"Britain Is More Germanic Than It Thinks"

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"THE ANGLO-SAXON INVASION: Britain Is More Germanic Than It Thinks"

"How Germanic is Great Britain really? Archeologists and geneticists have unveiled surprising revelations about the historical origins of people in the modern United Kingdom -- many of whom have ancestors who once crossed the North Sea."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 06,00.html

(Don't worry, the article is written in English )

of course it is, English are germanic people, they speak a germanic language.

And what do the Irish speak? Irish is very much a smell, minority language in your own country, largely confined to rural backwaters like Co Donegal.

But yes, we are a Germanic nation. We haven't really made any great secret of that. The English have indeed borrowed a lot from the Frogs over the years too.

Fascinating.


Part of what amazing about the story is the very fact that it is conisdered to BE amazing by the English themselves.

The English are - well- English. The dont speak Celtic, they speak English - a Germanic language akin to Dutch and the coastal dialects of German. So you would expect them to have a genetic kinship to the same people that they are linguistically akin to. And NOT to be related to the Celtic Welsh and Scots whom they are not linguistically akin to.

But apparently the English can both oppress the Celts AND identify with them at the same time to keep up their myth of racial exclusivity from the continent.

I feel akin to the Celtic countries as we all form parts of the same country, and as such we have our unique cultural links. I also feel a lot of commonalities between us and the Dutch and Scandinavian nations. Not difficult, is it?

Genetically, not so much. The article notwithstanding, AIUI genetic influence is mainly confined to the southeast and east coast of England. It's a very difficult field and there are and have been lots of claims and counter-claims.
Culturally, quite a lot, and I'll grant it's underappreciated.


Appreciate that an awful lot of English people are closely related to those scummy Scots and Welsh (and Irish) types. When they're not making with the tirunny and o-ppression.

And being that this has been known to be a fact for the last fifteen or sixteen centuries, this is news, how?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Could be worse: we could be French.

The Frogs used to be North Men. That is why Normandy is called what it is called.

ruveyn

On top of that, France is itself named for the Germanic Franks.
It should be remembered, though, that DNA testing reveals that the people of northern France, south and central Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the southern Netherlands, and England all share similar Celto-Germanic genetic markers. In other words, Germanic Northmen from time immemorial had mixed their DNA with the Celts they had encountered, rather than simply committing ethnic cleansing. There is a genetic differential between these previously named areas when compared with the old Germanic homeland of north Germany, north Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries, which genetically are more Germanic.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Last edited by Kraichgauer on 17 Jun 2011, 12:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.

This is not news. This has been taught in English schools for decades. Certainly I was taught about it back in 1997 and it wasn't considered news then, either. I have read history books from the 1950s and they mention about the history of England starting with the Anglo-Saxons.



Its really not. English people with any amount of education have always been aware of their history. We are taught that the name England means land of the Angles. We are taught that the days of the week in English relate to the Germanic/Norse gods. We recognise the similarities between our language and the germanic languages. Many English people have to read Anglo-Saxon poems, such as Beowulf, in English lessons at school. This isn't news to us. Believe me I would know, what with me ACTUALLY being English, living here all my life and going to English schools.



Okay, I've never heard anything about English racial exclusivity from the continent. We don't think we just sprang up out of the ground, we know we're related to people from the continent (as are the celts, by the way). I hear it said that "English people are mongrels" all the time - and its mostly English people that say that.

I don't know what you mean by the identifying with celts thing. Its hard not to identify with people when you live so close to them. I live about 40 minutes away from Wales. when I was younger we could only get Welsh TV because the hills where I used to live in North Devon blocked reception from English TV. The Welsh language fascinated me and I like it. As a teenager I knew a number of Welsh people and some have been good friends to me, so yes I of course I identify with them as they are humans with personalities and so are the English. Also, what's so wrong with being Germanic? The German people I have met have been incredibly intelligent and also very kind. Its just because of the world wars, but the anti-german feeling in England is fading with each new generation and that's a good thing.



It makes me feel sad because Irish is a beautiful language.

No surprise here since many English words have roots in German. Same thing can be said about French & Latin too. There were many Roman, German, & French invasions over time in Great Britain, but then the Anglo-Saxons were known to invade other regions around Great Britain as well as across the English Channel. Ireland was invaded by the Vikings, but not the Romans (too distant, too little money from Rome during the time?). Modern day France, formerly Gaul, was a land of Celts too until the Romans killed off the majority & enslaved those who survived. But invasions were a way of life in the Old Country, every region has been invaded by at least one outside group. It's why the US was invaded too by Spain, France, & the English. They all wanted a piece of the wealth. People unfortunately are greedy, & can't pass up an opportunity to plunder someone else's property. It's still happening today, sadly.

English is an interestingly complex language. There are so many roots in other languages: French, German, Latin, etc. Plus there's different forms of English: Old, Middle, & modern. It's certainly changed over the years.

Tomboy

This makes me sad too. Irish is one of the most beautiful languages I've ever had the privilege to hear. It's regaining in popularity again though, since England has lifted the ban on people speaking it. The Irish used to be punished severely if the English caught them speaking their native tongue. I hope it returns to its previous usage around the entire island, not just small pockets here or there.

This isn't likely to happen as the Irish Government spent decades foisting the language on children who didn't want to learn it and had no use for it, and who instilled a biased, Gaelicised view of Irish history. In the Republic of Ireland itself, Irish is seen as a minority language - one way to really annoy many Irishmen is to speak Irish fluently as a foreigner, because they don't know their language and have no need for it.

Ironically, it has grown in popularity in the jurisdiction on the island that has never made people learn Irish because of political reasons and where the majority community has an extremely negative view of it.

Ireland has a long & interesting history...maybe more so for someone like me who doesn't live it every day though. (I know i get bored with anything American because I'm surrounded & bombarded by it.) Anyway, a big part of the problem was the English government's attempt to irradicate the Irish by punishing them harshly for petty things like speaking their native tongue, or stealing bread so as not to starve to death. If the English had not imposed a ban on the language, more people would willingly speak it today. So therein lies the root of the problem. English was made the official language of Ireland & if you wanted to live in your homeland with your family, you sure didn't go around tempting fate by speaking Irish. If you did, it was off to jail, or worse shipped someplace far away like America or Australia. Of course, the height of that occured duing the Famine. And even today, being as the Irish are a stubborn lot (part Irish & hardheaded myself), they really frown on people imposing anything on them. I really do hope the language survives, the world would be a lesser place if it were to disappear.

Irish is a difficult language to learn (at least it was for me, harder than French). Even though I really have very little grasp of Irish, I love listening to it in song or spoken. It's the one language I find completely relaxing, just to hear it. No words grate, they just flow along like a river running its course.

It's worth noting that nowadays (and for the past 90 years) Irish has been the first official language of Ireland, ahead of English. But only a small minority of the Irish speak Irish. Most people speak English and don't know any Irish. So, they have road signs and government services in Irish but most Irish people don't need and have no use for them, and particularly in Northern Ireland Irish is associated with terrorists amongst Unionists.

What you've got to remember though, is that for most Irish people what happened in the 1800s is history. Only republicans, terrorists and their supporters really go on about "centuries of British oppression" these days.

Most of the Irish feel no animosity towards Britain and the British - how could they, when the Irish are the biggest minority population in England? Most English people feel much more at home in the Republic of Ireland than in Northern Ireland, because sectarianism and anti-British feeling has largely died down there apart from an extreme minority.