[mrangle]

This is both pedantic and probably worth the correction. English is a Germanic language, originated in an exceedingly small continental territory nestled among other Germanics. Virtually no one would be able to discern the Germanic people who originated the English language from other Germanic people. If you are referring to the English people from the UK, then of course they are more mixed. But the English language was brought to the UK by the aforementioned continental tribe(s).

[rayiner]

Yet ancestry.com can easily tell British with Anglo-Saxon and Brittonic ancestry apart from French with Frankish ancestry.

[Bayart]

Nobody can. There's far too much overlap regionally between Britain and North-Western France.

And nobody in Britain has just Brittonic ancestry, or Frankish ancestry in France. For the most part the populations in Europe have been stable since a time that predates the expansions of the Celtic and Germanic linguistic groups.

[laurencerowe]

Studies have found genetic evidence for population movements. You could make an argument for the Welsh having overwhelmingly Brittonic ancestry.

https://peopleofthebritishisles.web.ox.ac.uk/population-gene...

[shermantanktop]

Can they? They clearly want you to think so, but my own personal results are pretty mixed on how accurate that is.

[mrangle]

And yet the genetic differences are so insignificant so as to make them pointless to mention in the context of (paraphrasing) "it's super strange that German immigrants speak the Germanic English language that originates from the cultural region of Northern Germany".

[crazygringo]

I don't see what correction you're making.

The person you responded to explains that the most common ancestry in the US is German, but English is the dominant language.

You seem to be making the point that the most common ancestry in England is from England, but the Germanic language of English is dominant, rather than the Celtic one it replaced.

It's the same phenomenon, not a correction. That languages spread even when genes don't.

[mrangle]

I'll be clearer and repost theirs.

>The most common ancestry in the US is German, not English, but English is still the dominant language. Language isn't DNA.

Their specific point is that "language isn't DNA". To support that argument they note that Continental German immigrants to America now speak English.

My specific point is that English originates not only within the language family of German speaking peoples, but that it originated with the DNA pools that comprise Northern Germany.

Therefore, I don't see how "the Germans are speaking English" makes the point that language isn't DNA.

I'm not saying that it is, at all. Its very obviously not. But the example being argued didn't make that point.

[DiogenesKynikos]

When they immigrated to the US, they spoke German. Now, almost all their descendants speak English.

Your objection is that English is a Germanic language. That's interesting, but irrelevant here. German and English are two different languages that are mutually unintelligible, and the fact that immigrants went from speaking one to speaking the other within a few generations illustrates my point that language does not have to (and often doesn't) follow genetics.

It's not only German immigrants to the US who now speak English. Pretty much all immigrants to the US speak English after 1-2 generations, regardless of what language they originally spoke.

[mrangle]

You're out of your depth in regard to the German people example, but correct on your very simple main point.

[crazygringo]

> Therefore, I don't see how "the Germans are speaking English" makes the point that language isn't DNA.

Because German isn't English. Speaking one doesn't let you understand the other in conversation, not even a little bit. They're not like e.g. Spanish and Portuguese.

The fact that English is Germanic is a historical fact about where it came from, what it evolved from a millennium ago. But only a small percentage of Germanic influence remains in modern-day English vocabulary. It doesn't have anything to do with Germans in the US learning English.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Most simple words in English are still Germanic in origin. In fact, in the previous sentence, I count six Germanic words (most, word, in, English, are, still), versus only three Latin/French words (simple, Germanic, origin).

But as you say, the relationship between English and German doesn't have anything to do with what we're discussing. English and German are two different languages. Immigrants who spoke German gave birth to children who learned English, and after a few generations, their descendants didn't speak German any more. And that didn't just happen with German immigrants. It happened with every non-English-speaking immigrant group.