Who are the British?

from: Spotlight on Britain, Sheerin, OUP, p1)

Why British not English?

Many foreigners say 'England' and 'English' when they mean 'Britain', or the 'UK', and 'British'. This is very
annoying for the 5 million people who live in Scotland, the 2.8 million in Wales and 1.5 million in Northern
Ireland who are certainly not English. (46 million people live in England.) However, the people from
Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England are all British. So what is the difference between the names
'Great Britain' and 'the United Kingdom' - and what about 'the British Isles'?

The United Kingdom

This is an abbreviation of 'the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. It is often further
abbreviated to 'UK', and is the political name of the country which is made up of England, Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland (sometimes known as Ulster). Several islands off the British coast are also part of the
United Kingdom (for example, the Isle of Wight, the Orkneys, Hebrides and Shetlands, and the Isles of
Scilly), although the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not. However, all these islands do recognize
the Queen.

Great Britain

This is the name of the island which is made up of England, Scotland
and Wales and so, strictly speaking, it does not include Northern Ireland.
The origin of the word 'Great' is a reference to size, because in many
European languages the words for Britain and Brittany in France are the
same. In fact, it was the French who first talked about "Grande
Bretagne"! In everyday speech 'Britain' is used to mean the United
Kingdom.

The British Isles

This is the geographical name that refers to all the islands off the north
west coast of the European continent: Great Britain, the whole of Ireland
(Northern and Southern), the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. But it
is important to remember that Southern Ireland - that is the Republic of
Ireland (also called 'Eire') - is completely independent.

So you can see that 'The United Kingdom' is the correct name to use if
you are referring to the country in a political, rather than in a
geographical way. 'British' refers to people from the UK, Great Britain or
the British Isles in general.

How was the United Kingdom formed?

This took centuries, and a lot of armed struggle was involved. In the 15th
century a Welsh prince, Henry Tudor, became King Henry VII of
England. Then his son, King Henry VIII, united England and Wales under one Parliament in 1536. In
Scotland a similar thing happened. The King of Scotland inherited the crown of England and Wales in 1603,
so he became King James I of England and Wales and King James VI of Scotland. The Parliaments of
England, Wales and Scotland were united a century later in 1707.

The Scottish and Welsh are proud and independent people. In recent years there have been attempts at
devolution in the two countries, particularly in Scotland where the Scottish Nationalist Party was very strong
for a while. However, in a referendum in 1978 the Welsh rejected devolution and in 1979 the Scots did the
same. So it seems that most Welsh and Scottish people are happy to form part of the UK even though they
sometimes complain that they are dominated by England, and particularly by London.

The whole of Ireland was united with Great Britain from 1801 up until 1922. In that year the independent
Republic of Ireland was formed in the South, while Northern Ireland became part of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The story of this particular union is long and complicated.




Daffodil,
symbol of
Wales


Shamrock,
symbol of
Ireland



Rose,
symbol of
England



Thistle,
symbol of
Scotland


The Union Jack

The flag of the United Kingdom, known as the Union Jack, is made up of three
crosses. The upright red cross is the cross of St George, the patron saint of
England. The white diagonal cross (with the arms going into the corners) is the
cross of St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland. The red diagonal cross is the
cross of St Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. St David is the patron saint of
Wales.

Invasion

What makes the Scottish, Welsh, English and Northern Irish different from each other? About 2,000 years
ago the British Isles were inhabited by the Celts who originally came from continental Europe. During the
next 1,000 years there were many invasions. The Romans came from Italy in AD 43 and, in calling the
country Britannia, gave Britain its name. The Angles and Saxons came from Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands in the 5th century, and England gets its name from the invasion (Angle-land). The Vikings
arrived from Denmark and Norway throughout the 9th century, and in 1066 (the one date in history which
every British school-child knows) the Normans invaded from France under the authority of William the
Conqueror. These invasions drove the Celts into what is now Wales and Scotland, and they remained, of
course, in Ireland. The English, on the other hand, are the descendants of all the invaders, but are more
Anglo-Saxon than anything else. These various origins explain many of the differences to be found
between England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland - differences in education, religion and the legal systems,
but most obviously, in language.

Short history of the English language

Two thousand years ago the British Isles were inhabited by speakers of Celtic languages. These languages
still survive in parts of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Brittany in France. The Celts were conquered by the
Romans, and from 43 AD to about AD 410 the areas which are now England and Wales were part of the
Roman Empire, and Latin was the language of government. Between the fourth and seventh centuries AD,
the Anglo-Saxons arrived from what is now northern Germany, Holland and Denmark, and occupied most
of England, and parts of southern Scotland. In some parts of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, people still
speak Celtic languages. The Anglo-Saxons spoke a Germanic language which forms the basis of modern
English. This language was modified by the arrival of Viking invaders in the north and east of the country,
who came from Norway and Denmark between the eighth and eleventh centuries. These Scandinavian
settlers spoke Old Norse, which was related to Anglo-Saxon, and which is the parent language of modern
Danish. The mixing of the two languages greatly enriched the vocabulary of English. By the middle of the
tenth century England had become a unified country under one king.

In 1066 England was conquered by the French-speaking Normans, and French became the language of
government. For the next three hundred years three languages co-existed. The aristocracy spoke French,
the ordinary people spoke English, while Latin was used in the church. Modern English evolved from the
mingling of the three tongues. Today English vocabulary is approximately half Germanic (from the Saxons
and Vikings) and half Romance (from French and Latin). There are however considerable borrowings from
other languages.

Some derived words
Old English: shirt, life, death, heaven, earth, love, hate
Old Norse: skirt, birth, window, ugly, wrong, they, their, them
French: boil, roast, veal, beef, pork, village, painter, tailor
Latin: index, item, major, memorandum

Features of the English language

English has changed so much in the last 1500 years that it would now be hardly recognizable to the Anglo-
Saxons who brought the language across the North Sea. Although they would be able to recognize many
individual words, they would not recognize the way those words are put together to make sentences. Old
English, like modern German, was a highly inflected language, i.e. most words changed their endings or
forms to show their relationship to other words in the sentence according to number (singular, plural),
gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), case (subject, object), tense (past, future) etc. Some modern English
words still inflect, but much less so than in other European languages. The English verb 'to ride' inflects into
five forms (ride, rides, riding, rode, ridden) whereas the equivalent German verb has sixteen forms. The
English word 'the' has only one form, whereas other European languages would have several different
forms. The trend towards simplicity of form is considered to be a strength of English.
Another strength is the flexibility of function of individual words. Look at these uses of the word 'round':
There was a round table. (adjective)
He bought a round of drinks. (noun)
He turned round. (adverb)
He ran round the field. (preposition)
The car tried to round the bend too quickly. (verb)

This flexibility, together with a flexibility towards the assimilation of words borrowed from other languages
and the spontaneous creation of new words have made English what it is today, an effective medium of
international communication. English has achieved this in spite of the difficulties caused by written English,
which is not systematically phonetic.

Some loan words
Arabic admiral, algebra, mattress Russian vodka, sputnik
Spanish mosquito, cigar, canyon Finnish sauna
Italian piano, violin, spaghetti Chinese tea, silk
Dutch yacht, boss, deck Portuguese marmalade
Hindi pyjamas, shampoo, bungalow Eskimo anorak
Turkish yoghurt, kiosk Czech robot
Japanese tycoon, karate Basque bizarre
Malay bamboo, compound Carib canoe
Nahuatl (Aztec) tomato, chocolate Australian Aborigine kangaroo, boomerang
Quechua (Inca) coca, quinine Modern French rendez-vous, caf
Hungarian coach paprika Modern German kindergarten
Classical Greek theatre, astronomy, logic Gaelic whisky
Farsi (Iranian) lilac

Some 'created' words
xerox, hoover, mackintosh, sandwich, submarine, helicopter, pop, rock'n roll, x-ray, astronaut, hot dog.

English today

Approximately 350 million people speak English as their first language. About the same number use it as a
second language. It is the language of aviation, international sport and pop music. 75% of the world's mail
is in English, 60% of the world's radio stations broadcast in English and more than half of the world's
periodicals are printed in English. It is an official language in 44 countries. In many others it is the language
of business, commerce and technology.
There are many varieties of English, but Scottish, Texan, Australian, Indian and Jamaican speakers of
English, in spite of the differences in pronunciation, structure and vocabulary, would recognize that they are
all speaking the same basic language.

Some contemporary buzzwords
buzzword, empowerment, to leverage, proactive, wellness, win-win, deshopping, wagabees, hand-me-up

Some typical txt tlk (text talk) English
RUF2T, CU@H20WC, B4N, CUL8R, RU>18?, W2T2U