VIKINGS AND CELTS AND GERMANIC INVADERS LIVING TOGETHER (REVISITED).

VIKINGS AND CELTS AND GERMANIC INVADERS LIVING TOGETHER (REVISITED). You can see that Annalisa’s surprise present of John McWhorter’s book resonates with my interests, as revealed in earlier posts. McWhorter documents how the interaction of languages reflects people living together (and talking together). McWhorter disagrees strongly with earlier theories that the Germanic invaders of England after 449 A.D. “routed the Celts in more or less a genocide.” He points to archaeological evidence (for example, grave sites with burials in both Germanic and Celtic styles) and DNA to support his arguments. But the language evidence can be seen as supporting the ideas developed from archaeology and DNA that the Vikings can be seen as “model immigrants who co-existed peacefully with the natives”, as posted here. The language evidence is also consistent with the revisionist theory that a form of English was spoken in the British Isles before the Roman invasion under Claudius as posted here. (the revisionist theory provides another 500 or so years for Celtic languages to influence English grammar.) And McWhorter’s evidence dovetails with the argument posted here that the Vikings “actually adopted English fairly rapidly.” As Annalisa knows, I am fascinated by these efforts to track the activities of individuals whose lives are otherwise lost to history.