What Is Your Heredity?

Very cool. Does anyone on your father's side speak Frisian?

 

Dude, frisians are insanely proud on their language. Almost every frisian speaks their language and there are still people younger than 50 in the province of Friesland that can't speak dutch well at all (because they only speak frisian). My grandfather moved to the province of north Holland in the 1930's so my dad and all my uncles were raised there in a dutch speaking community but they all speak frisian when they are among eachother.
Also, at our primary school we had to communicate in dutch of course but in the breaks or just talking among eachother we all talked frisian (it gets even worse: some frisian dialect to be more precise )! Yeah, I guess frisian language is definately part of my inheritance

 

That is freakin cool man. I have listened to a lot of Frisian being spoke during my studies of Anglo-Saxon, as Frisian is very close when it comes to the sound.

 

Yeah it's funny to hear the similarities with the languages of all surrounding countries, from norse, swedish and danish to german, dutch and of course english. All languages have progressed and changed a lot over the centuries naturally but what is interesting is that of all of those english is the newest as the development of the english language is mainly a blend of old norse, old french and the languages of the peoples that were already settled there before the 10th century (the time when the danish influence became really big in england and of course the french influence came about a century later with and after William the conqueror).

 

I don't think it is a blend in the truest sense though. I mean, at its core (in terms of syntax, grammar, sentence structure, etc....) it is still entirely Germanic. What it got from Old Norse and Norman was words. That is my understanding and thoughts on the matter.

The Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, etc.... brought with them their languages (which were already closely related and relatively interchangeable at the time) and these combined to give rise to what we call Anglo-Saxon (Old English). From this the bedrock of modern English is formed. Then came the Danes, then the Norse, and then the Normans, which each gifted various words to the English vocabulary.

 

Yes, I was talking about modern english. We had old english (perhaps pictish, welsh, celtic influences what not but mainly germanic due to the imigration of people to england and it's islands during the early middle ages). Than the danes and norse came and left a huge influence that was not temporarily but stayed and developed old english together with the norman french influences that also made a lasting influence and developed together with the scandinavian languages in what we now call modern english. What I mean is the old english that would be spoken (probably in many different forms/dialects) before the 10th century sounds nothing like the english that we recognize today which has been massively influenced by the french and scandinavian languages from the 10th century and forward to an extend that is not the same in any of the other languages I mentioned earlier.

 

Ahhh, ok, I get your point.

In regards to the Celtic impact on English, we know it to be pretty damn minor. Very few words in English, and few place names in England, with a Celtic origin survived. The theories for this are varied; some think it shows the Germanic tribes that came over either exterminated or at least pushed out (to places like Wales and Cornwall) all the Celtic tribes that were already there. Another theory is that the people the original inhabitants of England weren't Celtic at all, but were instead Germanic.

 

Wether those original inhabitants were celtic or not, they were most likely not exterminated but assimilated (besides the ones that were pushed to Wales, Cornwall etc.). When the impact of the immigrants/invaders is strong enough it is of course their language that makes a stronger and lasting influence. Especially those saxons in the 6th and 7th century seem to have really stamped their cultural footmark in the english regions they ruled. Their cultural influence might also have had a bigger impact on the long term because they became christian and as christianity grew to be the prevalent religion in europe from that time onwards they had a stronger position to spread their culture and language.

 

The thing is we have seen many examples throughout history of the languages of conquered peoples enduring, especially when it comes to place names. Take, for example, the European conquest of North America. While there are certainly many place names of European origin, there are many, many surviving native place names throughout. Those native peoples were conquered utterly and completely, their people displaced or destroyed, replaced by massive European immigration, yet place names of their origin persist to this day.

The Normans conquered England and dominated the country politically, even if large scale immigration of Normans never took place. Even with this political dominance Anglo-Saxon place names persisted almost universally.

Now, compare this with place names of Celtic origin in England; they are very, very rare outside of Cornwall when compared with those of Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian origin. To me, this lends credence to the idea that the original peoples of England were not Celts but were, in fact, Germanic and spoke a Germanic tongue.

 

So this means you are not going to educate us about differences between Irish and Roman Catholics? I am disappointed.

 

Yeah, I was wondering how a nursery rhyme about the Black Plague related to any of this.


(and it's "ashes, ashes, we all fall down" not whisha,whosha)

 

I think it's clear from archaeological finds that Celtic culture had some foothold in Britain before the Romans. But there were others too, some possibly of Germanic origin.

It's also a fact that a lot of Latin influence was there in the development of Middle English and Modern English as well as Anglo Saxon, Scandinavian and French.

The Welsh language, which my own ex-father in law spoke fluently, is claimed by the Welsh to be a Celtic language. It is entirely different from English, and I don't think there has been much mutual influence. Many Welsh place names are unpronounceable to English speakers.

 

My own ancestors were Irish and French on one side, English with a pinch of Welsh on the other.

 

In other years, merchants from Bretagne (Brittany) France, crossed the channel to sell onions in Wales and were able to converse with their customers in Welsh (Cymraeg). There are two branches of Gaelic: the language that once dominated the western part of continental Europe, now called Brythonic (spoken in Wales and Brittany and being revived in Cornwall); and Goidelic (spoken in Ireland, Isle of Man and western Scotland) Some have argued that Goidelic is the older of the two languages, at least closer in form to proto-Gaelic than Brythonic is.

 

ashes ashes is the american version.

irish children played that game in relation to the great hunger. the irish famine, in relation to other adults and children dropping dead around them like flies through starvation.its a game still played by irish children.

 

Tsk, Frisian a real language as opposed to just another one of the thousands of dialects?
To be fair, you probably don't understand my Zuid-Oost Brabants just as much as I don't understand your Frisian.

Brabants should be its own language if anything. Kut!

 

Limburgs sounds the most strange to frisians (from all dutch dialects). It has that weird belgium/french touch in the way they pronounce words Brabants is a little bit better understandable. And hey, I didn't make frisian an official language. But it makes sense, just like why brabants is a dialect!

 

we have cows called frisians

 

Yeah Limburgs is weird, even for me as Brabo it sounds weird. And the more south it goes, the less intelligible it becomes.

 

That's funny, we have Frisians we call cows.