Invasions throughout history — DJP (2026)

 

A lot of Irish people hate the way that the island of Ireland is partitioned with six northern counties 

being called Northern Ireland and officially a part of the UK (Donegal is not in NI although it is a 

northern county).

A lot of Irish people resent the English invasion and plantation of Ireland centuries ago and this legacy

is still "live" for a lot of people with part of Ireland still being part of the UK.

What I have got to learn of more over the years though is that England was invaded too a few times 

before they invaded Ireland. 

And as well as having loads of Latin and French words the English language is actually a Germanic 

language!

And the impact of Gaelic Ireland on Scotland between c. 400-1000 AD was huge.

From ChatGPT

If we start with the Romans and focus mainly on the peoples who invaded and settled in what became England, the sequence is roughly:

1. Romans — AD 43–c. 410
   The Roman invasion of Britain began under Emperor Claudius in AD 43. Rome conquered most of England and Wales and at times controlled parts of Scotland. Roman rule lasted nearly 400 years.

2. Angles, Saxons and Jutes — mainly 5th–6th centuries
   After Roman rule ended, Germanic peoples crossed the North Sea and settled extensively in Britain:

   • Angles — associated particularly with areas of what are now northern Germany and southern Denmark.
   • Saxons — from areas corresponding broadly to northern Germany and the Netherlands.
   • Jutes — traditionally associated with Jutland, now mainly Denmark.

   They established a number of kingdoms. The Angles gave England its name: Engla land — "land of the Angles."

3. Vikings — from AD 793; major invasions from the 860s                                                  Scandinavian Vikings, particularly Danes and Norwegians, raided and then settled large areas. Danish armies conquered much of England, creating the area known as the Danelaw. England was even ruled by Danish kings, most famously Cnut, from 1016.                                    

4. Normans — 1066                                                                                                                  William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, invaded England from northern France and defeated the English king Harold II at the Battle of Hastings. The Normans were French-speaking, although their ancestors included Vikings who had settled in Normandy.

5. After 1066, there wasn't another successful foreign conquest of England on the same scale. There were later invasions and attempted invasions — including the Dutch landing of William of Orange in 1688, which successfully overthrew James II — but 1066 is conventionally regarded as the last successful conquest of England.

   So, very simply:

   Celtic/pre-Roman Britons → Romans → Angles/Saxons/Jutes → Vikings → Normans → modern England

   And this history helps explain English itself: its basic structure and much of its everyday vocabulary are Germanic, inherited principally from the Angle*-Saxons, with substantial Norse influence from the Vikings and enormous French/Latin influence following the Norman Conquest.

*Angle > Anglo

Update – Also from ChatGPT

Q: Would it be true to say that there are an "enormous" amount of Latin and French words used in English?

Yes. It would be fair to say that English contains an enormous number of words derived from Latin and French.

The important distinction is that English is still fundamentally a Germanic language. Its basic grammar and many of its most common everyday words—the, is, have, come, go, house, wife, child, bread, water—are Germanic.

But its vocabulary has been massively influenced by French and Latin:

• French: particularly after the Norman Conquest of 1066. Words such as government, court, parliament, justice, army, battle, prison, beauty, and language entered English from French.
• Latin: entered English at several different periods—through Christianity, medieval scholarship, French (which itself developed from Latin), and especially Renaissance and scientific vocabulary. Examples include education, information, communication, individual, society, literature, and science.

Depending on how words are counted, well over half of the vocabulary recorded in large English dictionaries is ultimately of Latin or French/Latinate origin. The percentage is much lower if you look only at the words people use most frequently in ordinary conversation, because those are disproportionately Germanic.

So this would be perfectly reasonable:

“English is a Germanic language, but it contains an enormous amount of vocabulary derived from French and Latin.”

I'd use “an enormous amount of vocabulary” rather than “an enormous amount of words”; alternatively, “an enormous number of French and Latin words.”