The English largely descend from two main historical population groups: the West Germanic tribes, including the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians who settled in Southern Britain following the withdrawal of the Romans, and the partially Romanised
The modern English are genetically closest to the Celtic peoples of the British Isles, but the modern English are not simply Celts who speak a German language. A large number of Germans migrated to Britain in the 6th century, and there are parts of England where nearly half the ancestry is Germanic.
Even the English are rather Anglo-Celts than Anglo-Saxons, and still more certainly is Anglo-Celtic a more accurate term than Anglo-Saxon, not only for that British nationality which includes the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh; but also for that Britannic race, chief elements in the formation of which have been Welsh, ...
The Germanic family itself has subgroups; English is in the West Germanic branch along with German, Dutch, Afrikaans, and a few others. What makes English like the other languages in its subfamily? West Germanic languages all trace back to one parent language.
Modern Britons are descended mainly from the varied ethnic groups that settled in Great Britain in and before the 11th century: Prehistoric, Brittonic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Normans.
The study found that the average person from Britain is 36.94 per cent British, 21.59 per cent Irish and 19.91 per cent Western European (French/German). When the results are broken down by country those living in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales were found, perhaps less surprisingly, to be even more Irish.
1. Closest Language: Scots. The closest language to English is arguably Scots.
As a result, we can certainly say that English and German share a common linguistic root. In fact, according to language statistics around 26% of English words are of Germanic origin.
English vocabulary comprises 29% French, 29% Latin, 26% Germanic, and 6% Greek.
There was no single 'Celtic' genetic group. In fact the Celtic parts of the UK (Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall) are among the most different from each other genetically. For example, the Cornish are much more similar genetically to other English groups than they are to the Welsh or the Scots.
Celts in Britain
It is believed that the Celts arrived at the shores of Britain at approximately 1,000BC and lived there during the Iron Age, the Roman Age and the post Roman era. Their legacy continues today where examples of the language, culture and traditions continue to exist.
The term Celtic is used to refer to persons who trace their ancestry back to one of the present Celtic territories located in the westernmost parts of Europe. Through the ages, each of these places has managed to preserve a significant portion of its original culture as well as its particular language.
Even in England, about 64 per cent of people are descended from these Celts, outnumbering the descendants of Anglo- Saxons by about three to one. The proportion of Celts is only slightly higher in Scotland, at 73 per cent. Wales is the most Celtic part of mainland Britain, with 83 per cent.
While people from Ireland, Britain, or Scotland tend to be genetically similar, genetic clusters show that even within countries, there are distinct regional differences, and this update captures some of that.
While Highland Scots are of Celtic (Gaelic) descent, Lowland Scots are descended from people of Germanic stock. During the seventh century C.E., settlers of Germanic tribes of Angles moved from Northumbria in present-day northern England and southeastern Scotland to the area around Edinburgh.
The closest language to English is one called Frisian, which is a Germanic language spoken by a small population of about 480,000 people. There are three separate dialects of the language, and it's only spoken at the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany.
English has its roots in the Germanic languages, from which German and Dutch also developed, as well as having many influences from romance languages such as French. (Romance languages are so called because they are derived from Latin which was the language spoken in ancient Rome.)
Having emerged from the dialects and vocabulary of Germanic peoples—Angles, Saxons, and Jutes—who settled in Britain in the 5th century CE, English today is a constantly changing language that has been influenced by a plethora of different cultures and languages, such as Latin, French, Dutch, and Afrikaans.
Britons share the most DNA with people from France and Germany — countries which were home to the Angles and Saxons that moved into the British Isles after Roman rule collapsed in the 4th century.
The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are the closest living relatives of English.
The United Kingdom is an ethnically diverse society. The largest ethnic group in the United Kingdom is White British, followed by Asian British. Ethnicity in the United Kingdom is formally recorded at the national level through a census.
The study shows the genetic history of Scandinavia was influenced by foreign genes from Asia and Southern Europe before the Viking Age. Early Viking Age raiding parties were an activity for locals and included close family members. The genetic legacy in the UK has left the population with up to six per cent Viking DNA.
Although the Roman Empire incorporated peoples from far and wide, this new research suggests that Roman genetics were not significantly mixed into the British population.