During the 1942 Burma campaign, Slim gave orders to his two division commanders in Gurkhali. All three of them had been officers in Gurkha regiments, and perforce, spoke the language.
In respect of Maori, I understand it has some commonality with Japanese and has borrowed from English for contemporary terms (eg 'punana' and 'motorcar'). It may have some utility at a tactical level (say during a game of rugby), but otherwise not-so-much - IMHO.Canada did use Cree speakers. Unfortunately they were a small unit and were not allowed to speak of it. A local veteran told his story at his funeral about what he did in the war because he was the sole survivor then to his knowledge
There are many many other native languages in Canada but unfortunately many are from small populations
Have heard of New Zealand using moari speakers
Scots divisions using Gaelic.
Lots of options but alkward to set up unless you have many multilingual people or constant rotation which hurts cohesion of the units
Code talking for WWI.Code talking became practical with radio and voice radio did not come until after WW1. Then, it wasn't long after WW2 that cryptography and more sophisticated codes would have made it obsolete.
Russian Empire and the U.S.S.R. are indeed good choices IMHO. There are some very obscure languages in the Caucasus/Siberia with only a few thousand to a few hundred (or less) speakers.The Soviet Union, maybe?
Having a “minority language” is not the main obstacle. It has to be a really obscure language that no one in the enemy nation(s) has any fluency in and has no realistic way of translating.It'd probably be easier to wonder who couldn't do this. Most nations, whether they care to recognize them or not, have minority languages.
Yeah, Welsh and Gaelic are great, until someone breaks out the Welsh-German dictionary. In the setting of an intelligence office that's probably only a matter of seconds...Having a “minority language” is not the main obstacle. It has to be a really obscure language that no one in the enemy nation(s) has any fluency in and has no realistic way of translating.
Yeah, Welsh and Gaelic are great, until someone breaks out the Welsh-German dictionary. In the setting of an intelligence office that's probably only a matter of seconds...
Pretty easy to recognize the only language with words like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in it.You have to know what the language is first.
I recall a story from the 90's about the German police having so much troubles fighting organized crime even after a new law explicitly allowed wiretapping suspect's phones. The problem was that the Sicilian Maffia did not speak Italian on their phones, but Sicilian dialect, which was pretty hard to understand even for mainland Italians. And there just weren't that many native Sicilian speakers in the German police force. Apparently they ran into the same problem with the Romanian gangs as well. So the problem would not be finding out the British were transmitting in Welsh, but in quickly escalating the intercepted messages to the next higher-ups that had a way of translating Welsh before the commands they intercepted were already obsolete.Yeah, Welsh and Gaelic are great, until someone breaks out the Welsh-German dictionary. In the setting of an intelligence office that's probably only a matter of seconds...
Maori doesn't have any commonality with Japanese--with the aboriginal Taiwanese languages @joho6411 mentions, yes (they're both Austronesian languages), though they're about as far apart as, say, English and Russian, or further--but not Japanese. Japanese is a near-isolate with only two or three other known related languages.In respect of Maori, I understand it has some commonality with Japanese and has borrowed from English for contemporary terms (eg 'punana' and 'motorcar')..
Having a “minority language” is not the main obstacle. It has to be a really obscure language that no one in the enemy nation(s) has any fluency in and has no realistic way of translating.
Twp!code talking doesn't really work when you have to spent 20 seconds pronouncing each word
This problem bites in the case of sloppily trained radio operators. Frequently repeated errors, cute catchphrases, unusual accents, even a peculiarity in the radio transmitter, can tag a unit. Officers who are constantly sending out lengthly messages can be a nasty problem. Voice, CW, digital, whatever. You want your transmissions to be brief, and bland with sameness.
Pretty easy to recognize the only language with words like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch in it.
Scouse? Oh, they used that to jam German radio frequencies.Geordies? ;-)
hadaway man let wor gan doon the toon the neet like pet man
Scouse? Oh, they used that to jam German radio frequencies.
Scouse? Oh, they used that to jam German radio frequencies.