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The Romano-British inhabitants of England after the Anglo-Saxon influx and political dominance together with the continual contact over 1500 year period between English and Brittonic languages(Welsh, Cornish or similar) have effected the English Language. In the view of some scholars the influence has been extensive. The research into this topic uses a variety of approaches to approximate the Romano-British language or the Celtic language in England. In particular, ancient Brittonic texts are used. Breton is useful for its lack of English influence.

Regarding the syntax and phonology of English, many possible Brittonicism have been proposed by scholars and many developements differentiating Old English from Middle English are seen as an emergence of previously unrecorded Brittonic influence. Because of the numerousness of the possible Brittonicisms identified, there is purportedly a statistical proof of some Brittonicism in English. The extent of Brittonic influence and the veracity of the individual brittonicisms themselves are debated.

History of academic work

The received view that Celtic impact on English has been minimal on all levels, became established at the beginning of the 20th century following work by such scholars as Otto Jespersen(1905) and Max Förster(1921). Opposing views by Wolfgang Keller(1925), Ingerid Dal (1952), G. Visser (1955),Walther Preusler (1956) and by Patricia Poussa (1990) were marginal to the academic consensus of their time. Perhaps more famously, the philologist and author J.R.R.Tolkein expressed his suspicion of Brittonic influence and pointed out some anomolies in support of this view. Research on Celtic influence in English has intensified in recent years, principally centering around The Celtic Englishes programmes in Germany(Potsdam University) and The Celtic Roots of English programme in Finland(Joensuu University).

Reviewing the extent of Celtic influence has been encouraged by developements in several fields. Significant survival of Brittonic peoples in Anglo-Saxon England has become a more widely excepted idea thanks primarily to recent archaelogical and genetic evidence. According to a previously held model, the Romano-Britons of England were all exterminated or somehow pushed out of England and therefore not able to give linguistic influence. There is now a much greater body of research work into language contact situations and a greater understanding of language contact types. The works of Sarah Thompson and Terence Kaufman have been used in particular to model borrowing scenarios versus language shift scenarios.The research uses investigations into Celtic Englishes(that is Welsh English and Irish English etc.) which reveal characteristics more certainly attributable to Celtic languages and also universal contact trends revealed by Celtic, African and Indian Englishes.

The Old English Diglossia model

Endorsed particularly in recent times by Hildegard Tristram, the Old English diglossia model proposes that much of the native Romano-British population remained in England while the Anglo-Saxons gradually took over the rule of the country. Over a long period, the Brittonic population imperfectly learnt the Anglo-Saxons language while Old English was maintained in an artificially stable form as the written language of the elete and the only version of English preserved in writing. After the Anglo-Saxon rule was removed by the Norman conquerers, the language of the general population, which was a Brittonicised version of English, was eventually recorded and appears as Middle English. This kind of variance between written and spoken language is attested historically in other cultures and may be common. For instance, Morrocan Arabic has not had a literary presence in over a millenium.

Change from syntheticism towards analyticism

The developement from Old English to Middle English is marked particularly by a change from syntheticism(expressing meaning using word-endings) to analyticism(expressing meaning using word order). Old English was a highly synthetic language. There are different word endings for case(roughly speaking, endings for the object of a sentence, the subject of a sentence and similarly for 2 other grammatical situations(not incl. instrumental)) varying for plural forms, gender forms and 2 kinds of word form(called weak and strong). This system is partially retained in modern Germanic languages.Brittonic, however, was already highly analytic and so Brittonic peoples may have had difficulty learning Old English. It has been suggested that the Brittonic Latin of the period demonstrates difficulty in using (Latin) word endings. Today, Welsh and English are conspicuously analytic compared with the Indo-European languages of Western Europe.

Language innovations occurred primarily in texts from Northern and South-Western England - in theory, the areas with the greater density of Brittonic people. In the Northern zone of that period, there was partial replacement of the Anglo-Saxon rule by Norse invaders. This situation can variously be seen as mitigating the emergence of Brittonic English or as the direct cause of the Northern language innovations Middle English creole hypothesis. However, the attrition in word endings, as witnessed by the loss of the nasal endings(m,n), began before the Norse invasion.

• Innovations in the Northern zone texts
  • Old English had case and gender word endings for nouns, pronouns and adjectives while at the time Brittonic did not have these endings. The endings in English were lost.
  • Old English had several versions of the word 'the' while at the time Brittonic only had one. The variations of 'the' were lost in English. The lack of different forms of 'the' is an unusual language feature shared only by Celtic and English in this region.
  • English developed a fixed word order, which was present earlier in Brittonic
• Innovations in the South Western zone texts
  • Rise of the periphrastic aspect, particularly the progressive form (i.e. BE verb-ing:I am writing, she was singing etc.) . The progressive form developed in the change from Old English to Middle English. Similar constructs are rare in Germanic languages and not completely analogous. Celtic usage has chronological precedence and high usage. Celtic Englishes employ the structure more than Standard English. e.g."It was meaning right the opposite" Manx English
  • DO-periphrasis in a variety of uses. Modern English is dependent on a semantically neutral 'do' in some negative statements and questions, e.g. 'I don't know' rather than 'I know not". This feature is linguistically very rare. Celtic languages use a similar structure, but without dependence. The usage is frequent in Cornish and Middle Cornish. e.g."Omma ny wreugh why tryge"="You do not stay here" and it is used in Middle Breton. "Do" is more common in Celtic Englishes than Standard English.

Phonetic Influence

Among the phonetic anomolies is the continued use of w, θ and ð in English (_w_in , brea_th_, brea_th_e).English is remarkable in being the only language(excepting Welsh/Cornish) to use all three of these sounds in the region. The use of the sounds in Germanic languages has generally been ephemeral and the continual influence of Celtic may have had a supportive effect in preserving English use.(θ and ð are produced in Welsh sound mutation systems e.g. tŷ = house, ei thŷ = her house, dolur - sorrow , ei ddolur = his sorrow)

Various Possible Brittonicisms

There are many, often obscure, characteristics in English that have been preposed as Brittonicism. David L White enumerated 92, 32 of which are specifically cited as identified in other academic works.

Substansive verb - consuetudinal tense Byð

Old English is unusual as a Germanic language in its use of two forms of the verb to be. The b- form is used in a habitual sense and the 3 person singular form, Byð, seams near identical to the Brittonic *bið (Welsh bydd). Biðun, the 3rd person plural form is also used in Northern texts and seams to parallel the Brittonic byddant. The byðun form is particularly difficult to explain as a Germanic language construct but is consistent with the Brittonic system.

Loss of Wurth

In Old English, constructions using "wurth" were used where today motion verbs like go and become are used instead e.g."What shall worthe of us twoo!"This use of motion verbs occurs in Celtic texts with relative frequency e.g. "ac am hynny yd aeth Kyledyr yg gwyllt" = "and because of this Kyledyr went mad" (Middle Welsh)

Lack of External Possessor

English does not make use of a construction called an external possessor. The only other "European" languages without the external possessor are Lezgian, Turkish, Welsh and Breton. Old English used the external possessor e.g.Seo cwen het þa þæm cyninge þæt heafod of aceorfan. *The Queen then ordered the King the head to be cut off but Modern English must use the internal possessor "The Queen then ordered the King's head to be cut off".

Tag questions and answers

The statistical bias towards use of tag questions and answers in English, historically, instead of simply yes or no has been attributed to Celtic influence. Celtic languages do not use yes and no. Answers are made by using the appropriate verb. It has been suggested that yes is a fossilised tag answer (a combination of gea(=yes) and si(=it may be) making the 's' in yes seamingly redundant).

Rise in use of some complex syntactic structures

English construction of complex sentences uses some forms which in popularity may suggest a Celtic influence. Clefting in Old Welsh literature predates its common use in English by perhaps 400 years - depending on the dating of Welsh texts. Cleft constructions are more common in Breton French than Standard French and more common and versitile in Celtic English than Standard English. Clefting may be linked to the rise of a fixed word order after the loss of inflections.

Uses of himself, herself etc.

Celtic and English have formal identity between intensifier and reflexive pronoun. They share this feature only with Dutch, Maltese, Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian in Europe. In Middle English, the old intensifier "self" was replaced by a fusion of pronoun + "self" which is now used in a communication to emphasise the object in question e.g."A woman who is conspicuously generous to others less fortunate than herself."

Northern Subject Rule

The Northern subject rule was the general pattern of syntax used for the present-tense in northern Middle English. It occurs in some present-day dialects. The 3rd person singular verb is used for 3rd person plural subjects unless the pronoun, "they", is used and it is directly adjacent to the verb.e.g "they sing","they only sings","birds sings". This anti-agreement is standard in Modern Welsh - excepting the adjacency condition. It had general usage in Old Welsh and therefore, presumably, in Cumbrian.