3 ms·
> The modern British nation is culturally descended from the post-Roman Anglo-Saxons, not the Celtic Britons who inhabited Roman Britain. Whoa, that's controve
by bloak 8y ago
> The modern British nation is culturally descended from the post-Roman Anglo-Saxons, not the Celtic Britons who inhabited Roman Britain.
Whoa, that's controversial!
Some English people consider themselves Celts, and some consider themselves Anglo-Saxons. I'm not sure whether it's political or more like being a dog person or a cat person.
The Celtic faction got quite a boost in the nineteenth century, which is when a lot of things that people today think of as Celtic ("Celtic art", for example) were rediscovered, or perhaps, in some cases, some would claim, invented.
Celtic influence in the English language has perhaps been rather ignored: English words that seem almost identical in form and meaning to Welsh or Cornish words have had their etymologies given in dictionaries as "unknown" or "obscure". The distinction between present and present continuous ("I eat" versus "I am eating") is perhaps an example of Celtic influence in English, and it suggests that English was at some point widely spoken by people whose native language was Celtic.
(The Americans' failure to distinguish correctly - from the British point of view - between "I ate" and "I have eaten" is likewise arguably due to American English being at one point widely spoken by people whose native language was German.)
- workinthehead 8y agoCould you explain further please? American English most definitely has a distinction between "I ate" and "I have eaten".
- bloak 8y agoI don't know enough about American English to "explain", unfortunately. I just notice that American speakers sometimes use one form when the other would be required in British English. For all I know, from an American point of view, perhaps British speakers are failing to make a distinction. However, something seems to have happened to those verb forms, and I think the change must have happened in colloquial American English because in this particular respect it's colloquial American that is different, while formal American, formal British and informal British all seem to agree with each other, as far as I can tell.
- workinthehead 8y agoI wonder if you're referring to what's described in the first section of this article: http://www.onestopenglish.com/grammar/grammar-reference/american-english-vs-british-english/differences-in-american-and-british-english-grammar-article/152820.article http://www.onestopenglish.com/grammar/grammar-reference/amer... As a lifelong American, I don't think that this is 100% widespread, many of the supposed Americanisms sound borderline "wrong" to me, and the only one I would favor is "She just left" instead of "She's just left". And, having a German family history myself, I have trouble seeing this as a particularly German phenomenon.