1.The English

The Celts BC 500

The English are Anglo-Saxon in origin，but the Welsh，the Scots and the Irish are not.They are Celts，descendants of the ancient people who came from Europe to the British Isles centuries before the Roman invasion.It was these people whom the Germanic Anglos and Saxons conquered in the 5th and 6th centuries AD.These Germanic conquerors gave England its name，“Angle”land.They were conquered in turn by the Norman French，when William of Normandy landed near Hastings in 1066.It was from the union of Norman conquerors and the defeated Anglo-Saxons that the English people and the English language were born.The Danes，or Vikings，who invaded Britain in the 8th century，also stamped their influence on the people and the language.

Since the English are such a mixed people，local customs and accents in England vary agreat deal and local pride is still strong in some parts of the country.For example，Yorkshiremen are blunt，caustic，no-nonsense people，and the men of Kent are honest John Bulls¹.The closer one gets to London，the less one notices such differences，for London is a melting pot.People from all over Britain and from all over the world pour into the giant city.London tends to“melt away”and smooth out strong accents and provincial customs.Every year the influence of London spreads further and further into the country，north，south，east and west，but particularly into the south and southeast.So people rarely hear the accents in Hampshire，Sussex and Kent.Yet，there is very strange and unusual accent found in the East End of London，the home of the cockneys.A cockney is a Londoner who is born within the sound of Bow Bells—the bells of the church of St Mary-le-Bow in east London.The cockney“language”is really more than an accent，since it includes many words and expressions that cannot be heard in any other part of the country.Some characteristic cockney speech sounds include-v-and-f-for th-，_-r-for-t-between two vowels，the dropping of h-at the beginning of a word，and the pronunciation of lng like-in.Cockney English is very rich in slang，especially rhyming slang，which seems to have been invented in London.For example，a“butcher’s hook”is a“look”；a“bowl of water”is“daughter”.The second part of the rhyming slang is often omitted.Thus，“Let me have a butcher’s”means“Let me have a look”.The most plausible theory about its origin is that it represented a variation of thieves’cants，and the need to talk in code so that outsiders could not understand what was being said.