WAS ENGLISH SPOKEN IN BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMANS GOT THERE?

March 6, 2007 · History

WAS ENGLISH SPOKEN IN BRITAIN BEFORE THE ROMANS GOT THERE? I had previously posted here and here on an article by Stephen Oppenheimer on what DNA tells us about the prehistory of Britain. Now Dr. Oppenheimer has published a book, THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH: A GENETIC DETECTIVE STORY, which is discussed in this article along with some contrary views of other geneticists. The article cites geneticists who agree with Oppenheimer that the ancestors of most of the people in Britain were present in the British Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. I had been struck by how many of the peoples of Britain had stayed put for a long time. Today’s article quotes a geneticist, Daniel G. Bradley, for the broad proposition that “Once you have an established population, it is quite difficult to change it very radically.” What is new to me in the article is the contention by geneticists applying their statistical methods to language that English was spoken in Britain before the Romans invaded under Claudius. [Apparently the usual framework has been that the Angles and Saxons brought English to Britain around 500 AD and that before that the language was Celtic. The new argument is that there are Celtic place names that don't survive and this is evidence that English always dominated over Celtic.] (I have added the clarifying language in brackets in an attempt to respond to my wife’s justified comments).

5 comments

Mary Jane March 6, 2007 at 10:55 PM

But what do they mean by English? Weren’t there different tribes, e.g., the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, all from different parts of Germany, all speaking their own brands of Old High German? Not to mention the Danes! What year, before the Romans, do they claim to have discerned a language we can call English? I really should have paid greater attention when I took the required course at NYU on the history of the language.

Philip March 6, 2007 at 11:03 PM

Apparently the usual framework has been that the Angles and Saxons brought English to Britain around 500 AD and that before that the language was Celtic. The new argument is that there are Celtic place names that don’t survive which is evidence that English always dominated over Celtic.

Michael Byrne October 5, 2008 at 1:30 PM

I cannot understand most of the arguments. Firstly there is documentary evidence that people referred to themselves as ‘English’ early on. As early as the 8th century. They used both the terms ‘Anglecynn’ and ‘Englisc’. Most of the terms Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Scandinavian and well as Ancient Briton as mere modern inventions made by people with their own view of history. What you have to look at with identity is what people called themselves not what we think they were. When did anybody refer to themselves as Celts or Vikings or Scandinavians or Anglo-Saxons? Never! Infact the Viking and Celtics were never one people with one ethnicity. Infact most had various identities and mostly followed local leaders. Viking were buried in various ways and there is no mention of the term Dane or Viking or Scandinavian in an ethnic sense. Celtic identity has arose in the 19th century through nationalism not historical fact.

I have read a book by Julian Richards (British Tv Presenter and Archaeologist) ‘Viking Age England’ looking into the Vikings. Infact he suggests there is no evidence of mass Viking settlements or that they spoke their own language in Britain and that they actually adopted English fairly rapidly. In fact in the North and East, English continued to be spoken by most people and that there is evidence that so called ‘Scandinavians’ were already involved amongst the so called Anglo-Saxons. Just look at Sutton Hoo (Swedish connections) and Beowulf (set entirely in Scandinavia) – no mention of the Saxons or Angles at all! Place names he suggests could come from any period and didn’t necessarily describe the people of a particular place. Both -by and -thorp places names could be just named by Vikings referring to a settlement probably that they owned or bypassed. They could even be much older in origin as most place names are not recorded before Doomesday. Archaeology from York shows that Durham (outside the Danelaw) had similar deposits to York and that there is nothing Scandinavian about them apart from a few ornamental styles in jewellery – which could be just trade.

I agree with Stephen Oppenheimer in that he suggests different groups from Northern Europe were already influencing Britain in the Paleolithic both culturally and linguistically. Some of that influence might even have differed come from two areas, the north and east influenced by more scandinavian tribes and the south from coastal germanic peoples, which might explain some differences. As the Anglo-Saxons were a tribal people like the rest of northern Europe where kinship and blood ties were important – then how can they be suddenly be di-culturalised and had to learn Old Norse! Why didn’t be Normans then force the English to be French and forget their language and culture like the Vikings did. Why did English identity survive the Normans – to the extent that one Norman writer says the people in East Anglia were mainly English and Christian (East Anglia being wholly in the Danelaw – surely then they were all Danes!). Why is there no recorded battles in the very East of Britain with the Anglo-Saxons and Ancient Britons. The take over seems too easy and complete for my liking – with in the 6th century Anglo-Saxons sitting in nice houses with and almost entirely Germanic Language – with no Celtic Briton in sight. Was Britain wholly Celtic or is this just another racial myth. Most people in Britain are descended from Paleolithic people – who were no Celts – the Paleolithic people themselves were never one people either.

A lot of Viking words might not be Viking at all and that they had been there for a while. After all most documents were written in West Saxon, not Mercian, East Anglican and Northumbrian. How do we know they are not from just Anglo-Saxon settlement pattern differences or where certain Germanic groups settled long ago (Danes in some areas, Swedes in others and Angles and Saxons in others – with mixing in these areas) – maybe even before the Romans. With virtually no solid proof from these areas, how can we make sweeping racial, cultural or linguistic statements. What is clear is that there was some form of common tribal identity in Anglo-Saxon times, with a common language, set of traditions and religious identity. It seems to me as though the Viking and Normans (both blended in to local circumstances like they did throughout Europe) respected these thing more than people do today. Let’s face it – most people in Northern Europe are descended from small groups of Paleolithic hunters whether they be R1B, R1A or I1A. These didn’t seem to mind about coming together and forming new identities – why cannot Germanic and Celtic speaking peoples come together after all we all share similar DNA.

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