Two languages in Britain

 

 

Seasonal migrations of the pre-Gallic people and pre-Germanic people. Both had or would later adopt the Proto-Indo-European language. Basque (probable original spread) and Etruscan are non-Proto-Indo-European languages.

Technology around 10 000 BC was comparable with that of the Canadian Indians just before the white man came. People could make boats, large canoes probably made of hide, would be available. Those boat types are still made by the Eskimos, and are surprisingly strong in ice-cold conditions. The Welsh word for such boats is currach. The English version of the word is coracle. Today, coracles are (very) small and often completely round while currachs are elongated and much bigger, but it is actually the same word [1]. With those currachs the pre-Gallic peoples could travel north by sea. This way of voyaging is much more comfortable and quicker. They followed the coast to the north, and colonized the complete west of 'Britain', including 'Ireland'. That explains why the Welsh live in the west of Britain and managed to colonize nearly all isles in the west.

The pre-Germanic people had a similar technology, and used the ‘Royal Road’: the Rhine. That’s why the Rhine is so important in German mythology, although the Rhine region is only a small part of today’s Germany. They followed the river, and colonized both banks up to 100 km away. That's how Alsace became German.
Where the Rhine merged with other rivers in what would become the North Sea, pre-Germanic people spread and sailed upstream those rivers. They settled on the banks of the Schelde and Meuse in Belgium and Holland. Where the Thames met the Rhine, they sailed up the Thames. In a similar way they sailed up the river Trent, Humber, etc. Eventually, they occupied the whole east and southeast of Britain.
But each time their movement south would have been stopped where they encountered the most northerly pre-Gallic people people (later known as proto-Welsh). That place in Britain, more or less upon the east-west watershed, was to become a language border. That’s why the original language border in Britain around 8000 BC was some 100 km more to the east of modern Wales roughly in line with the Pennines.

The pre-Gallic peoples colonized all land where the rivers flowed to the west. The pre-Germanic people colonized the river basins of those which flowed to the north.

In the cold north of Europe, lived tough local nomadic tribes who did not migrate south in winter: the later Scandinavians. Their lifestyle must have had some similarities with today’s Eskimos. But those nomads were few and probably all sorts of exchanges took place with the pre-Germanic people, including language and sex. Originally, they roamed a band of land from the (modern) Yorkshire coasts to Latvia. They were the first to be chased from their North Sea territories by the rising sea. They eventually settled in the north of proto-England, proto-Denmark, proto-Sweden, etc. In other words: roughly on the same latitudes. When the new PIE (Proto-Indo-European) language imposed itself in that region, the original local language (substrate language) gave birth to a different form of German.

When the ice melted completely ca.10000 years ago (at the beginning of the Holocene), and the sea level rose, all pre-Germanic people who had their territory in the North Sea were forced to go south, west and east: upon the modern coastal regions of the North Sea. Some of them settled in the east of Britain. The initial clans who came from different parts of south-Germany, each with their own dialect, eventually merged. This gave birth to a more mixed, slightly simplified language which would become known as coastal German or Ingweaoon German after the introduction of agriculture. The pre-Scandinavians largely remained on a northerly latitude. They settled in the Northeast of England and in the Midlands where they mixed with the pre-Germanic people. However, a strong Scandinavian influence subsisted. This mixed language with a strong Scandinavian impact will evolve much later in Scandi-proto-English.
The prediction here is that the clans deeper in Britain (Midlands) were less affected by this mixing of people and language and therefore should have a different dialect than the population near to the east coast. The Mercian dialect (=old English) corroborates this.

As the climate grew warmer, annual migration stopped. The land bridge crumbled a few thousands years later, leaving Britain cut off from the rest of the continent. Isolated, the east-British population began an uneasy cohabitation with the west-Britons, the later Welsh.