Anglo-Saxon (answer to Mr. Siegel)

[Umberto Rossi]

> The term Anglo-Saxon was probably invented to help legitimatize
> this embarrassing fact. The Angles were English. They lived in the
> British Isles. The Saxons were German. They lived in Germany.
> Germanic raiders did invade England during the 5th Century and
> leave elements of their language in the tongues spoken at the time,
> just as the Normans left much French, but the term Anglo-Saxon for
> Old English probably came into use after the ascent of the
> Hanovers, not before.
> [I will especially appreciate any comments about the paragraph
> above. Am I right? Wrong? Fair? Unfair? Mainly, are the historical
> facts correct?] 

Nice, apparently clever; totally false.

Three different ethnic groups (we could also call them tribes)
settled in England in V-VI century: the Angles, the Saxons, the
Jutes.  All they came from northern Germany, from the coastal area
between Holland and Denmark (a part of Denmark is not casually called
Jutland in German even today).  

The languages they spoke were Germanic, and quite similar:  surely
they had no problems in understanding each other.  And those
languages are the base of today's English, catalogued as a German
language in any linguistic text (the difference and the identity
between languages is determined by grammar, not words:  Rumenian is
full of Turkish words, but the grammar is clearly derived from Latin,
thus it is classified as a Latin language together with Italian,
French, Spanish, etc.). 

Ahem, I have to say that "leave elements of their language in the
tongues spoken at the time" is a false statement, because what
actually happened is that the tongues spoken at that time (Celtic and Latin)
left elements in Anglo-Saxon (should be Anglo-Saxon-Jute, but Jutes
were a small minority located in Kent;  to be complete, I'll tell you
that Saxons were mainly located in southwestern England--Winchester
was their capital city once they had a unified kingdom--while Angles
were mainly in the northeast).  By the way, you call that language
Old English, here in Italy we call it "anglosassone" (which is a
Latin rendering of Anglo-Saxon)--and as we have seen there's a good 
reason for that.

Yes, it is true that Saxons lived in Germany:  they are the majority 
of people currently living in Sachsen.  But many of them migrated to 
England.

I admit that from an anthropological point of view you are right. In
England the Germans mixed their blood with Celts and Latins.  But the
language they used (and use today) remains Germanic, and its closest
relative surviving today is Dutch. 

Sorry for my awkward English.  You'll easily find a more elegant 
description of these facts in any good history of English 
language--an interesting history indeed, I have to say.

As for the cultural (and political) implications of linguistics, it
is true that the idea of basing cultural identity on language isn't
completely right--but this is another story.

Umberto Rossi

"A commission is appointed 
To confer with a Volscian commission 
About perpetual peace"--and nobody told me!