I cannot but feel that most assimilation was by rape! And that the offspring thereof were servants made to speak what their masters spoke. I base this on the fact that after all the time of Roman occupation, when no local lad could serve in a legion in Britain, invaders had a pretty easy task of defeating aging retired legionaires and inexperienced, poorly armed locals. Anyone who could get out away from the invaders either crossed to Armorica (Brittany) with the last legions to leave, followed them, or fled west or north, determined to learn to fight and then do so! Women had more trouble doing this!
(As Iām sure Louis knows,) a tremendous amount of ink has been spilt giving different explanations for why this [edit- the seeming lack of influence from Welsh on English] happened.
From debates over exactly what vocabulary in English is derived from Welsh in both āstandardā English and dialects (the French embracing Celtic derivations, the English establishment seemingly not particularly to do so) and debate on how much the underlying grammar and usage of English is derived from Welsh,
Through to the fact that language influence in cases like this differs tremendously, depending on things such as the socio economic status and numbers of people coming in compared to the inhabitants, the different power play, the way the original language was regarded, etc- the situation in Britain was different in many ways to the rest of the Roman Empire.
Through to the idea that an underlying language having more effect on the grammar of a language than on its vocabulary is not unusual [tangentially, you can see that in Wales, where the way English is spoken is affected more than its vocabulary. Different times and circumstances- but thatās the point, really. Language shift doesnāt always happen in exactly the same way.] or even have little effect at all- to the degree it is often difficult to tell any influence at all from an underlying previous language.
And the idea that toponyms are often carried over, when other parts of the language are not.
All these considered, Iām not sure it is much of an unsolvable puzzle- rather it is a question with many different, not necessarily conflicting, answers.
touche (with accent on the āeā!)
Sorry about that, henddraig- I started writing that answer before you put yours up (Iām a very slow typer!) and it wasnāt directed at what you said!
Owain bach, what you put was a perfect answer to my input which was pure conjecture, in fairness, based on a bit of knowledge of human nature and of other conquests later in other places, but led by English armies!
You are quite right, there is very little proof of any facts about how languages and peoples interact, save in cases where the victors make the language of the vanquished illegal! cf Kurdish and Cymraeg.
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Nothing wrong with that! Stuff like that is how we get most of our ideas as a species!
And I think your idea is a perfectly valid one- as you know far better than me, however accurate genetic testing is, it doesnāt always give answers to the questions we want to ask!
I was simply pointing out there are many different answers to the question- and itās great to hear yours!
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ā¦and Scottish and Irish Gaelicā¦
I find the apartheid system as evidence for a lack of influence on the language is too abstract. Afrikaans contains Zulu influence. English contains Sanskrit (Jungle, Mufti).
Also, there is the chance that the Britons and Brythonic culture was used to bilingualism. Brythonic for home and Latin for commerce. Therefore, could the assimilation have allowed Anglo-Saxon to have dominated?
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Could you explain that last iidea a bit more clearly, I canĀ“t quite see what youĀ“re getting at, how it was supposed to work?
The Brythonic areas lived under Roman rule for 400 years. Therefore, there existed the precedent of two spheres of language. Publicly Latin, domestically Brythonic. Therefore, there is the possibility that the Brythonic culture was used to separate spheres of language. Assimilating into the areas of Saxon rule would not have necessitated Saxon gaining Brythonic language influence. The Brythonics would have adopted Saxon as they did Latin.
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Well, up to a point Lord Copper. 
The other extreme is when medical staff speak to grown adults in baby talk. When my wife was going through the pregnancy & childbirth stage, one of the things she would hear a lot was: āWaterworks ok dear?ā. For a long time āWaterworks ok dear?ā was a running joke in our family.
Right, I get you now.
But then Latin had behind it the prestige of an international empire and the whole weight of Romano-Greek civilization. Whereas the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were just a horde of hairy barbarians, despite ruling the roost by brute force. So itĀ“s hard to see why either Brittonic or whatever spoken Latin had developed into in Britain, didnĀ“t soon come to the fore.
Plenty of theories and discussion as to why other than the one you mentioned, as I said above.
Can you point me to any recent more or less serious studies/discussions (in English or Welsh)? Diolch yn fawr!
Donāt have them immediately to hand. But if you are interested I could explain any point youāre not sure of in the above post further if you like. If not, Iām sure (I know!) plenty of papers and discussion are available on the Internet if you use Google.
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Thatās an assumption based on sources written by Christians about the invading pagans. We donāt know what was attractive in the 5th century. We donāt know how ideologically attached to Romano-Greek culture the Britons were.
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Sorry I canāt recall the source of this, but I recently read something along these lines. That:
Many Britons were assimilated rather than displaced due to geography.
Regarding language especially grammar and construction, they had difficulty in adapting to the Germanic language of the Angles, etc, so naturally celticised Old English into a more workable form.
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The remains of the ĀØRoman OccupationĀØ are still to be seen all across England and parts of Wales. Roads (still major routes until the coming of motorways), temples, fora, villas. ThereĀ“s hardly a medium sized town without its Roman footprint. So IĀ“d say the interface between the Roman and British cultures must have been a pretty broad one. The wonder really is that British survived at all, one might have expected not Welsh (& Cornish) but one or more Romance languages in Britain.
Indeed it may well be that the most settled areas like the Thames valley and lower Severn area became Latin-speaking for a time. There are certainly a good number of Latin words borrowed into Welsh and Cornish going back to this time. Not later scholastic words, but names for common-or-garden objects and activities.
IĀ“m not a specialist in this area, but IĀ“d say this all shows that there must have been some kind of extensive and more or less stable bilingualism over a long period. And the point here is that this contrasts very sharply with the interaction between Britons and Saxons which seems to have been all one-sided. Indeed just as it still is with the English today.
Examples of ways in which OE was celticised (serious inquiry) ?
Hereās one theory: http://www.hildegard.tristram.de/media/tristram_manchester_30-07-07.pdf -possibly the one @JohnYoung refers to?
The theory also explains how Welsh has been/is being anglicised (particularly with regards to lexicon)
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