"Proto-English" theory on Newsnight

[Óttar]

Welsh is so full of Latin-derived words that it's probably only for political reasons that it's not classified as a Romance language.

Oh please. By that logic, you could say the same thing about English.

[Wulfhere]

Oh please. By that logic, you could say the same thing about English.

Yes, and I've heard it said about English. The difference is that in English, all the words for basic, everyday things are English, whereas in Welsh a very large number are Latin.

Whilst I don't necessarily agree with the following, I might as well report the theory about Welsh that it was, in fact, originally a Romance language, and any apparent Celtic elements are derived from the Irish colonisations of the Dark Ages.

[Treffie]

Yes, and I've heard it said about English. The difference is that in English, all the words for basic, everyday things are English, whereas in Welsh a very large number are Latin.

The clever thing with English is that it has many words which mean the same thing which are borrowed from both Germanic and Latin sources

eg, Large - etym L. largus "abundant, copious, plentiful, liberal

big - etym northern England dialect, "powerful, strong," of unknown origin, possibly from a Scandinavian source

With Welsh, word order is VSO, so this pretty much rules out the fact that it's a Romance language.

[Albion]

Here's a good site about that theory.
I'm not sure yet, I think there could have been some Germanics here before the Romans, but they would have been a minority with Celtic overlords I think, a similar situation with the Normans and the English.
Eventually Anglo-Saxon and Viking migrations and the spread from the east and assimilation of Celts could have reinforced their numbers and made them predominant.

[Liffrea]

Originally Posted by celtabria
Here's a good site about that theory.

I’ve seen it before, it’s mostly rehashed Oppenheimer, his points one to five aren’t that difficult to answer given the evidence we have available (I would imagine anyone with a modicum of knowledge could answer them reasonably well) and studies by people who actually are specialists in the field (which Oppenheimer isn’t). That’s not to say there aren’t questions, if you want certainties don’t study the period, but some theories are way out and I feel this Oppenheimer road show is one of them.

We also have Simon James, I have a lot of respect for the man he was my tutor at university, but the British weren’t Celts theory strikes me as dumb as the theory Old English didn’t originate with the Anglo-Saxons. Of course Oppenheimer likes to pretend as well that there weren’t any Celts in England pre-Roman times…….I’m not even going to credit that with a response.

I don’t like to claim agendas for people who may well be genuine in their beliefs, there are excellent studies in the Celtic impact on the English language and society, which has been underestimated, but I often feel this is often on the one hand some form of Celtophilia by English people who have a problem with their identity or, on the other, English folks who want to deny the Celts were ever here before we were. The roots of English identity are Anglo-Saxon, no amount of genetic evidence or wishful thinking will change that, the Anglo-Saxons may well have been a minority genetically but their cultural and linguistic dominance is undeniable, we speak English, not Welsh. The same goes for those who push the “no Celts” agenda, I’m not sure what the aim is there? English imperialism? If there are English people who want to be “Celts” then go and learn Welsh but re-writing history for the sake of modern prejudices isn’t nice.

I have yet to see any serious evidence that would deny that Celtic languages were spoken all over England pre-Roman times, I have yet to see anything that would even suggest Old English did not originate with the various Germanic people’s who settled in Britain.

[Curtis24]

I know, the whole thing is ridiculous. Oppenheimer and Bryan Sykes are both no-racers, and they came into this with the agenda that they were going to prove the English are not genetically different from the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. Later, they expanded that to include the Spanish as well.

In the process, they disregarded generations of work by linguistic and archaeological experts, deriding such people as being "too traditional".