The Invasion That Gave Us English

I first published this August 11, 2008. I've edited and expanded the original article just a bit and I have added a "Word History."

I'll start this at about 40 A.D. At that time Britain was populated by Celts; that is, a group of tribes of Indo Europeans represented most prominently in today's world by the Irish, the Scots, and the Welsh (and let's not forget the "Boston Celtics!"). In those times, the Celts living on the island were collectively known as Britons.* The Romans had been sending military expeditions into Britain from the mainland for some time, but it wasn't until around 40 A.D. that they really made a major effort to conquer the Britons, which they only partially succeeded in doing, as the Romans were unable to completely subdue the Celts in the north, which is pretty much today's modern Scotland.** Many, but not all, Celts under Roman rule in Britain became "Romanized," as the Roman form of civilization took hold, but the Celtic dialects prevailed over Latin in Britain, although some Latin terms took hold, or Latin forms of Celtic words occurred. The unsubdued northern areas remained pretty wild for hundreds of years afterward. As time passed, Rome began to experience it's own problems, with Germanic tribes inside and outside of Rome's continental borders. The Romans began to withdraw their forces from Britain to help protect Rome itself, a process that was completed by 410 A.D. The Celtic Britons then seem to have tried to get some Germanic elements to serve as a partial defense force for their now vulnerable area. Eventually many of these Germanic people settled in Britain, but they also sent for their relatives on the continent. Gradually waves of Germanic invaders came, only not to protect the Celts, but to overtake them. I've seen various numbers of Germanic invaders used by historians, from 100,000 to half a million, but 100 to 200 thousand  is a pretty good guess, and this was a substantial number for those times; that is, the mid to late 400s A.D.

These Germanic invaders came from the area of what is today northwestern Germany, southwestern Denmark, and northeastern Holland. The bulk of the invaders seem to have been from two particular tribes, the Angles and the Saxons. Elements of Jutes, Frisians and Franks also joined the migration to Britain, but I'll use the term Anglo-Saxons for the collective Germanic invaders. The various Germanic tribesmen spoke dialects (variations) of a hypothetical common Germanic language.*** Archaeologists and historians have generally concluded that the Angles totally pulled up from their homeland in what is part of the modern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, and left for Britain.**** On the other hand only some of the Saxons departed for Britain. The Saxons generally inhabited the area around modern Kiel, Lübeck, and Hamburg in the area of the Elbe River, and many of their descendants are undoubtedly still there today. Bordering the Saxons to the west were the Frisians, who inhabited the coastal territories of modern northwestern Germany and northeastern Holland. The identity of the Jutes has been more controversial over time. There is not a lot of  historical evidence about them before they migrated to Britain, and in more recent times some historians have speculated that they may have been a part of the Saxons, rather than a truly separate Germanic tribe, or that they had vacated their Jutland homeland, an area stretching from modern Denmark into northern Germany, and gone to the area of the Rhine River, a region under the control of the Franks, a large Germanic tribal confederation, as artifacts recovered from the Jutes in England show characteristics closer to the Franks, rather than to the Angles and Saxons.***** The Jutes settled in what is now Kent, at the southeastern edge of England. The idea is, if the Jutes had remained in their Jutland homeland, would they have sailed all the way to that area of Britain to land, thus bringing some historians to speculate that the Jutes came from across what is now famously known as the English Channel; that is, from Frankish territory on the mainland.

Over time, the Anglo-Saxons took over much of the southern part of Britain, but they too seem to have been halted by the fierce Picts (another Celtic tribe) and Scots in the north, just as the Romans had been several centuries before. Further, it seems that a fair number of Celts retreated to the western part of the island, into an area with a ridge of mountains serving as a natural barrier. The Germanic forces were halted there, and this area is today's Wales, the population being known as Welsh, but both Wales and Welsh come from a Germanic term generally meaning "foreign/foreigner," which was often applied to Celtic speaking and Latin speaking people by the Germanic peoples long ago, seemingly from the inability of the Germanic people to understand them. German still even uses a verb form, "welschen," to mean, "to talk in gibberish, to speak incomprehensibly."   

The Anglo-Saxons established themselves in Britain and their dialects formed the basis for English, with the linguistic use of the term "Anglo-Saxon" now interchangeable with "Old English." To this day the one hundred most commonly used words in English trace back to Anglo-Saxon. Later, Norwegians and Danes (also Germanic speakers) went to England and they too contributed to the English vocabulary.

* There had been many other Celtic tribes spread throughout Europe prior to those times; most notably in the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal) and Gaul (essentially modern France), but by the time I'm using, 40 A.D., they had been conquered and were mainly under the jurisdiction of the Romans.

** One of the Celtic tribes was known as Scots; thus we have the name Scotland, and the name of today's inhabitants thereof, Scots.

*** At least modern linguists believe that there had been a common Germanic language, called Proto-Germanic (sometimes "Old Germanic"), in the linguistic world.

**** The Angles lived in and around the region of the modern German city of Flensburg.

***** Archaeologists compare weapons, clothing, jewelry, housing and burial practices to try to determine relationships between one group to another. "If" indeed the Jutes left their homeland for Frankish territory, one would assume it was not six weeks before they sailed to Britain, for if their artifacts are similar to Frankish items, the Jutes undoubtedly did not pick up these practices in some relatively short period of time. A convincing verdict on the Jutes has not been reached.   

WORD HISTORY:
Begin-The origins of this common word are unknown, and it "may be" a West Germanic invention (English is a West Germanic language). West Germanic seems to have had "gennan/ginnan," the actual meaning of which is uncertain, but the word was used in compounds, and Old English had "onginnan," which meant "to set out to do something, undertake something." Old English also had "biginnan," which meant "to start, to commence." This then became "beginnen," before the modern version.The other West Germanic languages have: German "beginnen" (similar to its English cousin, German has "begann" in the past tense compared to English "began," and "begonnen" in the participle form, compared to English "begun"); Low German Saxon and Dutch have "beginnen;" and West Frisian has "begjinne." All have the meaning "to start, to commence, to begin."