Language Contact and the Origins of the Germanic Languages history of the Germanic languages but discusses the Finnic languages, Romance languages and Celtic languages extensively. Compared with other academic studies in historical linguistics, it is written in a usually plain and accessible style. Chapter 2, 'The Rise of English', focuses on the much debated question of whether English, and particularly Old English, shows any sign of contact between the West Germanic-speaking immigrants who became the Anglo-Saxons and the speakers of British Celtic and Latin whom these immigrants encountered during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain around the fifth century CE. The chapter argues that Middle English betrays the belated appearance
Germanic peoples classical source, modern linguists sometimes designate the Frankish language (and its descendant Dutch) as Istvaeonic, although the geographical term "Weser-Rhine Germanic" is often preferred. However, the classical ""Germani"" near the Rhine, to whom the term was originally applied by Caesar, may not have even spoken Germanic languages, let alone a language recognizably ancestral to modern Dutch. The close relatives of Dutch, Low German, Anglo-Saxon and Frisian, are in fact sometimes designated as Ingvaeonic, or alternatively, "North-Sea Germanic". Frankish, (and later Dutch, Luxembourgish and the Frankish dialects of German in Germany) has continuously been intelligible to some extent with both "Ingvaeonic"