The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[ambrosius]

The Romans did learn from the Celts, which is nothing new.

Robert, please calm down and stop trying to create arguments where
they do not exist (we have enough already to disagree about). Nobody
on this thread has ever suggested that Romans did not learn from the
Celts. And it is beyond me why you should imply that anyone has. :lol:

I shall repeat: Romans adopted more than 10 times the vocablulary
from Gauls than Anglo-Saxons adopted from British Celts. Period.
Now there is absolutely no reason for you to try claiming that anything
in that statement implies a lack of borrowing by Romans from Celts.

(Btw we’re not speaking about Gallic words here, from what I read: these Celtic words could have come from the Italic Celts, the Gauls, the Celtiberians or the British Celts for all I know).

Nonsense. Read what Coates says in his article (or better still, read his
French reference). About 40 Gallic words were adopted into Latin and
about 120 Gallic words were adopted into Frankish (> French). It is
rather disingenuous of you (to put politely) to try to rubbish the evidence, or reword it, just because you don't like what it proves. :lol: As for
saying that these GALLIC words could have come from the
Italic Celts rather than the Gallic Celts 'FOR ALL YOU KNOW, I
think that tells the rest of us an awful lot about 'ALL YOU KNOW.
:lol: :lol: :lol:

Given that the situation is equal for both Romans and Anglo-Saxons in this regard - why do Anglo-Saxons so conspicuously choose not to speak any British.

Your guess is as good as my guess, I guess .

Oh, so now you say I am guessing? Actually, I'm going by the evidence
of Gildas, Bede, Albinus (Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who was Bede's
source about the Adventus Saxonum in Kent) the ASC, the Historia
Brittonum, the Gallic Chronicle (for year 452) St. Patrick's 'Confessio',
the archaeological evidence of the systematic abandonment of British
cities in precise co-ordination with the Westward advance of Anglo-Saxon
groupings through 'England' and the linguistic evidence that over 600
years of Anglo-Saxon hegemony in England, they apparently didn't
adopt more than THREE words from the native population. If that
wasn't a conquest far more hostile than the Roman conquest of Gaul,
then somebody isn't paying enough attention to the evidence. :roll:

You say hostility, some say an empty landscape, some say Apartheid, some say no linguistic reason. My guess would be all of these and maybe others.

Well hooray! You've just conceded my point completely, Robert! :lol:

Yes, of course there was hostility! The empty lanscape, of course,
can also be A DIRECT RESULT OF THAT HOSTILITY if the invading Anglo-Saxons were killing the native Britons off quicker than they could adopt Brittonic speech from them. And 'Apartheid' (though wrongly used in its definiton in the recent paper by Thomas et al) is yet another SYMPTOM of racial and/or cultural hostility! 8)

That vague? Of course, I wasn’t there.

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Robert, far be it from me to say that I always thought you vague. :lol:
You weren't there? What a pity. Had I also been there, no doubt I
(as Ambrosius) would have been giving you (as Vortigern) a darn good
thrashing at the 'discord of Wallop'!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

But I don’t the signs of an empty landscape and
enough remains to suggest hostility was not the rule.

Of course there wasn't an 'empty landscape'. The Anglo-Saxons (for
which read: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Geats, Swedes,
Norwegians and no doubt many others) probably found a Romanised,
Christianised, British population in England & Wales of about 4 million
(according to the best archaeological estimates) and 'emptied' that
rather full landscape themselves (through masacre, exile, apartheid
enslavement etc). And when the only documented case of 5th c. Britons
actually INVITING Anglo-Saxons to Britain (you - I mean,
Vortigern 8) - inviting the Jutes to Kent in the Adventus Saxonum)
is cospicuous in its singularity among an estimated immigration of
AT LEAST 200,000 Anglo-Saxons here in the 5th & 6th centuries
(see Harke) and probably a Hell of a lot MORE than that, if some
of the genetic studies suggesting 2 million are correct, then how, exactly
do you not see hostility as being 'the rule'? 8)

My hypothesis is that once more words did exist in English but they vanished over time.

That is a rather unevidenced and unprovable hypothesis, Robert, and
one born of desperation on your part, no doubt, to ignore the simple
and obvious implications of ALL the evidence on this question
(not just the linguistic evidence).

The main difference is that while the Romans’ (like the Anglo-Saxons) first contact with almost every Celtic group was one of conquest, but that afterwards, for centuries, that relationship was neutral to benevolent. The Anglo-Saxons fought the British/Welsh until this very day.

Erm, I quite agree with you Robert...... NO... STRIKE THAT...
IT'S YOU WHO ARE AGREEING WITH ME :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hostile? Of course! I agree with you! (Again? I must be ill ).

:lol: :lol: :lol: But then, I always suspected this as well... :lol: :lol:

But unlike you (I think at least that’s your position) this hostility did not start on day one –

Of course not. It started about 700 years earlier, when the emerging
Germanic tribes first made contact with the Volcae Technosausages!!!

I see too many signs of co-operation and living next-to each to assume that. I just don’t think the Saxons all arrived on some beach, guns blazing,

Bloode Hell. They had GUNS as well? - no wonder they ended-up
conquering England (but then, the King Arthur movies (one of your
favourites :lol: ) did say they had crossbows, now didn't it) :lol: :lol: :lol:

In my view, the big split between Us English/You Welsh did not develop until later, 6th-7th c.

See above. It was probably about 200 B.C.

Ambrosius / Mike


[/quote]