Proto-English

I was trying to find out where the idea that there was a West Germanic language in Britain before the Angles, Saxons, Frisians, etc arrived around 400AD came from and what the evidence behind it is. John McWhorter mentioned it about a year ago with some qualified approval. It is certainly plausible, as groups were back-and-forth across the North Sea for centuries. But I'll have to get back to that farther on, as something more important has come up.

Cambridge openly admitting it now teaches students that “Anglo-Saxons aren’t real” to “fight nationalism”. God forbid we be historically well-versed if it means the descendants of certain people get to have a unique group identity.

Razib also tweeted about this today, which is where I originally found it.  It is lunacy. A lot of the Brits are blaming this on American influence, and I have to admit they have a point. They have some of this nonsense on their own, but we really are exporting this.

The complaint about nationalism was originally from communists, who believed their internationalism (or transnationalism) was so necessary to changing the governments of other places that all other goods had to be sacrificed to it. Internationalism is a wonderful thing, as are universal peace and brotherhood, but somehow the expressions of it seem to go bad very quickly. Perhaps CS Lewis's general rule is what applies here, that it can fall lower because it aims higher.  Demons are made of fallen angels, not fallen cattle. But we aren't supposed to notice the demons, only that they wanted to be angels when they started out.

Nazi Germany, offered as a catchphrase, not used as an intellectual argument, is given as an example why nationalism is always bad. It is not an unlimited good, but its faults are usually in its misuse, and sometimes these are slow in coming.  It was the various nationalisms working together, not ignored, that defeated the Nazis. National Socialism could more fairly be described as Racial Socialism, or Tribal Socialism. Germans across national borders were included; Slavs, Roma, and Jews within the borders were excluded. I think an additional problem arises because once people have been divided into groups, one can't help but notice that some of them seem to have more success. Steve Sailer kids that he keeps getting in trouble just for noticing things.

But back to Proto-English. I can't find much to support the idea, yet it does remain possible. I ran this video a few years ago and forgot it, it seems. The towns mentioned are in the west of England, halfway between Oxford and Bristol. 

The idea is that there was an inland lake, and the -ey endings indicate a Germanic ending for islands. But the lake was well back before the Common Era, four centuries or more. Next, the Belgae claimed to be a Germanic people. But most of the energy put into this theory seems to be devoted to pointing out the weaknesses of the prevailing theories. The DNA evidence neither proves nor disproves either side, but the Proto-English believers think it points more in their direction.

There may be newer evidence that I just haven't heard of.

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