[neverdem]

Tim Bower

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Technically they are both British (inhabitants of the British Isles), though the Irish (from the Republic of Ireland) are as probable to consider themselves British as Canadians are to consider themselves American. In contrast, most Latin Americans consider themselves American.

[Cicero]

Interesting article. Genetically, it's not that surprising that the populations go back before the Celtic and subsequent invasions.

But you can't discount the importance of cultural change. China had a way of assimilating invaders and getting them to adapt the Chinese culture. But the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Normans all ruled in their turns, and had enormous cultural influence. Which would help explain why the people of those regions are so different from one another.

[neverdem]

Red Pepper: Hot Stuff For Fighting Fat?

Programmed For Obesity: Early Exposure To Common Chemicals Can Permanently Alter Metabolic System

FReepmail me if you want on or off my health and science ping list.

[Vigilanteman]

When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north.

Ah, just another fine benefit of global warming . . .

[RegulatorCountry]

"In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque."

This dovetails nicely with the Milesian Legends, but the timeframe appears to be off considerably.

[sneakers]

bump

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

"He also adopts Dr. Forster’s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, that English is an ancient, fourth branch of the Germanic language tree, and was spoken in England before the Roman invasion."

If this is the case, then it would be pretty big.

[CarrotAndStick]

Searching for the Welsh-Hindi link
BBC ^ | Monday, 14 March, 2005, 10:31 GMT | BBC

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363051/posts

A BBC journalist is urging helpful linguists to come forward to help solve a mystery - why the Hindi (India's official language, along with English) accent has so much in common with Welsh. Sonia Mathur, a native Hindi speaker, had her interest sparked when she moved from India to work for the BBC in Wales - and found that two accents from countries 5,000 miles apart seemed to have something in common.

It has long been known that the two languages stem from Indo-European, the "mother of all languages" - but the peculiar similarities between the two accents when spoken in English are striking.

Remarkably, no-one has yet done a direct proper comparative study between the two languages to found out why this is so, says Ms Mathur.

"What I'm hoping is that if amateurs like myself - who have indulged in doing a little bit of research here and there - come forward, we can actually do proper research with professional linguists," she told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

No coincidence

Ms Mathur explained that when she moved to Wales, everyone instantly assumed she was Welsh from her accent.

"I would just answer the phone, and they would say 'oh hello, which part of Wales are you from?'," she said.

We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels

Sonia Mathur "I would explain that I'm not from Wales at all - I'm from India.

"It was just hilarious each time this conversation happened."

Her interest aroused, Ms Mathur spoke to a number of other people whose first language is Hindi.

One Hindi doctor in north Wales told her that when he answered the phone, people hearing his accent would begin talking to him in Welsh.

"I thought maybe it isn't a coincidence, and if I dig deeper I might find something more," Ms Mathur said.

Particular similarities between the accents are the way that both place emphasis on the last part of word, and an elongated way of speaking that pronounces all the letters of a word.

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels," Ms Mathur said.

"For example, if you were to pronounce 'predominantly', it would sound really similar in both because the 'r' is rolled, there is an emphasis on the 'd', and all the letters that are used to make the word can be heard.

"It's just fascinating that these things happen between people who come from such varied backgrounds."

The similarities have sometimes proved particularly tricky for actors - Pete Postlethwaite, playing an Asian criminal in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, had his accent described by Empire magazine as "Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea".

Proto-European language

But not only the two languages' accents share notable common features - their vocabularies do too.

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite? Ms Mathur's own research on basic words, such as the numbers one to 10, found that many were similar - "seven", for example, is "saith" in Welsh, "saat" in Hindi.

"These kind of things really struck me," she said.

"When I reached number nine they were exactly the same - it's 'naw' - and I thought there had to be more to it than sheer coincidence."

She later spoke to professor Colin Williams of Cardiff University's School Of Welsh, who specialises in comparative languages.

He suggested that the similarities are because they come from the same mother language - the proto-European language.

"It was basically the mother language to Celtic, Latin, and Sanskrit," Ms Mathur added.

"So basically that's where this link originates from."

---

Ms Mathur noticed the similarities after moving to BBC Radio Wales

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels."

Sonia Mathur

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite?

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

"Dr. Oppenheimer said genes “have no bearing on cultural history.”"

Bump to that.

A lot of Europeans seem to link people group (race) and culture together as if they are the same. In the Shilpa Shetty scandal in the British version of "Big Brother," people were declaring Jade Goody racist because of disparaging comments she made about Indian culture. The two are not the same.

Plenty of Americans use a Germanic language (English) although their amound of Germanic blood may be very low, or nonexistent.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Genealogy ping?

[denydenydeny]

The new arrivals in the British Isles would have found an empty territory, which they could have reached just by walking along the Atlantic coastline, since the English Channel and the Irish Sea were still land.

...until those prehistoric SUVs wrecked everything.

[hosepipe]

Both the English and Irish have yet to learn that Socialism is Slavery by Government..
And a Democracy is Mob Rule by Mobsters always in every place universally..

They are not too smart..

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

ping.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks for the pings, neverdem and Jedi Master Pikachu. To all -- see the list of related FR topics above.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[blam]

Oppemheimer's book, "Origin's Of The British", is an excellent book as is Bryan Sykes book, "Saxons, Vikings and Celts". Both these books are inspired by DNA studies. 85% of the DNA of the British Isles is very ancient and mostly the people are all the same having come from the Franco-Iberian Ice Age refuge at the end of the Ice Age.

[Pharmboy]

[Basheva]

Well, if you just want to simplify this whole thing....

Everyone went everywhere.

[martin_fierro]

	Genetic Genealogy
Send FReepmail if you want on/off GGP list Marty = Paternal Haplogroup O(2?)(M175) Maternal Haplogroup H
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[aculeus]

What's next?

Combined St Patrick-St George parades?

[Irish_Thatcherite]

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans.

WTH?? I accept that the peoples of these islands are more or less ethnically, if not culturally, homogenous, but this is a bizarre claim - the notion that Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, Vikings and Romans are only a minority of the genetic make up???

Ireland Ping!