The English and the Celts - no genocide?

[Robert Vermaat]

Oh for goodness sake, Robert! Make up your mind, please! 8) Now you
say you are AGREEING with Coates, after all!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
But I thought you had just complained that Coates thinks the reason
for Anglo-Saxons not adopting British words was that they had entered
an 'empty landscape' (because of either slaughter, exile or famine).

Well, I must apologise for confusing you!
I thought it was common practise that one could agree with some part of an article, while rejecting another part. And since these two need not be the same thing (after all, Coates mentions both as possibilities), I thought I could do that. [smilie for irony seems to be missing here]

Erm, excuse me, Robert, but it is YOU who are wrong there!!!
I am quoting the reference in Coates's article - which has been
mentioned in this thread a dozen or more times - that says Romans
adopted 40 words from Gallic into Latin compared to the Anglo-Saxon
adoption of only THREE words from Brittonic into Old English.
I don't know what kind of game you are trying to play on us all, here,
but you can't ignore the evidence of linguists - or the evidence of what
has been said in the archives of RAT, either. YOU were trying to
make a flawed point, to defend your Anglo-Saxon friends, by claiming
that they didn't need to adopt British words, as they wouldn't have seen
anything in Britain that they hadn't seen in Germany (like Kangaroos or
Koala Bears, for example).

The fact still remains (despite your attempts to ignore it and explain it
away) that Romans adopted MORE THAN TEN TIMES AS MANY WORDS
FROM GALLIC THAN ANGLO-SAXONS ADOPTED bRITTONIC WORDS

Temper temper Mike, calm down. It's not a good thing to write such heated posts late at night.

Stay objective, please, and lay off from statements like "your Anglo-Saxon friends", Or "what kind of game you are trying to play on us all", and such. That gets us nowhere.

My argument was, and is, that even though it's a number that's ten times as much, it's still a low amount when you consider that Romans and Celts were in contact much longer (almost 900 years). Also, the Romans were much more dominant (they conquered all the Celts in their Empire, not live side by side across a hostile border), plus the Romans were culturally more dominant than the Gauls, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, who were by no means that more advanced. And that's a valid argument.


Robert, please calm down and stop trying to create arguments where
they do not exist (we have enough already to disagree about). [/quote]

Well, it's not me who is SHOUTING on this forum. Please remember your webiquette.

Nobody on this thread has ever suggested that Romans did not learn from the Celts. And it is beyond me why you should imply that anyone has. :lol:

Well, it was you in fact who qoted (jan 24) that "Coates argues that the Romans wouldn't have seen anything new in Gaul, either". So your name is Nobody, in fact?

It is rather disingenuous of you (to put politely) to try to rubbish the evidence, or reword it, just because you don't like what it proves.

And there you go again. Can't win this with arguments, so you need to become persoal again?

As for saying that these GALLIC words could have come from the Italic Celts rather than the Gallic Celts 'FOR ALL YOU KNOW, I think that tells the rest of us an awful lot about 'ALL YOU KNOW.

And again. Did I piss you off or something. there's really no need to become that condescending, now is there? Are you a linguist? Why this comment if you don't want to argue with the correct data? Do you, then, know from which celts these words enetred into Latin? If not, then why comment on me stating (truthfully) that I don't know? What's the use?

Oh, so now you say I am guessing? Actually, I'm going by the evidence
of Gildas, Bede, Albinus (Arch Bishop of Canterbury, who was Bede's
source about the Adventus Saxonum in Kent) the ASC, the Historia
Brittonum, the Gallic Chronicle (for year 452) St. Patrick's 'Confessio',
the archaeological evidence of the systematic abandonment of British
cities in precise co-ordination with the Westward advance of Anglo-Saxon
groupings through 'England' and the linguistic evidence that over 600
years of Anglo-Saxon hegemony in England, they apparently didn't
adopt more than THREE words from the native population. If that
wasn't a conquest far more hostile than the Roman conquest of Gaul,
then somebody isn't paying enough attention to the evidence. :roll:

Well yes Mike, like it or not, that's still guessing instead of knowing. Statements about this period, whether coming from you, me, professor Dumville or Professor Coates, the're all guessing. Educated guessing by people who are sometimes extremely educated, but still guessing. You're not the only one who sometimes forgets that (there are some professors, too), but nevertheless, that's the best we all can come up with, not having been there and watching what really went on or not.

Of course there wasn't an 'empty landscape'. The Anglo-Saxons (for
which read: Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Frisians, Franks, Geats, Swedes,
Norwegians and no doubt many others) probably found a Romanised,
Christianised, British population in England & Wales of about 4 million
(according to the best archaeological estimates) and 'emptied' that
rather full landscape themselves (through masacre, exile, apartheid
enslavement etc). And when the only documented case of 5th c. Britons
actually INVITING Anglo-Saxons to Britain (you - I mean,
Vortigern 8) - inviting the Jutes to Kent in the Adventus Saxonum)
is cospicuous in its singularity among an estimated immigration of
AT LEAST 200,000 Anglo-Saxons here in the 5th & 6th centuries
(see Harke) and probably a Hell of a lot MORE than that, if some
of the genetic studies suggesting 2 million are correct, then how, exactly
do you not see hostility as being 'the rule'? 8)

Well, there seems to be a lot of confusion about that 'empty landscape' and what caused it or not. Coates seems to quote Härke, but has a different opinion about origins. Härke (I’m told) saw a sharp population drop around this time, and saw an end to the drop when the Anglo-Saxons arrived (again, not my view), whilst Coates saw an ‘empty landscape’ as a reason why Anglo-Saxons and Britons had not been in touch, linguistically.

Now we both agree that the western Roman Empire saw a sharp drop in economy, building, manufacture of luxury goods and all those niceties associated with a stable civilization. Roofs were no longer tiled, building no longer built in stone but of wood, good-quality pottery became extremely rare. And not just in Britain, but also in Gaul, Spain, Italy.
As a result from hostility? In part, sure, but these parts of the Empire never saw anything of invasion, depopulation and linguistic processes as we find in Britain. Yet the effects are there, but apparently not caused by anything like a massive invasion/migration (or plague) as is so often proposed as the reason for similar effects in Britain. So is Britain unique? Similar effect, different causes? If so, why?

That is why I see hostility as being “aâ€