, mostly just WWF-related one so don't count on me).
Click to expand...
 
here a nice video from austria, german comments, but somepictures and videos I had never seen before. DoE speaking German.
 
What was the prince's mother tongue?
 
Durham said:
What was the prince's mother tongue?
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German, she managed to speak Greek and I think English aswell after years of training because she was deaf and knew lipreading in I think four languages. so maybe french aswell?

oh, sorry, you asked for Philip's mother tongue LOL, German like his mother's.

here are two links to a visit in Germany and his sister at Langenburg.
wonderful to see both DoE and HM trying not to burst into laughter because of the cruel English the german mayor speaks (same as Philip Philip's nephew today, may a regional thing LOL)
the second video is coulour tv and has only been released this week from private owner.
HM can be seen in a then modern yellow dress. unfortunately with paywall 1 E.
https://www.swp.de/suedwesten/staed...erst-Philipp-Gaeste-Gaesteliste-56287631.html
 
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Durham said:
What was the prince's mother tongue?
Click to expand...

It was probably Greek, considering he was born as a Greek prince in Greece to a father who had refused to speak anything else to his parents. They spoke several things in Corfu but I don't think German would have been primary among them. But they left when he was so young that English, German and French (even Russian) replaced it to the point he didn't remember how to speak any Greek anymore.

Actually, I don't know if Philip was talking when they left Greece or not, but still, it's not likely that a native-born Greek prince with a very image-conscious family would have started out with German as his first language.

Edit: It's interesting; Philip's French accent in the oldest video is much better than in the later ones. I don't know if that's speaking in France vs. speaking in the UK, time going on, or something else.
 
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Prinsara said:
It was probably Greek, considering he was born as a Greek prince in Greece to a father who had refused to speak anything else to his parents. They spoke several things in Corfu but I don't think German would have been primary among them. But they left when he was so young that English, German and French (even Russian) replaced it to the point he didn't remember how to speak any Greek anymore.

Actually, I don't know if Philip was talking when they left Greece or not, but still, it's not likely that a native-born Greek prince with a very image-conscious family would have started out with German as his first language.

Edit: It's interesting; Philip's French accent in the oldest video is much better than in the later ones. I don't know if that's speaking in France vs. speaking in the UK, time going on, or something else.
Click to expand...

They were exiled in late 1922, so I don't think Philip spoke Greek by then (as he was less than a year and a half). They moved to France, so while his father might have spoken Greek, his mother probably spoke German and his peers spoke French. So, he probably grew up bi/trilingual; without one specific mother tongue (but rather multiple mother tongues).
 
Prinsara said:
It was probably Greek, considering he was born as a Greek prince in Greece to a father who had refused to speak anything else to his parents. They spoke several things in Corfu but I don't think German would have been primary among them. But they left when he was so young that English, German and French (even Russian) replaced it to the point he didn't remember how to speak any Greek anymore.

Actually, I don't know if Philip was talking when they left Greece or not, but still, it's not likely that a native-born Greek prince with a very image-conscious family would have started out with German as his first language.

Edit: It's interesting; Philip's French accent in the oldest video is much better than in the later ones. I don't know if that's speaking in France vs. speaking in the UK, time going on, or something else.
Click to expand...



I could swear I read that Andreas was as stubborn about only speaking Greek (at some point in his life) as Philip was about NOT speaking or really learning it.

I wonder if Philip’s “first” language was really multiple languages, like German, French, English. Wasn’t there some story he told about how someone in the family would start a story in one language and someone would pick it up in another and so on?

His English has never really sounded like a second language to me. I realize he spent the majority of his life in the UK, but still.
 
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Philip has said that he knew some Greek but had never really learned it. Presumably because he was so young when he left Greece. He said that members of his family would converse in one language and then switch to another, sometimes in the one sentence. I imagine that the languages spoken were a mix, French, German, English, maybe a little Greek.
 
I imagine his official biographer will have that well covered. Ie languages spoken.
 
I posted this before in another thread but I'll repost it here since we've started discussing the languages Philip spoke while growing up again.

"We spoke English at home,' Prince Philip recalls today. 'The others learned Greek. I could understand a certain amount of it. But then the (conversation) would go into French. Then it went into German, on occasion, because we had German cousins. If you couldn't think of a word in one language, you tended to go off in another.' For Princess Alice, who had been almost completely deaf since catching German measles at the age of four, conversations in whatever tongue had to be translated into sign language"
I guess that by "the others" he means his older sisters. Greek was apparently the language of choice of the children and grandchildren of George and Olga before the frequent exiles began. I've read that their children only spoke Greek language to each other and Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia has written about often hearing his grandmother Olga and her sisters speaking Greek with each other.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...ge-life-profile-of-prince-philip-1563268.html
 
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:previous:

Thank you for that information.
 
JR76 said:
I posted this before in another thread but I'll repost it here since we've started discussing the languages Philip spoke while growing up again.

"We spoke English at home,' Prince Philip recalls today. 'The others learned Greek. I could understand a certain amount of it. But then the (conversation) would go into French. Then it went into German, on occasion, because we had German cousins. If you couldn't think of a word in one language, you tended to go off in another.' For Princess Alice, who had been almost completely deaf since catching German measles at the age of four, conversations in whatever tongue had to be translated into sign language"
I guess that by "the others" he means his older sisters. Greek was apparently the language of choice of the children and grandchildren of George and Olga before the frequent exiles began. I've read that their children only spoke Greek language to each other and Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia has written about often hearing his grandmother Olga and her sisters speaking Greek with each other.
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-...ge-life-profile-of-prince-philip-1563268.html
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Philip's recollection is valuable, but I'm not sure where the information about Alice came from. Everything in her biography indicated that her deafness was congenital and due to the formation of her eustachian tubes, and nothing about German measles; likewise that she was a very fluent lip-reader, and no mention of her knowing how to sign. Perhaps it's partly why Philip and Sophie commissioned the biography after this.
 
His nanny was British. I doubt she'd have spoken Greek, although she may have spoken some German, so he probably did speak English as a child.


I'm not sure where that bit about German measles came from, either - all other sources say that Alice was congenitally deaf, and a fluent lip reader.
 
I recall Philip was asked to donate DNA to identify the remains of the Romanovs since he was related to the Tsarina. Alix was the sister of Philip's grandmother Victoria. Interesting family connection.
 
Two pictures of Prince Philip sailing a boat during his teenage years (taken in 1937) at Gordonstoun has been released. The pictures were taken by a pupil's great uncle who later contacted the school. The BBC articles contain these two pictures.

Meanwhile new pictures of the duke sailing a boat during his teenage years at Gordonstoun have been released.

Philip was captured on camera in 1937 - when he would have been around 15 - at the helm of one of Gordonstoun's boats, a two-mast, 14-ton boat named Diligent.

In another shot, he grins at the cameraman while helping with the washing up.

Philip's time at the prestigious boarding school under the eye of his eccentric headmaster Dr Kurt Hahn, inspired him to start his Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme.

The images were taken by the great-uncle of a former pupil, who then contacted the school.
Click to expand...

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/c...086194_princephilipcopyrightmajorbvarvill.jpg
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/c...86196_princephilip2copyrightmajorbvarvill.jpg

Duke of Edinburgh: Scotland remembers Prince Philip
The Duke of Edinburgh has been remembered in a series of events across Scotland as his funeral took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56779840
 
Who knew Philip's hair was actually that curly and it wasn't artistic license by The Crown? :ohmy: And yet none of their children inherited it from either parent, unless Anne has been straightening hers for more than fifty years. (Although I suppose she might have curly hair if it were short again and not as long as she's had it. Not really the case for her brothers.)
 
AC21091968 said:
Two pictures of Prince Philip sailing a boat during his teenage years (taken in 1937) at Gordonstoun has been released. The pictures were taken by a pupil's great uncle who later contacted the school. The BBC articles contain these two pictures.



https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/c...086194_princephilipcopyrightmajorbvarvill.jpg
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/c...86196_princephilip2copyrightmajorbvarvill.jpg

Duke of Edinburgh: Scotland remembers Prince Philip
The Duke of Edinburgh has been remembered in a series of events across Scotland as his funeral took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-56779840
Click to expand...

Philip was so very handsome as a young man. I always forget about all that curly hair he had.
 
When Philip met Prince Philip
 
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Lovely photo of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip of the cover of People magazine this week.
 
Claire said:
I was sent this link - wish I knew where it came from ? 7 of the grandchildren, all except James .

https://twitter.com/x/status/1385966321569992706
Click to expand...

Either Louise is cut-off somewhere or the OP can't count as there are only six grandchildren - Peter, Zara, William, Harry, Beatrice and Eugenie with Philip and The Queen.

I can't be sure but I suspect it was taken in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee looking at the ages of Harry and Beatrice in particular.
 
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Iluvbertie said:
Either Louise is cut-off somewhere or the OP can't count as there are only six grandchildren - Peter, Zara, William, Harry, Beatrice and Eugenie with Philip and The Queen.

I can't be sure but I suspect it was taken in 2002 for the Golden Jubilee looking at the ages of Harry and Beatrice in particular.
Click to expand...



HM is holding Louise’s hand.

This is a great photo!
 
Click into the pic - Louise is holding the Queen's hand.
I see people note that scene looks Christmassy. Can anyone place the clothes?
I don't understand how some significant pics just appear on the internet - oddly.
 
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