Where did the English language REALLY come from?

Submitted by MagicRaptor t3_xwxaqx in history

In recent decades, the idea that there was never an Anglo-Saxon invasion, or even a migration, has become increasingly popular. Archaeologists like Francis Pryor and Susan Oosthuizen point out that there is zero archaeological evidence to support the idea of an invasion, and in fact all the evidence currently available suggests a great deal of continuity in the lifestyles of the early medieval Britons, and that the English identity emerged organically over centuries of exposure to and trade with other North Sea peoples as Britain shifted away from being on the fringes of a Mediterranean trade network, and ended up center stage of a North Sea trade network. Basically that the Britons became the English because it was more fashionable at the time to do so. Their arguments are very compelling, and even offer fascinating reinterpretations of the written history of the period that suggest that Bede invented the idea of an English people not as an ethnic group, but as a sort of code for "Catholic Britons" as opposed to the "Celtic Christian Britons" who had all the same beliefs (more or less), but didn't report to the Pope in Rome (which makes it so much more ironic that the English were the ones who would eventually abandon Catholicism and the Irish would uphold it throughout the Protestant Reformation).

What I cannot wrap my head around though is the linguistic side of things. Let's assume this theory is correct, and that there never was an invasion or mass migration of Germanic peoples to the British Isles in the early medieval period. In that case, how the hell did a new Germanic language spring up on an island that had previously only spoken variations of Latin and Celtic? How or why did these groups of people invent a language that belonged to a totally different language family, wildly unrelated to the languages previously spoken? I can't think of any other instance in history where that occurred without some sort of coercion or influx of settlers. It would be like if Afrikaans emerged in South Africa without there being any influx of Dutch or British settlers. Or if the Japanese had invented and then adopted a totally new Romance language after meeting Portuguese merchants for the first time. Even Swahili, which is probably the closest analogy, is still a Bantu language, even though it borrows heavily from Arabic.

So IF there was no Anglo Saxon migration, then where did the English language come from and why is it so vastly different from Latin and Celtic?

(For those curious, here is a documentary and a lecture from Pryor and Oosthuizen, respectively):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqDusYEXwD0&ab_channel=Chronicle-MedievalHistoryDocumentaries

https://vimeo.com/425282049

EDIT: After reading a bunch of these comments, I'd like to reframe my question. If the migration DID happen in some form or another, then why is there so little archaeological evidence to support it? If enough people were migrating into Britain to change the linguistic and genetic makeup as much as it seems they did, then why is there so little evidence as to cast doubt on it in the first place? Where are their bodies? Why are their burials indistinguishable from the locals'? Why is there no discernable change in settlement or land use patterns? Why does the archaeology contradict the genetics instead of support it?

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GronakHD t1_ir95oqs wrote

Is there not dna/gene evidence? It does sound highly unlikely they all started speaking germanic from trade alone.

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[deleted] t1_ir9b237 wrote

[deleted]

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Vectorman1989 t1_ir9teqi wrote

I wonder if another clue might be that the remaining Celtic languages of Britian all refer to the English as 'Saxons'. Sasanach, Saeson, Sassanach, Sows, Saoz

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xarsha_93 t1_ir9wzko wrote

>In no other former province of the Roman Empire did the invading language take over the native language aside from England,

North Africa? Latin died out wherever it had only penetrated into urban environments. In North Africa, Berber was still spoken in most rural environments and Latin was mainly spoken in coastal cities (Punic was also around). Similarly, in Roman Britain, Latin was spoken in cities and fortresses, but Celtic languages were still dominant.

In both situations, Latin was a language for primarily elites, and when the elites became Germanic or Arabic speakers, it died out.

In Gaul, Iberia, and the Italian peninsula, Latin was spoken in the countryside and wasn't so easily displaced.

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elmonoenano t1_irbv8h3 wrote

Even in Iberia you still have the Basques, and there's Galicia Belgica with Flemish and German. The claim your disputing seems like one of those claims that only really works at a very general level and as you point out, the non elites kind of could do their own thing and are often over looked at that level.

Your point about the eastern side of the empire is another good one. The Greek situation is complicated b/c of it's role as a language of high culture and the Semitic languages were in a state of flux anyway and going through all sorts of changes.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_ir9ma5m wrote

There was a huge new genetic study out a couple of weeks ago that proved that the Anglo Saxons did invade. The academic consensus that it was just a small elite has been disproven

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Fit_Sandwich9551 t1_ir9n348 wrote

Source?

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AethelweardSaxon t1_ir9t196 wrote

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2339007-dna-records-reveal-mass-migration-from-europe-into-anglo-saxon-britain/

I believe it suggests that some DNA has come from the continent since, but it highly suggests that the Anglo Saxons came en mass and largely replaced the native Romano-British.

Which to be honest I think anyone with a brain should have known by looking at the basic facts. Even just that English has very little Celtic influence suggests that all the native Celts (that supposedly are the ancestors of the English) didn't just suddenly and rapidly abandon their language

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downnoutsavant t1_ira5wsj wrote

Thanks for sharing that. Small bone of contention - the word 'replaced'. It is not clear from this article that this was indeed an invasion replacing the location population. Rather, we could imagine large populations creating trade posts on the east coast, settling, and co-mingling with a smaller local population. Hence, 3/4ths European, 1/4th Celtic-Roman.

I'd be interested to see more specifics as to where they obtained their genetic samples as well. They provide no detail in this article beyond 'east coast' and it doesn't explain the widespread adoption of Old English.

Just thinking - I personally believe there probably was an invasion, especially since we see these Germanic speaking people ascend to positions of power so quickly in the annals, etc, but evidence evidence evidence.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_irafboi wrote

But for all modern English people to have from 50-100% Anglo Saxon DNA (generalisation), it suggests that much of the local Celts were either displaced or straight up killed. Unless there were 4x more invaders than locals which seems very unlikely.

We're forgetting that the DNA is just one part of the larger evidence for a replacement. All the contemporary sources and those written relatively soon after talk about invasion as opposed to colonists intermingling. We all know how unreliable those dark age sources are but for them all to agree is something.

The linguistic argument posed by many modern academics who favour the small elite theory has always fallen flat with me. You would expect pretty heavy, or even just any, Celtic influence and that the change would take place over a longer period too in my mind.

We also have a near perfect case study with England with the Norman conquest which was a small elite takeover, and of course we don't speak Normano-French now nor did we ever, day to day words used in conversation are still 70-80% Germanic derived.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_iram4l9 wrote

If all those local Celts were displaced or killed, surely that would pop up in the archaeological record, right? One would expect there to be abandoned settlements and mass graves in England, while new settlements and communities start appearing in Wales and Scotland at around the same time. But we just don't see any of that. Something must be missing. No matter which version of the story you go with, it just doesn't add up.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_iraw8k5 wrote

I wasn't suggesting genocide as the primary factor, but people don't just give up their land without a fight, there were certainly many battles fought and the chronicles attest to this.

In terms of settlements, there is perfect evidence for this. There are almost no place names in England with a Celtic etymology. A vast vast majority are from Anglo-Saxon derivation, the only other influence is a handful of Norse derivations in certain parts of the country.

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Thanatikos t1_irb7r5g wrote

Oh, aren’t there even good examples of Latin place names? Londonum…

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AethelweardSaxon t1_irb8jtt wrote

There a few cities sure, anything with -cester on the end of them especially i.e. Chichester, Leicester, Worcester, Gloucester. But even these are the exception to the rule and notable because of it.

Of course there are thousands more villages and towns than cities, and these are the ones with with nearly all Anglo Saxon derivations.

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Thanatikos t1_irb9qta wrote

No, I was actually trying to bolster your point. If Celtic names (and genes) are largely missing even while Latin ones managed to make it through, it doesn’t bode well for the idea that the Celts were integrated in the area. I don’t think genocide or “replacement” are great leaps in logic to come to. I think genetic and archaeological evidence are showing more and more that older populations all over the planet were replaced by successive waves of migration and technology. The genes of the oldest human remains almost never suggest a common lineage with present day populations.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_irawxjk wrote

Let me put it this way.

After the 'supposed' Anglo-Saxon invasion, Celtic DNA, material culture, language, Christian religion, and settlements basically completely vanish.

Within a relatively short amount of time it was like they were never there at all. This suggests they were largely displaced by the incoming germanics

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buteo51 t1_irbk51b wrote

"Women weren't buried with weapons."

"How do you know?"

"Because all the people buried with weapons were men."

"How do you know they were men?"

"Because they were buried with weapons!"

This same pattern plays out to an extent with material culture. We don't actually know that someone who was buried with a Quoit brooch, for example, spoke primarily Old English or saw themselves as ethnically Germanic. It is just traditional to assume that, and so the assumption becomes its own evidence.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_irblvgb wrote

You so realise you can tell the difference between male and female skeletons?

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buteo51 t1_irbp53s wrote

Skilled forensic anthropologists usually can, but the issue is that most of the graves we're talking about here have never been studied this way, and never will be, because the bones do not exist anymore. In some, the bones disintegrated naturally before the grave was even excavated. There were no surviving bones found in the Sutton Hoo grave, for example. For many though, the bones were simply discarded because the artifacts were all that people paid attention to. This was pretty common practice up until pretty recently, and definitely was during the Victorian antiquarian boom. They dug up the grave, found a sword, wrote the skeleton down as male and Germanic, and then threw the bones in the trash. We are still operating off of that data today.

But it wouldn't even help you to have the bones in this case. A skeleton can't tell you what language someone spoke, or what terms they would use to describe their own background. Not even their DNA can tell you that. Identity is not biological.

As an aside, just because someone had a skeleton we might describe as biologically male does not mean that that person or their society saw them as a man.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_irb4ovl wrote

Maybe you're right. I just don't understand how that level of replacement could take place at that time period. It just doesn't happen elsewhere in history like it appears to in Britain. The Persians, the Macedonians, the Romans, the Mongols, the Turks, the Magyars, the Vikings, the Arabs, the Normans, the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Franks, none of them so completely and totally wiped out every last genetic, cultural, and linguistic remnant of those that came before them. We don't see this level of population replacement until the European settlement of the New World, and that can mostly be attributed to disease wiping out most of the Native Americans. As far as I know, nobody is suggesting a plague wiped out the Britons, paving the way for Anglo Saxon resettlement, so for the DNA to suggest upwards of 75% replacement just feels unfathomable to me. If it was a genocide, it would have been one of the most successful ones ever conducted in history, which would require a level of organization that the Anglo Saxons probably weren't capable of, and there would almost certainly be more evidence of it. If it wasn't a genocide, then how on earth did they achieve that high of a replacement rate? Maybe we'll get a clearer answer in coming years/decades as they do more studies and have more data to analyze.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_irb7ywp wrote

It's certainly not unheard of. The beaker people essentially wiped out the Neolithic British down to the last man in an even less advanced time. In about 200 years after the beaker people's arrival the Neolithic British only made up 10% of the population.

There of course also was a degree of intermixing with the Celts that 25% of their DNA was still there. I can only assume that the remnants that once lived in England were forced back or fled to the extremities of the Island.

We know there were Celtic 'nations' and communities in Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria and Scotland well into the Anglo Saxon period.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_irbc4h8 wrote

There are a number of theories regarding the Neolithic decline and subsequent Beaker replacement, but most of them revolve around a plague and/or famine wiping out the Neolithic peoples (maybe even the predecessor to the black plague), so it wasn't as much a deliberate replacement but more of a "oh look, free real estate" situation.

Here's a couple sources on that:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_decline

https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/earliest-strain-of-bubonic-plague-bacteria-identified-in-neolithic-site-350328

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07673-7

Population replacements just don't happen without some outside force killing a bunch of people beforehand, or a level of genocide that would make Pol Pot blush. If you have any other examples, I would love to hear them. And I don't mean that to be snarky, I legitimately want to know if there are other historical precedents of a non-disease, non-genocidal population replacement so I can wrap my head around this. Because your earlier point was right. For all intents and purposes, it's as if the Celts never lived in England in the first place. How can that be?

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_irbvvif wrote

Sorry...but I don't believe your statement regarding displaced or killed peoples is completely correct. I believe it was Charles I or James I that favored his followers and gave them much of northern Ireland. There was significant displacement and deaths as a result. Or perhaps I misunderstood your statement.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_irbyh4y wrote

Those were both much later, and in Ireland. I'm specifically talking about England in the early medieval period.

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Tiberius_1919 t1_ira0slh wrote

Honestly English having very little Celtic influence is to be expected and isn’t considered all that unusual, at least not by historians such as N. Higham and J. Davies.

This video goes into more detail on the subject but in short, elite, “high-prestige” and (typically) conquering languages generally do not borrow all that much from the low-level conquered ones. There are exceptions of course, such as French and Gaulish, but for the vast majority of conquering languages it does seem to be the case.

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AethelweardSaxon t1_iradiac wrote

Sure, I take your point. But it's not the only reason why am AS invasion is pretty evident, such as the material archeology we have too etc.

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Tiberius_1919 t1_iraoes3 wrote

Sure, but I am just talking about the expected influence of Brythonic on Old English, which is an unsurprisingly low amount

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira1dxq wrote

I hadn't heard about this, but I definitely want to check it out

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira190b wrote

There is, but it doesn't seem to be conclusive. Oosthuizen mentions a genetic study that indicates the vast majority of English DNA comes from France rather than around the North Sea, but I do know there are others that support the conventional Germanic migrant theory. Someone else mentioned a new study that just came out a couple weeks ago that I hadn't heard about yet, so I'll have to check that out as well.

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borisherman t1_ir94m1n wrote

I heartily recommend History of English podcast ( www.historyofenglishpodcast.com ) and get your answers there. In my view this is the most detailed view of the development of the English language delivered in laymen’s terms.

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AtrainV t1_ir99anx wrote

One of the best podcasts if you're at all interested in the subject.

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MrRoboto12345 t1_ir97jx8 wrote

Damn it I was going to recommend this. I've binged the podcast. It's so good. I can't wait until he gets to Shakespeare

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Daienlai t1_ir9n916 wrote

Cannot recommend this podcast enough. It is fascinating. And it makes you realize just how interconnected our world has always been.

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borisherman t1_ir9ogn6 wrote

What makes it the best for me is that it’s at least 50% history and 50% linguistics because, you know, they are so closely related. I listen to it as often as I can but not more than one episode per day to give me a chance to think about it. Kevin Stroud is my personal hero, right after Richard Feynman.

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jbavir t1_ir9pzlu wrote

John McWhorter’s “Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue” is a good starting place.

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TheMooseIsBlue t1_ir9s386 wrote

Can you provide a summary for those who don’t have hours and hours to listen to this podcast? OP’s opinion seems pretty fringe based on what I’ve learned, but it’s hard to tell from your comment if this podcast agrees or disagrees with them.

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Priswell t1_ira3f8g wrote

He follows the language paths from Sanskrit through the Russian steppes to the Balkans, through Europe and on. English turns out to have more than one thread of descent, especially once you reach Europe, since we have contributions from other child languages such as French, German, Greek, and so on.

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Ralphinader t1_ir9m4ea wrote

Is that different from the multi part documentary series back on the day? I just remember two men shaking hands for like 10 minutes while haggling over a sheep

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira1o0l wrote

I just saw that it has 161 episodes dating back to June 2012. I'll absolutely give it a listen, but this could take a while. Thanks for the recommendation!

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NerdWerdLernd t1_irm0nr0 wrote

Thank you guys for turning me onto this podcast- I listened to the first 5 episodes the last two days. So very interesting

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J_G_E t1_ir9iyq3 wrote

>the idea that there was never an Anglo-Saxon invasion, or even a migration, has become increasingly popular.

And the DNA analysis work recently published by the Max Planck Institite stakes that idea through the heart, decapitates it, stuffs garlic down its neck and buries it at a crossroads.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05247-2?fbclid=IwAR1xzaPW6lfvdfr8LNxrGb4qo0o-euaRkiUaDQikbCl-4yhvzklRhmM4wY0

"Work based on present-day Y chromosomes inferred 50–100% replacement of male lineages during the Early Middle Ages in eastern England" is just one of the lines inthe summary. That study was only published a few months ago, so the ripples have yet to filter through, but it resolutely puts the idea that there was no AS migration in the coffin for good.

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Tiberius_1919 t1_ira17h3 wrote

Although I do agree with you, that study claimed a continental North Sea ancestry was as high as 76% in the skeletons they analysed.

The 50-100% example is an example of an older and relatively lower quality study that can’t be used as well to analyse the DNA of groups from so long ago, as the paragraph just below it says:
>”However, populations change over time through drift and gene flow, so present-day populations may be poor proxies for ancient groups of unknown genetic makeup”.

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julie78787 t1_ir9l4b1 wrote

It's why my predominantly English heritage shows up primarily as ... French and German, with some Scandinavian, DNA.

I think most people view "Anglo-Saxon Invasion" as some kind of reverse D-Day, with ships filled with people scaling the White Cliffs of Dover.

Nope.

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booksandmints t1_ir94nej wrote

There isn’t a single source of English. The current archaeological/anthropological/genetic thinking is that there was a gradual, but eventually very large, migration (not an invasion) of Saxons and other peoples from around that area to what is now Britain, and they brought their language and customs with them. The Vikings brought theirs, and so did the Normans. The language we speak now is an amalgamation of quite a lot of others. The genetic research being done for the Thousand Ancient Genomes Project is very interesting, and some of the preliminary results have been released regarding the Saxons (it seems to be quite a touchy subject and the name “Anglo-Saxon” has acquired negative connotations in the US which has trickled over to us), although Covid slowed quite a lot down obviously. I’m really looking forward to hearing more results from the TAGP!

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Skaldskatan t1_ir9jqzw wrote

I am not English, but why would Anglo-Saxon have negative connotations? I am fairly interested in European historian and like to watch ie Dan Davis and “survive the jive” but have never heard anyone mention this.

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booksandmints t1_ir9ko2k wrote

Until maybe two years ago, I hadn’t heard of it either (I live in the UK). It seems that it has mostly been a problem in the US, where the term “Anglo Saxon” came to gain white supremacist meanings, along with nationalism and racial purity, etc. Abhorrent, of course. But in the UK (and I suppose parts of Europe?) “Anglo Saxon” broadly refers to the time period between the end of the Roman period and the beginning of the Viking Age, and doesn’t have the same horrible meaning that it does in the US. It was news to me when I first heard about that, but I’ve since read more. In her recent book Buried, Dr. Alice Roberts has a whole postscript section about the use of the term and how its meaning has changed over time across the world.

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calamitouscamembert t1_ir9mzl6 wrote

Some people probably say it as another word for white British (or of that ancestry), so it's probably because of who is or isn't using that terminology.

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Fit_Sandwich9551 t1_ir9nfzx wrote

In the U.S. "Anglo-Saxon" identity connotes racial purity and is a longstanding racist concept and buzzword.

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Uptown_NOLA t1_ir9uhtn wrote

I'm here in the states and am well read and have never heard that as well, so you're not crazy.

edit:clarity

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cuicocha t1_irao0iw wrote

Another well-read American here. This is the first I ever heard of Anglo-Saxon being a racist buzzword (as described here). Not denying that it exists, just that the racist buzzword use is not how I'm used to hearing it used. The racist use seems illogical to me because the term excludes Germanic or Nordic heritage, which modern racists usually are fine with.

I've heard Anglo-Saxon used in a few senses in American writing, none of which make any sense or actually pertain to Anglo-Saxon ethnicity (i.e., not Norman, Norse, or Celtic):

  • In global politics, "Anglo-Saxon world" basically meaning the close ties between US, UK, Australia, NZ, and Canada
  • Especially in the northeastern US, describing white families with British colonial roots, as opposed to heritage in post-independence immigrants (as in White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, "WASP"), usually with the implication of upper class, "respectability", education, and a certain uptightness or reserve
  • In the southwestern US, "Anglo" meaning English-speaking Americans with roots elsewhere in the US, as opposed to the hispanic and indigenous people who were already there before the Mexican-American war (not common anymore in my experience).
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elmonoenano t1_irbw950 wrote

Back in the hey day of "scientific" racism there were a lot of claims that were made about Anglo-Saxon people vis a vis other groups. Most of it is pretty easily rejected, even by the 30. Just better tools of linguistic analysis, genetics, and basic standards in stuff like anatomy got people to reject stuff like phrenology, which had served as the basis for a lot it.

But, the racism associated with the term got worked into a lot of stuff, like immigration law and the medical profession. It mostly now is associated with stuff like keeping Jewish people from receiving refuge from the Nazis or slavery or sterilizing people of color or lower classes or colonialism.

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GronakHD t1_ir9egmr wrote

English is a mashup of languages, interesting reading about where words came from

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booksandmints t1_ir9fo0v wrote

Yes, I find it fascinating! The names of places in the UK is also very interesting when you start picking them apart. There are a lot of places near where I currently live that date from the Anglo-Saxon period. It ties into the whole language thing quite nicely and just adds to the richness of the landscape for me. I’m sure the same is true of the rest of the world too, and I’d love to hear those stories, but I see these place names every day so they’re more in my mind.

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GronakHD t1_ir9fw87 wrote

I’m in Scotland so we have a lot of original brittonic/celtic names. Load of places called DunSomehting, Dundee, Dunbar, Dumbarton, dun means forified hill. Dumbarton means fortified hill of the brittons. Also Aber is common, like Aberdeen, but even in Wales you can find places called AberSomething. Then theres the buroughs/burgh, loads of places called burg or berg in germany/scandinavia. Really fascinating!

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booksandmints t1_ir9jrb1 wrote

I can definitely vouch for the Welsh names, because I grew up there. In Wales Aber means the mouth of, as in, the mouth of a river. So Abertawe (Swansea) means the mouth of the river Tawe.

I lived in Scotland for a while and never made the Dun connection, but that makes so much sense now you’ve said it!

I find all this stuff really interesting. I did a degree in history and I’ve got lots of books on words and the history of words, sayings, and place names. Fascinating!

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redneckhotmess t1_ir9sed0 wrote

You should see it here in the states, where we just stole our town names from other countries! We have London's, Sidney, Russia, Kensongton, Aberdeen, Kenmare; there are bergs and burgs and boros galore. Unfortunately, nobody bothered to steal any of the classy sounding names like Strafford-on-Avon . and I have no clue how we ended up with a city called Intercourse 🤣

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PA_Golden_Dino t1_ira8d9t wrote

Because Blue Ball and Bird-In-Hand, PA (neighboring towns) were lonely. Please keep in mind that once you go through Intercourse, you end up in Paradise, PA.

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Uptown_NOLA t1_ir9u9u6 wrote

I've always had a theory that the settlers. while very hard working, kind of ran out of names by the time they got to the Mississippi river and just started repeating everything.

In Texas they have Palestine, which is named after Palestine, Illinois, not the original place. lol

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Wintersbone7 t1_irgvgmh wrote

After the 13 original colonies, th new states were named either by the Spanish or after local indigenous populations who then quickly displaced

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Uptown_NOLA t1_iri99rm wrote

I was speaking more to names of municipalities which a lot of seem to simply get repeated in state after state.

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primalbluewolf t1_ir9n7e8 wrote

>dun means forified hill

I knew there was some use to be had out of reading Katherine Kerr!

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blueshark27 t1_ir9teqb wrote

As is nearly every other language, French is a mix of Gaulish, germanic Frankish, Latin and more. Yet no one tries to deny France existing to the extent that happens with England/English as a nation.

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ElricAvMelnibone t1_ira5x8z wrote

I think it's just people who speak English only and think it's a uniquely crazy language lol, anyone who speaks anything can tell you about loan words, language families, weird grammar rules and all that

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GronakHD t1_ir9zeag wrote

Yes. I guess just because it happened more recently than other languages it’s more interesting.

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Virtual-Study-Campus t1_ir9bdro wrote

English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon migrants from what is now northwest Germany, southern Denmark and the Netherlands.

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Tiberius_1919 t1_ir9zl56 wrote

The theory that there was NO Anglo-Saxon migration is extremely fringe, and doesn’t appear to have any sort of wide level of support.

I answered a question on AskHistorians earlier today about why the Anglo-Saxon migrations are so controversial, and what the various theories have been over the decades, which might be useful to you (although I am by no means an expert) https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/xwkhb8/can_someone_why_new_evidence_of_a_large_scale/ir9cskt/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3

To summarise, the most modern study of Anglo-Saxon remains concluded that there was a large-scale migration from the continental North Sea, however unlike previous theories (and the very dubious primary sources of Gildas and Bede) it doesn’t posit that this took place as a singular event, but rather that it took place from sometime during Roman rule in Britain to as late as the 8th century.

In addition, this video goes into detail over why the evolution of English is not all that unusual. In short, most elite-level (or “high prestige”) languages do not borrow heavily from the lower languages. There are exceptions of course, such as French having quite a lot of Gaulish influence, but the vast majority of the time the conquering language takes very little from the conquered.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira60u3 wrote

That was a good read, thank you! I hope I live long enough to see these questions definitively answered because it's clear that as of right now, SOMETHING is missing. Whether it's a breakthrough in genetic technology, a massive archaeological discovery, a hidden vault of early medieval scrolls unearthed from some church vault, or a revolutionary new way of categorizing and studying languages, I just hope I'm still alive to see it.

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Tiberius_1919 t1_ira8slb wrote

Me too honestly, I’d love to be able to know for certain but unfortunately a high level of certainty is very unlikely to ever surface.

But who knows, each subsequent study on the Anglo-Saxon migrations have shed more and more light and offered more and more concrete and well-evidenced hypotheses on this era

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Tidesticky t1_ir9fjr4 wrote

"The Mother Tongue : English and How It Got That Way" by Bill Bryson is quite entertaining and informative on the subject.

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mcmanus2099 t1_ir9gz3d wrote

I haven't read either of the authors you mention but I know those that argue against any form of migration often use straw man arguments by using a mass invasion as the opposing argument they are refuting. They also heavily refer to Bede's explanation & argue against that. The problem with this approach is we know both the mass invasion hypothesis & Bede's description are untrue, refuting them doesn't refute migration.

Here are a few things we know:

  1. Bede lived in a world of defined Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, he tried to explain how they came to be using mass migrations so his theory of Jutes south east, Saxons in the South, Angles in the mid & North is him working backwards rather than actual historical research. This is both proveably false & totally implausible that it's easy to take shots at. Just because migrations definitely didn't happen how Bede describes doesn't mean they didn't happen.

  2. We know the late Roman Empire used Germanic tribes to supplement it's military forces & that towards the very end significant military towns in the Empire were drawing their troop requirements repeatedly from specific Germanic areas. It is believed Britania was doing the same with the region that contained Saxon tribes & this would likely have continued when Britain was cut off from the empire. As the military latin used by troops in Gaul created French the military Germanic language used by Saxon tribes could have had the same effect in England. The question here would be why the tribes would keep Germanic language than learning Latin & the answer is probably explained by the fact Britain was cut off from the Empire & so Latin wasn't as significant for all soldiers to learn.

  3. Though Bede's explanation of how can be debunked what we cannot ignore is that Bede of many cultural touch points that refer to a migration of some sort. Of Germanic ppl's coming over to Britain. There is something in living memory of that experience both in the Anglo-Saxon culture & in the Welsh & Cumbrian cultures.

  4. We know through studies of the fall of the Roman Empire & of colonialism that languages & cultural identity don't need a population displacement to change root & branch. In a society where military might equals total power & those with it were the minority it actually wouldn't take a large number of people to migrate to see a cultural change if these dominated the military class. The more dangerous & fractious society the more this is the case. So if it's a period of lack of central authority, there are small petty kingdoms everywhere, villages are fighting villages. Then a member of a Saxon warrior band sets up farm in your village. You can bet your bottom dollar every villager is kissing his ass & learning his language to both avoid being his victim & to use his warrior influence to ensure their farms are also defended. Just like that he's the feudal lord there. Individual ppl are chameleons who will copy others culturally if it improves survival or offers advancement.

  5. The best Roman coin hoards we have found in Britain come from this period. Though it's not uncommon for coins to be buried for safety in normal times it isn't common for large coin hoards to then be forgotten about. These are instances where a person has buried a hoard of coins & then never been able to go back & claim them. This is signs of fleeing suddenly.

As a result of these facts the historical consensus at present was that there were small warrior bands & traders migrating & settling in England. These were usual of mixed tribal background, warrior bands tended not to be ethnocentric. These bands were military elite & drove immitation. It was a violent time of which these bands were part of that drove large scale uprooting of population - note not necessarily driven away by invading migration but by the violence of the time of which the warrior bands took part. Though some must have been displaced by settling bands. What emerges from the violence is a society that has homogenised around the Saxon warrior elite.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira88x1 wrote

The only point you made that I disagree with is point 3. All of the archaeological evidence suggests that the early medieval period of Britain was not dangerous, violent, or even unstable. Quite the contrary in fact. It all seems to suggest that people just kept on living their lives just as they had under the Romans. Not much really changed. All of their civic structures that they inherited from the Romans remained intact, and there was no interruption or change in how the land was occupied or used. There is nothing in the archaeology to indicate marauding bands of Saxons dominating the locals by force or intimidation.

You do make a good point though, just because the migration didn't happen the way Bede describes it doesn't mean it didn't happen at all. It very well may have, but unfortunately we just don't know for certain. All we can do is speculate until new discoveries are made.

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mcmanus2099 t1_iracprk wrote

Whilst you are right that initially Britania continued as under the Romans it did not remain that way up until the formation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. We know large provincial authorities fracture at some point. It is unusual for this to happen peacefully & having independent regions the size of towns almost always leads to struggles with raids, local resource conflicts etc.

We know the wall stops becoming defense & Celtic raids become more frequent with places like Vindolanda - which carried on as a civilian bathhouse after the troops left, was abandoned. We also can see the coin deposits found that were buried & never returned to.

Whilst it's true large towns & cities, the best places for finding evidence of violence in archeological record would have been largely insulated from this. It doesn't mean the countryside, where wooden buildings leave little record isn't being impacted.

So yes, Britain carries on as before when the military forces leave & do not return but we see a slow gradual decline of authority to local struggles towards the end of the next century.

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Imaginary_Engine5052 t1_irb7mvw wrote

One small point about your excellent reply... As I understand it, we don't really know why the coin hoards were deposited. It might not be "hiding" as much as some kind of religious tribute, or even a more prosaic reason such as putting it somewhere for safe keeping and forgetting where.

And the unfortunate fact is that if there IS any archaeological evidence of violence or general disruption, it is probably not going to be found except by accident as it will either be under a major city and inaccessible, or in the middle of nowhere (like West Heslerton) and only found through a combination of luck and hard work.

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AccoSpoot t1_ir98voz wrote

What Francis Pryor says is that there was a cultural campaign by the papacy which encouraged Germanic culture and traits to expand into Britain during the early days of Christianity's spread, could well be that it piggybacked on Christian spread or that the Pope caused just enough initial basis for the Anglo-Saxon culture to take root.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_ira9pq1 wrote

That's really interesting. I wonder why the papacy would do that? How did that benefit them?

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AccoSpoot t1_iraa975 wrote

I can't quite find the source, but it was a couple of Angles were sold as slaves to the then pope, and he marvelled at their angellic appearance, and decided to shower praises and rewards upon them.

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AnaphoricReference t1_ir9i6am wrote

I don't think anyone claims there was no migration, just that there appears to be no definite identifiable point at which a mass migration or large scale invasion happened. Michael Pye's The Edge of the World is an interesting read relating to this topic. "Frisian" trade networks spanning the North Sea coasts may be a big part of the (hypothetical) answer. There are lots of references to the Frisian sea, Frisian trading posts on all North Sea coasts, and Procopius (from a vantage point in Byzantium) writes that Brittia is inhabited by Angles, Frisians, and Brits.

"Frisian" as used by Latin writers in the Dark Ages should be understood as a purely geographic label: the oldest written history of the Counts of Holland mentions that the Low Countries are inhabited by Saxons, but are traditionally called Frisians by the Romans and Franks (after a tribe that used to live there in Caesar's time that gave the area its Latin name). So for practical purposes Frisians = Saxons. One is an endonym, and the other an exonym for ethnically the same people in a specific area.

Because transport over land was much slower, harder, and more dangerous than transport over sea, this trade network would have had a major impact on linguistic transmission (creating perhaps a sort of creole Lingua Franca of the markets on the coast), and migration from coast to coast was simply a matter of individuals, families, small bands of adventurers, or small villages booking passage over the course of centuries. If migration happened this way, the migrants would easily all pick up the same language (closely related to their own). And diplomats traveling between the kingdoms in England would have depended on that same trade network for their travels. Travel itineraries of missionaries for instance do suggest that hopping from port to port on the North Sea was greatly preferred over inland travels.

Kingdoms that formed may have picked this trade language as their official language merely as a matter of convenience. It was the language of wealth and power, and of interaction with the other kingdoms and foreign bands of cheap mercenaries. Like the US picked English, over for instance Dutch, French, Spanish, or Navajo, etc. Including some kingdoms that were, by historical accident, dominated by clans of Angles.

This account leaves open the question of what happened with the trade network if it was already so well-developed. How did English become isolated from the mainland Germanic languages? Another hypothetical: The Franks caused it to collapse when they conquered the Frisian and adjacent Saxon kingdoms on the mainland, temporarily isolating Britannia and the Scandinavian coasts from access to the trade network, and making it give way to an era of North Sea raiding (the "Viking" era) that pushed people away from the coasts and increasingly turned inland travel into the preferred method, and reduced shipping to short distance crossings of the English Channel.

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_irbwxq4 wrote

Aside from events like the Norman Invasion there wasn't perhaps a multitude a migration torrents, perhaps rather, a never ending trickle of migrating peoples.

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Truthdeb8 t1_irei7cb wrote

Hengst and Horsa, as representatives of the two tribes of the time, Juta and Angle, were together Saxons, after arriving on the island at the "invitation" of Vortigern, they made the first impact, but after that, the tribe of Dan had the greatest impact on the genetic and linguistic change. When we talk about the period of the Danites conquest of Britain and the period when Britain was called the Dan Law, given that the Danites stayed for so long as well as the fact that during their conquests and stay in Britain they massively rapped and exterminated the islanders of that time, it is clear to you where the fact that 80 % genes of today's Britons is of Vikings origin, comes from. Just look at a map of Britain from the 1st-2nd century AD and you will see how many different tribes existed on the island, the purity of their genes is the best evidence of the extent to which they exterminated all people and how much rape there was at that time.

The fact that Hengst and Horsa have been Danite gods since then is also interesting, that is to say who these Saxons really were, if you don't know how these gods are symbolized, google it and you will immediately remember where you saw all their symbols before.

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Afraid_Concert549 t1_ir9p9fc wrote

> Let's assume this theory is correct

It is not. It is a crackpot conspiracy theory.

> ...and that there never was an invasion or mass migration of Germanic peoples to the British Isles in the early medieval period.

Why would you do this? It is as dumb as assuming there was never an invasion or mass migration of Italic peoples (the Romans) into Gaul or Hispania.

> In that case, how the hell did a new Germanic language spring up on an island that had previously only spoken variations of Latin and Celtic?

There are only two possibilities - either the Germanic language we know as English isn't actually spoken in Britain, or the Angle-Saxon-Jute denialists are cranks.

Hint: English is spoken in Britain.

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Imaginary_Engine5052 t1_irb7zyq wrote

"Crackpot" theory is a little harsh. It was a thing for a while when history did one of its "everything is wrong, let's start from scratch" things a few years ago. It was always at the extreme, iconoclastic end of history/archaeology (and some archaeological theories have always been a little "out there") but it was a school of thought for a while. Never a good theory, but definitely a theory and it helped to reset the debate a little bit.

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flowering_sun_star t1_ir9cw1s wrote

A lot of people posting either haven't read the post or didn't comprehend it. Yes, the evolution of Old English into the modern form we have today through Norman and other influences is well established. OP is asking how Old English came about.

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Lazerhorze t1_iraj2av wrote

That the Anglo-Saxons came to britain and established themselves as the dominant people on the island is undeniable due to the see of genetic, archeological and linguistic evidence as others pointed it out already.

However, the mixup happens when people assume that there was an invasion involving military conflict. Iirc, the originator of the myth was Bede, who had his own reasons to try and invent a narrative where his own people are seen as conquerors. There wasn't an invasion, there is zero evidence for it. Instead, all the other evidence (genetic, archeological, linguistic) points toward the fact that it must have been a gradual, long-lasting migration on a massive scale, where the Anglo-Saxons simply outnumbered the indigenous Brythonic people slowly, them having to assimilate to the germanic migrants gradually, for their culture and language garnered a higher status than their own. There is debate as to why that stratification developed, but I would say that the sheer numbers were a key factor, and the Anglo-Saxons might have had more aggressive socio-economical practices.

I might have left some thing out, but that's pretty much what I was taught at the university at a historical linguistics class.

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ArkyBeagle t1_irjx5mh wrote

> Iirc, the originator of the myth was Bede

Makes perfect sense.

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buteo51 t1_irat296 wrote

I am not familiar with Pryor's work, and while I know a bit about Oosthuizen's, I haven't read The Emergence of the English (her main book on the subject). The idea that there was no population movement from mainland Europe in late antiquity, or at least that such migration was not the main force behind the creation of Old English, is a small minority view. Calling the scholars who argue for it crackpots or cranks is going too far though.

When pressed on the question in interviews, Oosthuizen usually says something like 'I would be surprised if there was no migration,' so she doesn't even really subscribe to the idea that there was no population movement at all. What these scholars are usually trying to do is point out that there are a lot of flawed assumptions underlying the traditional understanding of Britain in late antiquity. I don't think the alternate theories they propose are likely correct, but they are technically also possible.

Many of the points they emphasize while making their arguments are also very good to keep in mind when studying the past in general.

  • DNA is not identity
    • Just because we identify 60% or whatever of a skeleton's DNA as 'Germanic,' does not mean that that person identified with a Germanic ethnicity in life or spoke a Germanic language. Culture is not biological, and the idea that it is has a lot of really nasty implications in European history.
  • Artifacts are not people
    • Just because an artifact that we identify as 'Germanic' is found somewhere does not mean that a person who identified with a Germanic ethnicity or spoke a Germanic language left it there. This can really be boiled down to 'trade and cultural exchange exist.' Invasion and migration are not the only explanations for a style of artifact showing up in a new area.
  • Historical documents are not necessarily reliable
    • The idea of barbarian invasions remaking post-Roman Britain comes entirely from On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain, a text written by a British monk named Gildas in the 5th or 6th century. The problem with this is that Ruin and Conquest was never meant to be a history of post-Roman Britain. Most of it is actually a summary of biblical events. Gildas then draws parallels between this biblical material and claims about his contemporaries to make an argument that British society is sinful and bound to incur God's wrath. Ruin and Conquest is a sermon, not a history. It is written with a polemic agenda and can't be relied on as a source of historical fact. For all we know, Gildas could have been the Alex Jones of his day.

I've typed a stupid amount and still not answered your question: "where did the English language really come from?" The only honest answer is that nobody can say for certain. Anybody who tells you they can is kidding themselves. There is just too little good evidence. It was probably a much lengthier and more complex process than we will ever truly understand.

Now as I understand it, Oosthuizen's theory is that an ancestor to Old English was already spoken along the North Sea coast of Britain before the end of Roman rule. It could have been brought by earlier migrations and/or or introduced to Britain as a trade language by merchants traveling across the North Sea. As Roman influence receded, exchange across the English Channel and ultimately to the Mediterranean became less important to British society. To fill the void, trade across the North Sea became more important, and thus so did this pre-existing Germanic trade language along the North Sea coast. It became the lingua franca of a new economy and society integrated with the North Sea zone instead of the Mediterranean, and so over time whatever variants of Brythonic and Latin remained in what would become England were disfavored and eventually died out. In her view, this theory both explains the spread of Old English language and culture as well as the absence of archaeological evidence for some catastrophic destruction and replacement of Romano-British society.

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MagicRaptor OP t1_irb7rro wrote

Thanks for writing all that up, I really appreciate it. I remember reading some other theory (I wish I could remember the author) that stated a similar theory to Oosthuizen, which is that some form of embryonic precursor to Old English was introduced to Britain by the Belgae before the Romans even arrived, and that it followed a similar trajectory to the one you suggest. It lied in wait, evolved as a trade language, and then erupted across Britain as North Sea trade overtook Channel trade, eventually becoming the primary language of the mercantile class before spreading both upwards and downwards to the elites and the peasants, respectively. What's strange though is that if it was a trade language, why did it only emerge and gain traction in Britain, and not across the entire North Sea?

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buteo51 t1_irbcwuc wrote

>What's strange though is that if it was a trade language, why did it only emerge and gain traction in Britain, and not across the entire North Sea?

This is a really good question, and as far as I know it isn't one that migration-skeptical scholars have a good answer for.

You could also ask it in the other direction though. If Old English came from continental Europe, why didn't any remnant of it survive there? It can't really be that all the people who spoke Old English migrated from the continent to Britain, can it?

Early Medieval Britain is fascinating for the same reason that it can be so incredibly frustrating. There are so many mysteries.

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drewbaccaAWD t1_ir9je1n wrote

I didn't even know this was a theory until a few days ago when something auto loaded into my YouTube feed discussing it... but whatever I was watching only made the case that there wasn't a military invasion or evidence of fighting; they never said there was no evidence of large peaceful migration. Has that been rolled out by some other source?

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the__truthguy t1_ir9n4gx wrote

I've been teaching English as a second language for 20 years. I speak English, French, German, and I know a ton of Latin (thanks to English).

It is blatantly obvious to me that English is German people incorporating an enormous amount of French and Latin words into their vocabulary. I think what people overlook is how influential French was during the late Middle Ages. It was considered the language of the learned and as such anyone who could read learned French. It wasn't a result of French migration, but rather the English admiration and obsession with everything French. It is through them that we learned everything, from the alphabet to the classics.

As an example, I will re-write the paragraph above, but take out all the French/Latin words and you'll see how English is a German language at heart.

It is grossly clear to me that English is German folk bringing in an very big sum of French and Latin words into their word list. I think what folk overlook is how stark French was when the late Middle Ages was. It was thought the language of the learned and as such everyone who could read learned French. It wasn't an outcome of French wandering, but rather the English wonder and worship with everything French. It is through them that we learned everything, from the alphabet to the classics.

English sounds weird without all the French and Latin, but it's still English, which is a German dialect. No doubt.

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Marcellus_Crowe t1_ir9p2eq wrote

It is Germanic, rather than German. It shares a common ancestor with modern German and belongs to the same family as Dutch.

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_irbxpxs wrote

Forgive me but that's a gross over-simplification as it doesn't account for Danish influences, Celtic, etc. or the myriad of other peoples who came and went to the British Isles.

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the__truthguy t1_ird848j wrote

Too bad. It's not a novel; It's a 400 letter reddit comment.

Without a doubt, English, in its beginning, was a Germanic language. You can cry about that all the way home. It's been loaded up with a ton of loanwords over the past 1,500 years, which makes it more Latinized than other Germanic languages, but that's about it.

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Wintersbone7 t1_irgze4o wrote

Language is more than just vocabulary. It is the grammar structure that makes English a Germanic language. It has a shit ton of Latin based words though

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TheSovereignGrave t1_ir9pp3z wrote

It's definitely not German. Sure it's similar, but that because it's a West Germanic language like German. But German isn't even English's closest relative.

Also you're overlooking the Norman Conquest when England was literally conquered & ruled over by Frenchmen.

0

MichaelOfRivia26 t1_ira3j25 wrote

I've never come across this theory, and I don't give it much credence. Even if there was no large scale migration to Britain, there absolutely was an Anglo-Saxon invasion that at least affected the upper classes/rulers & warriors. After that there was probably heavy anglicisation of local Brittonic celts, but the idea that they'd adopt an entire language and culture because of trade and admiration alone seems weird. Likely however there was more large migration than previously thought, not less.

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Geo-Griphin t1_iranm15 wrote

I'm really surprised that there is no gene evidence and it has "supposedly" come from just German trade. Like atheist I would expect some gene evidence.

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Matta_G t1_irb3xdo wrote

East Anglia, Wessex, Sussex, Essex are all Anglo-Saxon names. Wessex literally means land of the West Saxons, Essex (East), Sussex (South) follow similar naming conventions.

The name “English” is derived from the name “Angles”.

Native Britons wouldn’t have names these kingdoms what they named them just because it was en vogue. It’s because they were invaded and gradually conquered through war or cultural domination. These places were known by different names before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.

So whether they all came at once, or in waves, or conquered or peacefully settled and intermingled with the locals (doubtful since there is plenty of evidence the Britons fought the Anglo-Saxons, and the legendary Arthur may have been a Britonic warlord who fought Anglo-Saxons), there was definitely an “invasion” of sorts, probably a centuries long migration.

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_irbvakv wrote

Forgive me but I'm not sure where you're looking. There's tremendous historical as well as archeological evidence for many migrations to the British Isles. Within recorded history there's been the Norman invasion and the introduction of early French to the indigenous language and the Vikings with King Cnut before that. From an archeological perspective, you may find the below interesting...it's an article I literally came across just today during lunch. Through the work of modern DNA research, the British Isles were visited and settled literally countless times by any number of peoples and cultures.

https://news.sky.com/story/dna-from-skeletons-reveals-where-first-people-to-call-themselves-english-came-from-12713175

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MagicRaptor OP t1_irc0bdl wrote

Yes, of course there have been numerous migrations to and from Britain over the centuries, but the one I'm concerned with is specifically the Anglo Saxon migration in the early medieval period and how it seems to have both occurred in great enough numbers to leave a sizable linguistic and genetic footprint, yet at the same time small enough numbers to have left what is essentially a negligible footprint in the history and archaeology. I'm just trying to make sense of that discrepancy.

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Bitter-Cold2335 t1_ircb7pf wrote

It is a mix of languges in practice but major use of it and editing of it to suit the needs of the English population started under Edward III.

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Rocketgirl8097 t1_ircotxv wrote

Lack of archeological evidence doesn't mean anything. And I'm with you. The language is still Germanic.

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Truthdeb8 t1_ireb5fr wrote

English, just like all other Germanic languages, has its roots in Old Norse, which is otherwise the language of the tribe of Dan, Anderson Peterhaper explained it best in his book Blue blood secret, as well as the settlement of Britannia itself.

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imapassenger1 t1_ir96qk7 wrote

I read a book on this but can't recall the title. Back soon if I can find it. Author insisted English evolved in England.

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imapassenger1 t1_ir96xji wrote

"The History of Britain Revealed: the shocking truth about the English language". MJ Harper. Many have said it is bollocks, though.

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andreasdagen t1_ir9q47j wrote

How does danish and norwegian fit in here?

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ConsitutionalHistory t1_irbxy8x wrote

Not sure if this answer is correct but I just saw your question. Most of the northeastern British Isles were conquered by the Danes (i.e. Vikings). Much of their language and DNA still survives in those areas of the country.

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jhvanriper t1_ir9ut39 wrote

How does zero evidence and Dane Geld correlate?

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[deleted] t1_iracnfg wrote

[deleted]

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MagicRaptor OP t1_iraezof wrote

While I appreciate the kind words, you could make my day even better by giving me a source I could read.

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Alternative_Demand96 t1_iraf5l6 wrote

The sources were given to you by multiple users. If you were to have typed "Anglo Saxon" into google any time in the past two to three weeks you would have seen a new study came out proving the genetic replacement was huge.

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scottishhistorian t1_ir9as90 wrote

Because England has been invaded so many times, the language has been influenced by the Normans (French), Germans, Romans and the Vikings.

−1

extopico t1_ir96m4l wrote

I blame the Dutch. Northern Dutch language sounds like drunken English, or English as I would hear it if I were incoherently drunk.

How the Dutch spread into England and morphed into English? Not sure... there are surely actual answers somewhere in this thread.

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K_H007 t1_ir97mty wrote

Trade routes. That's how. Same thing happened to Greek when it became Latin, and to Latin when it became the Romance Languages.

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EzraSkorpion t1_ir9aamk wrote

What? Greek never became latin, they're on separate branches of the indo-european language family. Latin became romance languages not by influence via trade routes but because the people in those areas spoke latin natively, which then underwent language change.

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TheMooseIsBlue t1_ir9soe4 wrote

I assume he meant “how Greek-speaking lands became Latin-speaking lands,” not that Greek literally evolved into Latin. Though, that’s me being generous since his second point was about how Latin did evolve into others.

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K_H007 t1_irdhuy7 wrote

That was actually about what I meant. After all, the roman empire arose from old greek colonies of italy, meaning that greek lands became roman lands, and with rome came latin.

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stuzz74 t1_ir936gu wrote

There is no one source it's still being developed today and words made up and borrowed from other languages.

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