[Torie]

Bryan Sykes almost wrote a book entitled Adam's Curse: A Future without Men . Enjoy.

[GreyFriar]

ping

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Ireland Ping!

[Right Wing Assault]

Maybe I should put myself down as not as "Caucasian" but as "Celts". It sound more impressive.

[Alter Kaker]

Now maybe this is true for Bill Russell, but Wilt Chamberlain was no Celt.

[southernnorthcarolina]

Interesting stuff, Torie. Thanks for the post.

I can trace my surname to Carlisle, near the England-Scotland border, but that's the extent of my knowledge. Am I descended from Celts? Romans? Norsemen? Danes? Saxons? Normans? I have no idea, but I assume I'm a mongrel of sorts. Britain was invaded again and again over the last two millenia, and I'm sure most Brits, let alone those whose ancestors left the island centuries ago, have long since lost track.

[mtbopfuyn]

A shout out for great....grandpa Halfdan Frodasson born c. 503, Denmark! Vikings rule!

[Diddle E. Squat]

Celtics spread Limey Disease?

[CarrotAndStick]

Wales is the most Celtic part of mainland Britain, with 83 per cent.


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363051/posts

Searching for the Welsh-Hindi link
BBC ^ | Monday, 14 March, 2005, 10:31 GMT | BBC




A BBC journalist is urging helpful linguists to come forward to help solve a mystery - why the Hindi (India's official language, along with English) accent has so much in common with Welsh. Sonia Mathur, a native Hindi speaker, had her interest sparked when she moved from India to work for the BBC in Wales - and found that two accents from countries 5,000 miles apart seemed to have something in common.

It has long been known that the two languages stem from Indo-European, the "mother of all languages" - but the peculiar similarities between the two accents when spoken in English are striking.

Remarkably, no-one has yet done a direct proper comparative study between the two languages to found out why this is so, says Ms Mathur.

"What I'm hoping is that if amateurs like myself - who have indulged in doing a little bit of research here and there - come forward, we can actually do proper research with professional linguists," she told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

No coincidence

Ms Mathur explained that when she moved to Wales, everyone instantly assumed she was Welsh from her accent.

"I would just answer the phone, and they would say 'oh hello, which part of Wales are you from?'," she said.

We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels

Sonia Mathur "I would explain that I'm not from Wales at all - I'm from India.

"It was just hilarious each time this conversation happened."

Her interest aroused, Ms Mathur spoke to a number of other people whose first language is Hindi.

One Hindi doctor in north Wales told her that when he answered the phone, people hearing his accent would begin talking to him in Welsh.

"I thought maybe it isn't a coincidence, and if I dig deeper I might find something more," Ms Mathur said.

Particular similarities between the accents are the way that both place emphasis on the last part of word, and an elongated way of speaking that pronounces all the letters of a word.

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels," Ms Mathur said.

"For example, if you were to pronounce 'predominantly', it would sound really similar in both because the 'r' is rolled, there is an emphasis on the 'd', and all the letters that are used to make the word can be heard.

"It's just fascinating that these things happen between people who come from such varied backgrounds."

The similarities have sometimes proved particularly tricky for actors - Pete Postlethwaite, playing an Asian criminal in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, had his accent described by Empire magazine as "Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea".

Proto-European language

But not only the two languages' accents share notable common features - their vocabularies do too.

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite? Ms Mathur's own research on basic words, such as the numbers one to 10, found that many were similar - "seven", for example, is "saith" in Welsh, "saat" in Hindi.

"These kind of things really struck me," she said.

"When I reached number nine they were exactly the same - it's 'naw' - and I thought there had to be more to it than sheer coincidence."

She later spoke to professor Colin Williams of Cardiff University's School Of Welsh, who specialises in comparative languages.

He suggested that the similarities are because they come from the same mother language - the proto-European language.

"It was basically the mother language to Celtic, Latin, and Sanskrit," Ms Mathur added.

"So basically that's where this link originates from."

---

Ms Mathur noticed the similarities after moving to BBC Radio Wales

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels."

Sonia Mathur

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite?

Ms Mathur noticed the similarities after moving to BBC Radio Wales

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels."

Sonia Mathur

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite?

[two134711]

Instead, a research team at Oxford University has found the majority of Britons are Celts descended from Spanish tribes who began arriving about 7,000 years ago.

7,000 years ago there was no "Spain," hence no Spanish tribes. Perhaps they meant Hispano-Celts, or Celtiberians. I know, it's nitpicking.

[Just mythoughts]

7,000 years ago, now that is mighty interesting as well as the "Re for a farming people who spread to Europe from the Middle East."

[PzLdr]

No Roman blood?

[elhombrelibre]

This is interesting.

[Sam Cree]

*

[Wallace T.]

OTOH, there are other genetically based studies that claim that there are considerable genetic differences between the English and the Welsh. The BBC has an article on its Web site titled "English and Welsh Are Races Apart", that may be found at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/2076470.stm.

The fact that the Low Germanic dialects that developed into English became the common language of what would become England is in itself evidence of the scale of the migration. Contrast the Anglo-Saxon invasion of England with those of other Germanic tribes during the era of the collapse of the Roman Empire, and you will notice the other tribes, such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Vandals, etc., adopted the native languages of the former Roman provinces they conquered. The descendants of the barbarians became the aristocracy in the areas that would become France, Spain, and northern Italy. To this day, blondness is more prevalent in aristocratic Spanish and Italian families than in the population as a whole.

Both Anglo-Saxon and Welsh chronicles from the 5th and 6th Centuries, as well as those from continental Europe, attest to the mass killing of native Britons, or their flight to exile in Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Cumberland, Scotland, and Ireland. Especially in eastern England, what happened was not unlike what whites did to the American Indians. No doubt Celts survived in western England, but they were probably of the peasant class and adopted into the Anglo-Saxon culture, much like many Indians in the Southern states who were not exiled in the Trail of Tears or killed in warfare eventually were absorbed culturally and relationally into Anglo-Southern culture, especially in Appalachia. Not only isolated groups like the Melungeons, but many so-called hillbillies have some Cherokee or Creek ancestry.

The dominance of Anglo-Saxon language and culture in the future England, the records from the era, and the analogy with 18th and 19th Century America indicate that the invasions of England from northwest Germany and adjacent areas of the Netherlands and Denmark in the 5th and 6th Centuries AD dramatically transformed the racial and cultural makeup of the future England.

[Panzerfaust]

Arthur: How do you do, good lady. I am Arthur, king of the Britons. Whose
castle is that?
Woman: King of the 'oo?
Arthur: King of the Britons.
Woman: 'Oo are the Britons?
Arthur: Well we all are! We are all Britons! And I am your king.
Woman: I didn't know we 'ad a king! I thought we were autonomous collective.
Man: (mad) You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship! A
self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Woman: There you go, bringing class into it again...
Man: That's what it's all about! If only people would--
Arthur: Please, *please*, good people, I am in haste! WHO lives in that
castle?
Woman: No one lives there.
Arthur: Then who is your lord?
Woman: We don't have a lord!
Arthur: (spurised) What??
Man: I *told* you! We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune! We're taking
turns to act as a sort of executive-officer-for-the-week--
Arthur: (uninterested) Yes...
Man: But all the decisions *of* that officer 'ave to be ratified at a
special bi-weekly meeting--
Arthur: (perturbed) Yes I see!
Man: By a simple majority, in the case of purely internal affairs--
Arthur: (mad) Be quiet!
Man: But by a two-thirds majority, in the case of more major--
Arthur: (very angry) BE QUIET! I *order* you to be quiet!
Woman: "Order", eh, 'oo does 'e think 'e is?
Arthur: I am your king!
Woman: Well I didn't vote for you!
Arthur: You don't vote for kings!
Woman: Well 'ow'd you become king then?
(holy music up)
Arthur: The Lady of the Lake-- her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite,
held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by
divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why
I am your king!
Man: (laughingly) Listen: Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power
derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical
aquatic ceremony!
Arthur: (yelling) BE QUIET!
Man: You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some
watery tart threw a sword at you!!
Arthur: (coming forward and grabbing the man) Shut *UP*!
Man: I mean, if I went 'round, saying I was an emperor, just because some
moistened bink had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!
Arthur: (throwing the man around) Shut up, will you, SHUT UP!
Man: Aha! Now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Arthur: SHUT UP!
Man: (yelling to all the other workers) Come and see the violence inherent
in the system! HELP, HELP, I'M BEING REPRESSED!
Arthur: (letting go and walking away) Bloody PEASANT!
Man: Oh, what a giveaway! Did'j'hear that, did'j'hear that, eh? That's
what I'm all about! Did you see 'im repressing me? You saw it,
didn't you?!

[NonValueAdded]

Genealogy bump

[blam]

Celtic Found To Have Ancient Roots

[blam]

Don't forget these Celts way over in China:

Tocharians

[blam]

Descendent Of Stone Age Skeleton Found (Cheddar Man - 9,000 Years Old)

"LONDON (Reuter) British scientists Saturday celebrated their feat of tracing a living descendant of a 9,000-year-old skeleton and establishing the world's oldest known family tree."

[blam]

GGG Ping.

Genetic Survey Reveals Hidden Celts Of England

"THE Celts of Scotland and Wales are not as unique as some of them like to think. New research has revealed that the majority of Britons living in the south of England share the same DNA as their Celtic counterparts."