'Switzerland on sea' - A very different British TL

[Abdominalz]

In a 21st Britain quite different from our own, thousands of families across the country are getting out of bed to start the normal school run. Not so very different at all, I hear you ask. Well no, but how about the schools themselves? You see, Britain, or rather the Empire of the British Isles is hardly an ordinary nation-state. Blessed with eight different languages, all thriving in their own corners of the islands, the EBI makes even Switzerland seem like a monolingual desert when it comes to languages.

And thanks to government policy, each language group has the right to state primary education in their own language wherever in these islands there is the demand, quite something. In multicultural cities like London and Liverpool with longstanding communities from all over the islands present, parents are not hesitating to give their children a slice of state funded bilingual education, regardless of their own linguistic background.

Multiple PODs:

• The Lowlands of Scotland manage to go through the 'Davidian Revolution' without ceasing to speak Gaelic, much like the Baltic states had foreign cities and incursions on their soil at this time without loosing their indigenous language
• The islands' minority languages like Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Norn, Welsh, and Channel Island French, all make it to the 1880s and continue to be spoken by the common people (just like on the Continent at this time) before local based language nationalisms demand language rights like in the Austro-Hungarian Empire
• Due to the fact that Scotland is still totally Gaelic-speaking at this point, the Kings of England don't trust the Scots in colonising Ulster, and for that reason, the Ulster plantations are no more transformational than the plantations of Offaly, for example.
• When the Act of Union happens in 1801, the British government decides to include not just Ireland, but also the Isle of Mann and the Channel Islands. Additionally, when George III is offered the title of 'Emperor of the British Isles', he accepts, making the islands formerly an Empire. Thus, post WWII, the EBI is, along with Japan, one of two states to be ruled by an Emperor.
• In the Channel Islands, the local Anglo-Norman dialects give way to Standard French, and not English, just like Standard French gains ground over Walloon in French-speaking Belgium.
• There is no South Wales coalfield, meaning that the shift to English in South Wales most definitely does not happen.
• In the later 19th century, you have your language based nationalisms and your Home Rule movements. Because there is no Larne Gun-running incident, there is no Ulster volunteers and no Irish Volunteers. Therefore, no Easter Rising. Ireland merely gets Home Rule and eventually you have Home Rule all round.
• When compulsory state funded Education is set up a few decades earlier, the different language groups insist on being educated in their mother tongue. The state is therefore obliged to fund primary schools in any of the eight languages where there is the demand.

The Result: A Multilingual British Isles!!! In this scenario, what little separatist tendencies there are disappear with Home Rule all round, with the result that the EBI becomes much like a larger and less mountainous version of Switzerland.

So, how does it play out?
Well, inter-ethnic relations do really well, with each group having Home Rule and their language rights in their own territories. But what happens in England itself? Well, that's where it gets interesting.

Cities like London and Liverpool in particular become known as the rainbow cities, due to their linguistic diversity. In both cities, communities from across the British Isles create their own state-funded primary schools starting at the end of the Victorian Era, and thus the descendent of Victorian era Irish and Welsh immigrants to England find it much easier to keep their heritage alive down the generations.

In Liverpool, you have your longstanding Irish and Welsh communities, the latter due to the fact that there may well have been 100,000 North Wales welsh-speakers on the Mersey in 1910. In fact, Liverpool is increasingly referred to as the De Facto capital of the Welsh Language, having the largest number of Welsh-speakers out of any city in the world, more so than Wales's own capital, Aberystwyth, and the longstanding Welsh community develops its own urban dialect there.

In London, it's Irish and French primary schools that are particularly popular, the former due to the longstanding Irish community there. By the year 2018, there has been a massive boom in French-language primary schools, but not because of Channel Islanders moving to London, instead because citizens of Francophone countries, in particular French Expats, are doing so.

But it's not just French-speaking parents who like the French schools, its English parents too, for in recent decades, more and more English-speaking parents have been dying to have their children receive a bilingual Education, and increasingly it becomes a criterion for what it is to be 'Middle Class'.

This increasingly makes the EBI an archetype of what it is to be European, but it also raises questions. Why is it, that French-speaking foreign nationals have the right to send their children to state-funded schools in their mother tongue, but Polish or Punjabi residents don't have that right? It becomes an election issue.

 

[frustrated progressive]

I really like this, but the absence of the Welsh coalfields would seem to be a geological POD

 

[Skallagrim]

The thing with the coal-fields is indeed ASB. Might I suggest changing it to the coalfields just not being discovered or exploited for some hand-waved reason? That's rather improbable, but not ASB. Besides this, a premise based on a whole collection of PODs is pretty evidently steering the scenario in a certain direction, but that can be forgiven for the sake of exploring the resulting situation (which is very interesting). Absent the coal-related ASB stuff, my main quibble with this scenario is that we have initial PODs that are before 1800, but reference is still made to World War II. I mean... that's a big butterfly net, right there. A bit too big to be credible, I'd say.

That said, however, the idea of a multilingual Britain is very interesting. The political issue arising from the question of "why doesn't my language get funding" could, by the way, be easily skirted by legally defining the "ancestral languages of the empire", and just stating flat-out that only such recognised languages get public funding for education. That may seem a bit uunkind, but if you don't draw such a line, you can basically get to a point where every single immigrant group demands funding to have education in their own language. considering the number of languages on earth, that's going to be a rather complicated and expensive affair... (Needless to say, you can also draw a different line. For instance, you can say that any language needs a certain minimum number of native speakers within the Empire to qualify for funding. Or you can say that it must be a somewhat prominent language of countries formerly part of the Empire-- then Punjabi would qualify, but Polish wouldn't, for instance.)

 

[Admiral Matt]

Came this close to leaving over the no coalfield thing. Definitely ASB.

Rather, have coal exploitation begin very early in Wales. It'll be much smaller scale than the OTL mid-19th century rush, but that's fine. If there's a substantial tradition of coal mining in southern Wales come the Industrial Revolution, that might avert much of the language shift and some of the migration.

 

[Avrorrange]

The fact that there’s so many PODs and somehow most events still remain the same is definitely ASB.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

The fact that there’s so many PODs and somehow most events still remain the same is definitely ASB.

Not necessarily. All it takes is a little creativity and a slightly different Industrial revolution.

Came this close to leaving over the no coalfield thing. Definitely ASB.

Rather, have coal exploitation begin very early in Wales. It'll be much smaller scale than the OTL mid-19th century rush, but that's fine. If there's a substantial tradition of coal mining in southern Wales come the Industrial Revolution, that might avert much of the language shift and some of the migration.

I like the idea of Welsh coal mining being an old tradition like Cornish tin mining. What could drive coal demand before the steam engine? More demand for wood making coal as heating fuel more viable?

 

[RMcD94]

• When the Act of Union happens in 1801, the British government decides to include not just Ireland, but also the Isle of Mann and the Channel Islands. Additionally, when George III is offered the title of 'Emperor of the British Isles', he accepts, making the islands formerly an Empire. Thus, post WWII, the EBI is, along with Japan, one of two states to be ruled by an Emperor.

As people have pointed out you may want to research what the butterfly effect is.

Your original pod is 1200, ignoring the crazy coalfield stuff. There is no Acts of Union in 1801. That came from our timeline, not one where Scotland is Gaelic.

 

[Avrorrange]

Not necessarily. All it takes is a little creativity and a slightly different Industrial revolution.



I like the idea of Welsh coal mining being an old tradition like Cornish tin mining. What could drive coal demand before the steam engine? More demand for wood making coal as heating fuel more viable?

The way how he/she changes things here and there and expects the general outcome of history to be same as before is plainly asb.For example,even if there is a George III in 1801,this George III will most likely be a totally different person.

 

[Burton K Wheeler]

The way how he/she changes things here and there and expects the general outcome of history to be same as before is plainly asb.For example,even if there is a George III in 1801,this George III will most likely be a totally different person.

You’re engaging in pointless nitpicking rather than actually thinking creatively about how to make the scenario work.

 

[Avrorrange]

You’re engaging in pointless nitpicking rather than actually thinking creatively about how to make the scenario work.

It’s not pointless,nor nitpicking.A well developed setting is fundemental to discussion.Writing a timeline without fully exploring butterflies rather problematic in making people find a timeline plausible.

 

[Komnenos002]

While it would be useful to apply the butterfly effect, none of the basic structure of this timeline rests on the murder of innocent butterflies.

This is a really cool idea and not something that is explored often, so kudos to the OP for that!

With everyone being on the same page in regards to the ASB elements, it would be better to move on and debate/improve the scenario, at least in my opinion.

Throwing out some ideas that somewhat parallel OTL, anyone with some more knowledge of the time period feel free to debunk it.

If there is a union of the two crowns with a Scottish King becoming King of England in a more varied linguistic British Isles, it could lead to a looser rule over the entire thing. England is somewhat harder to keep happy with a Gaelic speaking King (I imagine he would already know English or need to learn it right quick), but this also conversely means that Gaelic becomes more enshrined in Scotland. If half the Kingdoms you rule is a little bit more antsy, you're hardly going to impose new languages on your main base of support.

A looser union of England and Scotland weakens English efforts to subjugate Ireland, and the Gaelic speaking Kings of a looser confederation type entity aren't going to repeat the same colonial suppression of OTL.

Throw in a Welsh coal mining tradition that begins in the Middle Ages (go back further and you need another butterfly net) and people learn Welsh as they filter into the existing industry structures as the Industrial Revolution kicks off.

At some point in the 1800 or 1900's, Britain has managed to tick along as a weird multi-national/multi-linguistic construct that maintains its separate identities but hasn't been distinct nations in a long time. The looser confederation nature has also translated to what we would recognise as "Home Rule" for everyone. This gets formalised with the crown becoming a sort of "Father to all Languages/Nations" in the Isles and a National Parliment being set for each major region of the UK. An "Imperial Parliament" is also run somewhere, but given the nature of this beast, it's a lot less powerful than most national bodies.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Not necessarily. All it takes is a little creativity and a slightly different Industrial revolution.

I like the idea of Welsh coal mining being an old tradition like Cornish tin mining. What could drive coal demand before the steam engine? More demand for wood making coal as heating fuel more viable?

I would think there would be three most natural avenues. The first would be a cultural shift - in Wales or perhaps elsewhere in Britain - that entails using more fuel for whatever purpose, eventually making wood relatively scarce; coal would come into greater use as an alternative. The second would be a legal question - from the Norman conquest woodland was a legal entity (sometimes existing with the force of law even in the absence of trees) under the protection and management of the crown. Alternate kings could have different policies, hypothetically deforesting England to an earlier and greater degree than in OTL. This would create demand for coal, one source of which would be Wales even if Wales itself was still relatively forested compared with England. The third would be an agricultural POD, arranging for Britain's population to be higher, and thus more likely to deforest the isles.

Obviously each entails knock-on effects to different degrees: If Britain has a large population, much of northwest Europe probably will too.

 

[frustrated progressive]

You’re engaging in pointless nitpicking rather than actually thinking creatively about how to make the scenario work.

It’s not pointless,nor nitpicking.A well developed setting is fundemental to discussion.Writing a timeline without fully exploring butterflies rather problematic in making people find a timeline plausible.

A setting without the butterfly effect is not necessarily ASB, the definition of which is something so utterly impossible that it requires a helping hand from Skippy to get going.
It would, however, be rather implausible.
This scenario though is actually ASB in its current form, as it posits a geological POD.

 

[Abdominalz]

I really like this, but the absence of the Welsh coalfields would seem to be a geological POD

The thing with the coal-fields is indeed ASB. Might I suggest changing it to the coalfields just not being discovered or exploited for some hand-waved reason? That's rather improbable, but not ASB. Besides this, a premise based on a whole collection of PODs is pretty evidently steering the scenario in a certain direction, but that can be forgiven for the sake of exploring the resulting situation (which is very interesting). Absent the coal-related ASB stuff, my main quibble with this scenario is that we have initial PODs that are before 1800, but reference is still made to World War II. I mean... that's a big butterfly net, right there. A bit too big to be credible, I'd say.

Came this close to leaving over the no coalfield thing. Definitely ASB.

Rather, have coal exploitation begin very early in Wales. It'll be much smaller scale than the OTL mid-19th century rush, but that's fine. If there's a substantial tradition of coal mining in southern Wales come the Industrial Revolution, that might avert much of the language shift and some of the migration.

Maybe I should have excluded the Coalfield POD. The reason why I decided to put it in is that it makes the situation with Wales extremely complicated... although on second thoughts much more interesting. In fact, I am now going to try and imagine what the situation would be like without the coalfield POD. Please bear with me.

Now what is interesting is whether or not Welsh would have survived in the South Wales if the language of instruction in primary schools had been made to match home language/parental demand, and if Welsh-speaking parents had insisted on having their children attend Welsh schools, and kept it alive in their own families. Certainly, in Cardiff and a number of other communities, it seems that the levels of in-migration, chiefly from the nearby English West Country was simply so great that that city was going to be majority Anglophone anyway but in a language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-home-language scenario, could you have had a minority Welsh-speaking community survive much better than in OTL with its own schools?

Moving on to the South Wales valleys and Merthyr Tydfil, would Welsh have necessarily become a minority language there? Quite possibly not, in a language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-home-language scenario, and you would have had English migrant parents in Merthyr Tydfil and the valleys sending their children to English medium primary schools, and Welsh parents send their children to Welsh ones. Thus while you would not have ended up with the Welsh-speakers moving over to English as in OTL (at least not nearly as quickly, that's for sure), you probably would not have had the English-speakers being assimilated into the Welsh community either, although I may be wrong and either outcome may have happened eventually. It would be very interesting to see what the comparative numbers were in each area, as otherwise its hopeless trying to speculate. Either way, a likely situation in some, if not many, industrial communities of South Wales, is that you would have likely had parallel communities living side by side.

Moving on from Industrial South Wales now, what happens to the Welsh language elsewhere is very interesting. There was certainly a very large Welsh-speaking community in Liverpool by the early 20th century as the following quote shows:

The Welsh migrants created communities in areas such as Vauxhall, Anfield, Everton, Dingle and Wavertree that were, in effect, pockets of Wales. In these parts, Welsh was the dominant language. In fact, there were more Welsh speakers in Liverpool that in any Welsh city. Religion was another key factor in both binding the community together and setting it apart from other groups. At one point, there were over seventy Welsh Methodist chapels in Liverpool.

The founder of Plaid Cymru, Saunders Lewis, lived in one such Welsh community on Merseyside. He was born, in 1893, just over the Mersey from Liverpool in Wallasey, Wirral, and educated at Liverpool University. He said: ‘The idea that because I was born in Liverpool I was born an exile from Wales is completely false… I’m pretty sure that there were about a hundred thousand Welsh-speaking people in Liverpool during the period of my boyhood. And I should say that at least half of those were monoglot Welsh speakers who could hardly manage a word of English… I wasn’t born in English England but in a totally Welsh society.’

In his book Our Liverpool, J.P. Dudgeon speaks to a Toxteth resident who grew up in the area in the early twentieth century. She says: ‘the whole street was Welsh, because the chappie who built the houses was Welsh and he only let the houses out to Welsh people. It was really strange. In the mornings everyone in the street was talking in Welsh, and I didn’t know there was another language until I went to school really, because I went to a Welsh chapel and everything was in Welsh there, too.’

Now here is an interesting question. To what extent would the Liverpool Welsh community and in other cities have managed to maintain themselves down the generations if they had been allowed to have state primary schools in their own language, like Czechs were in Imperial Vienna, for example? Certainly, in OTL, there is a thriving French community in London based on the Lycée with children attending those schools speaking French amongst themselves in the street.

Now if the answer to this question is yes, meaning that the Liverpool Welsh and London Welsh could have survived in significant numbers (talking tens of thousands) down the generations, then the Welsh language would have entered a really strange situation from the 1960s and 70s. This is because it was in the 60s and 70s that most of the language's rural heartland down the west side of Wales was anglicised primarily due to incomers moving to rural Wales, it seems, with Welsh medium education quite frankly not saving it there. Now if the language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-parental-demand law had been in force, then the collapse of Welsh across that huge area of rural Wales would have been even faster, due to incomer parents being allowed to change the medium of instruction of their local primary school in ATL, when in OTL, at least their children were schooled through Welsh.

Thus, in this ATL, you may have this strange situation where Welsh survives really well in its diaspora communities in London and Liverpool, but dies an even faster death than OTL across most of rural north and West Wales. The result would be that the Welsh language increasingly becomes more of a non-territorial language centred on its 'diaspora' communities in English cities, rather than in Wales itself (with the exception of surviving communities in North West Wales with do still speak Welsh in OTL 2018) although this, of course, depends on whether or not the South Wales valleys stay Welsh-speaking in this ATL.

 

[Alex Richards]

You’re engaging in pointless nitpicking rather than actually thinking creatively about how to make the scenario work.

Eh, it's actually a really valid point.

See the 1801 Act of Union stemmed from the desire to tie the island more closely to Britain by both the narrow Protestant ascendency who ruled in Ireland and the more conservative factions in Britain as Catholic Emancipation became a real possibility. The particular trigger in that case was the French-backed Irish catholic uprising of 1798 by a populace trying to emulate the revolution and take power from the Protestant Anglo-Scots aristocracy.

Here however the Plantation of Ulster has been entirely averted, meaning that either Ireland is being ruled by an even smaller aristocracy, or by the Catholic majority who may well have no desire to actually enter an act of union.

Of course, there's actually another aspect going on here- the Welsh switch to Anglicanism in the 16th Century was driven by the Tudors commissioning a Welsh language bible early on, in part out of the fact they considered the Welsh to be 'loyal' to their dynasty. Scotland meanwhile had her own reformers- and that's likely to be similar here, meaning that there's now a Scottish Gaelic bible in the 1530s or 40s. And given the smaller jump that could mean an Irish Gaelic bible that early on as well, meaning that we might have a sizable Irish protestant population- maybe even a majority.

But then perhaps the absence of a common language between England and Scotland means that the spread of reform that inspired men like John Knox doesn't happen either, meaning Scotland and Ireland are Catholic which completely mucks up the notion of the Acts of Union before they even get started.

I mean these are all fundamental to working out what a Britain with this sort of linguistic diversity looks like, or even if there is a Britain at all.

Heck, quite possibly the most likely method to create a unified Britain here is a substantial weakening of the English monarchy in the High Middle Ages that leads to a more decentralised monarchy establishing itself across the isles with a unified identity that eventually comes together more firmly in the 19th Century. And that's going to produce radically different cultures and ideas than a union of centralised monarchies.

 

[Roger II]

And we've maybe butterflied "English" identity as it emerged otl. Really the best options are either

1) Write off Scottish Gaelic*, start from a 17th-18th* century set of PoDs that preserve Irish and Welsh and maybe see Scots become a language in its own right(either actual divergence or just politics getting it treated as a separate language; it would neither be the first nor last time mutually intelligible dialects became "separate languages". These have been outlined or discussed in this thread.

2) Go with the medieval PoD and work from the butterflies there.

*Or let it get revived mainly as a prestige project similar to OTL Irish.

**The bibles idea could be good too, dunno if I know enough to judge.

 

[Analytical Engine]

Now here is an interesting question. To what extent would the Liverpool Welsh community and in other cities have managed to maintain themselves down the generations if they had been allowed to have state primary schools in their own language, like Czechs were in Imperial Vienna, for example? Certainly, in OTL, there is a thriving French community in London based on the Lycée with children attending those schools speaking French amongst themselves in the street.

Now if the answer to this question is yes, meaning that the Liverpool Welsh and London Welsh could have survived in significant numbers (talking tens of thousands) down the generations, then the Welsh language would have entered a really strange situation from the 1960s and 70s. This is because it was in the 60s and 70s that most of the language's rural heartland down the west side of Wales was anglicised primarily due to incomers moving to rural Wales, it seems, with Welsh medium education quite frankly not saving it there. Now if the language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-parental-demand law had been in force, then the collapse of Welsh across that huge area of rural Wales would have been even faster, due to incomer parents being allowed to change the medium of instruction of their local primary school in ATL, when in OTL, at least their children were schooled through Welsh.

Thus, in this ATL, you may have this strange situation where Welsh survives really well in its diaspora communities in London and Liverpool, but dies an even faster death than OTL across most of rural north and West Wales. The result would be that the Welsh language increasingly becomes more of a non-territorial language centred on its 'diaspora' communities in English cities, rather than in Wales itself (with the exception of surviving communities in North West Wales with do still speak Welsh in OTL 2018) although this, of course, depends on whether or not the South Wales valleys stay Welsh-speaking in this ATL.

It isn't just Liverpool and London that had large Welsh populations. Lloyd George himself was from a Manchester-Welsh family. Bristol had a large Welsh population. In such a world, there could be pockets of Welsh-speakers scattered throughout the major cities of the rest of Britain.

I wonder if Welsh would hang on longer in Shropshire and Herefordshire ITTL as well.

 

[Admiral Matt]

Maybe I should have excluded the Coalfield POD. The reason why I decided to put it in is that it makes the situation with Wales extremely complicated... although on second thoughts much more interesting. In fact, I am now going to try and imagine what the situation would be like without the coalfield POD. Please bear with me.

Now what is interesting is whether or not Welsh would have survived in the South Wales if the language of instruction in primary schools had been made to match home language/parental demand, and if Welsh-speaking parents had insisted on having their children attend Welsh schools, and kept it alive in their own families. Certainly, in Cardiff and a number of other communities, it seems that the levels of in-migration, chiefly from the nearby English West Country was simply so great that that city was going to be majority Anglophone anyway but in a language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-home-language scenario, could you have had a minority Welsh-speaking community survive much better than in OTL with its own schools?

Moving on to the South Wales valleys and Merthyr Tydfil, would Welsh have necessarily become a minority language there? Quite possibly not, in a language-of-instruction-is-driven-by-home-language scenario, and you would have had English migrant parents in Merthyr Tydfil and the valleys sending their children to English medium primary schools, and Welsh parents send their children to Welsh ones. Thus while you would not have ended up with the Welsh-speakers moving over to English as in OTL (at least not nearly as quickly, that's for sure), you probably would not have had the English-speakers being assimilated into the Welsh community either, although I may be wrong and either outcome may have happened eventually. It would be very interesting to see what the comparative numbers were in each area, as otherwise its hopeless trying to speculate. Either way, a likely situation in some, if not many, industrial communities of South Wales, is that you would have likely had parallel communities living side by side.

I can see your purpose here, and absolutely it is useful as a thought exercise, but there's only so far we can usefully go down this road. It's not a fundamentally different question from asking "Would Welsh survive better if Iguanodon and Baryonyx had never gone extinct in the British Isles?" The technical answer is that OTL hominids wouldn't exist in the first place, never mind Celts of any sort.

As you explored, parental-preference education has advantages in spots and disadvantages in others; it's not a game changer on its own. For the Welsh case, a more effective POD would probably involve creating a political unit over Wales administering itself in Welsh, which would in pursuing its interests attempt to maintain Welsh in schools, public life, etc. I may be showing my ignorance, but my understanding that Wales IOTL lacked such an entity, being legally part of England. Another option - perhaps the best - would be to simply alter the circumstances that led to South Wales being swamped with Englishmen.

 

[Abdominalz]

Another option - perhaps the best - would be to simply alter the circumstances that led to South Wales being swamped with Englishmen.

The best way to do that would be to either butterfly the South Wales coalfield or to disperse across Wales into smaller coalfields. That way, the North Wales Welsh would have been more likely to migrate to these ATL industrial areas of Wales and not to Liverpool, while the coalfields themselves would have been further away from the English West Country and not attract so many English migrants. Thus, in each 'little coalfield' you would have had a higher percentage of Welshmen moving there and far fewer English migrants. Result: Industrial areas stay Welsh-speaking and so does Wales.

Trouble is that both these scenarios require geological PODs.

 

[ShortsBelfast]

The real problem is not that there weren't rival identities to England in the British Isles but that the English identity is too big. Where you have a large majority language (spoken by 60% plus of the overall population of the British Isles) minority languages begin to suffer as the modern era comes in. Printing, newspapers, radio and TV all weaken regionalisation of language and, even if the dominant linguistic group aren't coercive, they will publish more books, have more record labels and popular songs (and hymns), put on more plays, have more radio and TV stations than the minority languages and be the biggest market you want to do business with. Just by virtue of being bigger and richer they will inspire emulation and assimilation. Look at the steady decline of Breton, Occitan, Gaelic and the slower decline of Welsh.
I think you would need a different pattern of early English settlement so that English is less dominant. And a more limited but more culturally penetrative Norman conquest. So, if you had the Home Counties and Channel Islands speaking Norman French, Devon and Cornwall Cornish, Wales and the Border Counties Welsh, the Midlands Anglo-Saxon, Yorkshire and points North Norse, East Anglia Danish, Scotland, Man and Ireland Gaelic, that would about achieve what you are looking for I think.