Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
Well, you're not wrong about the common root; there is definitely a root linking Hindi and the Germanic languages (English included), since they're all Indo-European languages, but you have to go back much farther than the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain to find that root. It would be found somewhere around six thousand years ago when the original Indo-Europeans started spreading out from somewhere in western Asia (Anatolia, or maybe the Caspian steppes; there are conflicting theories) and expanding west into Europe as well as further east into Asia. The ones who went east into Asia would eventually give rise to the Indo-Iranian branch, of which Hindi is a member, while the ones who headed west into Europe would eventually give rise to the Germanic branch (which English belongs to) and several other branches.
Yes, what I was trying to say was that the link between English in Hindi would have gone well before English was even really called English, although it looks more like there was never really anything linking the two except a common ancestral tongue, which is a claim you can make for almost any two languages.

Quote Originally Posted by Syme View Post
As for the pre-Anglo-Saxon inhabitants of the British Isles, they were Celts, so their native languages (the Brythonic languages) belonged to the Celtic group, which is another branch of the Indo-European family. But these Celtic languages are not the forefather of what eventually became English; English actually developed from the Germanic languages that the Anglo-Saxons brought with when they invaded, rather than from the Celtic languages that were spoken in the British Isles before they arrived. The words "England" and "English" derive from the name of the Angles, who were of course part of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. So the English language is an invention of Germanic invaders, not the "native"* peoples who lived there before; the pre-Anglo-Saxon languages of the British Isles have nothing to do with English.
Oh, well that changes my initial impression where the language root was Celtic (or the Brythonic languages I guess) which was influenced by the Anglo-overlords, although in retrospect that seems a little too convenient, considering I didn't decide to make the next logical step back and say who came before them. I didn't know the Celts~ were invaders either, I had assumed they were the descendants of the first people to immigrate to the island before it was populated, but then I can't say I've ever truly studied the situation in depth.