The myth of Anglo-Saxon cleansing

[Aryaman2]

Here
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/arti ... hp?id=7817
I don´t agree with all the ideas given here, however I do agree with this

"The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories".
That I said in a previous thread for data from Northern France, similar to those of Belgium.

[Robert Vermaat]

Same old same old. Language, in the opinion of these folks, can only have spread with invasions and migrations.
Yet I speak English and so do most Dutch people. And Coca Cola bottles are already recognised by archaeologists as a cultural marker for the mid-20th century. And yet, we have not been invaded by the English and the Americans… D D

The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.

Well, he should ask for his school fees to be returned. Or maybe he should have read some good books after that. The myth of the wipeout is an old one, for all I know, and not part of mainstream thinking for decades. Also, no-one is claiming that all ancestors of the English arrived as 5th-c. invaders - there will have been many many immigrants before and after that time.

Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul "the language differs but little."

Well, that shopuld be telling enough - or are we sudenly declaring all British to have been German?

[M. Demetrius]

You know what has caused English to be the common language that it is? The Internet. Many countries (I lived in Italy when I was a kid) have always taught English, but without somewhere to practice a language, you simply don't retain it very long. But the Net is better accessible to those who speak/read English, right?

I know, they didn't have the Internet in Linh Dubh. But at the same time, there were other kinds of assimilations, not just conquests. At some dim past time, the first family of people came to, say, France, and settled down, as the population of the world spread out. Trade was the language learning impetus back then. Couldn't sell your wares and know you were getting a good deal unless you could talk to your customers.

Then big conquerors, like the Romans, forced a language change. And hired translators. But I'm skipping around. Sorry.

[authun]

Well, that shopuld be telling enough - or are we sudenly declaring all British to have been German?

The Oppenheimer book claims that english split from continental germanic very early and was present in Britain apparently from around 1000 BC. He claims the belgic tribes were germanic and that they brought the language here well before the romans did. Celtic languages are supposed to have arrived at around the same time and the two language groups developed independently.

He cites works by Kortlandt, Gray and Atkinson, Dyen, McMahon and Forster and Toth to support his claim that insular germanic arrived in Britain around a millennium before the romans. However, having read the above, I don't see that they make these claims at all.

The techniques used to date language splits are interesting, using mathematical algorithms developed to predict genetic polymorphisms and reverse equations of radioactive decay. A table for the dating of the development of the IE languages by Gray and Atkinson can be seen at:

http://www.psych.auckland.ac.nz/Psych/r ... on2003.pdf

but, as you can see, english develops after the north/west germanic split around 250 AD.

Interestingly, the Forster Toth paper used only english to represent the entire germanic language group:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/100/15/9079

best

authun

[Robert Vermaat]

Then big conquerors, like the Romans, forced a language change.

Erm.. how? I never came across Romans forcing their subjects to speak latin. Why - half of the Empire spoke Greek!

[M. Demetrius]

No, I rambled as usual, you are correct few were forced to speak Latin, and Greek was the language of the educated, but how many place names in, say, Britain aren't better known by their Latinized names? And for the most part, the tribe names we have, Brigantii, Dumnonii, etc., were Latinized Brittonic tribe names...even many of the people, etc. So whether they, themselves were forced to learn to speak Latin isn't really what I meant...it's that the Latin replaced their cultural languages, for practical purposes.

Aquincum? Numantia? Londinium? Cisalpine Gaul? See what I mean? All those places had names of their own before being Roman provinces. Most of those names are lost now, and only the language of the conqueror remains.

Or else I'm just wrong. It happens.

[Robert Vermaat]

Greek was also the first and second language of the masses in the East. Something to do with hellenisation and Alexander's conquests or something.. Anyway they kept speaking Greek throughout the Roman 'occupation'..

I'm not sure if Londinium even existed as a native settlement before the Romans.
Anyway, like many modern names in the US use native American names, many indigenous names for rivers and places remained in use, albeit sometimes Latinezed. See how many names with -duro and -dunum you can find, or the many occurrances of places like Sorviodunum, etc.
The newbies are those name Aquae, Noviomagus, that sort of name - newly founded towns. In fact I think it was something of a rule that the Romans left local society in place. of course, some towns were later re-named (Londinium became Augusta, but it did not stick).

[M. Demetrius]

You bring up good points, Vortigern, as always. Note that many forts were built in Britain and of course, elsewhere, and generally ended with the word "Castrum", for "fort". And there are dozens at least of places in England now named "-chester", which is the Anglicized Latin...so the Latin was adopted by the residents, and after the Romans left, the names stuck, and evolved into the indigenous language.

I can't say that's true everywhere, but it's true in Britain, anyway. Odds are, the places and people wouldn't have thought it strange at the time, either.

You're also right about the same thing happening in the US. Many place names are "Native American" names, somewhat modified into English, and as you point out, rivers and regions (Tuskoseegee, Mississippi, Monongahela, Connecticut, Minnesota, hundreds more) are all Indian names. A map of North Carolina, for example, has many dozens of Indian names.

I suppose it would be true that the Celt names in Gaul were replacements for any settlements of the previous dwellers, too, and they replaced the names of their Paleolithic predecessors. So it's not so much a forcing of change of language by threat of the sword, but by cultural assimilation and by the need of the vanquished to communicate with the conquerors, IMO.

(For the benefit of any other aboriginal decendants in the US, I'm partly Trail of Tears decendant Cherokee, so I put "Native American" in quotes, but generally use the word Indian for simplicity. Neither is really accurate, since this isn't India, and we aren't native to this continent; we just walked in a while before they sailed in. Humans are not native to North America, we're all immigrants at some point. Not intended as a slur on anyone, that's just the facts.)

[Redwald]

Ah Robert,
Coca cola bottles may be cultural markers - but not many people will be buried with one!
School fees? -- education is free in England!

Paul

[Robert Vermaat]

Coca cola bottles may be cultural markers - but not many people will be buried with one!

True enough (not that modern westerners are buried with much anyway), but does that have to do with the point of 'cultural markers' pointing to invasions as there origin?

School fees? -- education is free in England!

Now I understand why... [/quote]

[Redwald]

School fees? -- education is free in England!

Now I understand why...

Ooh! You are so naughty, Robert! Do you pay in Holland?

Not sure English as second language counts. Good books......? Not Mr Pryor again! Oh dear!


Paul

[Robert Vermaat]

Ooh! You are so naughty, Robert! Do you pay in Holland?

Sure do. It's an expression over here when you do something stupid: 'better get your schoolfees back'.

Not sure English as second language counts. Good books......? Not Mr Pryor again! Oh dear!

Who mentioned good books? Why mention Prior?

[Robert Vermaat]

Ooh! You are so naughty, Robert! Do you pay in Holland?

Sure do. It's an expression over here when you do something stupid: 'better get your schoolfees back'.

Not sure English as second language counts. Good books......? Not Mr Pryor again! Oh dear!

English as a second language does not count? To whom? Who mentioned good books? Why mention Prior? You lost me.