2. Languages and nationalities

The total population of the UK is over 59 million (59554000) people. The UK is inhabited by the English – 49856 million, who constitute about 83% of the total population, the Scots – 5057 million (8, 5%), the Welsh – 2938 million (about 5%), the Irish – 1703 million, constituting 2, 9% of the total population. Among other nationalities inhabiting the UK there are Gaels, Jews, Poles, Germans, Italians, Chinese as well as migrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and African countries.

English is the official language of the country. Besides standard literary English there are many regional and social dialects. They are not as numerous as in Italy or Germany, for example. Besides, the vocabulary of the dialects died out, but the accents and few bits of distinctive grammar remain. And it is the accents which gives visitors with knowledge of the English language problems and even a shock. Some accents are so strong that they present problems for the British, too.

English is the language predominantly spoken in all four parts of the UK. Wales, however, is bilingual as a result of the long struggle of the Welsh to preserve their language. Welsh is the first language of the majority of the population in most western counties. The Welsh language is the survival of ancient Celtic, one of Europe’s oldest languages. It was banned from use by Henry VIII after the Act of Union of 1535, by which he united England and Wales under one parliament. But the language lived on in the homes and in the arts and it continued to be the language of worship. In 1847 education commissioners preparing a report for the government in Westminster visited schools in Wales. There they heard children using their native Welsh language, which they attacked as immoral and backward. From then on a campaign to stamp out the use of Welsh was rigorous pursued, often by the Welsh themselves. Pupils overheard slipping into the Welsh language were forced to wear wooden boards around their necks bearing the words “Welsh Not”. The commission’s report, bound between blue covers, was never really forgiven and has passed into Welsh history as the “Treason of the Blue Books”. Only in 1967 the Welsh Language Act was passed to affirm the equal validity of Welsh with English in the administration of justice and conduct of government business through Wales. For about 550000 people welsh is the first language, many others speak it fluently as English.

The Celtic language still exists as Gaelic in Scotland and Ireland. In Scotland some 100000 people, mainly in the highlands and western coastal regions and the Hebrides, are able to speak the Scottish form of Gaelic. A few families in Northern Ireland speak the Irish form of Gaelic. French is still the official language of Jersey (the Channel Isles) and on the Isle of Man. It is used for ceremonial and official procedure. Both French and English are used in courts.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The Germanic influence the Anglo-Saxons, who invaded England in AD 350, came from Germany, Denmark and Netherlands. They spoke a Germanic language which became the basis of Old English. Even today, words used in Modern English for ordinary objects are mostly Anglo-Saxon, in origin. Germanic languages, such as Danish, German, Norwegian and Swedish have very similar words for the objects. Words of Germanic origin are usually short (often just one syllable) and tend to be informal in modern English.

The French influence English also has many similarities with Romance languages, whose origin is Latin. Norman-French was used as the language of government. Words of Latin origin are usually longer than words of Germanic origin and often have meaning in English than in the original Romance language. Norman-French words did not enter English immediately. When the Normans invaded in 1066, ordinary people still spoke English. Imagine a Norman feast. The English would look after the cattle and cook the meat, still calling the cattle by their English names. The Normans, when they saw the cooked meat arrive at the table, would use French ones. This explains why the English language now has different words for cattle and meal cooked from meat.

Example: pig – pork; sheep – mutton; cow – beef.

The classical influence Two centuries later came the Renaissance: there was a revival of interest in ancient culture, Greek and Latin. Some Latin words already existed because of the influence of Norman-French, but thousands more words of Latin origin flooded into English. This explains why modern English has pairs of words which mean almost the same thing, such as base which came into English from Norman-French, and basis, which came into English during the Renaissance. The Latin words were joined by hundreds of Greek words.

At the same time, it became more popular throughout Europe to use your mother tongue, not Latin, for written documents: the Bible, in particular, began to be read in the language of the country. By the 17^th century, it became possible to describe something in English with words of Germanic, Latin and Greek origin. This is still true today.