Don't forget that the Celtic peoples invaded the majority of the British Isles and displaced the original inhabitants, replacing their culture. The Irish Celts Invaded Scotland and replaced those people too.
5:14 This was filmed in Berlin where Rob lives as he is working for Germany's English-language broadcasting news service DW News (Deutsche Welle News). It's a typical tenant backyard in the Gesundbrunnen neighborhood of central Berlin.
I mean, that really isn't as much of a given for plants as you'd think. The continents are separated, after all. There may be some exchange over vast distances with seeds being carried by the wind and via landbridges further back in time but I'd assume similarities to mostly stem from convergent evolution. Like cacti and Euphorbia or Aloe and Agave.@dwest6358 Edit: Looked it up, the similarities are actually mainly due to shared ancestry, so you do find a lot of the same genera. This was apparently even a thing before the recent glaciations. Seems I misremembered the floral provinces (mainly that one of them covers half the planet's landmass). Well, the more you know.
That was exactly what I wanted to say. Rob lives in Berlin, works for Deutsche Welle in his day time job, speaks a lovely German (I heard him many times in interviews), and Rob is such a nice guy! I'm so happy that we have him working with German media. So, yes, nice to know that your childhood backyard looked like Berlin.
@@richardwest6358 Actually, You don't. This is typical flora of the Northern hemisphere in moderate climate. Let me tell you that I traveled 42 out of 50 US states. America is a very diverse country, also in terms of nature. When I first visited North Dakota, it was like an eye-opener: It looked, smellt, and felt like Northern Germany! It made totally sense why so many Germans settled there back in the day.
Gondor is too! White dressed marble for minis tirith, Celtic tree symbolism atop, stewards taking care of the throne and “return of the King”. Can’t get any more blatant that it’s based on The tales of King Arthur.
@McJibbin please see the following: The Triskel symbol has various meanings in Irish culture. Some people believe that the three spirals represent the three elements of earth, water, and air. Others believe that the symbol represents the three aspects of the Triple Goddess in Celtic mythology: maiden, mother, and crone.
Is asking why the 'swirl' is so prominent Celtic cultures a bit like why stars are so frequently used in American iconography? [I know that stars often represent states in the USA but why?]
To @22grena When I open my mouth and say "It's a Sassenach name but I can't help that" in a Yorkshire accent I rather think I'm calling myself a Sassenach. Likewise when I open my mouth and say "I'm a Sassenach." It's not Scots or Irish calling me such. I also call myself a "refugee". I voted for Scottish independence in the referendum too. So there.
Living in the north east of England, we have an accent that still has roots in old English (obviously mixed over the centuries) and there was a tv documentary that took a person from our region to an area of the western Netherlands.. it was a town they had found... and they could easily talk with the locals in their own language.. the roots of the language was the same. relates to what you said at 4 mins.
Alot of dialects in the that region of England still even use old english words that have completely fall out of use everywhere else hundreds of years ago.. wich is pretty fucking cool if you ask me I have no idea what they're saying when they use those words but it's cool they've been preserved
Your "Port Port" point is well known in other forms, possibly most famously as Terry Pratchett's "Surly native" theory of place names. The idea is that explorers and/or colonisers turn up in a new land, and the map-maker grabs the nearest local, points at a landmark, and writes down what the native says. Thus we get such places as Torpenhow Hill, which translates from various native tongues as "Hillhillhill Hill".
I love RobWords :) He is funny and very good at passing on knowledge ♥ Love your outlook on this, sir, etymology, respect for those you react to and the news related reactions :D Subscribed.
Actually re: English connection to the Dutch...Frisian is supposedly one of the closest languages to English (which makes sense given the proximity). Old English is almost mutually understandable to at least some Frisian speakers apparently.
13:25 That really depends on what you consider native. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were the first to bring their Germanic languages. Before them came Celtic speaking Britons. Not sure how important Latin was during the days of the Roman Empire but after the fall of the Western Roman Empire it quickly went extinct. Before the Celts, Great Britain was inhabited by different peoples. For one, you'd have a mix of Yamnaya (probably early Indo European speakers), Early Anatolian Farmer and Western Hunter Gatherer ancestry, so they'd speak their respective languages (whatever those were). But you'd also have different people groups moving in between glaciation events, including several other human species, so who knows what language (if any in some cases) they spoke? Anyways, pick your answer ^^
I hate it when people call the celts native and the english invaders, either both are native or neither are. Also the anglo tribes were invited by the britons.
Same, I don’t actually think there was as much fighting between Britons and Anglo/Saxons as people make out. The only people the Britons seriously didn’t like were the Mercians.
Mc Jibbin having trouble understanding why the place he lived as a child looks the same as England the clue is in the name of the area New ENGLAND, because it reminded people of the land they lived in they named it a new version of the old if the area had been covered in sand it would probably been called new Egypt.
Somebody else replied that Rob of Rob's Words doesn't live in England but is based in Berlin in Germany. The type of trees you see in the background are not typical of trees that you would find in England.
To answer your question - although I'm no expert - the Welsh claim to be the original Britons (not including Ireland as it's a separate isle). There is some genetic evidence to support this claim. What a lot of people forget when wrangling about this genetic footprint is indigenous Britons today are so similar to one another rather than different. Furthermore, the home countries of the UK aren't one genetically identifiable group but are made up of several. Finally, it needs to be emphasized that Welsh / English / Scots / and Cornish people are all descendants of the original Britons. In my opinion, there's too much emphasis on invaders, for whatever reason...
Mate you've been told about and you've seen videos on how (old-) Dutch (moreover Frisian) is close to old-English plenty of times, yet you keep wondering, just like with the Hanseatic architecture.
Connor, please do a video on the Isles of Scilly that Rob pointed out. They are 28 miles off the Cornish coast and have loads of history both ancient and more modern. They are very small but beautiful and unspoilt. I'm sure you'd be interested. Fun fact, Scilly was officially at war with the Netherlands from 1651 to 1986 because the Dutch forgot to sign a peace treaty when they went home after a local skirmish.😃 Once it was realised that they were still listed as being at war, the Dutch ambassador paid a visit and officially signed the treaty. Much fun was had at the celebrations on ending the 335 year 'war' .
Not water related, but another tautology that springs to mind is Torpenhowe Hill in Cumbria. Tor, Pen and Howe all being words to denote a hill...so it's name really is hill hill hill hill.
I suspect the accent of the Dutch speaking English is more to do with them being the none English speaking country with the most English speakers. There is a local language Frisian which is the closest to Old English of any modern Language. I do like the theory that the Jutes may well have been pushed out of Jutland by the Danes migrating from Scandinavia. The Jutes were supposed to have been the first Germanic settlers of England, and settled Kent and the Isle of Wight. That makes more sense if they were in Northern Netherlands rather than Denmark. Also it explains why Bede never mentions Frisians settling, when there clearly is a linguistic link, if he thinks of them as Jutes.
There was a people called the Euthiones recorded as living in the area under Frankish domination around the migration period. Given the later British Jutes having some customs in common with the Franks unlike the Angles and Saxons it does seem to back that up.
Hi Connor, thanks for your reaction to British Country names Explained. It is really interesting to see where the different names/ words come from. You could spend a whole lifetime studying this alone. I live in Northern Ireland and have been since 1962,but was born in Darwin Australia,so I’m a bit of a mixture. But, as I say, the English language is a mixture of a lot of European languages,old and not so old. All the very best my friend.
Many Welsh people have DNA going back to the Neolithic, but everyone in the UK is likely to have some ancient local ancestry. The oldest body discovered in the UK was Cheddar Man and when his DNA was checked with people in the Cheddar area, several people proved to be related to his family.
The closest language to English is apparently Frisian, (if you discount Scots)? Frisian is still spoken in the Northern Netherlands, However, to make things more complicated, there is more than one form of Frisian?
I believe there was a dna study in Cymru,Scotland and England recently,which established the only remaining indigenous descendants are found in Cymru and the Scottish islands.
The DNA studies in the UK show that there are specific isolated clusters of genes in Cornwall, North and South Cymru, North East Scotland and the Orkney islands that are not replicated elsewhere. However, it would be wrong to speak of "indigenous descendants" because it is known that the population of the UK has changed many times through successive waves of migration over the past 10,000 years, and before then there was an ice age where practically nobody lived in most of Britain at all because of mile-high glaciers, and certainly not in Cymru.
@@ftumschk either both are or neither are. I'll agree that they are 'slightly' more indigenous if that makes any sense. Also the english were invited, not invaded, so they are even more indigenous too. By whatever definition we are using.
I'm English and living in Wales, there is currently a bit of a rush on re "Welshing" things at the moment, (areas and mountains etc) but Welsh speakers on average (depending on who you ask) appears to be around just 25% of the population. I'm not knocking their attempts to keep the language alive but (just my opinion) I don't think "renaming" popular tourist attractions with (to the majority) unpronounceable names is the best way to go about it. Keep up the good work, I'm learning and I live here.
“Re-naming” implies they are doing to spite English speakers or trying to eliminate English when this ain’t true. They are taking back their own country from Anglo influence, something they are in their right to do.
Populations were very small during that time , Boudica and the Iceni tribe had gathered 230,000 Britons in Norfolk to fight Rome , I would say a lot of East Anglian blood is still Celtic , due to rape or courtship with local woman ...... the Celts that ran away , fled West ....... They done the same after the Saxon invasions but fled further oversea to Brittany , France ...
I thought Angling was the name given between the rod and the line in the water and the person fishing to where the line enters the water, thus forming an angle.
The Celts weren’t the indigenous population of the islands. They might not even have been the first replacement population from the mainland continent, and the indigenous peoples (whoever they were, there is scant record of them) were probably not the very first hominids or even humans here. The languages spoken by the predecessor populations to the Celts were probably not Indo-European languages like Celtic, Romance, or Germanic languages are.
I'm not sure if there is a connection between English and Dutch however I do know that English is taught in Dutch schools as a compulsory subject, maybe that's why they speak English so well.
English is more connected to Friesian than Dutch, I think. For me, a native (Northern)English-English speaker, there is something about Friesian, especially the coastal dialects which is so close to English that I can almost grasp it without having to learn a new language. Certainly the accent is very east coast England adjacent.
I had a nice little comment lined up about Gales (Spanish) and Pays de Galles (French), and the Gauls. Then he went and mentioned it. D'oh. You might want to watch a starter video on the Welsh language, particularly how to read it. It's spoken as it's written, not like English, but you do need to know the way some of the letters are pronounced to get it right.
The Beaker People are the earliest inhabitants of Great Britain and they and their culture got pushed west by incoming waves of migrants. Genetic traces can be found in the west of Wales 😊
😮 England would be Ingland not Angland Connor. Its not a colony of America. Its not the United Federation of Planets' 'Anglish' which is a muxup of American and English...! It's from Eng pronounced Ing. (I dont have a link to the video I saw which explained it sorry, but there _was_ one I watched _ages_ ago here on RUclips) ...(and my name is not English, it's Irish - _Brigid_ - though ny middle name ( _Mary_ ) is apparently a derivative of a Hebrew name, meaning "bitter tears" (...lovely eh?!😢)
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek I've tried that (& with e's etc) but my Tablet won't let me hold it fo long enough to even touch the letters I aim for. Likewise if (when!) I need to edit stuff, it is a real pita to edit anything...so it takes me forever to triple-check for typos to avoid having to battle to edit my 'copious' errors (now am 70 years old, I'm doing my best, but I only regained my eyesight last year - Summer- 6th June, & Autumn 1st Sept '23).
I (Swedish) went with my family on vacation to the Netherlands when younger. My mother noted a similar thing to you, but with Swedish and Dutch. So... they sound familiar to a number of us. Linguistic melting pot of the ancient days maybe.
Well, to one of your questions about Dutch, I know Frisian is the closest related language to English (or old English) there is. So it makes sense, for me personally as a Dutch person that English is easy? As I can also understand Frisian.. if this logic makes sense? (probably not but in my mind it does, sorry I'm about as ADD as Connor). But it's also so easy to learn English and offc.. It's not as closely related to German, after all, I can hold a conversation in basic Dutch, and a German person could speak back to me in basic German and we would understand, but still!
Middle english was also quite heavily influenced by Dutch too it was probably the biggest influence outside of old english and Norman French at least as I understand but yes frisian is so similar to old english that alot of linguists consider it to be English's sister language
Dutch & Old English come from Low German, and German comes from High German, so Yes, Dutch is more similar to English than German is. PS Dont think Wallace was a woad painted Pict, or even a Celt. He wasn't. He was Anglo Norman. Even his name is Norman.He probably spoke very little Gaelic if any, and was more likely to speak Norman French or Old English.
Orkney and Shetland belonged to Norway, but came under the Kalmar ruled by Margrete who was born a Princess of Denmark, married the Norwegian king, united Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. A king of Denmark had a daughter who married a Scottish king, and as the Danish king couldn't pay the dowry he handed over the two groups of islands. It is by the way said that the people of Shetland are still geneticly more Norwegian than Scots - after more than 500 years 🤭
Concerning your question: The first humans on the lands which today form the british isles, were neanderthals. We have no idea what language they spoke. The first homo sapiens arrived by foot on Britain+Doggerland more than 40k years ago... and again, we have no idea what language they spoke. The first "guessable" language on the british isles must have been one spoken by the western hunter gatherers. Basque might!!! be the last surviving example of that language group. The first identifiable languages on the british isles are indeed celtic languages. After them, the romans, anglo-saxons, norse, franco-normans and (peacefully) americans invaded and ra... ther intensly changed the local language. So no, the celtic language was not the language of the "native" people, but the whole question of "nativity" is anyway complete nonsense. As we humans have always migrated, and most humans will be hard pressed to get back further than a few thousand years. EXCEPT for the Khoi and Xhosa. Which are probably the only humans on earth that can trace their lineage back in the same general region for more than the impressive 50k years of the second place (Australias first nations).
Lots of the widely believed history of the home nations is made up / ignored. So on a trivial level modern kilts were invented by an Englishman, the national drink of Scotland used to be red wine (due to the links with France) and the majority of those living in Wales are descended from the English who moved there for jobs in the mines. I'm sure that similar things can be found about "English" history
And the majority of “English” people who live in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool are descended from the original Welsh after they were economically forced to re-locate to England. So what’s your point?
Dutch is the closest language to english. The Frisian language (also spoken in the netherlands) is even closer. Dutch people learn English from a very young age (6 years old) and consume copious amounts of American and English TV.
Most indigenous people is a tricky one, as the before the Romans there were several settlement waves largely replacing those already there, the celtic people were the last of those and were probably there 500 to 1000 years when the Romans arrived.. Its thought that the people who built the stone circles make up just 2% of our DNA. Either way there are three candidate areas for which has the oldest setlers. There is western Ireland, away from Viking, Anglo-Norman and the 17th Century plantation populations. It is thought however that the Irish Celts arrived there later than those in Britain, so it could be western Wales. The other possibility could be north east Scotland, as the Picts may have been an older people than the celts further south, but that rather depends how much the Scots replaced them, culturally they totally vanished.
Very educating video but also .......... very confusing. 🙂 Much more complicating as where I come from (The Netherlands, Holland, Dutch ....). Btw I must say ...... I like you American RUclipsrs, seeing there's more to learn besides THE US of A. Big "eye openers".
'Cymru' is pronounced cum ree, for a couple of reasons 'Cymraeg' (the Welsh Language) is phoenetic but has mutations as well. No letter K, Q, X, Z , V a 'Poster ' (graham?) menetioned the Word for 'river' in Cymraeg is 'Affon' which is correct but spelt with one 'F' , ie Afon. Not critising just pointing out that 'FF' sometimes replaces the letter V , great Video by the way👍thumbs up in any Lingo!!
Why in the US do you pronounce a lot of words wrong, hence the words like zee bra. Ask an African and they call it Zeb ra also you call the German car brand or dee, no it called Audi which sounds like owdee. Sorry i'm just a grumpy old fart😠
@@dlarge6502 An evil person if ever there was one imo!!! (No offence intended to most Webster's - my first & favourite - though we only had her for our first year, due to personal reasons - English teacher at my Secondary School was Mrs.Caroline Webster 👌❤️🏴).🇬🇧🖖
The Welsh are believed to be the closest to the original Britons. I’ve heard that when the Angles and Saxons arrived the Britons were pushed west into modern day Wales. I could be wrong though.
Yeah you are wrong, the Britons are the Welsh, Welsh is the Anglo-Saxon name for the Britons and Briton is the Roman name for the Brython and Brython was the appellative name for the Cynmry which are the Welsh now spelled Cymry. They were not pushed anywhere. What is now England didn’t suddenly become Anglo-Saxon only, in fact they were still the minority and only about 25% of DNA in the English population today have Anglo-Saxon DNA, there is almost no trace of Roman or Viking DNA either today and the French DNA predates the Norman invasion and most of those who made up the Norman army were actually the Britons (Welsh) who had migrated down into Western Europe and therefore were descendants of the Britons. Most of the history taught today is Germanic propaganda and has no basis in reality and prior to the 18/19th century did not exist
@@declanrussell2232 no worries, unfortunately there is a lot of anti non Germanic propaganda that started being pushed when the Germanic house on Hanover took over the monarchy and to quell a rebellion they gaslit the English into believing they were Anglo-Saxons and therefore they had their best interests at heart because the House of Hanover were a Saxony royal house and they were also a Holy Roman Empire House
@@Penddraig7 again thank you very much for educating me on that. Myself being brought up in England by an Irish catholic mother I could easily have fallen into that trap 😉
Yes Tolkien took alot of influence form these languages the language the rohirim speak was based on old english dwarven was based on old norse and the language spoken by the elves was influenced by Irish.. although he literally invented his own languages
English, Dutch and Frisian are all Low German languages (the language of the lowlands) as opposed to modern German which is a High German language (i.e.: from the language of the Alpine territories).
Low German is a language of its own, descended from Continental Old Saxon. Frisian is a language family (West Frisian, Saterfrisian and North Frisian). Dutch is a descendant of Old Franconian, which was a more Central Germanic dialect that moved west around 400 AD All of them, plus English are West Germanic (not "German") languages. High German split off from the more northerly languages after it went through a second consonant shift some time between 600 and 800 AD.
Re Dutch/English. There is a really low quality video on here of Eddie Izzard speaking Old English to a farmer in the Netherlands speaking Frisian only. They manage to sell/buy a cow.
@@MsPataca We certainly got it from German. I'd say its derogatory, but no longer connected to thiefs, typically said about severe dialects OR some disliked jargon. We may have associated it with "rotig", ~ messy. Then there's "double Dutch"...
When the Romans invaded Britain, the ancient British tribes, if not killed fled to Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, which are more remote or mountainous areas that the Romans couldnt invade.
They didn’t flee to Scotland, Scotland didn’t exist, neither did Cornwall or technically Wales although there was a wales and it was called Prydain which the Romans latinised to Britannia. They didn’t flee to anywhere, they already were in those places. The Brython or Britons to the Romans or Welsh to the Anglo-Saxons were part of the Roman Empire, most of the “Romans” in Prydain (Britain) were Brythons and not Roman and some of them were even Roman Emperors
@@lukespooky I was actually referring to the people who lived a thousand years ago, who had already found themselves repressed, dispossessed and raped by a bunch of graceless nordic intruders. The fact that these invaders called the locals "foreigners" then, and for centuries afterwards, is still pretty offensive.
The context of the word _as then used_ actually relates more to the language and culture not the land itself. Don't mix in modern nationalism to historical situations
@nealjroberts4050 "as then used"? It's _still_ being used 1,600 years after the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain!!! Besides, would it be OK for a modern-day country to occupy another and refer to the (majority) indigenous population as "foreigners" or "slaves"? Of course it wouldn't.
The the British isles are actually the last bastion of the Keltic language group which is neither romance nor Germanic and because it's harde to conquer an island did the mainland Europe Celtics get eaten up by Germanic and roman influences while the Celtics up there semi exist to this day with English slowly overtaking their languages
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek We could say… for instance ‘homo heidlelbergensis’, or a bit later, The Beaker People’, but I think everyone appreciates a cut off point to keep the discussion viable.
@KRAM_valentina The Celts were in the British Isles a thousand years before the English, and had established a rich literary culture, as well as laws, coinage and other trappings of a modern civilisation long before the Anglo-Saxons came along, and it would be centuries after the A/S invasion before the "English" became a thing.
"Foreigner doesn't sound that bad"... unless you are the indigenous people.
Don't forget that the Celtic peoples invaded the majority of the British Isles and displaced the original inhabitants, replacing their culture. The Irish Celts Invaded Scotland and replaced those people too.
5:14 This was filmed in Berlin where Rob lives as he is working for Germany's English-language broadcasting news service DW News (Deutsche Welle News). It's a typical tenant backyard in the Gesundbrunnen neighborhood of central Berlin.
And you can find a similar floral mix all over the world. Is the sky like your sky ?
I mean, that really isn't as much of a given for plants as you'd think. The continents are separated, after all. There may be some exchange over vast distances with seeds being carried by the wind and via landbridges further back in time but I'd assume similarities to mostly stem from convergent evolution. Like cacti and Euphorbia or Aloe and Agave.@dwest6358
Edit: Looked it up, the similarities are actually mainly due to shared ancestry, so you do find a lot of the same genera. This was apparently even a thing before the recent glaciations. Seems I misremembered the floral provinces (mainly that one of them covers half the planet's landmass). Well, the more you know.
Looks just like uk
That was exactly what I wanted to say. Rob lives in Berlin, works for Deutsche Welle in his day time job, speaks a lovely German (I heard him many times in interviews), and Rob is such a nice guy! I'm so happy that we have him working with German media. So, yes, nice to know that your childhood backyard looked like Berlin.
@@richardwest6358 Actually, You don't. This is typical flora of the Northern hemisphere in moderate climate. Let me tell you that I traveled 42 out of 50 US states. America is a very diverse country, also in terms of nature. When I first visited North Dakota, it was like an eye-opener: It looked, smellt, and felt like Northern Germany! It made totally sense why so many Germans settled there back in the day.
Dutch is very close to English, hand, arm, water, help etc. But Frisian (Fries in Dutch, Frysk in Frisian) is even closer.
Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon so there is a lot of words and ideas he took from the Anglo-Saxon's and used in the
Lord of the Rings.
Most of it it inspired by Welsh (British) and Finnish. With few elements of Anglo Saxons. Rohan is Anglo Saxon inspired, nothing else.
Hi Connor, the port replication thing also happens with rivers, like the River Rhine (river, river) River Avon (river, river) etc
New Zealand has a place called Mount Maunganui. Maunganui is a Maori word which translates to Hill/Mountain + Big, i.e. Mt Big Mountain.
The old name for England is Albion, which is Latin for “White or White Lands”, due to the chalk cliffs.
Well done on your pronunciation of Cymru. It tears my soul when Americans say it wrong.
Well-spotted. Tolkien based Sindarin on Welsh.
Gondor is too! White dressed marble for minis tirith, Celtic tree symbolism atop, stewards taking care of the throne and “return of the King”. Can’t get any more blatant that it’s based on The tales of King Arthur.
@McJibbin please see the following:
The Triskel symbol has various meanings in Irish culture. Some people believe that the three spirals represent the three elements of earth, water, and air. Others believe that the symbol represents the three aspects of the Triple Goddess in Celtic mythology: maiden, mother, and crone.
Is asking why the 'swirl' is so prominent Celtic cultures a bit like why stars are so frequently used in American iconography? [I know that stars often represent states in the USA but why?]
The Triskel is used as the symbol for the Isle of Man, it is on the Manx Flag, as the Triskelion, the Three Legs of Mann.
I'm English, living in Scotland. I call myself a Sassenach.
No. the Irish and Scots call you a Sassenach
And why not?
To @22grena
When I open my mouth and say "It's a Sassenach name but I can't help that" in a Yorkshire accent I rather think I'm calling myself a Sassenach. Likewise when I open my mouth and say "I'm a Sassenach." It's not Scots or Irish calling me such. I also call myself a "refugee". I voted for Scottish independence in the referendum too. So there.
@@22grenaoh lighten up. He can call himself a Sassenach for a laugh if he wants
@@michaeledmondson5100 Salute to your integrity, Michael. Have a dram and put it on my slate.
Living in the north east of England, we have an accent that still has roots in old English (obviously mixed over the centuries) and there was a tv documentary that took a person from our region to an area of the western Netherlands.. it was a town they had found... and they could easily talk with the locals in their own language.. the roots of the language was the same. relates to what you said at 4 mins.
Alot of dialects in the that region of England still even use old english words that have completely fall out of use everywhere else hundreds of years ago.. wich is pretty fucking cool if you ask me I have no idea what they're saying when they use those words but it's cool they've been preserved
Your "Port Port" point is well known in other forms, possibly most famously as Terry Pratchett's "Surly native" theory of place names. The idea is that explorers and/or colonisers turn up in a new land, and the map-maker grabs the nearest local, points at a landmark, and writes down what the native says.
Thus we get such places as Torpenhow Hill, which translates from various native tongues as "Hillhillhill Hill".
I love RobWords :) He is funny and very good at passing on knowledge ♥ Love your outlook on this, sir, etymology, respect for those you react to and the news related reactions :D Subscribed.
Actually re: English connection to the Dutch...Frisian is supposedly one of the closest languages to English (which makes sense given the proximity). Old English is almost mutually understandable to at least some Frisian speakers apparently.
13:25 That really depends on what you consider native. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were the first to bring their Germanic languages. Before them came Celtic speaking Britons. Not sure how important Latin was during the days of the Roman Empire but after the fall of the Western Roman Empire it quickly went extinct. Before the Celts, Great Britain was inhabited by different peoples. For one, you'd have a mix of Yamnaya (probably early Indo European speakers), Early Anatolian Farmer and Western Hunter Gatherer ancestry, so they'd speak their respective languages (whatever those were). But you'd also have different people groups moving in between glaciation events, including several other human species, so who knows what language (if any in some cases) they spoke? Anyways, pick your answer ^^
I hate it when people call the celts native and the english invaders, either both are native or neither are. Also the anglo tribes were invited by the britons.
Same, I don’t actually think there was as much fighting between Britons and Anglo/Saxons as people make out. The only people the Britons seriously didn’t like were the Mercians.
Connor, most Englishmen have Celtic genes in their racial mix.
The English are in fact majority celtic, genetically
Mc Jibbin having trouble understanding why the place he lived as a child looks the same as England the clue is in the name of the area New ENGLAND, because it reminded people of the land they lived in they named it a new version of the old if the area had been covered in sand it would probably been called new Egypt.
Somebody else replied that Rob of Rob's Words doesn't live in England but is based in Berlin in Germany.
The type of trees you see in the background are not typical of trees that you would find in England.
The trees in the background are indigenous to northern European countries including England.@@alicemilne1444
Very interesting video Connor 😊.
To answer your question - although I'm no expert - the Welsh claim to be the original Britons (not including Ireland as it's a separate isle). There is some genetic evidence to support this claim. What a lot of people forget when wrangling about this genetic footprint is indigenous Britons today are so similar to one another rather than different. Furthermore, the home countries of the UK aren't one genetically identifiable group but are made up of several. Finally, it needs to be emphasized that Welsh / English / Scots / and Cornish people are all descendants of the original Britons. In my opinion, there's too much emphasis on invaders, for whatever reason...
Mate you've been told about and you've seen videos on how (old-) Dutch (moreover Frisian) is close to old-English plenty of times, yet you keep wondering, just like with the Hanseatic architecture.
Connor, please do a video on the Isles of Scilly that Rob pointed out. They are 28 miles off the Cornish coast and have loads of history both ancient and more modern. They are very small but beautiful and unspoilt. I'm sure you'd be interested. Fun fact, Scilly was officially at war with the Netherlands from 1651 to 1986 because the Dutch forgot to sign a peace treaty when they went home after a local skirmish.😃 Once it was realised that they were still listed as being at war, the Dutch ambassador paid a visit and officially signed the treaty. Much fun was had at the celebrations on ending the 335 year 'war' .
Canadians and everyone else say Zed not zee
You are correct in that somethings are named twice. Celtic for river is Affon (Avon) and Usk, Exe, Esk and Urr come from 'flowing water' (river)
Not water related, but another tautology that springs to mind is Torpenhowe Hill in Cumbria. Tor, Pen and Howe all being words to denote a hill...so it's name really is hill hill hill hill.
I agree with you regarding the news.
Cells is also a misleading terms. It refers to specific German tribes who never came here. They should be ed Britons.
Yep, the Britons (Welsh) are not Celtic. They are the true Gauls (Gaels). Definitely wrongly labelled “Celts”
I suspect the accent of the Dutch speaking English is more to do with them being the none English speaking country with the most English speakers. There is a local language Frisian which is the closest to Old English of any modern Language. I do like the theory that the Jutes may well have been pushed out of Jutland by the Danes migrating from Scandinavia. The Jutes were supposed to have been the first Germanic settlers of England, and settled Kent and the Isle of Wight. That makes more sense if they were in Northern Netherlands rather than Denmark. Also it explains why Bede never mentions Frisians settling, when there clearly is a linguistic link, if he thinks of them as Jutes.
There was a people called the Euthiones recorded as living in the area under Frankish domination around the migration period.
Given the later British Jutes having some customs in common with the Franks unlike the Angles and Saxons it does seem to back that up.
Before the Anglo Saxons we were Celtic Britons.
Awesome video!
Hi Connor, thanks for your reaction to British Country names Explained. It is really interesting to see where the different names/ words come from. You could spend a whole lifetime studying this alone. I live in Northern Ireland and have been since 1962,but was born in Darwin Australia,so I’m a bit of a mixture. But, as I say, the English language is a mixture of a lot of European languages,old and not so old. All the very best my friend.
Very interesting indeed!
I look forward to your analysis of the 150 indigenous languages of your country
Many Welsh people have DNA going back to the Neolithic, but everyone in the UK is likely to have some ancient local ancestry. The oldest body discovered in the UK was Cheddar Man and when his DNA was checked with people in the Cheddar area, several people proved to be related to his family.
Very interesting video Connor
The closest language to English is apparently Frisian, (if you discount Scots)? Frisian is still spoken in the Northern Netherlands,
However, to make things more complicated, there is more than one form of Frisian?
I believe there was a dna study in Cymru,Scotland and England recently,which established the only remaining indigenous descendants are found in Cymru and the Scottish islands.
The DNA studies in the UK show that there are specific isolated clusters of genes in Cornwall, North and South Cymru, North East Scotland and the Orkney islands that are not replicated elsewhere.
However, it would be wrong to speak of "indigenous descendants" because it is known that the population of the UK has changed many times through successive waves of migration over the past 10,000 years, and before then there was an ice age where practically nobody lived in most of Britain at all because of mile-high glaciers, and certainly not in Cymru.
That's false. Also the celts aren't indigenous.
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek They're a darned sight more indigenous than the English.
@@ftumschk either both are or neither are. I'll agree that they are 'slightly' more indigenous if that makes any sense. Also the english were invited, not invaded, so they are even more indigenous too. By whatever definition we are using.
@@ftumschkWhere are the English indigenous too, if not England?
I'm English and living in Wales, there is currently a bit of a rush on re "Welshing" things at the moment, (areas and mountains etc) but Welsh speakers on average (depending on who you ask) appears to be around just 25% of the population. I'm not knocking their attempts to keep the language alive but (just my opinion) I don't think "renaming" popular tourist attractions with (to the majority) unpronounceable names is the best way to go about it. Keep up the good work, I'm learning and I live here.
If you're dyslexic, then Welsh would be easy to read..😁
“Re-naming” implies they are doing to spite English speakers or trying to eliminate English when this ain’t true. They are taking back their own country from Anglo influence, something they are in their right to do.
@@WalesTheTrueBritonsYet the same people cry when English people want to stop their country being taken over by foreign influence.
This is not "renaming".
It is using the original forms.
8:32 in the UK probably north Wales and the Scottish Highlands and Islands. Maybe Cornwall too. Those would be my guesses anyway
That "-...before pre-roman..." had me giggle for a socond.
Thanks.
Populations were very small during that time , Boudica and the Iceni tribe had gathered 230,000 Britons in Norfolk to fight Rome , I would say a lot of East Anglian blood is still Celtic , due to rape or courtship with local woman ......
the Celts that ran away , fled West .......
They done the same after the Saxon invasions but fled further oversea to Brittany , France ...
I'm English and Norwegian i speak English - Norsk also called ENGLOSK
4:05 - English is the craziest way to speak Low German.!
This is my "you pronounced Thames wrong" comment to boost engagement! 😁
Mate I swear only you can watch a five minute video and drag it out for two days. Well it can feel like that sometimes. 😄
This is a reaction channel so we must expect the video to to interrupted.
@@johnsimmons5951 I was taking the piss mate not having a go.
This is a very good video. I like Rob.
I thought Angling was the name given between the rod and the line in the water and the person fishing to where the line enters the water, thus forming an angle.
You may be interested in a documentary called Dragon’s Lair: Fortress Orkney and Scapa Flow. It’s about the First World War notably.
Crazy how New England looks like England !
yeh, funny that. Of course it has nothing to do with the obvious
The problem is it was filmed in Berlin.
@@stephenthirkettle7663 I suppose most northern European woodlands look similar. I didn't know it was Berlin . Have to call New England New Germany !
@@James-wp3jq That's Wisconsin, it's even got a Lake Geneva!
The Celts weren’t the indigenous population of the islands. They might not even have been the first replacement population from the mainland continent, and the indigenous peoples (whoever they were, there is scant record of them) were probably not the very first hominids or even humans here. The languages spoken by the predecessor populations to the Celts were probably not Indo-European languages like Celtic, Romance, or Germanic languages are.
13:22 No, the natives of the British Isles spoke Celtic languages. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes were the Germanic people!
I'm not sure if there is a connection between English and Dutch however I do know that English is taught in Dutch schools as a compulsory subject, maybe that's why they speak English so well.
English is more connected to Friesian than Dutch, I think. For me, a native (Northern)English-English speaker, there is something about Friesian, especially the coastal dialects which is so close to English that I can almost grasp it without having to learn a new language. Certainly the accent is very east coast England adjacent.
Some of Tolkiens elvish languages are based on Welsh and old English
Welsh = Sindarin Quenya = Finnish
I had a nice little comment lined up about Gales (Spanish) and Pays de Galles (French), and the Gauls. Then he went and mentioned it. D'oh.
You might want to watch a starter video on the Welsh language, particularly how to read it. It's spoken as it's written, not like English, but you do need to know the way some of the letters are pronounced to get it right.
13:28 no they are celtic not germanic but they both come from proto indo european
The Beaker People are the earliest inhabitants of Great Britain and they and their culture got pushed west by incoming waves of migrants. Genetic traces can be found in the west of Wales 😊
No such thing as Beaker people, or Le Tene or Hallstatt.
No such thing as Beaer People? You are contradicting both the Natural History Museum and the Encyclopedia Brittannica@@WalesTheTrueBritons
@@WalesTheTrueBritons yes there is
Those migrants were also descendants of the beaker people, Europeans are more related than people like to admit
😮 England would be Ingland not Angland Connor. Its not a colony of America. Its not the United Federation of Planets' 'Anglish' which is a muxup of American and English...!
It's from Eng pronounced Ing.
(I dont have a link to the video I saw which explained it sorry, but there _was_ one I watched _ages_ ago here on RUclips) ...(and my name is not English, it's Irish - _Brigid_ - though ny middle name ( _Mary_ ) is apparently a derivative of a Hebrew name, meaning "bitter tears"
(...lovely eh?!😢)
Actually it's Anglish, Ænglisc. æ is under A on the keyboard for a reason.
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek
'Encyclopaedia' ...but no ae 'together' on my QWERTY ... 🥺🤔🏴🙂🖖
@@brigidsingleton1596 you hold down A to get the dead/obscure letters.
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek
I've tried that (& with e's etc) but my Tablet won't let me hold it fo long enough to even touch the letters I aim for. Likewise if (when!) I need to edit stuff, it is a real pita to edit anything...so it takes me forever to triple-check for typos to avoid having to battle to edit my 'copious' errors (now am 70 years old, I'm doing my best, but I only regained my eyesight last year -
Summer- 6th June, & Autumn 1st Sept '23).
I (Swedish) went with my family on vacation to the Netherlands when younger. My mother noted a similar thing to you, but with Swedish and Dutch. So... they sound familiar to a number of us. Linguistic melting pot of the ancient days maybe.
No, not dover conner. White cliff of dover are only one part
12:23 - So it seems Polish has adopted this Germanic word to refer to Italy - Włochy
always "pre-emptive"
Well, to one of your questions about Dutch, I know Frisian is the closest related language to English (or old English) there is. So it makes sense, for me personally as a Dutch person that English is easy? As I can also understand Frisian.. if this logic makes sense? (probably not but in my mind it does, sorry I'm about as ADD as Connor).
But it's also so easy to learn English and offc.. It's not as closely related to German, after all, I can hold a conversation in basic Dutch, and a German person could speak back to me in basic German and we would understand, but still!
Middle english was also quite heavily influenced by Dutch too it was probably the biggest influence outside of old english and Norman French at least as I understand but yes frisian is so similar to old english that alot of linguists consider it to be English's sister language
Dutch & Old English come from Low German, and German comes from High German, so Yes, Dutch is more similar to English than German is. PS Dont think Wallace was a woad painted Pict, or even a Celt. He wasn't. He was Anglo Norman. Even his name is Norman.He probably spoke very little Gaelic if any, and was more likely to speak Norman French or Old English.
Orkney and Shetland belonged to Norway, but came under the Kalmar ruled by Margrete who was born a Princess of Denmark, married the Norwegian king, united Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. A king of Denmark had a daughter who married a Scottish king, and as the Danish king couldn't pay the dowry he handed over the two groups of islands. It is by the way said that the people of Shetland are still geneticly more Norwegian than Scots - after more than 500 years 🤭
Concerning your question:
The first humans on the lands which today form the british isles, were neanderthals. We have no idea what language they spoke.
The first homo sapiens arrived by foot on Britain+Doggerland more than 40k years ago... and again, we have no idea what language they spoke.
The first "guessable" language on the british isles must have been one spoken by the western hunter gatherers. Basque might!!! be the last surviving example of that language group.
The first identifiable languages on the british isles are indeed celtic languages.
After them, the romans, anglo-saxons, norse, franco-normans and (peacefully) americans invaded and ra... ther intensly changed the local language.
So no, the celtic language was not the language of the "native" people, but the whole question of "nativity" is anyway complete nonsense. As we humans have always migrated, and most humans will be hard pressed to get back further than a few thousand years.
EXCEPT for the Khoi and Xhosa. Which are probably the only humans on earth that can trace their lineage back in the same general region for more than the impressive 50k years of the second place (Australias first nations).
I've always preferred using Albion in place of Britain simply to confuse people and talk about ancient names of things lol.
Respectable
Prydain!
Having the same word for Foreigner and Slave strongly indicates that all foreigners were considered useful uniquely as slaves.
Lots of the widely believed history of the home nations is made up / ignored. So on a trivial level modern kilts were invented by an Englishman, the national drink of Scotland used to be red wine (due to the links with France) and the majority of those living in Wales are descended from the English who moved there for jobs in the mines. I'm sure that similar things can be found about "English" history
And the majority of “English” people who live in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool are descended from the original Welsh after they were economically forced to re-locate to England. So what’s your point?
@@WalesTheTrueBritonsThat we're all native
He uploaded a really interesting new video: “All Brtiain’s Celtic languages explained”
Lokks at a (pop)linguistic clip. can't stop staring at trees...
Ironic how the petition to have the Welsh language given more recognition was written in English.
How? Most speakers speak English so it’s obvious it would be in English. Forced English at that.
Not ironic at all.
@@WalesTheTrueBritonsWho's forcing you? You have your own language, use it.
“Welsh not”, the effects of which are still being felt today.
Dutch is the closest language to english. The Frisian language (also spoken in the netherlands) is even closer. Dutch people learn English from a very young age (6 years old) and consume copious amounts of American and English TV.
Most indigenous people is a tricky one, as the before the Romans there were several settlement waves largely replacing those already there, the celtic people were the last of those and were probably there 500 to 1000 years when the Romans arrived.. Its thought that the people who built the stone circles make up just 2% of our DNA. Either way there are three candidate areas for which has the oldest setlers. There is western Ireland, away from Viking, Anglo-Norman and the 17th Century plantation populations. It is thought however that the Irish Celts arrived there later than those in Britain, so it could be western Wales. The other possibility could be north east Scotland, as the Picts may have been an older people than the celts further south, but that rather depends how much the Scots replaced them, culturally they totally vanished.
I lived in Germany for five years and I found it so easy to learn the language but found it almost impossible to get a grasp of the Latin languages.
Very educating video but also .......... very confusing. 🙂
Much more complicating as where I come from (The Netherlands, Holland, Dutch ....).
Btw I must say ...... I like you American RUclipsrs, seeing there's more to learn besides THE US of A. Big "eye openers".
'Cymru' is pronounced cum ree, for a couple of reasons 'Cymraeg' (the Welsh Language) is phoenetic but has mutations as well. No letter K, Q, X, Z , V a 'Poster ' (graham?) menetioned the Word for 'river' in Cymraeg is 'Affon' which is correct but spelt with one 'F' , ie Afon. Not critising just pointing out that 'FF' sometimes replaces the letter V , great Video by the way👍thumbs up in any Lingo!!
Not fully correct. "FF" in Welsh is the equivalent of the single "F" in English, whereas "F" in Welsh represents the same sound as English "V".
" THA MESS" !! Gets you a punch on the nose next time you visit !!
Hi, Connor! If I understood right what you meant....I agree with you! (Minute 10 to 10:30).
Why in the US do you pronounce a lot of words wrong, hence the words like zee bra. Ask an African and they call it Zeb ra also you call the German car brand or dee, no it called Audi which sounds like owdee. Sorry i'm just a grumpy old fart😠
😊❤ please let me join your 'grumpy old fart clan' ... I am right for it, truly, in every way, 'man'!!❤😊
Look up Webster
@@dlarge6502
An evil person if ever there was one imo!!! (No offence intended to most Webster's - my first & favourite - though we only had her for our first year, due to personal reasons - English teacher at my Secondary School was Mrs.Caroline Webster 👌❤️🏴).🇬🇧🖖
Dutch is more closely related to English than German is. In fact, Dutch is the most closely related official national language to English.
Wales and Cornwall I believe where are the most indigenous population. They were pushed west from the Germanic states.
America, Canada, Europe, Northern part of Asia and Russia shares the nature. New Sealand has same features.
I’m English with a Welsh father yes to Cymru! 🏴
The Welsh are believed to be the closest to the original Britons. I’ve heard that when the Angles and Saxons arrived the Britons were pushed west into modern day Wales. I could be wrong though.
Yeah you are wrong, the Britons are the Welsh, Welsh is the Anglo-Saxon name for the Britons and Briton is the Roman name for the Brython and Brython was the appellative name for the Cynmry which are the Welsh now spelled Cymry.
They were not pushed anywhere. What is now England didn’t suddenly become Anglo-Saxon only, in fact they were still the minority and only about 25% of DNA in the English population today have Anglo-Saxon DNA, there is almost no trace of Roman or Viking DNA either today and the French DNA predates the Norman invasion and most of those who made up the Norman army were actually the Britons (Welsh) who had migrated down into Western Europe and therefore were descendants of the Britons.
Most of the history taught today is Germanic propaganda and has no basis in reality and prior to the 18/19th century did not exist
@@Penddraig7 thanks for correcting me
@@jackearl2398 Was that Grainne Mhaol, or Grace O' Malley as her name is in English?
@@declanrussell2232 no worries, unfortunately there is a lot of anti non Germanic propaganda that started being pushed when the Germanic house on Hanover took over the monarchy and to quell a rebellion they gaslit the English into believing they were Anglo-Saxons and therefore they had their best interests at heart because the House of Hanover were a Saxony royal house and they were also a Holy Roman Empire House
@@Penddraig7 again thank you very much for educating me on that. Myself being brought up in England by an Irish catholic mother I could easily have fallen into that trap 😉
he missed Lundy island
Yes Tolkien took alot of influence form these languages the language the rohirim speak was based on old english dwarven was based on old norse and the language spoken by the elves was influenced by Irish.. although he literally invented his own languages
Netherlands speaks Dutch in English
Deutschland speaks German in Englisch 😉
@Robwords knows what I speak of 😁
It's the same with Nordic countries Sweden Norway etc.
Hustory becomes more interesting the more you investigate it.
The Welsh have been living on this island for10 thousand years and are the original people 😊
English, Dutch and Frisian are all Low German languages (the language of the lowlands) as opposed to modern German which is a High German language (i.e.: from the language of the Alpine territories).
Low German is a language of its own, descended from Continental Old Saxon. Frisian is a language family (West Frisian, Saterfrisian and North Frisian). Dutch is a descendant of Old Franconian, which was a more Central Germanic dialect that moved west around 400 AD
All of them, plus English are West Germanic (not "German") languages.
High German split off from the more northerly languages after it went through a second consonant shift some time between 600 and 800 AD.
Re Dutch/English. There is a really low quality video on here of Eddie Izzard speaking Old English to a farmer in the Netherlands speaking Frisian only. They manage to sell/buy a cow.
They don't manage to sell/buy a cow. The Frisian says he doesn't understand Eddie and ends up thinking that Eddie wants to milk a cow.
He reacted to that vid long ago.
Have to wonder what the Irish were thinking when they moved to Scotland...C'mon Seamus! I know an even colder and wetter place!!
Swedish "rotvälska" means gibberish, so it fits nicely.
So does Rotwelsch and Kauderwelsch in german.
Rotwelsch is an ancient German word meaning “language of thieves and thugs”, whereas Kauderwelsch is still used today, meaning “gibberish”.
@@MsPataca We certainly got it from German. I'd say its derogatory, but no longer connected to thiefs, typically said about severe dialects OR some disliked jargon. We may have associated it with "rotig", ~ messy.
Then there's "double Dutch"...
The Isle of Man is the best candidate for being Avalon.
The trees are the same cause the British bring they with them to make vessels.
This is a fascinating video, but the foolish host guy can't get beyond how the forest looks like one in the US. So irrelevant. It's not about you!
When the Romans invaded Britain, the ancient British tribes, if not killed fled to Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, which are more remote or mountainous areas that the Romans couldnt invade.
They didn’t flee to Scotland, Scotland didn’t exist, neither did Cornwall or technically Wales although there was a wales and it was called Prydain which the Romans latinised to Britannia.
They didn’t flee to anywhere, they already were in those places.
The Brython or Britons to the Romans or Welsh to the Anglo-Saxons were part of the Roman Empire, most of the “Romans” in Prydain (Britain) were Brythons and not Roman and some of them were even Roman Emperors
Was there no ferry to Ireland? Just kidding.
6:40 "foreigner" was pretty offensive for the people who had occupied the land for a millennium (give or take) before the Anglo-Saxons arrived.
imagine getting offended by something from a thousand years ago
@@lukespooky I was actually referring to the people who lived a thousand years ago, who had already found themselves repressed, dispossessed and raped by a bunch of graceless nordic intruders. The fact that these invaders called the locals "foreigners" then, and for centuries afterwards, is still pretty offensive.
Imagine glorifying something that happened a thousand years ago aswell. Like most Anglo do!
The context of the word _as then used_ actually relates more to the language and culture not the land itself.
Don't mix in modern nationalism to historical situations
@nealjroberts4050 "as then used"? It's _still_ being used 1,600 years after the Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain!!! Besides, would it be OK for a modern-day country to occupy another and refer to the (majority) indigenous population as "foreigners" or "slaves"? Of course it wouldn't.
There's no way he just said New England looks like England? How does he think it got its name 😂😂😂
The the British isles are actually the last bastion of the Keltic language group which is neither romance nor Germanic and because it's harde to conquer an island did the mainland Europe Celtics get eaten up by Germanic and roman influences while the Celtics up there semi exist to this day with English slowly overtaking their languages
Cornwell is the oldest and only indigenous area left in England, they are the last England based celts, closely related to the Welsh.
I would say Cornwall too, but just a guess on my part.
Anywhere that has its own language is a win for me. People say we have our own language, but I’m from Wigan. It’s just an accent.
The celts were not indigenous, unless you want to call the english indigenous too.
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek We could say… for instance ‘homo heidlelbergensis’, or a bit later, The Beaker People’, but I think everyone appreciates a cut off point to keep the discussion viable.
@KRAM_valentina The Celts were in the British Isles a thousand years before the English, and had established a rich literary culture, as well as laws, coinage and other trappings of a modern civilisation long before the Anglo-Saxons came along, and it would be centuries after the A/S invasion before the "English" became a thing.