I always thought the term "ethno-linguistic"
was pretty funny.
I mean, the word "ethnic" refers to everything
that makes a distinct cultural group of people
a distinct cultural group of people, while
the word "linguistic" refers specifically
to language.
So ethno-linguistic always basically indicated
to me that what people were really after was
culture, but culture is fuzzy and difficult
to define and usually exactly the same as
language, so they just use language to quantify
things instead.
And doing things this way is really useful,
because when you boil all of culture down
to language you can see how culturally similar
a group of people are by how closely related
their languages are.
For instance, Germany, because it speaks a
western germanic language, is close cultural
buds with the Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland,
slightly less so with the Nordic countries,
and then it's faint cultural acquaintances
with the rest of Europe.
When I first learned that you could do this,
I tried applying it to England, and it through
a big fat monkey wrench into the whole system.
Why?
Because ENGLAND IS WEIRD!!!
I tried to come up with a sweet, short, simple
word that described the ethno-linguistics
of the English people like "east slavic" or
"western Germanic", but I eventually decided
that the quickest way to summarize their heritage
was to say that they are celtic-roman-western-germanic
people ruled by french-speaking vikings.
Allow me to explain.
At the beginning of the first century AD,
the British isles were populated entirely
by three mane celtic groups, until about 40AD
when the Romans took over the part of it inhabited
by the Brythonic people.
They stayed there until the 400s, and while
they were there they formed this Roman-Celtic
cultural mix, and this mix survived and stayed
there even after the Roman Empire abandoned
the British Isles, but over the next few hundred
years the Roman-Celtic people who were left
slowly lost territory to a mix of various
western Germanic people who history has decided
to call "Anglo Saxons" even though that's
not quite accurate.
It's unclear how much they just wiped out
the native population to make room and how
much they actually moved in and started inter-breeding,
but there was probably some of both.
By the way, King Arthur, according to legend,
was actually one of these celtic-brythonic-mix
people, and there are actually stories of
him fighting the invading Anglo-Saxons.
Anyway, the Anglo-Saxons had taken over all
of what is today considered "England" at the
beginning of the tenth century , so we have
four regions at this point in the British
islands, each with their own ethno-linguistic
background.
And now we got to the Norman invasion in 1066,
and here's where I need to back up so I can
explain the origin of the Normans.
See, the vikings, which is to say, northern
Germanic people from Scandinavia, kept sailing
up the rivers of France to raid and pillage
the local French people and then they went
back home carrying all there loot.
Except, some of them stayed behind and adopted
the local culture, and after a while of this,
the French were just like, "You know what,
you've wiped out most of the people living
there and you've mostly moved in there yourself,
why don't you just take the whole piece of
land, we don't want to have to fend you off
anymore." and the Vikings were like “sweet!”
So they founded the country of Normandy in
northern France.
They then proceeded to completely give up
their old culture in favor of the French one
for some reason, and after a few generations
no one could remember how to speak Norse anymore.
But, like a child who got bored with his old
toy, they Normans decided they needed somewhere
new to invade, so they invaded England in
1066 and conquered the Anglo-Saxons.
This is the beginning of England as we know
it, as the mingling between Normal French
culture and Anglo-Saxon culture basically
created Modern English culture.
All of the English monarchs most of you have
heard of are actually descended from the Norman
conquerers, all the way up to Queen Elizabeth
the second.
So this is why the English people annoy me.
They’re mixes of people who are mixes of
people who are mixes of people, and they don't
fit into any of the nice ethno-linguistic
groups that I like to divide Europe into.
They should learn from us Americans, who's
ethnolinguistic background is nice and pure
and simple.
