Why almost no Keltic influence on the English language?

[Zelenius]

Some historians and linguists are puzzled by how the English language shows so little Keltic influence - not in grammar or vocabulary(although there are some English words of Keltic origin), even though most of the population in Britain before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was largely Keltic-speaking.

Besides speaking Keltic languages, much of the population before the Anglo-Saxon invasion was Latin-speaking, especially among the elite, Roman settlers, and Latinized Kelts, especially in urban areas.

Slowly but surely, virtually all Kelts in the area that is now England were assimilated by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. In Wales, and Scotland the native Keltic languages have survived to this day, although fluent English is spoken by virtually all Scots and Welsh.

Genetic studies reveal that the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic invaders didn't have a whole lot of influence on the gene pool of Britain, except in the extreme south-east of England. Western England and Wales in particular show very little to no Germanic influence. I've been told that the cultural level of the Anglo-Saxons was supposedly higher than the native Kelts, which may explain why the Keltic languages were largely supplanted by English and had little influence on English. However, much of the Keltic population had been Romanized and may have been at a higher cultural level than the barbarian Anglo-Saxon invaders(much of the Anglo-Saxons had been Roman mercenaries, although they were heathens).

Contrast Britain with Gaul(France) at around the same time and later. In the last decades of the Roman Empire, Gaul had also been invaded by several Germanic tribes; indeed, "France" gets its name from the Germanic-speaking Franks, who ruled much of Gaul after the fall of Rome. Eventually these invaders were assimilated by the vulgar-Latin speaking Gauls; the Germanic elite lost their native language. The vulgar Latin spoken there eventually evolved into modern French and various other closely related Romance languages, most of which have gone extinct except for Provencal(Occitan). Some scholars claim the unique French accent may even be due to a Keltic influence, or maybe a Germanic one.

Similarly, the Turks invaded and conquered Persia, the Byzantine Empire and the Arab lands a little after this, and the Turkish language was very influenced by Farsi(Persian), as well as Arabic. So why is the Keltic influence on English so negligable?

[malbui]

It's an interesting question and I think the basic answer boils down to power and prestige. The Celtic languages were on the defensive even before modern English took shape, and certainly after the Celtic regions were ruled from London (directly or indirectly) the use of those languages was leaned on quite seriously. All the pressure was on native speakers of the Celtic languages to speak English and there was no reason for the anglophone administrators and land-owners to adopt any of the vocabulary of the masses around them and for this to permeate into standard English.

Having said that... it's worth bearing in mind the impact of the Celtic languages on the local forms of English. My grandfather's generation, the last first-language Irish speakers in my family (my own Irish is decent but far from native), had many structures in their English which came directly from their way of thinking and expressing themselves in Irish. They'd say things like "I'm after going to the shops", because Irish has no real perfect tense and uses a prepositional construction instead, or "I saw a man and he going to..." which mapped from "chonaic mé fear agus é ag dul...". And then of course getting them to answer yes or no to a simple question was a challenge, Irish not working like that.

In terms of vocabulary there were a few items which crept across but very few which entered into mainstream English - sitting here now I can think of a couple of dozen but not many more.

[arthwollipot]

May be a silly and pointless diversion, but...

Why "Keltic" and not "Celtic"?

[SimonD]

There is no K in the Celtic alphabet

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/irish.htm

Which is way it is prononunced Celtic with a hard C and not 'seltic', or so I was told by my Irish speaking father, but I'm sure they will be a lot of Americans who will disagree with me :)

Some other letters are 'missing' also, like v. Which is why Niamb is spelt like that and not the way it sounds - 'Naiv'.

[SimonD]

I also started a thread a long while back about keeping the Irish language alive and got a resounding NO by this forum. So if a bunch of intelligent, broad minded people think it's a waste of time (to be fair it was to sign a partion which people may have thought would not achieve anything), communites under pressure of invasion, etc (sorry I'm in a rush to go home so thats a mighty big etc :)) don't stand a chance.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=76427

[six7s]

There is no K in the Celtic alphabet
THE Celtic alphabet (singular)? ? ? ?

...it is prononunced Celtic with a hard C and not 'seltic', or so I was told by my Irish speaking father, but I'm sure they will be a lot of Americans who will disagree with me :)And maybe more than just a few Celtic fans in Glasgow
wikipedia: Celtic_Football_Club#Formation_and_history (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Football_Club#Formation_and_history)

Some other letters are 'missing' also, like v. Which is why Niamb is spelt like that and not the way it sounds - 'Naiv'.Off topic... but I have noticed the same in Greek (Varvara = Barbara) and Hindi (Benares = Varanassi)

[SimonD]

THE Celtic alphabet (singular)? ? ? ?

The Irish Alphabet...

And maybe more than just a few Celtic fans in Glasgow

Yes, always wonder why it was 'seltic' in Scotland.

It has been my experience that when ever I have said 'seltic' around Irish people I have been quickly corrected to 'Celtic'. I would have thought it would be the same.

Off topic... but I have noticed the same in Greek (Varvara = Barbara) and Hindi (Benares = Varanassi)

I think they are related as in they have come from a common root.

[six7s]

Sanskrit?

[moopet]

Yes, always wonder why it was 'seltic' in Scotland.


That's exclusively for the team.

[H3LL]

I would like to throw some speculation into the pot.

Perhaps there never was a Celtic language and it's more of a modern construct.

Elsewhere in the world groups of people in rugged/difficult terrain developed dialects so diverse as to be almost incomprehensible to other groups even one valley away.

I would be surprised if the Celtic speakers, perhaps quite isolated from other Celtic speaking communities by geography, conflict or politics, didn't also develop dialects. Celtic, as a useful single language perhaps only existed in the lowlands (now England) and as the Celtic tribes retreated into the more rugged areas of the British Isles language separation may have accelerated. It could be speculated that they were insufficiently similar to use in trading and therefore used a common tongue. Latin or whatever was widely available.

Alternatively, the UK still contains a surprisingly diverse range of dialects and accents in contrast to the US which is remarkably homogeneous. I understand that dispassionately looking at the US and its immigration history one would expect German to be the predominant language, particularly on the East coast.

Bryson covered the odd, homogeneous nature of US langauge in Mother Tongue. Perhaps there are some pointers to be had there? US - Dominant language German - English became the standard. UK - Dominant language Celtic - English became standard?

(I seem to recall he touched on the oddity of so little Celtic in English but forget if he resolved the issue).


.

[arthwollipot]

I've always been led to believe that the term "celtic" referred to quite a wide variety of ethnic/tribal groups, each sharing a common language base but with many different dialects. To describe something as "celtic" is approximately equivalent to describe something as "asian". Okay, maybe not quite, but at least "southeast asian".

[Rolfe]

Come in, Architect....

Rolfe.

[drkitten]

I've always been led to believe that the term "celtic" referred to quite a wide variety of ethnic/tribal groups, each sharing a common language base but with many different dialects. To describe something as "celtic" is approximately equivalent to describe something as "asian". Okay, maybe not quite, but at least "southeast asian".

"Dravidian," perhaps. Southeast Asia includes quite a few entirely separate language families, language groups with no apparent genetic relationship (for example, Thai, Cambodian, and Chinese are apparently independent) --- and if you include New Guinea as part of southeast Asia, then it includes more than half of the language families believed to currently or ever have existed.

It's very difficult, of course, to distinguish "dialect" from "language" in a principled way, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt that the various Celtic dialects were at least as closely related as the various Germanic ones. My understanding is that they were actually much closer (although I'm not a Celtic specialist); most of them shared very similar grammar[e.g. VSO word order, periphrasis to represent aspect and some forms of tense, &c] and core vocabulary, and the differences were largely morphological and (as far as we can tell) phonological.

[brodski]

There is no K in the Celtic alphabet




A lack of a C wouldn't explain spelling Celtic as Keltic though, would it?

[arthwollipot]

A lack of a C wouldn't explain spelling Celtic as Keltic though, would it?No, but a lack of a K would explain spelling Keltic as Celtic.

[Zelenius]

Everyone, thank you for the input, I appreciate it. It seems the culture, power, and military might of the Anglo-Saxons helped preserve a certain level of linguistic "purity" in the proper form of English. Undoubtedly, the various local dialects of spoken English throughout the isles, even within England but especially in Wales and Scotland do show some significant traces of Keltic influence in accent and grammar, as well as vocabulary. However, these are all far removed from mainstream, spoken English which is based on the English spoken in London and south-east England. The Keltic influence on this type of English is almost nonexistent, according to most linguists. Perhaps there was even something like an apartheid-like system in ancient Britain, with the Kelts only becoming Anglicized very slowly, too slow to have an impact on the development on mainstream English.

Although either "Celtic" or "Keltic" is acceptable, "Keltic" is more phonetic and considered more authentic. The word "Kelt" was first used by the Greeks, Hecataeus of Miletus in particular to refer to the people near Massilia in ancient Gaul. The Greeks called them "Keltoi", and this word may have been derived from the name of one of the Keltic tribes in Gaul.

The modern definition of Keltic refers to an important ethno-linguistic sub-division of the larger Indo-European speaking peoples. In ancient times, the word "Keltic" may have had a broader, fuzzier meaning and may have been used to refer to both the Keltic speaking peoples of ancient western and northwestern Europe as well as non-Keltic speaking peoples. Hence, at times it may have been used to refer to the Germanic speaking peoples and maybe even the Basques or pre-Indo-European peoples of the Iberian peninsula. By the modern usage, this would be erroneous; in its ancient usage, they may have been "right" insofar as they weren't basing this classification on language and more as an umbrella term for the barbarians of northern Europe. Certainly almost all ancient Kelts never called themselves "Kelts" or "Keltic". We may never know what they called themselves as a group, and they probably didn't have a term for themselves either, except local tribal names. They may have been vastly different over large enough distances, and according to some scholars, this may have been due to the "Kelts" being just a military aristocracy ruling over a non Indo-European speaking people, especially in parts of ancient Gaul and Spain(Keltiberians). Eventually the non-Indo-European common folk were "Kelticized", according to this view.

The Kelts used to occupy a much larger area of Europe. Most of ancient Gaul and a large part of what is now Germany, Spain, all of the British Isles and Ireland, parts of eastern Europe and for a time what is now central Turkey were dominated by the Kelts. Even before the Kelts of Britain had been conquered and assimilated by the Anglo-Saxons, much the same thing happened in continental Europe with the Germanic peoples displacing the Kelts in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium(This country takes its name from the "Belgae", an ancient Keltic tribe, but no Keltic languages are spoken in Belgium).

[davefoc]

I thought H3LL's idea sounded right.

Although the Irish are making a big effort to preserve Gaelic these days, there are numerous dialects of Irish and I think the government is promoting only one of them. Presumably, this means that some of the dialects are going to be left to die naturally as the native speakers move more towards the national standard Gaelic.

Presumably in the past where travel was limited there might have been many more dialects each spoken only by a few people. The invaders come in and their language dominated in the urban areas and pretty soon it became the lingua franca because there was no widely spoken common dialect to compete with it. So the local dialects fade away before they have much chance to affect the language of the invaders.

When the Normans came a single Saxon language was spoken throughout much of England, so the language of the invaders was much slower to take hold and in the end Modern English became a mix of Saxon and Norman.

That's my (H3LL inspired) theory anyway.

[gumboot]

Although either "Celtic" or "Keltic" is acceptable, "Keltic" is more phonetic and considered more authentic. The word "Kelt" was first used by the Greeks, Hecataeus of Miletus in particular to refer to the people near Massilia in ancient Gaul. The Greeks called them "Keltoi", and this word may have been derived from the name of one of the Keltic tribes in Gaul.



You're missing a link in the chain. The word "Celt" comes from the Latin "Celtæ" which was derived from the Greek "Keltoi" which was an invention by Herodotus for the Gauls (which the Greeks already called "Galatai").

The Romans, apparently, only ever referred to the Gauls as the Celtæ and not British Celts, who were referred to as Brittonem.

The reason it's "C" not "K" is not because there's no K in the Irish Alphabet. It's because there's no K in the Latin alphabet. "C" has a hard sound in Latin, which is why the German "Kaiser" is derived from the Latin "Cæsar" (which is often incorrectly pronounced "See-zar").

[six7s]

As someone who is half Irish (down my left side) and a quarter Welsh (my right leg), I feel able to openly speculate that the demise of some dialects may well have been precipitated by the simple fact that even the speakers didn't understand a feckin word!

[ImaginalDisc]

Alternatively, the UK still contains a surprisingly diverse range of dialects and accents in contrast to the US which is remarkably homogeneous. I understand that dispassionately looking at the US and its immigration history one would expect German to be the predominant language, particularly on the East coast.


There's a popular myth that the founding fathers almost made German an official language of the U.S., or a co-official language, but that doesn't appear to be well supported by anything, really.

I'm trying to find reliable population estimates for the number and distributions of German speakers relative to English speakers in colonial North America, but I'm not finding much. Have you found something worth looking into?

I think this paper (http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002847.php)summarizes well why English in the early U.S. was more stable and homogeneous:

Mid-Atlantic Anglophone colonials were, from the start, more mobile, more connected to commercial networks, and more involved with a demographically diverse population across a wider area. Those factors may have accelerated dialect leveling.

And:

By the third quarter of the eighteenth century, many observers were describing this leveled colonial speech as well-established and well-known. In 1759, Franklin invoked as common knowledge that, although in England individuals’ geographical origins could be pinpointed by their speech, in North America they could not.

If you lived in Georgia and wanted to write a letter to a Virginian, a Bostonian, your cousin in Maryland, or your brother in Charleston, you wrote in English. There were certainly large German speaking populations in the colonies at that time, but English was spoken by the widest range of people along the Atlantic coast, and was spoken in the most important places of business and politics, as well as being spoken by the economic and political elite even when they lived in or near German speaking populations. Even if you assumed there were as many German speakers as English speakers, English would still be favored for those reasons.

[fuelair]

I also started a thread a long while back about keeping the Irish language alive and got a resounding NO by this forum. So if a bunch of intelligent, broad minded people think it's a waste of time (to be fair it was to sign a partion which people may have thought would not achieve anything), communites under pressure of invasion, etc (sorry I'm in a rush to go home so thats a mighty big etc :)) don't stand a chance.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=76427

Save It by getting it's vocabulary, alphabet and large quanties of spoken/sung versions of it. That saves it. Just no longer a living one.

[malbui]

Although the Irish are making a big effort to preserve Gaelic these days, there are numerous dialects of Irish and I think the government is promoting only one of them. Presumably, this means that some of the dialects are going to be left to die naturally as the native speakers move more towards the national standard Gaelic.


The Irish situation is pretty interesting. There is a national standard, the Caighdeán Oifigiúil, but it's actually fairly artificial: they looked at how things were said in the three main dialect areas (Munster, Connacht and Donegal) and cobbled something together. In my experience*, it has led to an odd situation in that it's the form that learners pick up (at least until they go and spend some time in the gaeltacht) and that the media use, but native speakers out in the wild don't find it that easy. Certainly a couple of older people I know from the wilds of Donegal (whose dialect is fairly unrepresented in the standard) are fairly baffled by the modern direction of the language.




* Habitual disclaimer: I'm not a native speaker, merely a linguistically aware descendant of native speakers.

[I Ratant]

As someone who is half Irish (down my left side) and a quarter Welsh (my right leg), I feel able to openly speculate that the demise of some dialects may well have been precipitated by the simple fact that even the speakers didn't understand a feckin word!
.
I do believe this is the answer.

[Gravy]

I'm enjoying this thread!

–Gravy (Irish, Welsh, German, French)

[Nogbad]

Everyone, thank you for the input, I appreciate it. It seems the culture, power, and military might of the Anglo-Saxons helped preserve a certain level of linguistic "purity" in the proper form of English. Undoubtedly, the various local dialects of spoken English throughout the isles, even within England but especially in Wales and Scotland do show some significant traces of Keltic influence in accent and grammar, as well as vocabulary. However, these are all far removed from mainstream, spoken English which is based on the English spoken in London and south-east England. The Keltic influence on this type of English is almost nonexistent, according to most linguists. Perhaps there was even something like an apartheid-like system in ancient Britain, with the Kelts only becoming Anglicized very slowly, too slow to have an impact on the development on mainstream English.

Although either "Celtic" or "Keltic" is acceptable, "Keltic" is more phonetic and considered more authentic. The word "Kelt" was first used by the Greeks, Hecataeus of Miletus in particular to refer to the people near Massilia in ancient Gaul. The Greeks called them "Keltoi", and this word may have been derived from the name of one of the Keltic tribes in Gaul.

The modern definition of Keltic refers to an important ethno-linguistic sub-division of the larger Indo-European speaking peoples. In ancient times, the word "Keltic" may have had a broader, fuzzier meaning and may have been used to refer to both the Keltic speaking peoples of ancient western and northwestern Europe as well as non-Keltic speaking peoples. Hence, at times it may have been used to refer to the Germanic speaking peoples and maybe even the Basques or pre-Indo-European peoples of the Iberian peninsula. By the modern usage, this would be erroneous; in its ancient usage, they may have been "right" insofar as they weren't basing this classification on language and more as an umbrella term for the barbarians of northern Europe. Certainly almost all ancient Kelts never called themselves "Kelts" or "Keltic". We may never know what they called themselves as a group, and they probably didn't have a term for themselves either, except local tribal names. They may have been vastly different over large enough distances, and according to some scholars, this may have been due to the "Kelts" being just a military aristocracy ruling over a non Indo-European speaking people, especially in parts of ancient Gaul and Spain(Keltiberians). Eventually the non-Indo-European common folk were "Kelticized", according to this view.

The Kelts used to occupy a much larger area of Europe. Most of ancient Gaul and a large part of what is now Germany, Spain, all of the British Isles and Ireland, parts of eastern Europe and for a time what is now central Turkey were dominated by the Kelts. Even before the Kelts of Britain had been conquered and assimilated by the Anglo-Saxons, much the same thing happened in continental Europe with the Germanic peoples displacing the Kelts in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium(This country takes its name from the "Belgae", an ancient Keltic tribe, but no Keltic languages are spoken in Belgium).

Given that modern English would be incomprehensible to an Anglo Saxon I am not entirely convinced by the hegemony argument. Modern English has developed from a cocktail of Old and Middle English, Norman French, Norse and some Celtic influences. Also, given that none of the native languages of Britain employ the letter K, I am buggered if I am going to be told that it is more authentic to use K because the Greeks happened to like the letter. Whether the western tribes were actually Celts in the sense that they were the same ethnic peoples that originally gave rise to this distinctive culture is moot. However, it is true that these western tribes continued the cultural traditions, most obviously expressed in their art and metal working, that indicates they were part of the broader Celtic culture and ultimately became the last torch bearers of that culture. These Western tribes and their languages can be found in North West Iberia, Brittany, Britain and Ireland.

The demise of Celtic languages in these Celtic lands has been long and drawn out. It was really the standardisation of Empires - Spain, France and Britain - in recent history with compulsory schooling for all that caused a major decline. As a child it was common for me to hear workman in the street talking Gaelic - a rare occurrence these days. In Britain this economic and cultural imperative relates to the Anglo Saxons only in so much that the economic and political centres where they prevailed most thoroughly (the South East of England) ultimately became the administrative centre for all the British Isles (including Ireland). With Empire in full swing the inconvenience of multiple languages was frowned upon and devices such as a large rope knot were placed around children's necks to remind them that Welsh or Gaelic was not spoken at school.

Another factor which may have some bearing on the insulation of the South Eastern Saxon language in Britain is that the sixth century was a difficult period with poor weather and a major plague which caused considerable population decline across Europe. It perhaps wasn't culture or military strength that protected Old English from the local population but a lack of population itself. It is certainly the case that English made little dent on the rest of the Britain until many hundreds of years later.

[H3LL]

There's a popular myth that the founding fathers almost made German an official language of the U.S., or a co-official language, but that doesn't appear to be well supported by anything, really.

Nothing without a re-read, pro or con. I'll try to dive in for a look soon.

Thanks for the linky, ID. It would be nice if I could nail my speculation down a bit better.

Not to be confused with the myth (I'd not heard of it as a myth), it was more a "This is what you would expect but it isn't what you get" sort of thing. :confused:

It is some time since I read Mother Tongue, but I also think Pinker brushed over the topic and Diamond dips his toe in as well.

I understand that communication/trade over distance using a common standard language or method of communication isn't really much of a debate. It's very apparent today. So much so we have international standards for many things. ISO standards, for example, are a language of sorts (certainly communication).

This was why I would be surprised if it wasn't the case for the (K)Celtic peoples. I'll see what develops here.

.

[H3LL]

Found some bits:

Bill Bryson - Mother Tongue (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mother-Tongue-Language-Bill-Bryson/dp/014014305X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221774173&sr=1-1) P 160-163

On the "myth".


The story has been repeated many times, even by as eminent an authority as Randolph Quirk.* But it appears to be without foundation.

*`At the time when the United States split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals that independence should be linguistically acknowledged by the use of a different language from that of Britain' (The Use of En,glish, page 3).




I remembered wrong, he mentioned New York not the East coast:


At the turn of the century, New York had more speakers of German than anywhere in the world except Vienna and Berlin, more Irish than anywhere but Dublin, more Russians than in Kiev, more Italians than in Milan or Naples. In 1890 the United States had 800 German newspapers and as late as the outbreak of World War I Baltimore alone had four elementary schools teaching in German only.




Suggestions he made for uniform speech and why it was so different than in the UK:

It was natural to suppose that the existence of these linguistic pockets would lead the United States to deteriorate into a variety of regional tongues, rather as in Europe, or at the very result in widely divergent dialects of English, each heavily influenced by its prevailing immigrant group.


There were three main reasons. First, the continuous movement of people back and forth across the continent militated against the formation of permanent regionalisms. Americans enjoyed social mobility long before sociologists thought up the term. Second, the intermingling of people from diverse backgrounds worked in favour of homogeneity. Third, and above all, social pressures and the desire for a common national identity encouraged people to settle on a single way of speaking.




and some comments:

People who didn't blend in risked being made to feel like outsiders. They were given names that denigrated their backgrounds: zoop from the Italian guappo (a strutting fellow), kraut (from the supposed German fondness for sauerkraut), yid (for Yiddish speakers), dago from the Spanish Diego, kike (from the -ki and -ky endings on many Jewish names), bohunk from Bohemian-Hungarian, micks and paddies for the Irish. As we saw in the chapter on dialects, the usual pattern was for the offspring of immigrants to become completely assimilated - to the point of being unable to speak their parents' language.


Bold mine. Probably appropriate for the OP.

I hope that helps.

I must read his book again. Simple to read and fascinating.

.

[I Ratant]

"As we saw in the chapter on dialects, the usual pattern was for the offspring of immigrants to become completely assimilated - to the point of being unable to speak their parents' language."
.
I see Hispanic children talking in English to their siblings, and Spanish to their parents.
Sweet Thang is multi-linquistic, English, Spanish and Ebonics.

[Delvo]

"As we saw in the chapter on dialects, the usual pattern was for the offspring of immigrants to become completely assimilated - to the point of being unable to speak their parents' language."But even then, second-language errors can creep into the way the next generation speaks that language even if it's their first. For example, in part of the USA which once had a lot of German immigrants, some things have become local normal standards for the local version of English which perfectly match what you'd expect a German immigrant to do by mistake after having English not quite mastered...

1. They replace various time words like "already" and "still" with "yet". In German, which represents our Y-sound with J, the word "jetzt" seems to be a cognate of "yet" and is usually translated as "now" but can also be used for those other functions.

2. They say "let" when they mean "leave" or "leave" when they mean "let", essentially merging the two into one verb, spelled and pronounced as "let" in present tense and "left" in past tense. In German, one verb is given as the translation for both of those English verbs: "lassen", the past form of which is "lässt". (The umlauts make the "a" sound more like an "e".)

3. They say "what for" to ask about type or kind, rather than reason or purpose. For example, "What for pizza do you want?" doesn't mean "what do you want a pizza for?" or "why do you want a pizza?"; it means "what kind of pizza do you want?". In German, the words that, individually translated, would be "What for a..." actually form a phrase that means "What kind of a..." to German speakers.

[Gurdur]

1) There is a theory that Celtic tribes in Britain were actually far less in numbers by the time of the Saxon invasions than is commonly believed; that Germanics had already immigrated in large numbers -- and possibly even before the Romans; that indeed much of England was Germanicized extremely early.


2) The invading Saxons seem to have practiced a form of apartheid, and surrounding tribes seem to have imitated the Saxons in customs and language to a great deal, accounting for much cultural loss and disappearence on their part.

[dudalb]

May be a silly and pointless diversion, but...

Why "Keltic" and not "Celtic"?

BUt almost all Celtic scholars spell it with a C when writing in English.
I know a professor of Celtic languages in the California University system who says that among Celtic scholars, there is a joke that 90% of the people writing "Celtic" with a K instead of a C in English are either Poseurs or crackpots.

[Nogbad]

Thinking about this a little bit more, a simple observation of a modern English person attempting to speak French might explain much ;)

[Jeff Corey]

I also started a thread a long while back about keeping the Irish language alive and got a resounding NO by this forum. So if a bunch of intelligent, broad minded people think it's a waste of time (to be fair it was to sign a partion which people may have thought would not achieve anything), communites under pressure of invasion, etc (sorry I'm in a rush to go home so thats a mighty big etc :)) don't stand a chance.

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=76427

We were here two years ago. It's alive and well...http://www.odireain.com/

[Wudang]

And Scots gaelic is still doing well where my cousins live on Mull and Harris - it's still their normal language.

And these guys help s_UuuEL4pys

[davefoc]

Thanks for the link Wudang. That was both interesting and entertaining.

Would somebody fluent in Irish have been able to understand much of this? Would they have recognized it as a form of Gaelic?

I tried to match the written words with the words being sung and it was somewhat difficult for me. The pronunciation of some of the words seemed to be indistinct or mostly swallowed to my ear. I suspect that I was just so unfamiliar with the sounds of the language that I didn't detect them as language sounds.

[Soapy Sam]

I suspect the suppression of Celtic language was a natural result of the dominance of Latin.
The language of the Empire and of the mediaeval church

I remember being surprised that the Arabic for a knife was "siqin" (all spellings here are fonnetik). How odd that it should be so like the Gaelic "sgian".
Then I realised both probably derive from the Latin "siccare" meaning "to cut".
(Also why "scissors and scythe have that odd , surplus "c", I suppose).

I 'd guess the Celtic languages were just swamped by the universality of Latin, except in specific contexts like placenames. The ubiquity of "Avon" (Afon, abhainn) as a river name in once Celtic areas is an example.

[politas]

Some other letters are 'missing' also, like v. Which is why Niamb is spelt like that and not the way it sounds - 'Naiv'.That would be "Niamh", actually. Gaelic "lenition" adds an "h" after another letter: "bh", "ch", "dh", "fh", "gh", "mh", "ph", "sh" and "th".

There is actually a system to it, if you can get your head around the difference between the "v" sounds of "bh" and "mh".

[this charming man]

It's a Druish conspiracy.

[six7s]

The pronunciation of some of the words seemed to be indistinct or mostly swallowed to my ear. I suspect that I was just so unfamiliar with the sounds of the language that I didn't detect them as language sounds.Is that a euphemism for drunk? ;)

Qv0RWDOvldw

[davefoc]

Is that a euphemism for drunk? ;)





:)
I thought you were talking about my inability to hear the words of the singer in the linked to video. I was sober, but I'm old so maybe that was it.

In the interest of Scottish-American relations let me make it clear I was not suggesting excess alcohol consumption on the part of the group as the reason I couldn't quite make out the words they were singing. My sense of it is that if I had the slightest familiarity with Scottish Gaelic I would have done better.

[stilicho]

Similarly, the Turks invaded and conquered Persia, the Byzantine Empire and the Arab lands a little after this, and the Turkish language was very influenced by Farsi(Persian), as well as Arabic. So why is the Keltic influence on English so negligable?
The influence of the Norse hasn't really been addressed either. It's been some time but one book on etymology that I read explained that popular Irish surnames such as "MacAuliffe" are substitutions for "Mac Olaf"--Olaf being a common Norse given name.

The British Isles and Ireland were under constant invasion or threat of invasion for roughly 1,000 years until that civilisation stabilised after the Norman invasion. The Normans had trouble with the "r" sound, and places such as "Searesbyrig" or "Seresberi" became "Salisbury" instead. There is some evidence that the dropping of the terminal "r" sound in words such as "rather" is directly attributable to the Norman influence.

The Norse effectively destroyed the most advanced culture in Europe when they invaded Ireland. While it's not documented that there was an intentional policy to kill the Celtic languages, each successive wave of invaders brought their own symbols of cultural dominance, and that included language.

Compared to the Asiatic and nomadic Turks, the successive invaders of the British Isles tended to bring superior technology and forms of administration to the conquered lands. The Turks had to learn a lot of from the people inhabiting the lands they eventually occupied. The Persians and Byzantines were more technologically advanced until the Turks mastered chemically-propelled artillery.

In summary, the Celts in the British Isles were not in a position to linguistically influence the invaders.

[six7s]

I thought you were talking about my inability to hear the words of the singer in the linked to video. NB I did add a ;) after my words

:)

I'm old
I'll type slowly then :D

In the interest of Scottish-American relations let me make it clear I was not suggesting excess alcohol consumption on the part of the group as the reason I couldn't quite make out the words they were singing. No True Scotsman would have thought otherwise

My sense of it is that if I had the slightest familiarity with Scottish Gaelic I would have done better.How'd you get on deciphering Rab C Nesbitt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z08kiQ-5hI)? (IIRC, the programme had subtitles when aired in the US)

[six7s]

The British Isles and Ireland Ahemmm

The British Isles, a geographic term, includes Great Britain, Ireland and a few other (wee ;)) islands

[Big Les]

I agree, but you will find people pussyfooting around to avoid offending some Irish people, who maintain that it should not be so.

[grayman]

Not the British Isles, but pockets of Gaelic are to be found on Cape Breton:

QfSgb0irTbY

aoApELfgWcg

[Jaggy Bunnet]

And maybe more than just a few Celtic fans in Glasgow

To be fair, they also pronounce it with a soft "t" - sellick

How'd you get on deciphering Rab C Nesbitt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z08kiQ-5hI)? (IIRC, the programme had subtitles when aired in the US)

The BBC wanted to put subtitles on it for broadcast in England, but the producers refused.

[Wudang]

Thanks for the link Wudang. That was both interesting and entertaining.

Fun band, live


Would somebody fluent in Irish have been able to understand much of this? Would they have recognized it as a form of Gaelic?


My wife is Irish but lacks practice as she left Ireland when 14 but manages to get by. Scots and Irish gaelic were the same language (Erse) until they began to drift in the 10th century. (Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language)


I tried to match the written words with the words being sung and it was somewhat difficult for me. The pronunciation of some of the words seemed to be indistinct or mostly swallowed to my ear. I suspect that I was just so unfamiliar with the sounds of the language that I didn't detect them as language sounds.See the post by Politas. The sounds of words change for example if the noun is object of subject. Thus "boat" (bata) would become "bhata" pronounced "vahta".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/foghlam/beag_air_bheag/index.shtml

[Jeff Corey]

Here's a list of English words from Irish (Wikipedia)
English words from the Irish language
alannah
from Irish a leanbh, "Oh, Child" (OED).
banshee
from Irish bean sídhe, "woman of fairyland" (M-W), "...of the fairies" (AHD) or "...of a fairy mound" (RH). The Modern Irish word for woman is bean /bæn/ and síd(h) (or sí in modern spelling) is an Irish term referring to a 'fairy mound'. (See Sidhe.)
bard
a poet. From Irish and Scottish Gaelic bárd and Welsh bardd. Originally from Old Celtic *bardos (OED).
bog
(from bogach, 'a bog', or bog, 'soft') a piece of wet spongy ground (OED).
boreen
(from bóithrín) a small country road
brogues
(from bróig, a shoe) A type of shoe (OED).
brogue
A strong regional accent, especially an Irish one. Presumably used originally with reference to the footwear of speakers of the brogue (OED).
callow
A low-lying meadow by an Irish river, liable to be flooded; a water-meadow. Also in adjectival use. This is the same as the English callow (originally, 'bald', or 'unfeathered', and now often 'inexperienced'), itself cognate with the Irish calbh (bald), and is a particularly Irish usage (OED).
colleen
(from cailín, countrywoman) girl (usually referring to an Irish girl) (OED).
craic (crack)
fun, used in Ireland for fun/enjoyment, often when mixed with alcohol and/or music. The word came to Ireland from Ulster or Scots dialects of English. The modern Gaelicized spelling craic, although preferred by most of the Irish people, is sometimes controversial, decried as faux-Irish.[1]
drum
(from droim, 'back') A ridge often separating two long narrow valleys; a long narrow ridge of drift or diluvial formation (OED).
drumlin
(from droim, 'back' with a diminutive) A small rounded hill of glacial formation, often seen in series (OED).
esker
(from eiscir) an elongated mound of post-glacial gravel, usually along a river valley (OED).
Fenian
A member of a 19th century Irish nationalist group. From Old Irish fené, the name of an ancient Irish people, but confused with fíann, a legendary band of warriors (OED).
fiacre
a small four-wheeled carriage for hire, a hackney-coach. This derives from the Old Irish given name Fiacre (of uncertain meaning, perhaps 'battle king', perhaps 'little raven'). Saint Fiacre was a seventh century Irish saint for whom an inn in Paris that hired carriages was named. (OED)
galore
plenty, a lot. From go leor, Irish for to sufficiency. (OED)
gob
(literally beak) mouth. Perhaps from Irish. (OED)
keen
(from caoinim, 'to wail') to lament, to wail mournfully (OED).
kibosh
'To put the kibosh on' is to do for something, finish it off, or simply to end it or terminate it. The OED says the origin is obscure and possibly Hebrew Yiddish, but it may be from the Irish an cháip bháis, 'the cap of death' [2] or cabáiste, cabbage [3].
leprechaun
elf, sprite (from leipreachán, from lu 'small' and corp 'body') (OED).
loch
(from loch) A lake, or arm of the sea; this has entered English by various routes; one derivation is most obvious (but then the spelling is usually 'lough'), and in Anglo-Irish and in various northern English dialects the origin is Gaelic.
poteen
(from poitín, 'small pot') hooch, bootleg alcoholic drink (OED)
phoney
(from fáinne, 'ring') from fake rings sold to immigrants just off the boat from Ireland
Puck, pook, pooka
possibly related to púca (a pooka, a hobgoblin, a bogey, a sprite), poker, an evil demon, a mischievous sprite or spirit; a hobgoblin
scam
from 's cam é ('it is a scam/a trick'), a trick - it is a trick.
shamrock
from seamróg ('trefoil'), a clover, used as a symbol for Ireland (OED).
Shan Van Vocht
from SeanBhean Bhocht (a poor old woman), "Poor Old Woman", a literary name for Ireland in the 18th and 19th centuries
shebeen
unlicensed house selling alcohol, from Irish síbín, a mugful (OED).
shillelagh
a wooden club or cudgel made from a stout knotty stick with a large knob on the end
Sidhe
(pronounced 'she') the fairy folk of Ireland, from (aos) sídhe (OED). See banshee.
sleeveen
(also slieveen, sleiveen) an untrustworthy or cunning person, from the Irish slíbhín. Used in Ireland and Newfoundland. (OED)
slew
from sluagh, a large number; a great amount (OED). NB: as in a slew of new products, not as in slay.
slob
from slab mud (OED)
smithereens
small fragments, atoms. In phrases such as 'to explode into smithereens'. This is the word smithers (of obscure origin) with the Irish diminutive ending. Whether it derives from the modern Irish smidrín or is the source of this word is unclear (OED).
tilly
(from tuilleadh, 'an additional quantity, supplement') used in Ireland and places of Irish settlement such as Newfoundland to refer to an additional article or amount unpaid for by the purchaser, as a gift from the vendor (OED).
Tory
originally an Irish outlaw, probably from the Irish verb tóir, meaning "pursue" (OED).
whiskey
from uisce beatha, 'water of life' (OED).

[Scazon]

Here's my take on some of the reasons:

(1) There was a drastic fall in population of post-Roman Britain. We don't know why, but it appears that the population was over 3 million in the 4th century (maybe as many as 5 million), and not much more than 1.5 million in the 11th century, despite immigration of Angles, saxons, Jutes and Vikings. If much of this population drop happened early (the Justinian plague has been suggested), Celtic culture could have been diffuse, centreless, impoverished and traumatised.

(2) The Roman church re- established contact after a period of separation, under the impression that the Celtic church (Ireland- based, but operating in Wales, Cornwall, English- dominated areas, Scotland and even into Germany) was tainted with heresy. TRome had a vague memory of the Pelagian heresy which was popular just before Britain fell away from the Roman empire. Hence their extirpation of native British influence after the synod of Whitby (that took place IIRC at Streneshall because Whitby didn't exist).

(3) Apartheid. The early English word for "Briton" is the same as the word for "slave". It's notable that some basic household words like "mam" (mum, mom) are Celtic- evidence of slaves caring for the children, or perhaps British au pair girls (try pronouncing that in Welsh). There are also a lot of places called "Walton"- the place where the Britons lived.

[DevilsAdvocate]

I think it is simply a matter of geography. The British Isles had lots of languages and dialects. The Celtic languages were further west. The Anglo-Saxons came from the east and dominated the southern and eastern parts of England. This established Old English languages and dialects. The Romans took over and brought Latin, but the Romans tended to control the state and not mess about with the culture. But it was the language of the government and scholars and priests, who tend to be the people that write things down, so it had an influence. Some Vikings came in to the northeast and brought some Norse. Then the French came over after the Norman invasion and brought their language, which had quite a bit of influence, especially in southern England.

Things stayed like this for a while. French for government, Latin for religion, a bunch of variations of English for the common folk. Later, the French felt they were losing control and started doing business in English. So the English spoken in southern England worked its way into government. Then Martin Luther came along bringing Christianity to the people. That means Bibles in the language of the common people, which is English. We get a Bible by Tyndale who studied at Oxford. So the English spoken in southern England worked its way into religion. These versions of English sort of come together with some substantial transformations over the next 100 years or so and we get Early Modern English.

The Celtic languages were essentially out of the picture during this whole process. So current English doesn’t have much influence from Celtic.

[arthwollipot]

There was Christianity in the British Isles before Martin Luther...

[DevilsAdvocate]

There was Christianity in the British Isles before Martin Luther...Of course there was. But it operated in Latin. Priests and scholars and such knew Latin, but not the common folk. They all spoke English. Luther said you don't need the Church establishment; that Christianity is for the common folk. The common folk spoke English. That meant publishing English Bibles (now that we have the printing press), which meant putting English into writing and establishing standards for English for the first time. This had a huge influence on why English is what it is today.

[arthwollipot]

Ah. I understand what you were saying now. Thanks for the clarification.

[Scazon]

The Celtic languages were further west. The Anglo-Saxons came from the east and dominated the southern and eastern parts of England. This established Old English languages and dialects. The Romans took over and brought Latin,

I think your chronology is rather skew whiff. As far as we know (which is much less than we would like) the language of the whole main island of Britain was Brythonic- a group of P-Celtic dialects ancestral to modern Welsh. Some think that a pre-Celtic language, Pictish, survived in the farnorth. but there's little evidence of this.

The Romans used Latin as the administrative language from 43AD onwards, and it's reasonable to assume that all of the decurial class (those rich enough to "qualify" as administrators) would have been fluent. Most people involved in any sort of trade would have had some Latin- this is testified by scratched notes on pieces of pot found in potteries for example, and in often half- literate curses from Bath and other places. The army also used Latin, see Vindolanda. The peasants may well have not needed it.

There is little sign of Saxon presence until the very end of empire, when they may have been used (in a small way) as mercenaries, as the stories say they were after the empire withdrew. There is then a period of 100-150 years when it is very difficult to be sure of what was going on- we only have writings from a hundred or more years after the event, and archaeology is often vestigial. But at the end, it's certain that most of what is now England, along with south-east Scotland, was controlled by Early English speaking "kingdoms". In the remaining areas (Wales, Cornwall, and south- west Scotland) the Brythonic language survived, as it may well have done in patches in the English areas- but with little apparent influence on the language. Place names are another matter, Celtic based names being widespread.

The British may have been Christian to a greater or lesser degree. The Saxons were pagan, but probably did not suppress native Christianity (common placename Eccles), but after Augustine's mission of 597 onwards adopted Christianity and took control of it as the official religion.

One interesting question is why Britain didn't become a Romance- speaking area, like France. That was a Celtic society too, and the invaders were Germanic. They'd had a hundred years more of empire, but I think the main factor there was the long period during which whole Germanic tribes acted as Roman mercenaries, which made Latin the unavoidable lingua franca :), more evidence that Saxon penetration of Britain in the empire period was slight.

[DevilsAdvocate]

I think your chronology is rather skew whiff.I agree. I was trying to keep things short and outline the influences rather than give a chronological history. I wish I could do better.

The point I was trying to make was that the Celtic languages were geographically outside of any major influence of the development of the English language. There was no conspiracy or intentional suppression of the language or genocide. The language was just simply not in the arena of influence.

Here are some maps.

Influence on Old English:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a2/Old_norse%2C_ca_900.PNG/250px-Old_norse%2C_ca_900.PNG

Current Celtic:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Celtic_Nations.svg/175px-Celtic_Nations.svg.png

There is very little overlap on the British Isles. One language went one way, the other went the other way. They stayed apart. So there isn’t much mixing.

[Scazon]

Sorry DA, but you're getting confused between NOW and THEN. Pre Roman Empire, the Celtic area would have included all of France, part of Spain, north Italy, all the British Isles and other bits that we can only speculate about, as they were swallowed up by Germanic migratory movements before they left any written record.

Where did you get the maps from? The map for Old English is confused and, simply, misleading. The red bits appear to show Nowegian influence. The orange bits Swedish/ Danish- why they bothered making a distinction between these still mutually intelligible Scandinavian dialects isn't clear. The green bit is apparently Low German, but should therefore include England, as Old English is a Low German dialect.

The British isles map is also very poor. Depending on what period it's supposed to represent, the green should cover the west side of Scotland and the Isle of Man, while all the others should be one colour, and there should be much more of it ( like the whole of the rest of the country). Breton is very similar to Cornish, indeed it's not a survival of the old Gaulish language (pace Asterix) but was created by a dark- age migration from Britain, and Cumbria should join the Welsh section.

The map doesn't represent the current situation either- Irish would be a pale green over all the Republic (many profess it, few use it), with a few bright spots mainly in the west, and a few spots in the Hebrides. Blue would be pale over much of Wales, again with bigger and more contiguous bright spots more widely scattered, and there would be a few blue spots in Brittany, but none in Cornwall where nobody uses it except as a literary language.

[DevilsAdvocate]

Sorry DA, but you're getting confused between NOW and THEN....Where did you get the maps from?The maps are from Wikipedia.

The first map shows influences on Old English.
The green bit is apparently Low German, but should therefore include England, as Old English is a Low German dialect.I don’t understand. The map shows influences on Old English. Why would it only show Low German as the influence of Old English? That would just be a map of Old English, and not a map of “Influence on Old English” as I indicated.

The British isles map is also very poor. Depending on what period it's supposed to represent, the green should cover the west side of Scotland and the Isle of Man, while all the others should be one colour, and there should be much more of it ( like the whole of the rest of the country). Breton is very similar to Cornish, indeed it's not a survival of the old Gaulish language (pace Asterix) but was created by a dark- age migration from Britain, and Cumbria should join the Welsh section.I guess you are talking about the second map? It represents current use of Celtic languages. Hence the label “Current Celtic”. I don’t know about the colors. I think the maps are fairly general.

The point is, the influences on modern English came from several places, and the places where Celtic languages were retained were not among those places. Therefore, Celtic had little influence on English and Celtic languages continues despite the predominance of English. They were geographically separate.

The maps I found seem to support that. Not much influence from the areas that continue to use Celtic languages. And English did not completely overtake those areas that used Celtic languages.

If you don't think that is the case, give be better maps. I'll reconsider.

Edited to add:
The first map is "The approximate extent of Old Norse and related languages in the early 10th century". So iy is not really actually a map of the influnce on English that I said it was.

[Wudang]

The second map mistakes national boundaries for linguistics ones. Gaelic is not prevalent through Scotland, especially the east and south where Doric and Lallans are generally considered the "native" tongue though both have declined massively.
Try the map here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A0idhealtachd

[tyr_13]

I think my opinion might be of some worth here, and would like to emphasize that it is just my opinion but...

English has become a rather robust language, and one that assimilates readily. This didn't happen as much with Celtic because of all the dialects. One of the ways that used to be used do differentiate between a dialect and a language is that a language is supported by an army or a navy. At the time, that was true of the English that was spoken.

An interesting parallel can be drawn with modern 'Chinese'. There are over 200 dialects spoken in China, and often a person from one province can't speak with a person from another. As Mandarin is the government language, many businesses use that. But many also speak to each other in English. In Japan, kangi are getting less and less popular because of the versatility of Romanji (English characters). French was the language of diplomacy until WW2 when English took over, and it has been the language of business from the time of the British Empire (before that it was Farsee or Indian depending on who you asked). Sure, that has nothing to do with how 'good' a language it is.

Now I'm not saying that 'English is the greatest language' and I don't pretend to be an expert on Old English, but has it occurred to anyone that it was just a more versatile language? Maybe not as versatile as the Latin of the time, but political reasons would have made that less popular. It would seem a variety of reasons are at the root for the limited impact of the various Celtic dialects on the English language.

[DevilsAdvocate]

The second map mistakes national boundaries for linguistics ones. Gaelic is not prevalent through Scotland, especially the east and south where Doric and Lallans are generally considered the "native" tongue though both have declined massively.
Try the map here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A0idhealtachdYeah. Ok. Maybe my map idea there doesn't work so well. :boggled:

[UnrepentantSinner]

You're missing a link in the chain. The word "Celt" comes from the Latin "Celtæ" which was derived from the Greek "Keltoi" which was an invention by Herodotus for the Gauls (which the Greeks already called "Galatai").

The Romans, apparently, only ever referred to the Gauls as the Celtæ and not British Celts, who were referred to as Brittonem.

The reason it's "C" not "K" is not because there's no K in the Irish Alphabet. It's because there's no K in the Latin alphabet. "C" has a hard sound in Latin, which is why the German "Kaiser" is derived from the Latin "Cæsar" (which is often incorrectly pronounced "See-zar").

{tangent}

This raises a pet peeve of mine regarding transliteration from non-Latin or Germanic languages into English. If there's a corresponding English letter or phonem sound the closest pheonetic analogue should be used in the English transliteration. If a word in a hypothetical non-Latin or Germanic language using Latin letters was spelled "tlourgh" but was pronounced "taxes" it should be transliterated accordingly.

Pinyin is a great transliteration if you know generally how some name phonems are pronounced - I have some paperwork for an employee named Xiaopeng right in front of me, which I read as "Shaow-peng" - but during the Olympics this summer I was constantly being thrown for a loop as to how I'd pronounce the Pinyin vs. what the actual pronounciation was.

And, obviously, people's names are what they are, but I still wish something could be done to make them more accurately reflect the pheonetic pronounciation. Sticking with the Olympic theme - U.S.A. mens coach Mike Krzyzewski pronounched "Sha-chef-skee".

{tangent}

[arthwollipot]

And, obviously, people's names are what they are, but I still wish something could be done to make them more accurately reflect the pheonetic pronounciation. Sticking with the Olympic theme - U.S.A. mens coach Mike Krzyzewski pronounched "Sha-chef-skee".That is phonetic in Ukranian. It's just been transliterated into Latin letters.

[UnrepentantSinner]

That is phonetic in Ukranian. It's just been transliterated into Latin letters.

Polish actually. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coach_K) And did you miss where I wrote this?

This raises a pet peeve of mine regarding transliteration from non-Latin or Germanic languages into English. If there's a corresponding English letter or phonem sound the closest pheonetic analogue should be used in the English transliteration.

[politas]

The second map mistakes national boundaries for linguistics ones. Gaelic is not prevalent through Scotland, especially the east and south where Doric and Lallans are generally considered the "native" tongue though both have declined massively.
Try the map here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A0idhealtachd

And "Lallans" is mostly middle English with a few loan words from Gaelic.

[arthwollipot]

Polish actually. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coach_K) And did you miss where I wrote this?Yeah. I did. Sorry.

[Scazon]

English has become a rather robust language, and one that assimilates readily. This didn't happen as much with Celtic because of all the dialects. One of the ways that used to be used do differentiate between a dialect and a language is that a language is supported by an army or a navy. At the time, that was true of the English that was spoken.

That doesn't work for the period in which English superceded British in what is now Emgland. There were several dialects of Old English, roughly corresponding to the major kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex and Kent, but each (probably) having its own sub- dialects. The absorption of loan- words from other languages seems to date from the Norse invasions onwards (particularly in the Danelaw, where Nordic settlers lived alongside native Saxons), and accelerated in the period leading up to the Norman invasion, as the country came increasingly under French influence - this was well under way before the Bastard took over.

One factor in the supercession of British might be the grammatical features of Celtic languages- which are in some ways much simpler than Germanic, but have a killer complication- consonantal mutation- the . The sheer unfamiliarity of such a concept might have made wholesale transfer of words unattractive.

For example:
Cymru = Wales
Dw i'n dod o Gymru = I come from Wales
Dw i'n byw yng Nghymru = I live in Wales
Lloegr a Chymru = England and Wales

One possible major influence of British on English seems to get forgotten, perhaps because it's so familiar and pervasive- the ordinary form of the verb, as in "I am playing", far closer to the Welsh "mae yn chwarelae" than the German "ich spiele".

[Miss_Kitt]

Thnak you all, I'm up too late, but this is a fascinating thread.

I think that the Celtic languages made little impression on English in part because they're so damned difficult. As someone above noted, Mandarin is the "official business" dialect of Chinese--in part because Cantonese, another arguable candidate, is so fragging difficult. I had a (native Cantonese speaking) roommate in college who was learning Mandarin as a hobby, on top of her classload at Harvey Mudd. She said, "In China, we know better than to try to teach Cantonese to people who don't learn it as a child. It's too hard. (laughs) It's hard for me, and I learned as a baby!" I have heard, similarly, that if you don't grow up speaking Welsh you will never sound anything like fluent. It's just too complex and subtle.

In addition to the advantage that being the Language of the Learned and of Business, in a fair fight, the easier language wins. Only specific terms that have no equivalent in the imported language will move in.

Just my opinion, I'm not a linguist. MK

[malbui]

One factor in the supercession of British might be the grammatical features of Celtic languages- which are in some ways much simpler than Germanic, but have a killer complication- consonantal mutation- the . The sheer unfamiliarity of such a concept might have made wholesale transfer of words unattractive.


This is true, but how would the existence of such mutations in the Celtic languages (aspiration and eclipsis in Gaelic, plus that horrible nasal thing in Welsh :D) stop nouns from being assimilated into English where such structures don't exist? I mean, take a word like "banshee" in English. In Irish the initial b can get mutated into an mb or a bh depending on context, and the genitive and the plural are even more difficult as bean becomes mná, but that's irrelevant to its adoption and use in English.


One possible major influence of British on English seems to get forgotten, perhaps because it's so familiar and pervasive- the ordinary form of the verb, as in "I am playing", far closer to the Welsh "mae yn chwarelae" than the German "ich spiele".


But interestingly there's no mapping of the third form of the present tense that exists in Gaelic. I can say things like:

Imríonn mé (I play)

Tá mé ag imirt (I am playing)

Bím ag imirt (I play habitually)

... all with their distinct shades of meaning.

[Scazon]

'Tis true an' all, Yellow Mal, but observe that most Celtic words that have got into English are literary adoptions, like banshee, and come pre- mutated if you like. In the dark ages, the Saxon overlords and their Brit peasants (if that's the way it was) weren't sending memos to each other, it was verbal. It's possible that the variability of form meant that the words were simply not recognised.

I've sometimes wondered if there's a sort of ghost of that habitual present in some English verbs. Look at bleat-> blether, bot (a fly)-> bother, get->gather, wet->weather :)

[millwallfan]

Some historians and linguists are puzzled by how the English language shows so little Keltic influence - not in grammar or vocabulary(although there are some English words of Keltic origin), even though most of the population in Britain before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons was largely Keltic-speaking.

Besides speaking Keltic languages, much of the population before the Anglo-Saxon invasion was Latin-speaking, especially among the elite, Roman settlers, and Latinized Kelts, especially in urban areas.

Slowly but surely, virtually all Kelts in the area that is now England were assimilated by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. In Wales, and Scotland the native Keltic languages have survived to this day, although fluent English is spoken by virtually all Scots and Welsh.

Genetic studies reveal that the Anglo-Saxons and other Germanic invaders didn't have a whole lot of influence on the gene pool of Britain, except in the extreme south-east of England. Western England and Wales in particular show very little to no Germanic influence. I've been told that the cultural level of the Anglo-Saxons was supposedly higher than the native Kelts, which may explain why the Keltic languages were largely supplanted by English and had little influence on English. However, much of the Keltic population had been Romanized and may have been at a higher cultural level than the barbarian Anglo-Saxon invaders(much of the Anglo-Saxons had been Roman mercenaries, although they were heathens).

Contrast Britain with Gaul(France) at around the same time and later. In the last decades of the Roman Empire, Gaul had also been invaded by several Germanic tribes; indeed, "France" gets its name from the Germanic-speaking Franks, who ruled much of Gaul after the fall of Rome. Eventually these invaders were assimilated by the vulgar-Latin speaking Gauls; the Germanic elite lost their native language. The vulgar Latin spoken there eventually evolved into modern French and various other closely related Romance languages, most of which have gone extinct except for Provencal(Occitan). Some scholars claim the unique French accent may even be due to a Keltic influence, or maybe a Germanic one.

Similarly, the Turks invaded and conquered Persia, the Byzantine Empire and the Arab lands a little after this, and the Turkish language was very influenced by Farsi(Persian), as well as Arabic. So why is the Keltic influence on English so negligable?
so if the english arent really Germanic as previously thought what are their origins?

[malbui]

'Tis true an' all, Yellow Mal, but observe that most Celtic words that have got into English are literary adoptions, like banshee, and come pre- mutated if you like. In the dark ages, the Saxon overlords and their Brit peasants (if that's the way it was) weren't sending memos to each other, it was verbal. It's possible that the variability of form meant that the words were simply not recognised.


And even written down the words can vary so much in their written forms that recognition can be tricky - in the example of bean I gave above, you've got the forms bean, mná and ban even before you start on mutations and the varying spoken treatments of consonant clusters like "bh". It's a wonder anyone ever understood anybody.

The "Yellow Mal" thing amuses me too and well done for picking up on it. My nickname actually comes from school, where so many of us had the same first names that we were referred to by our home villages: it amused me that none of my classmates who called me by the abbreviated form of my home village high in the Alps realised that it was also a legitimate nickname far away in Ireland - or would have been had my first name been "Mal".

[malbui]

I think that the Celtic languages made little impression on English in part because they're so damned difficult.


This is probably material for a whole new thread but I wonder how true that really is. At first sight the Celtic languages look ferociously difficult, with the orthography looking baffling and very few words looking immediately familiar to native English speakers, but I'm not sure that they really are and once the underlying principles are understood there's not a lot in the grammar that's any more complicated than anything else I've tried to learn.

[millwallfan]

This is probably material for a whole new thread but I wonder how true that really is. At first sight the Celtic languages look ferociously difficult, with the orthography looking baffling and very few words looking immediately familiar to native English speakers, but I'm not sure that they really are and once the underlying principles are understood there's not a lot in the grammar that's any more complicated than anything else I've tried to learn.


From what I`ve read German DNA is very strong in York and Norfolk, Mediterranean in the Midlands , western Scotland and Wales:boxedin:

[hgc]

That's exclusively for the team.


Same in the US. Other than the Boston Celtics, anyone who uses the word, or it's variants, probably pronounces it with a hard c.

[Cuddles]

I think that the Celtic languages made little impression on English in part because they're so damned difficult.

Not really. While it's true that there are some rather interesting mutations in Welsh, there are other aspects that make it much simpler. To start with, Welsh is pretty much constant with pronunciation. Once you know how to pronounce a letter, you know how to pronounce it whenever you see it. There's none of this nonsense with words like cough, bough, tough all being pronounced differently. Most of the time when English people complain about Welsh being hard, the only problem is that things are pronounced differently from English, not that there's inherently anything difficult to learn.

As for the mutations themselves, they may be rather silly if you use them all, but the simple fact is that most people don't, or use the same ones in any situation. For example, taking Scazon's examples of:
Cymru = Wales
Dw i'n dod o Gymru = I come from Wales
Dw i'n byw yng Nghymru = I live in Wales
Lloegr a Chymru = England and Wales

These would often just be:
Cymru = Wales
Dw i'n dod o Gymru = I come from Wales
Dw i'n byw yn Gymru = I live in Wales
Lloegr a Gymru = England and Wales

When it comes down to it, English is one of the more irregular languages around. I think you'll struggle to find any European language that you can really claim is inherently more complicated than English. There may be all kinds of reasons why Celtic languages didn't have much influence on Englsih, but I doubt complexity is one of them.

[kleinjahr]

Has anyone read,"The Adventure of English"? There are some interesting ideas, postulates in it. Including why the Celtic languages had a relatively slight influence on English. Consider, Welsh( the word not the language) is,apparently, derived from a Saxon word meaning slave. Now think about it, how often have conquerors/ dominant societies borrowed entire languages from the conquered/dominated. Not often, if at all. Though some words or phrases from the dominated language, almost always, become part of the dominant. For examples look up how many words in modern English have roots in the Native American, Hindi, African and Oriental languages. Most will likely have something to do with food or something which English had no word for.

[malbui]

These would often just be:
Cymru = Wales
Dw i'n dod o Gymru = I come from Wales
Dw i'n byw yn Gymru = I live in Wales
Lloegr a Gymru = England and Wales


When I was an undergrad in Aberystwyth, back in the day, I'd have been thrown off the top of Constitution Hill for those last two!

[Nomada]

From what I`ve read German DNA is very strong in York and Norfolk, Mediterranean in the Midlands , western Scotland and Wales:boxedin:
I believe, using DNA, the oldest inhabitants of the British Isles were found to originate in the Basque region of Spain.

[arthwollipot]

Has anyone read,"The Adventure of English"?I've read most of it...

[six7s]

I've read most of it...What? And coloured in the rest, huh?

;)

-------
ETA: have you stopped shaving, or what?

[arthwollipot]

What? And coloured in the rest, huh?

;)No, actually I stopped being interested sometime around the 1700s.

ETA: have you stopped shaving, or what?Yeah, that's exactly it. It's my Halloween avatar! All hael deamon kitteh!

[DevilsAdvocate]

Even though my map presentation didn’t work so well, I still hold my theory of geographic influence. It is simple. If you have a pot of various stuff, and you add a bit of other stuff to the right side of the pot, and then stir just the right side of the pot, and then pull out a sample from the middle of the stirred portion, and put it in a test tube and call it English, then you don’t have much influence from the stuff that was in the pot that was not stirred.

Celtic was not stirred in much. It is not a matter of the difficulty or complexity of the language, or any political or sociological rejection of the language. It just didn’t get stirred in because it wasn’t in that particular part of the pot.

[six7s]

Here's a list of English words from Irish (Wikipedia)
English words from the Irish language
<snip/>
whiskey
from uisce beatha, 'water of life' (OED).Ahhh, such music to me ears :)


This thread prompted me to dust off my copy of Simon Winchester's (excellent) The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary

Of those settlers about whose language we know something, the Celts - who came from gloomy forests and swamps in the upper valleys of the Danube - are generally counted as the first. They swarmed westwards across Europe some time during the Bronze Age; about 500 years before the birth of Christ they settled themselves, among other places, on the cliff-protected fortress of the rainy and foggy islands that lay off the continent's north-western shores. Those that settled in the generally more climatically benign southern half of the islands called themselves Britons--a name from which in time was to come the British Isles, and, indeed, Britain.

Here they created for themselves some kind of home and civilization, and they spoke languages that have left precious little trace on modern English, but which are preserved as the basis of such Welsh, Cornish, Scots Gaelic, and Irish as is still spoken today. There are a very few words - brock, for badger being one, combe, meaning a deep valley, and which appears in some English village names and in contemporary Welsh, another, torr, a mountain peak - which seem to have survived, at least among those who speak preciously or somewhat pedantically today. Some Celtic place names - London, Dover, and Kent, the rivers Thames, Exe, and Wye - exist today as well. Late in their history the Celts borrowed - probably; there is still debate among etymologists - a small number of words, such as assen for ass and maybe the word cross, from visiting Christian missionaries. But generally their linguistic role in the speech and writings of future English generations was fairly minimal; shortly after the beginning of the Christian era any idea that Celtic British might have a long-term linguistic influence was brushed aside: thousands of well-armoured and tactically adept legionnaires swept ashore and, before the language had the chance properly to take hold, promptly placed all south Britain under the colonial suzerainty of Rome


and

But for all this, Old English was first and foremost a hoem-grown language - by far its greatest component being the Teutonic stock of words gifted by the Jutlanders and Frisians and Angles who began to drift into the population in the wake of Hengist and Horsa. The total accumulation of Latin and Norse loanwords (a triflingly small number of probable French lendings, too - among them words like prisen, castel and prud, which equate to today's prison, castle and proud) amount to no more than three per cent of Old English's word stock; Germanic words account for almost all the rest. And though we glibly say that the language as written and spoken 1,000 years ago is recognisable to the modern ear - it is certainly more so than the Celtic of the very early British - the numbers suggest otherwise; something like nine out of every ten of the Old English words have since fallen into disuse

Google Books:blurb (http://books.google.com/books?id=e8mxWTFIXqAC&dq=%22simon+winchester%22+%22the+meaning+of+everyt hing%22&lr=&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0)
extracts (http://books.google.com/books?id=e8mxWTFIXqAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22simon+winchester%22+%22the+meaning+of+everyt hing%22&lr=&sig=ACfU3U2fXNizq0SjxchjdKGb0HuOAmfabA)

[scissorhands]

Has anyone read,"The Adventure of English"? There are some interesting ideas, postulates in it. Including why the Celtic languages had a relatively slight influence on English. Consider, Welsh( the word not the language) is,apparently, derived from a Saxon word meaning slave. Now think about it, how often have conquerors/ dominant societies borrowed entire languages from the conquered/dominated. Not often, if at all. Though some words or phrases from the dominated language, almost always, become part of the dominant. For examples look up how many words in modern English have roots in the Native American, Hindi, African and Oriental languages. Most will likely have something to do with food or something which English had no word for.

The modern words "Wales" and "welsh", comes from the ancient germanic word "walha", meaning stranger or foreigner, not slave.

[ddt]

This thread prompted me to dust off my copy of Simon Winchester's (excellent) The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
But generally their linguistic role in the speech and writings of future English generations was fairly minimal; shortly after the beginning of the Christian era any idea that Celtic British might have a long-term linguistic influence was brushed aside: thousands of well-armoured and tactically adept legionnaires swept ashore and, before the language had the chance properly to take hold, promptly placed all south Britain under the colonial suzerainty of Rome
What does Simon Winchester mean by that? The people must have spoken some language. Didn't all inhabitants of the British Isles 42 AD speak some Celtic language? And after the Roman invasion, they didn't all switch to speaking Latin, did they?

[six7s]

What does Simon Winchester mean by that? The people must have spoken some language. Didn't all inhabitants of the British Isles 42 AD speak some Celtic language? And after the Roman invasion, they didn't all switch to speaking Latin, did they?I'm not exactly sure... having been preoccupied in trying to spell and then look up suzerainty

However, (re)reading more of his book, I think his point might be that time is a factor...

Shortly after the above extract, he says:The Romans remained in Britain for the next 400 years. By the time they left in AD 409, <snip/>, Britain had been under their military and cultural influence for very nearly the same amount of time as separates us today from the Renaissance

[Wudang]

Even though my map presentation didn’t work so well, I still hold my theory of geographic influence.<..snip...>
Celtic was not stirred in much. It is not a matter of the difficulty or complexity of the language, or any political or sociological rejection of the language. It just didn’t get stirred in because it wasn’t in that particular part of the pot.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-English-Robert-McCrum/dp/0571210775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224148586&sr=8-1
A similar idea can be found in the BBC book "The Story of English"