English And Welsh Are Races Apart

BBC ^ | 6-30-2002

[Torie]

Well one thing that I have noticed is that upper class Englishman looked different than the plebs, or did until 50 years ago. I assumed that is because they were of Norman ancestry. If Pricess Diana wasn't of almost pure Norman blood, I don't know who is. She sure looked the part.

[dr_who]

Uh huh.

[muawiyah]

The antecedent is that we know they held onto their Gallo language because it was present before the Normans and present after the Normans.

The Normans abandoned their Old West Gothic and Norse! More than likely 3/4 of the people they brought with them in their baggage train on their attacks were Irish and Welsh slaves anyway!

When a small population of males invades and conquers another population that speaks a different language, their descendants end up speaking the language of the mothers - and those mothers will typically be from among the conquered population.

The fact that Gallo was spoken in Normandy before and after the arrival of the Vikings proves it was mostly a male invading force and that local women were taken to wife. No doubt the language changed through time, but it was Gallo that changed to a different variety of Gallo, and not Gothic that became Norman French.

We note, also, that Anglo-Saxon contiued to exist in England and eventually came to dominate over the Norman-French, Gallo and Gaelic spoken by the Conquerors. Again, we need point no further than to the mothers.

Then, too, English has been demonstrated to be much more robust in the acceptance of foreign words than have other languages. Presently it has a virtually infinite vocabulary. No other language has demonstrated this capacity.

[Torie]

English is close to 40% contaminated by French words.

[leilani]

CG, Galicia is VERY celtic (Galician food, art,& especially their architecture are dead giveaways). Castro however is definitely not Gallician. He is as I recall descended from Portuguese Jews (as was Henri Castro who founded Castroville Texas and much of the western Hill Country in TX)

[Torie]

I might add the French was the language of English law for a long time, and legal terms in English are largely of French origin. We even have variations of French (guaranty - Norman French; guarantee - Parisian French).

[keithtoo]

I think you mean Latin, not French. And that is Latin as a root, not as a proper word.

[muawiyah]

Thor Hyerdahl demonstrated conclusively that the ancient Norwegians migrated from Assyria about 100 AD or thereabouts. They were not Celtic in culure nor Gaelic in language when the Romans were running around placing levies on them in those days (which is why they left the area).

The Norwegians were Germanic and spoke a Gothic language then. The Swedes probably derive from no more than 6 of these earliest Norwegians.

[Torie]

No I mean French. Most of the Romance influence in English is via the French language.

[keithtoo]

Did you know their is a Galicia in Southeastern Europe (Austria?)in addition to the Galicia in NW Spain?

[muawiyah]

Fidel Castro's grandfather emigrated from Galicia to Cuba. You can think of him as Jewish or Arabic, or whatever you want, but one grandfather was definitely from Galicia. I heard he wore a kilt and played the pipes too!

Now what the other 3 grandparents might have been is a good question.

Magellan was also from Galicia!

[Torie]

Gallician interestingly is under the Portugese language family rather than Spanish. Your Magellan reference made me recall that. I guess the folks forgot how to speak Celtic.

[keithtoo]

peut-être vous avez raison? Or to use a more common French phrase: je me rends (I surrender)

[Cleburne]

You're fooling yourself! We're living in a dictatorship, a self perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes...

[dr_who]

WHAT is the capital of Assyria?

[dr_who]

ge-run-teee! - Justin Wilson (Lousiana) French.

[dr_who]

Oh, there you go bringing class into it again!!

[LostTribe]

>Thor Hyerdahl demonstrated conclusively that the ancient Norwegians migrated from Assyria about 100 AD or thereabouts.

Oh, cmon now. Let's not be silly about this. Thor Hyerdahl is one of my heros and I am quite familiar with his work.

He did not demonstrate conclusively that the ancient Norwegians migrated from Assyria about 100 AD, even though that is where the Celts originated ~610 BC. (Now if you want to make case that the Norse migrated from Assyria a whole lot earlier, we can talk.)

[Torie]

That almost sounds like gerund. LOL.

[Torie]

Why do I get this feeling that you consider yourself of Celt ancestry? :)