Anglo-Saxon (answer to Mr. Siegel)

[thomas vieth]

You might be surprised, but BOTH Angles and Saxons were German. Anglia is 
an area in todays Schleswig-Holstein. In fact, the first noticable 
language mix occurred when the Anglo-Saxons were confronted with the 
Danes that gave them all the town names on -by as in Derby. The creole 
lasted until 1066.
Thomas

On Fri, 2 May 1997, Umberto Rossi 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!
>