Anglo-Saxon (answer to Mr. Siegel)

[jester]

And let's not forget about the "barbarian picts," whose language has never
really been recorded, though was a major influence to the Celts and the
"invading" germanic tribes, and there are Celtic/Gaelic parts of the
language that haven't even been touched by the germanic/proto-europeans.  It
is an interesting fact that Gaelic is so far removed from the Proto-European
roots.  Where did it come from?  Why did the Celts have such an "original"
language system?  You're right of course about the language being
characterized by grammar, but English grammar after Old English to
Early-Middle English developed in significantly different directions than
the other germanics and latin languages.  It's significantly more
complicated than the rest.

Is there a diehard linguist on the list who can get us all on track?

JJ "Jester"

At 11:29 PM 05/02/1997 +0000, you wrote:
>> 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!
>
>