Who Are We Really?
A little while ago, @elsiekjay posted a thought provoking video on misconceptions about Africa. One of the things she mentioned was that there are many tribal languages across each country and there is usually one main language which allows communication across the countries between tribes. Initially it seemed strange to me, but when I thought about it more I realised that at one time every country in the world would have had many different tribal languages and dialects, but over the years they have mostly amalgamated into one language with maybe small variances in accent and dialect.
photo by @izzydawnIn western Europe there were many Celtic languages and most of these have gone extinct. While there are a few pockets where they are still spoken, it is in addition to the country language. There are various reasons for these languages dying out and much of it is to do with conquest.
The English language is still classed as a Germanic language despite having a lot of romance language influence. Throughout history the British Isles has been invaded from all the European sides. The Norse came in from the Scandinavian countries in the north and the Goths and Saxons came from the area that is now Germany. These were Germanic languages. The Roman invasions brought Latin. Other romance languages which have been incorporated into modern English come from French and Spanish. Britain varied between being at war with these countries and making alliances through royal marriages. For several generations England had kings from Normandy who spoke only French and no English.
For the most part the English language developed naturally as a way to simplify communication between the varied languages. It dropped the masculine and feminine that many European languages use and, for the most part, plurals became simplified by just adding an “s” at the end.
However, it is also certain that some enforcement was used to stop the use of Celtic languages. In 1536 an act of union was enacted which pretty much banned the use of the Welsh language and removed it's official status as a language. Hundreds of years later in the 1840s a report was drawn up which declared that all schooling in Wales had to be done in the English language and children were at best discouraged from even speaking Welsh while at school and at worst were punished for it. Interestingly, Welsh is still spoken today, which makes you wonder if enforcing change is actually as effective as allowing change to evolve naturally. Force tends incite rebellion, in my experience.
In Cornwall their native Celtic language gained a resurgence at the start of the 20th century. Cornwall is an area which has, over the years, remained mostly unconquered and possibly has one of the highest amounts of original native British. They do not consider themselves to be English, despite being on the area of the isles that is classed as England. The reason is that they consider England as the land of the conquerors.
For me this brings up an interesting question. Are we, the English, the descendants the natives, of our conquerors or something else? In my family alone the physical genetics of a variety of cultures are apparent. My father has the hair colour of what is thought to be the original natives of the area. My mother and sister have dark Mediterranean features, my aunt has the blonde hair and blue eyes of the Saxons, or maybe Vikings, and I most certainly have Viking blood showing! Interestingly, the family name which connects us to Viking ancestry on my father's side has been altered through the French language, also indicating ancestry from France.
In an added note, my maternal grandmother was from Germany and certainly a source of our Mediterranean genetics. She was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland [again]) and during Hitler's regime all families had to trace their ancestry to prove German heritage.
When Britain expanded its empire to countries across the world, was it the descendants of those original native Britons that did this, or a race of people evolved from all the European warriors who invaded Britain, breeding with the natives? Perhaps it was a culmination of Europeans who ended up pooling their genes when they decided to stay in this new land. A race which ended up gaining the hatred of even some of it's previous conquerors and ancestors.
If you think about it enough, it can raise a multitude of questions about national identity, so I'm going to leave it at that, today, before I really bake my noodle! Instead, I'll turn it over to you, dear reader. If you've made it this far, what do you think?
This is an elegant outline of the English language. All languages are bastardised versions of pre-existing dialects and languages, but English, as you have pointed out, with its layers of Teutonic and Latin (and some others), is probably the biggest bastard of the lot :) ...... The Indian version is interesting too - ie as spoken in India, with anglicisation of Hindi/Urdu words and Hindi/Urdu words being integrated (as verbs or nouns) into Indian English. Sentences are often repeated - one after the other - in the other language (Hindi/Urdu or English) for emphasis. And there's also the continuing status aspect of English, which is a remnant of colonial times when the babu class was created as a middle-layer between rulers and ruled, in order to implement rule. A poor level of spoken English is looked down on by the elite and openly ridiculed, although the flavour of this snobbery has altered over the past decade or two of rising Hindutva and its ugly and insane agenda. Interestingly, business in parliament in Delhi has been conducted in English since Independence - there is resistance to the national 'Hindi' language by the Tamils in the South (who are mainly Hindus btw), it is not taught in schools and English is preferred for communication with non-Tamil speakers. Other parts of the country also prefer to use English over Hindi/Urdu as the second language. India has a few dozen main languages (with their own scripts) and hundreds of derivatives.
As for the question under consideration, which, "If you think about it enough, it can raise a multitude of questions about national identity", hmm, I wonder if it has anything to it beyond mere curiosity and a temporary measure for discovering details that may have a bearing on how we express ourselves. I mean, the 'who I am' question for me is beyond nationality - indeed, the division inherent in groupings leads me outside and away from the data that can tell me who I am. The effect of genealogy, anscestry, culture etc is very powerful, but, for me, this belongs to the experience of being conditioned to think you are something other than what you really are......if that makes sense :D
I often wondered at the fluency that many Indians seem to have in English, but then I also often forget that it is part of the British Commonwealth. So English is actually used as a day to day language there then? While what you've said is wonderfully fascinating I also have a tinge of sadness for how it is used in the judgement of class.
Thank you for your thoughts on my question. What set me on the path to writing this were some of the many debates on nationality and race. I am who I am and I am the product of my ancestors. I wouldn't choose it any other way. However, I cannot claim to be of an original native culture. I cannot claim my ancestry back to one country.
I suddenly realise that I forgot to include that my grandmother was German. That is potentially where some of the Mediterranean genes have come through. During Hitler's regime, all Germans had to trace their bloodline to prove a long German ancestry. So I agree, there is certainly a lot of conditioning for you to be of a certain "nationality." It's not enough for us to be who we are. I guess my direction in writing this was indeed to ask, does it matter?
If we go back far enough we are likely all a mixed bunch and I think that's a good thing. It makes for a strong and diverse gene pool. I love that in Britain if you have any gathering of people there are lots of different hair, eye and skin colours. I remember thinking once, when I was a teen, how can any white be racist when the whole race is already a mixed pot?
The school I went to was English-medium, as are a lot of the schools across the country. The snobbery and class status of English has been significant since Independence in 1947. The heads of both of the newly formed nations - Nehru in India, and Jinnah in Pakistan, were anglophiles through and through. Both were educated in England, both used English as their medium of communication, both affected Western mannerisms and attire. Nehru's famous Independence day speech - "Tryst with destiny" - was delivered in English, Nehru himself utterly incapable of such oratory in any of the Indian languages. Jinnah was no different, and his proposal for a separate Muslim homeland - the 'Land of the Pure' (Pak-istan) was dismissed with ridicule until shortly before independence, when it was a useful tool of division and demagoguery. I consider current Indian society (especially in the North-West) to be fragmented. There is certainly more pride in India than the 1980s of my childhood where everything Indian was second-class. This inferiority complex has transformed somewhat into an upsurge of fascist Hindutva, and an aggressive pursuit of narrow agendas playing out at top political levels. The relative statuses of Hindi/Urdu and English may be drawing closer, but the perceived divisions in the country are widening :(
Yes, fantastic line of enquiry. I think it matters only at a personal level of curiosity, and healing oneself from inherited traumas of family, tribe and peoples. When we travel, live elsewhere, it becomes so clear - as you have pointed out - that any other consideration of ethnicity along lines of 'us' vs 'them', or in order to find the 'pure streak', is really nothing more than a tool of control and manipulation, as well as justification for the same.
There are no natural lines of division across the planet which conform to any man-made sense of nationality. It can be fun to cheer a team on in a match, but the division into teams itself is as artificial and random as the lines drawn on a map to separate one set of people from another, to split people apart. The most rapid advances have taken place where there is a mixing of maximum diversity (even in humans, the more diverse you genes are, the better placed you are to not activate any inherited condition!). The facade of 'Nationality' is revealed when, for example, one looks at the number of 'foreign' players in any given 'national' team - take the cricket or football worlds high profile examples of this.
Identity has always been a biggie for me - being mixed myself, I always felt and was made to feel, different. It bothered me until I let it go and realised just what a magnificent gift had been bestowed on me by having parentage as diverse as Scottish and Indian :D.
I would have guessed that becoming independent would have led them to want to reject English as a way to claim their own country back. I guess that's what they're trying to do now, instead.
Something that seems to be happening in a lot of countries of late :(
Have you read this post on countries from @mattclarke? It's very much along these lines. Most of these things are just the rules of man-made games.
Our instinct is to want to fit in as children and young adults. It can take a long time to realise that our difference is a new perspective and a gift. Yet, in the right environment, even as children we can grow up loving the variety around us. I sometimes wish that my grandparents had chosen to raise their children bilingual, so that my sister and I could have enjoyed the same. I'm guessing that straight after the war it mustn't have seemed like a great idea to be speaking German, though.
So much of human history we were divided up into cities, which is so much more sensible.
Cities can have their own languages, governance, cultural practices and even internal currencies (with gold and silver used for trade with other cities), there's really no need for the concept of a country, unless you want to micromanage the lives of the people on an entire continent, controlling their movements, activities, and which items they can own.
Villages, towns then cities would have been more like an expansion on the tribes, but the larger the populous, the more disconnected we become and the harder it becomes for one entity to have control without finding ways to keep eyes on everyone.
Of course, what else would the power hungry want? There is no meaning to their life without control.
Thanks for the link to @mattclarke's post - very interesting and I agree entirely :) ...... it's interesting to think just how much is the product of 'man-made' stuff. All man-made structuring, organising, writing (including religious texts, regardless of origin :) etc etc are products of thought, all divisions and groupings too. Matt's observation is astute - cities and continents, but no countries. Cities and continents retain a continuity that 'countries' do not. Pre WW1 or WW2 cities and continents no different (in location anyway :) than post, yet country lines re-drawn out of some bureaucrat's backside and onto a 'map'.
Goodness, given how some of the oldies in the UK still haven't forgiven the Germans, I don't think it would've been a good idea post WW2. Oh the insanity of it all!!
Although cities do sometimes get a name change when country boundaries change or dictators come and go.
I love that you are choosing this topic to talk about!
One of my favorite books I read in high school talked about the evolution of the English language over the centuries and how it drew from all the elements that you are talking about.
At the end it concluded that there is no "pure" form of English, and that the language at its essence is changing and constantly mutating, and that is a good thing =)
I find the history of the English language fascinating. It's always funny when you hear a foreign speaker use an English word, except it's not, it's from their own language and was incorporated into English hundreds of years ago. I've heard it called a living language and it seems an appropriate description.
Sometimes English can seem so complex, but in other ways it's so simple. When a foreigner is not fluent with the language they can often still make themselves understood, because English is so flexible. Word order can often be swapped around and still make sense. I can see, in many ways, why it became the go to language for communicating internationally and I don't think it's purely because of the British Empire. Every country that speaks it as their main language uses some different words as each has evolved separate to British English.
And there are so many foreign phrases that we use regularly (and I guess this is subject to be different depending on where you live what your circles are etc) but there are many french/spanish/yiddish phrases that are common knowledge and people find themselves using them even if they have zero knowledge of the actual language that these phrases are borrowed from.