Anglicisation

Last updated December 21, 2024

Anglicisation or anglicization is a form of cultural assimilation whereby something non-English becomes assimilated into or influenced by the culture of England. It can be sociocultural, in which a non-English or place adopts the English language or culture; institutional, in which institutions are influenced by those of England or the United Kingdom; or linguistic, in which a non-English term or name is altered due to the cultural influence of the English language.^[1]^[2] It can also refer to the influence of English soft power, which includes media, cuisine, popular culture, technology, business practices, laws and political systems.^[3]

Anglicisation first occurred in the British Isles, when Celts under the sovereignty of the king of England underwent a process of anglicisation.^[4] The Celtic language decline in England was mostly complete by 1000 AD, but continued in Cornwall and other regions until the 18th century. In Scotland, the decline of Scottish Gaelic began during the reign of Malcolm III of Scotland to the point where by the mid-14th century the Scots language was the dominant national language among the Scottish people.^[5]^[6]^: 139 In Wales, however, the Welsh language has continued to be spoken by a large part of the country's population due to language revival measures aimed at countering historical anglicisation measures such as the Welsh not.^[1]^[4]

History and examples

Channel Islands

In the early parts of the 19th century, mostly due to increased immigration from the rest of the British Isles, the town of St Helier in the Channel Islands became a predominantly English-speaking place, though bilingualism was still common. This created a divided linguistic geography, as the people of the countryside continued to use forms of Norman French, and many did not even know English.^[7]^: 38–9^[8]^: 268 English became seen in the Channel Islands as "the language of commercial success and moral and intellectual achievement".^[8]^: 269 The growth of English and the decline of French brought about the adoption of more values and social structures from Victorian era England.^[8] Eventually, this led to the Channel Islands's culture becoming mostly anglicised, which supplanted the traditional Norman-based culture of the Islands.^[8]^: 270

From 1912, the educational system of the Channel Islands was delivered solely in English, following the norms of the English educational system.^[7] Anglicisation was supported by the British government, and it was suggested that anglicisation would not only encourage loyalty and congeniality between the Channel Islands and Britain, but also provide economic prosperity and improved "general happiness". During the 19th century, there was concern over the practise of sending young Channel Islanders to France for education, as they might have brought back French culture and viewpoints back to the Islands. The upper class in the Channel Islands supported anglicising the Islands, due to the social and economic benefits it would bring. Anglophiles such as John Le Couteur strove to introduce English culture to Jersey.^[8]^: 268

British Isles

Anglicisation was an essential element in the development of British society and of the development of a unified British polity.^[1] Within the British Isles, anglicisation can be defined as influence of English culture in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Until the 19th century, most significant period for anglicisation in those regions was the High Middle Ages. Between 1000 and 1300, the British Isles became increasingly anglicised. Firstly, the ruling classes of England, who were of Norman origin after the Norman Conquest of 1066, became anglicised as their separate Norman identity, different from the identity of the native Anglo-Saxons, became replaced with a single English national identity.^{[ citation needed ]}

Secondly, English communities in Wales and Ireland emphasised their English identities, which became established through the settlement of various parts of Wales and Ireland between the 11th and 17th centuries under the guidance of successive English kings. In Wales, this primarily occurred during the conquest of Wales by Edward I, which involved English and Flemish settlers being "planted" in various newly established settlements in Welsh territory. English settlers in Ireland mostly resided in the Pale, a small area concentrated around Dublin. However, much of the land the English settled was not intensively used or densely populated. The culture of settling English populations in Wales and Ireland remained heavy influenced by that of England. These communities were also socially and culturally segregated from the native Irish and Welsh, a distinction which was reinforced by government legislation such as the Statutes of Kilkenny.^[4]

Wales

During the Middle Ages, Wales was gradually conquered by the English. The institutional anglicisation of Wales was finalised with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, which fully incorporated Wales into the Kingdom of England. This not only institutionally anglicised Wales, but brought about the anglicisation of the Welsh culture and language. Motives for anglicising Wales included securing Protestant England against incursions from Catholic powers in Continental Europe and promoting the power of the Welsh Tudor dynasty in the rest of England.^[1]

Scholars have argued that industrialisation prevented Wales from being anglicised to the extent of Ireland and Scotland, as the majority of the Welsh people did not move abroad in search of employment during the early modern era, and thus did not have to learn to speak English. Furthermore, migration patterns created a cultural division of labour, with national migrants tending to work in coalfields or remain in rural villages, while non-national migrants were attracted to coastal towns and cities. This preserved monocultural Welsh communities, ensuring the continued prominence of the Welsh language and customs within them. However, other scholars argue that industrialisation and urbanisation led to economic decline in rural Wales, and given that the country's large towns and cities were anglicised, this led to an overall anglicisation of the nation.^[1]

The Elementary Education Act 1870 and the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889 introduced compulsory English-language education into the Welsh educational system. English "was perceived as the language of progress, equality, prosperity, mass entertainment and pleasure". This and other administrative reforms resulted in the institutional and cultural dominance of English and marginalisation of Welsh, especially in the more urban south and north-east of Wales.^[1] In 2022, the Commission for Welsh-speaking Communities warned that the emigration of Anglophones to Welsh-speaking villages and towns was putting the Welsh language at risk.^[9]

United States

During the 19th and 20th centuries, there was a nationwide effort in the United States to anglicise all immigrants to the US. This was carried out through methods including (but not limited to) mandating the teaching of American English and having all immigrants change their first names to English-sounding names. This movement was known as Americanization and is considered a subset of Anglicization due to English being the dominant language in the United States.

Linguistic anglicisation

Linguistic anglicisation is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce or understand in English.^[1]^[2] The term commonly refers to the respelling of foreign words, often to a more drastic degree than that implied in, for example, romanisation.

Non-English words may be anglicised by changing their form and/or pronunciation to something more familiar to English speakers. Some foreign place names are commonly anglicised in English. Examples include the Danish city København (Copenhagen), the Russian city of Moskva (Moscow), the Swedish city of Göteborg (Gothenburg), the Dutch city of Den Haag (The Hague), the Spanish city of Sevilla (Seville), the Egyptian city of Al-Qāhira (Cairo), and the Italian city of Firenze (Florence). The Indian city of Kolkata used to be anglicised as Calcutta, until the city chose to change its official name back to Kolkata in 2001. Anglicisation of words and names from indigenous languages occurred across the English-speaking world in former parts of the British Empire. Toponyms in particular have been affected by this process.

In the past, the names of people from other language areas were anglicised to a higher extent than today. This was the general rule for names of Latin or (classical) Greek origin. Today, the anglicised name forms are often retained for the more well-known persons, like Aristotle for Aristoteles, and Adrian (or later Hadrian) for Hadrianus. During the time in which there were large influxes of immigrants from Europe to the United States and United Kingdom during the 19th and 20th centuries, the names of many immigrants were never changed by immigration officials but only by personal choice.

Related Research Articles

The British Isles are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, and over six thousand smaller islands. They have a total area of 315,159 km² (121,684 sq mi) and a combined population of almost 72 million, and include two sovereign states, the Republic of Ireland, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Channel Islands, off the north coast of France, are normally taken to be part of the British Isles, even though geographically they do not form part of the archipelago. Under the UK Interpretation Act 1978, the Channel Islands are clarified as forming part of the British Islands, not to be confused with the British Isles.

The Goidelic or Gaelic languages form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.

English is the most widely spoken and de facto official language of the United Kingdom. A number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Regional English variant languages are Scots and Ulster Scots; indigenous Celtic languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. There are many non-native languages spoken by immigrants, including Polish, Hindi, and Urdu. British Sign Language is sometimes used as well as liturgical and hobby languages such as Latin and a revived form of Cornish.

Anglo-Celtic people are descended primarily from English and Irish, Scottish or Welsh people. The concept is mainly relevant outside of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales particularly in Australia, but is also used in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and South Africa, where a significant diaspora is located.

British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.

The modern Celts are a related group of ethnicities who share similar Celtic languages, cultures and artistic histories, and who live in or descend from one of the regions on the western extremities of Europe populated by the Celts.

The English language in Europe, as a native language, is mainly spoken in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Outside of these states, it has official status in Malta, the Crown Dependencies, Gibraltar and the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. In the Netherlands, English has an official status as a regional language on the isles of Saba and Sint Eustatius. In other parts of Europe, English is spoken mainly by those who have learnt it as a second language, but also, to a lesser extent, natively by some expatriates from some countries in the English-speaking world.

Pan-Celticism, also known as Celticism or Celtic nationalism is a political, social and cultural movement advocating solidarity and cooperation between Celtic nations and the modern Celts in Northwestern Europe. Some pan-Celtic organisations advocate the Celtic nations seceding from the United Kingdom and France and forming their own separate federal state together, while others simply advocate very close cooperation between independent sovereign Celtic nations, in the form of Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish, and Welsh nationalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Celtic Britons</span> Ancient Celtic people of Great Britain

The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.

The Cornish people or Cornish are an ethnic group native to, or associated with Cornwall and a recognised national minority in the United Kingdom, which can trace its roots to the ancient Britons who inhabited Great Britain from somewhere between the 11th and 7th centuries BC and inhabited Britain at the time of the Roman conquest. Many in Cornwall today continue to assert a distinct identity separate from or in addition to English or British identities. Cornish identity has also been adopted by some migrants into Cornwall, as well as by emigrant and descendant communities from Cornwall, the latter sometimes referred to as the Cornish diaspora. Although not included as a tick-box option in the UK census, the numbers of those writing in a Cornish ethnic and national identity are officially recognised and recorded.

The Celtic nations or Celtic countries are a cultural area and collection of geographical regions in Northwestern Europe where the Celtic languages and cultural traits have survived. The term nation is used in its original sense to mean a people who share a common identity and culture and are identified with a traditional territory.

British people or Britons, also known colloquially as Brits, are the citizens of the United Kingdom, the British Overseas Territories, and the Crown dependencies. British nationality law governs modern British citizenship and nationality, which can be acquired, for instance, by descent from British nationals. When used in a historical context, "British" or "Britons" can refer to the Ancient Britons, the Celtic-speaking inhabitants of Great Britain during the Iron Age, whose descendants formed the major part of the modern Welsh people, Cornish people, Bretons and considerable proportions of English people. It also refers to citizens of the former British Empire, who settled in the country prior to 1973, and hold neither UK citizenship nor nationality.

The Gaels are an ethnolinguistic group native to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. They are associated with the Gaelic languages: a branch of the Celtic languages comprising Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic.

The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.

The anglicisation of personal names is the change of non-English-language personal names to spellings nearer English sounds, or substitution of equivalent or similar English personal names in the place of non-English personal names.

The Scottish people or Scots are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. In the following two centuries, Celtic-speaking Cumbrians of Strathclyde and Germanic-speaking Angles of Northumbria became part of Scotland. In the High Middle Ages, during the 12th-century Davidian Revolution, small numbers of Norman nobles migrated to the Lowlands. In the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels of the Western Isles became part of Scotland, followed by the Norse of the Northern Isles in the 15th century.

English is by far the most spoken, and the "de facto" national language of Northern Ireland,; it occurs in various forms, including Ulster English and Hiberno-English. Irish is an official language of Northern Ireland since 2022, and the local variety of Scots, known as Ulster Scots, has official minority status, with services in the language provided by public authorities. Northern Ireland Sign Language and Irish Sign Language have also been recognised with minority status since 29 March 2004.

In addition to English, literature has been written in a wide variety of other languages in Britain, that is the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This includes literature in Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Latin, Cornish, Anglo-Norman, Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Manx, and Irish. Literature in Anglo-Saxon is treated as English literature and literature in Scots as Scottish literature.

The Jersey people, also referred to as Islanders, are an ethnic group and nation native to the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands who share a common history, Norman ancestry and culture. There is no standard demonym for Jersey people; however, common demonyms include Jerseyman/Jerseywoman or Jèrriais. Jersey people are colloquially known as 'beans', after the Jersey bean crock - a traditional meal, or crapauds, the reason being that Jersey has toads and Guernsey does not. There is a statue in St. Helier of a toad, known as Le Crapaud. The Jersey toad is a unique species, which are bigger, breed earlier and use different habitats than English toads.

In linguistics, anglicisation or anglicization is the practice of modifying foreign words, names, and phrases to make them easier to spell, pronounce or understand in English. The term commonly refers to the respelling of foreign words or loan words in English, often to a more drastic degree than that implied in, for example, romanisation. One instance is the word "dandelion", modified from the French dent-de-lion. The term can also refer to phonological adaptation without spelling change: for example, pasta is accepted in English with Italian spelling, but anglicised phonetically in being pronounced in American English and in British English. The anglicisation of non-English words for use in English is just one case of the more widespread domestication of foreign words that is a feature of many languages, sometimes involving shifts in meaning. The term does not cover the unmodified adoption of foreign words into English or the unmodified adoption of English words into foreign languages.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Coupland, Nikolas; Thomas, Alan Richard (1990). "2. The Anglicisation of Wales". English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Multilingual Matters. ISBN 978-1-85359-031-3. OCLC 44961554.
1 2 Bridge, Carl, and Fedorowich, Kent. The British World: Diaspora, Culture, and Identity, 2003, p. 89. "Beyond gaps in our information about who or what was affected by anglicisation is the matter of understanding the process more fully in terms of agency, periodisation, and extent and limitations."
↑ Breen, T.H. (October 1986). "An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690–1776". Journal of British Studies. 25 (4). Cambridge University Press: 467–499. doi:10.1086/385874. S2CID 144798714 . Retrieved 13 July 2021.
1 2 3 Davies, R.R. (2000). "The Anglicization of the British Isles". First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343 (Ford lectures; 1998). Oxford University Press. OCLC 940657419.
↑ Withers, Charles W.J. (1984). Gaelic in Scotland, 1698-1981: the geographical history of a language. Edinburgh: J. Donald. ISBN 0-85976-097-9. OCLC 12078924.
↑ Embleton, Sheila M.; Withers, Charles W.J. (September 1985). "Gaelic in Scotland 1698-1981: The Geographical History of a Language". Language. 61 (3): 718. doi:10.2307/414416. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 414416.
1 2 Le Feuvre, David (1994). Jersey: Not Quite British: The Rural History of a Singular People. Jersey: Seaflower Books. ISBN 0-948578-57-2. OCLC 29846615.
1 2 3 4 5 Kelleher, John D. (1991). The rural community in nineteenth century Jersey (Thesis). S.l.: typescript.
↑ Morris, Steven (8 November 2022). "Second homes and Brexit pushing Welsh language to 'tipping point'". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2022.

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[:0-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Coupland, Nikolas; Thomas, Alan Richard (1990). "2. The Anglicisation of Wales". English in Wales: Diversity, Conflict, and Change. Multilingual Matters. ISBN 978-1-85359-031-3. OCLC 44961554.

[ReferenceB-2] 1 2 Bridge, Carl, and Fedorowich, Kent. The British World: Diaspora, Culture, and Identity, 2003, p. 89. "Beyond gaps in our information about who or what was affected by anglicisation is the matter of understanding the process more fully in terms of agency, periodisation, and extent and limitations."

[Breen,_pp._467-499-3] Breen, T.H. (October 1986). "An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690–1776". Journal of British Studies. 25 (4). Cambridge University Press: 467–499. doi:10.1086/385874. S2CID 144798714 . Retrieved 13 July 2021.

[:1-4] 1 2 3 Davies, R.R. (2000). "The Anglicization of the British Isles". First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093–1343 (Ford lectures; 1998). Oxford University Press. OCLC 940657419.

[5] Withers, Charles W.J. (1984). Gaelic in Scotland, 1698-1981: the geographical history of a language. Edinburgh: J. Donald. ISBN 0-85976-097-9. OCLC 12078924.

[6] Embleton, Sheila M.; Withers, Charles W.J. (September 1985). "Gaelic in Scotland 1698-1981: The Geographical History of a Language". Language. 61 (3): 718. doi:10.2307/414416. ISSN 0097-8507. JSTOR 414416.

[:12-7] 1 2 Le Feuvre, David (1994). Jersey: Not Quite British: The Rural History of a Singular People. Jersey: Seaflower Books. ISBN 0-948578-57-2. OCLC 29846615.

[:23-8] 1 2 3 4 5 Kelleher, John D. (1991). The rural community in nineteenth century Jersey (Thesis). S.l.: typescript.

[9] Morris, Steven (8 November 2022). "Second homes and Brexit pushing Welsh language to 'tipping point'". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 2 January 2023. Retrieved 19 December 2022.

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