117-578: The Solway Firth is an inlet on the west coast of Great Britain , forming part of the border between England and Scotland . The " firth " (a Scottish term for inlets of the sea) divides Cumbria (including the Solway Plain ) from Dumfries and Galloway . It stretches from St Bees Head, just south of Whitehaven in Cumbria, to the Mull of Galloway , on the western end of Dumfries and Galloway . The Isle of Man
234-631: A landbridge now known as Doggerland , Great Britain has been inhabited by modern humans for around 30,000 years. In 2011, it had a population of about 61 million , making it the world's third-most-populous island after Honshu in Japan and Java in Indonesia , and the most populated island outside of Asia . The term "Great Britain" can also refer to the political territory of England , Scotland and Wales , which includes their offshore islands. This territory, together with Northern Ireland , constitutes
351-454: A Goidelic language, Manx . Northern Scotland mainly spoke Pritennic , which became Pictish , which may have been a Brythonic language. During the period of the Roman occupation of Southern Britain (AD 43 to c. 410 ), Common Brythonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words. Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brythonic languages. Romano-British
468-701: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse
585-452: A common ancestral language termed Brittonic , British , Common Brythonic , Old Brythonic or Proto-Brythonic , which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century AD. Brythonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion at least in the majority of Great Britain south of the rivers Forth and Clyde , though the Isle of Man later had
702-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within
819-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has
936-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive
1053-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,
1170-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to
1287-566: A peninsular extension of mainland Europe until catastrophic flooding between then and 130,000 years ago resulted in the creation of the English Channel and Britain becoming an island during warm interglacial periods like the Last Interglacial/Eemian (130–115,000 years ago), though it remained connected to mainland Europe during glacial periods when sea levels were low. Archaic humans repeatedly occupied Britain before abandoning
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#17328374905561404-495: A popular footpath, enabling residents of Scotland to easily cross into England, where alcoholic drink was legally available seven days a week. (Scotland was dry on Sundays at the time.) The viaduct was demolished between 1931 and 1933. The Ministry of Defence had by 1999 fired more than 6,350 depleted uranium rounds into the Solway Firth from its testing range at Dundrennan Range . Slipknot 2019 song. "Solway Firth" from
1521-494: A possible royal match in 1548, Lord Protector Somerset said that the English and Scots were, "like as twoo brethren of one Islande of great Britaynes again." In 1604, James VI and I styled himself "King of Great Brittaine, France and Ireland". Great Britain refers geographically to the island of Great Britain. Politically, it may refer to the whole of England , Scotland and Wales , including their smaller offshore islands. It
1638-746: A result of this eventful geological history, the island shows a rich variety of landscapes . The oldest rocks in Great Britain are the Lewisian gneisses , metamorphic rocks found in the far north west of the island and in the Hebrides (with a few small outcrops elsewhere), which date from at least 2,700 My ago. South of the gneisses are a complex mixture of rocks forming the North West Highlands and Grampian Highlands in Scotland. These are essentially
1755-472: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after
1872-699: A similar sense to fauna, and for similar reasons, the flora consists of fewer species compared to much larger continental Europe. The flora comprises 3,354 vascular plant species, of which 2,297 are native and 1,057 have been introduced. The island has a wide variety of trees , including native species of birch , beech , ash , hawthorn , elm , oak , yew , pine , cherry and apple . Other trees have been naturalised, introduced especially from other parts of Europe (particularly Norway) and North America. Introduced trees include several varieties of pine, chestnut , maple , spruce , sycamore and fir , as well as cherry plum and pear trees . The tallest species are
1989-401: A very extended period of time. Changing latitude and sea levels have been important factors in the nature of sedimentary sequences, whilst successive continental collisions have affected its geological structure with major faulting and folding being a legacy of each orogeny (mountain-building period), often associated with volcanic activity and the metamorphism of existing rock sequences. As
2106-601: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It
2223-460: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created
2340-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding
2457-649: Is G. On the Internet, .uk is the country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. A .gb top-level domain was used to a limited extent, but is now deprecated; although existing registrations still exist (mainly by government organizations and email providers), the domain name registrar will not take new registrations. In the Olympics, Team GB is used by the British Olympic Association to represent
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#17328374905562574-743: Is also more than 1000 species of bryophyte including algae and mosses across the island. The currently known species include 767 mosses, 298 liverworts and 4 hornworts . There are many species of fungi including lichen -forming species, and the mycobiota is less poorly known than in many other parts of the world. The most recent checklist of Basidiomycota (bracket fungi, jelly fungi, mushrooms and toadstools, puffballs, rusts and smuts), published in 2005, accepts over 3600 species. The most recent checklist of Ascomycota (cup fungi and their allies, including most lichen-forming fungi), published in 1985, accepts another 5100 species. These two lists did not include conidial fungi (fungi mostly with affinities in
2691-464: Is also very near to the firth. The firth comprises part of the Irish Sea . The firth's coastline is characterised by lowland hills and small mountains. It is a mainly rural area, with mostly small villages and settlements (such as Powfoot ). Fishing, hill farming , and some arable farming play a large part in the local economy, although tourism is increasing. The northern part of the English coast of
2808-537: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke
2925-461: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At
3042-574: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to
3159-558: Is not technically correct to use the term to refer to the whole of the United Kingdom which includes Northern Ireland , though the Oxford English Dictionary states "...the term is also used loosely to refer to the United Kingdom." Similarly, Britain can refer to either all islands in Great Britain, the largest island, or the political grouping of countries. There is no clear distinction, even in government documents:
3276-508: Is subject to continuing urbanisation , which have contributed towards the overall loss of species. A DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) study from 2006 suggested that 100 species have become extinct in the UK during the 20th century, about 100 times the background extinction rate . However, some species, such as the brown rat , red fox , and introduced grey squirrel , are well adapted to urban areas. Rodents make up 40% of
3393-456: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of
3510-855: Is the capital city of Scotland , and is the seat of the Scottish Government as well as the highest courts in Scotland . The Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. Cardiff is the capital city of Wales , and is the seat of the Welsh Government . In the Late Bronze Age, Britain was part of a culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age , held together by maritime trading, which also included Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal. In contrast to
3627-554: Is the case, the first element may be * sulr , an unrecorded word cognate with Old English sol 'muddy, pool', or a derivative of sulla , meaning 'to swill'. The second element of the name is from the Old Norse vað , meaning 'ford' (which is cognate with the modern English word wade ). The area had three fords: the Annan or Bowness Wath, the Dornock Wath (once called
Solway Firth - Misplaced Pages Continue
3744-577: Is the largest denomination in Wales . There are other non-conformist minorities, such as Baptists , Quakers , the United Reformed Church (a union of Congregationalists and English Presbyterians ), Unitarians . The first patron saint of Great Britain was Saint Alban . He was the first Christian martyr dating from the Romano-British period, condemned to death for his faith and sacrificed to
3861-519: Is the largest species, with roe deer and fallow deer also prominent; the latter was introduced by the Normans . Sika deer and two more species of smaller deer, muntjac and Chinese water deer , have been introduced, muntjac becoming widespread in England and parts of Wales while Chinese water deer are restricted mainly to East Anglia. Habitat loss has affected many species. Extinct large mammals include
3978-780: Is the name for the Latinised form of the language used by Roman authors. British English is spoken in the present day across the island, and developed from the Old English brought to the island by Anglo-Saxon settlers from the mid 5th century. Some 1.5 million people speak Scots —which was indigenous language of Scotland and has become closer to English over centuries. An estimated 700,000 people speak Welsh , an official language in Wales . In parts of north west Scotland, Scottish Gaelic remains widely spoken. There are various regional dialects of English, and numerous languages spoken by some immigrant populations. Christianity has been
4095-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩
4212-603: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on
4329-466: The British Olympic team . The Olympic Federation of Ireland represents the whole island of Ireland , and Northern Irish sportspeople may choose to compete for either team, most choosing to represent Ireland. Politically, Great Britain refers to the whole of England , Scotland and Wales in combination, but not Northern Ireland ; it includes islands, such as the Isle of Wight , Anglesey ,
4446-797: The Celtic languages to the island. During the Iron Age , Britain was inhabited by various different Celtic tribes . The Romans conquered most of the island (up to Hadrian's Wall in northern England) and this became the Ancient Roman province of Britannia . In the course of the 500 years after the Roman Empire fell, the Britons of the south and east of the island were assimilated or displaced by invading Germanic tribes ( Angles , Saxons , and Jutes , often referred to collectively as Anglo-Saxons ). At about
4563-937: The Douglas firs ; two specimens have been recorded measuring 65 metres or 212 feet. The Fortingall Yew in Perthshire is the oldest tree in Europe. There are at least 1,500 different species of wildflower . Some 107 species are particularly rare or vulnerable and are protected by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 . It is illegal to uproot any wildflowers without the landowner's permission. A vote in 2002 nominated various wildflowers to represent specific counties. These include red poppies , bluebells , daisies , daffodils , rosemary , gorse , iris , ivy , mint , orchids , brambles , thistles , buttercups , primrose , thyme , tulips , violets , cowslip , heather and many more. There
4680-512: The Gregorian mission . It was the main religion for around a thousand years. There are over 5 million adherents today, 4.5 million Catholics in England and Wales and 750,000 in Scotland , although fewer than a million Catholics regularly attend mass . The Church of Scotland , a form of Protestantism with a Presbyterian system of ecclesiastical polity , is the third most numerous on
4797-473: The Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia . Judaism figured slightly more than Buddhism at the 2011 census, having 263,000 adherents (excluding Scotland's about 6000). Jews have inhabited Britain since 1070. However, those resident and open about their religion were expelled from England in 1290, replicated in some other Catholic countries of the era. Jews were permitted to re-establish settlement as of 1656, in
Solway Firth - Misplaced Pages Continue
4914-559: The Isles of Scilly , the Hebrides and the island groups of Orkney and Shetland , that are part of England, Wales, or Scotland. It does not include the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands . The political union which joined the kingdoms of England and Scotland occurred in 1707 when the Acts of Union ratified the 1706 Treaty of Union and merged the parliaments of the two nations, forming
5031-692: The Kingdom of Great Britain , which covered the entire island. Before this, a personal union had existed between these two countries since the 1603 Union of the Crowns under James VI of Scotland and I of England . The oldest evidence for archaic humans in Britain are the Happisburgh footprints and associated stone tools found in Norfolk , dating to around 950–850,000 years ago. Prior to 450,000 years ago, Britain formed
5148-525: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation
5265-578: The Privy Council of England was drafting the proclamation of the new king, Charles I, a Scottish peer, Thomas Erskine, 1st Earl of Kellie , succeeded in insisting that it use the phrase "King of Great Britain", which James had preferred, rather than King of Scotland and England (or vice versa). While that title was also used by some of James's successors, England and Scotland each remained legally separate countries, each with its own parliament, until 1707, when each parliament passed an Act of Union to ratify
5382-657: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks
5499-454: The Treaty of Union that had been agreed the previous year. This created a single kingdom with one parliament with effect from 1 May 1707. The Treaty of Union specified the name of the new all-island state as "Great Britain", while describing it as "One Kingdom" and "the United Kingdom". To most historians, therefore, the all-island state that existed between 1707 and 1800 is either "Great Britain" or
5616-547: The United Kingdom . The archipelago has been referred to by a single name for over 2000 years: the term ' British Isles ' derives from terms used by classical geographers to describe this island group. By 50 BC, Greek geographers were using equivalents of Prettanikē as a collective name for the British Isles. However, with the Roman conquest of Britain , the Latin term Britannia
5733-433: The brown bear , grey wolf and wild boar ; the latter has had a limited reintroduction in recent times. There is a wealth of birdlife , with 628 species recorded, of which 258 breed on the island or remain during winter. Because of its mild winters for its latitude, Great Britain hosts important numbers of many wintering species, particularly waders , ducks , geese and swans . Other well known bird species include
5850-520: The golden eagle , grey heron , common kingfisher , common wood pigeon , house sparrow , European robin , grey partridge , and various species of crow , finch , gull , auk , grouse , owl and falcon . There are six species of reptile on the island; three snakes and three lizards including the legless slowworm . One snake, the adder , is venomous but rarely deadly. Amphibians present are frogs , toads and newts . There are also several introduced species of reptile and amphibian. In
5967-711: The honeycomb worm and blue mussel were designated as targets of conservation efforts, and Allonby Bay (an inlet of the Solway Firth) was put forward as a candidate for a Marine Conservation Zone . A 53-mile (85 km) long-distance walking route, the Annandale Way , runs through Annandale, from the source of the River Annan , in the Moffat Hills , to the Solway Firth; it was opened in September 2009. Unlike other parts of
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#17328374905566084-548: The mammal species . These include squirrels , mice , voles , rats and the recently reintroduced European beaver . There is also an abundance of European rabbit , European hare , shrews , European mole and several species of bat . Carnivorous mammals include the red fox , Eurasian badger , Eurasian otter , weasel , stoat and elusive Scottish wildcat . Various species of seal , whale and dolphin are found on or around British shores and coastlines. The largest land-based wild animals today are deer . The red deer
6201-420: The ninth-largest island in the world . It is dominated by a maritime climate with narrow temperature differences between seasons. The island of Ireland , with an area 40 per cent that of Great Britain, is to the west – these islands, along with over 1,000 smaller surrounding islands and named substantial rocks , comprise the British Isles archipelago . Connected to mainland Europe until 9,000 years ago by
6318-520: The pagan gods . In more recent times, some have suggested the adoption of St Aidan as another patron saint of Britain. From Ireland, he worked at Iona amongst the Dál Riata and then Lindisfarne where he restored Christianity to Northumbria . The three constituent countries of the United Kingdom have patron saints: Saint George and Saint Andrew are represented in the flags of England and Scotland respectively. These two flags combined to form
6435-654: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for
6552-694: The " Kingdom of Great Britain ". Great Britain lies on the European continental shelf, part of the Eurasian Plate and off the north-west coast of continental Europe , separated from this European mainland by the North Sea and by the English Channel , which narrows to 34 km (18 nmi; 21 mi) at the Straits of Dover . It stretches over about ten degrees of latitude on its longer, north–south axis and covers 209,331 km (80,823 sq mi), excluding
6669-551: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within
6786-957: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants
6903-460: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian
7020-453: The 4th century BC. The term used by Pytheas may derive from a Celtic word meaning "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk" in reference to body decorations . According to Strabo, Pytheas referred to Britain as Bretannikē , which is treated a feminine noun. Marcian of Heraclea , in his Periplus maris exteri , described the island group as αἱ Πρεττανικαὶ νῆσοι (the Prettanic Isles). The Greco-Egyptian scientist Ptolemy referred to
7137-401: The Album "We Are Not Your Kind" Great Britain Great Britain (commonly shortened to Britain ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe , consisting of the countries England , Scotland and Wales . With an area of 209,331 km (80,823 sq mi), it is the largest of the British Isles , the largest European island and
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#17328374905567254-439: The Angles. Germanic speakers referred to Britons as Welsh . This term came to be applied exclusively to the inhabitants of what is now Wales, but it also survives in names such as Wallace and in the second syllable of Cornwall . Cymry , a name the Britons used to describe themselves, is similarly restricted in modern Welsh to people from Wales, but also survives in English in the place name of Cumbria . The Britons living in
7371-438: The Ascomycota but known only in their asexual state) or any of the other main fungal groups (Chytridiomycota, Glomeromycota and Zygomycota). The number of fungal species known very probably exceeds 10,000. There is widespread agreement among mycologists that many others are yet to be discovered. London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom as a whole, and is the seat of the United Kingdom's government . Edinburgh
7488-434: The Church is the monarch of the United Kingdom, as the Supreme Governor . It has the status of established church in England. There are just over 26 million adherents to Anglicanism in Britain today, although only around one million regularly attend services. The second largest Christian practice is the Latin Church of the Catholic Church , which traces its history to the 6th century with Augustine of Canterbury and
7605-455: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French
7722-455: The London area sinking at double this partly due to the continuing compaction of the recent clay deposits. Animal diversity is modest, as a result of factors including the island's small land area, the relatively recent age of the habitats developed since the last glacial period and the island's physical separation from continental Europe , and the effects of seasonal variability. Great Britain also experienced early industrialisation and
7839-421: The Sandywathe), and the main one —the Solewath (also called the Solewath or the Sulewad). A wooden lighthouse was built in 1841 at Barnkirk Point ( grid reference NY 1903 6425 ). It was destroyed by fire in 1960. On 9 March 1876, a 79-ton French lugger St. Pierre , was stranded - and finally declared lost - on Blackshaw Bank, an ill-defined feature which extends for a considerable distance on both sides of
7956-440: The Solway Firth was designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty , known as the Solway Coast , in 1964. Construction of the Robin Rigg Wind Farm in the firth began in 2007. Within the firth, there are some salt flats and mud flats that can be dangerous, due to their frequently shifting patches of quicksand . There are over 290 square kilometres (110 sq mi) of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) in
8073-416: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused
8190-405: The UK government yearbooks have used both Britain and United Kingdom . GB and GBR are used instead of UK in some international codes to refer to the United Kingdom, including the Universal Postal Union , international sports teams, NATO , and the International Organization for Standardization country codes ISO 3166-2 and ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 , whilst the aircraft registration prefix
8307-431: The area during cooler periods. Modern humans arrived in Britain about 40,000 years ago, as evidenced by remains found in Kents Cavern in Devon, following the disappearance of Neanderthals . Prior to 9,000 years ago Britain retained a land connection to the continent, with an area of mostly low marshland ( Doggerland ) joining it to what are now Denmark and the Netherlands . During the Mesolithic period, Britain
8424-579: The area of the firth (one of which is Salta Moss ), as well as national nature reserves — at Caerlaverock and in Cumbria . On the Cumbrian side, much of the coastline has been designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The Solway Coast ’s AONB has two separate sections: the first runs westward from just north of Carlisle to Skinburness ; the second runs south from the hamlet of Beckfoot , past Mawbray and Allonby , to Crosscanonby . In 2013,
8541-503: The areas now known as Wales, Cumbria and Cornwall were not assimilated by the Germanic tribes, a fact reflected in the survival of Celtic languages in these areas into more recent times. At the time of the Germanic invasion of southern Britain , many Britons emigrated to the area now known as Brittany , where Breton , a Celtic language closely related to Welsh and Cornish and descended from
8658-702: The basis of the Great Britain royal flag of 1604. Saint David is the patron saint of Wales. There are many other British saints. Some of the best known are Cuthbert , Columba , Patrick , Margaret , Edward the Confessor , Mungo , Thomas More , Petroc , Bede , and Thomas Becket . Numerous other religions are practised. The 2011 census recorded that Islam had around 2.7 million adherents (excluding Scotland with about 76,000). More than 1.4 million people (excluding Scotland's about 38,000) believe in Hinduism , Sikhism , or Buddhism —religions that developed in
8775-579: The bed of the North Sea was dry and acted as a land bridge, now known as Doggerland , to the Continent. It is generally thought that as sea levels gradually rose after the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, Doggerland reflooded cutting off what was the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BC. Great Britain has been subject to a variety of plate tectonic processes over
8892-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,
9009-603: The breaching of the Weald-Artois Anticline , a ridge that held back a large proglacial lake , now submerged under the North Sea. Around 10,000 years ago, during the Devensian glaciation with its lower sea level , Great Britain was not an island, but an upland region of continental north-western Europe, lying partially underneath the Eurasian ice sheet. The sea level was about 120 metres (390 ft) lower than today, and
9126-648: The channel of the River Nith. Between 1869 and 1921, the estuary was crossed by the Solway Junction Railway on a 1780 m (5850 ft) iron viaduct . The line was built to carry iron ore from the Whitehaven area to Lanarkshire and was financed and operated by the Caledonian Railway of Scotland. After the railway, which was not a financial success, ceased operating in 1921, the railway bridge became
9243-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/
9360-659: The continental region which approximates to modern Brittany and had been settled in the fifth and sixth centuries by Celtic Briton migrants from Great Britain. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Cecily , daughter of Edward IV of England , and James , son of James III of Scotland , which described it as "this Nobill Isle, callit Gret Britanee". The Scottish philosopher and historian, John Major (Mair), published his 'History of Great Britain, both England and Scotland' ( Historia majoris Britanniae, tam Angliae quam Scotiae ) in 1521. While promoting
9477-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it
9594-702: The generally accepted view that Celtic originated in the context of the Hallstatt culture , since 2009, John T. Koch and others have proposed that the origins of the Celtic languages are to be sought in Bronze Age Western Europe, especially the Iberian Peninsula. Koch et al.'s proposal has failed to find wide acceptance among experts on the Celtic languages. All the modern Brythonic languages (Breton, Cornish, Welsh) are generally considered to derive from
9711-438: The interregnum which was a peak of anti-Catholicism. Most Jews in Great Britain have ancestors who fled for their lives , particularly from 19th century Lithuania and the territories occupied by Nazi Germany . Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse
9828-555: The island with around 2.1 million members. Introduced in Scotland by clergyman John Knox , it has the status of national church in Scotland. The monarch of the United Kingdom is represented by a Lord High Commissioner . Methodism is the fourth largest and grew out of Anglicanism through John Wesley . It gained popularity in the old mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire , also amongst tin miners in Cornwall . The Presbyterian Church of Wales , which follows Calvinistic Methodism ,
9945-451: The language of the emigrants, is still spoken. In the 9th century, a series of Danish assaults on northern English kingdoms led to them coming under Danish control (an area known as the Danelaw ). In the 10th century, however, all the English kingdoms were unified under one ruler as the kingdom of England when the last constituent kingdom, Northumbria, submitted to Edgar in 959. In 1066, England
10062-418: The larger island as great Britain (μεγάλη Βρεττανία megale Brettania ) and to Ireland as little Britain (μικρὰ Βρεττανία mikra Brettania ) in his work Almagest (147–148 AD). In his later work, Geography ( c. 150 AD ), he gave the islands the names Alwion , Iwernia , and Mona (the Isle of Man ), suggesting these may have been the names of the individual islands not known to him at
10179-528: The largest religion by number of adherents since the Early Middle Ages : it was introduced under the ancient Romans, developing as Celtic Christianity . According to tradition, Christianity arrived in the 1st or 2nd century . The most popular form is Anglicanism (known as Episcopalism in Scotland). Dating from the 16th-century Reformation , it regards itself as both Catholic and Reformed . The Head of
10296-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If
10413-544: The mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian
10530-662: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse
10647-489: The much smaller surrounding islands. The North Channel , Irish Sea , St George's Channel and Celtic Sea separate the island from the island of Ireland to its west. The island is since 1993 joined, via one structure, with continental Europe: the Channel Tunnel , the longest undersea rail tunnel in the world. The island is marked by low, rolling countryside in the east and south, while hills and mountains predominate in
10764-556: The name is probably from the Old Norse word súl 'pillar', referring to the Lochmaben Stane , though it may instead be from súla , meaning ' solan goose '. Súl and súla both have long vowels, but the early spellings of Solway indicate a short vowel in the first element. This may be due to the shortening of an originally long vowel in the Middle English period but may also represent an original short vowel. If this
10881-513: The name of 'Britanniæ.'" The name Britain descends from the Latin name for Britain, Britannia or Brittānia , the land of the Britons. Old French Bretaigne (whence also Modern French Bretagne ) and Middle English Bretayne , Breteyne . The French form replaced the Old English Breoton, Breoten, Bryten, Breten (also Breoton-lond, Breten-lond ). Britannia
10998-503: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around
11115-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having
11232-465: The remains of folded sedimentary rocks that were deposited between 1,000 My and 670 My ago over the gneiss on what was then the floor of the Iapetus Ocean . In the current era the north of the island is rising as a result of the weight of Devensian ice being lifted. Counterbalanced, the south and east is sinking, generally estimated at 1 mm ( 1 ⁄ 25 inch) per year, with
11349-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because
11466-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains
11583-562: The same source as the Goidelic term Cruithne used to refer to the early Brythonic -speaking inhabitants of Ireland. The latter were later called Picts or Caledonians by the Romans . Greek historians Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo preserved variants of Prettanike from the work of Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia , who travelled from his home in Hellenistic southern Gaul to Britain in
11700-618: The same time, Gaelic tribes from Ireland invaded the north-west, absorbing both the Picts and Britons of northern Britain, eventually forming the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century. The south-east of Scotland was colonised by the Angles and formed, until 1018, a part of the Kingdom of Northumbria . Ultimately, the population of south-east Britain came to be referred to as the English people , so-named after
11817-581: The time of writing Almagest . The name Albion appears to have fallen out of use sometime after the Roman conquest of Britain , after which Britain became the more commonplace name for the island. After the Anglo-Saxon period, Britain was used as a historical term only. Geoffrey of Monmouth in his pseudohistorical Historia Regum Britanniae ( c. 1136 ) refers to the island of Great Britain as Britannia major ("Greater Britain"), to distinguish it from Britannia minor ("Lesser Britain"),
11934-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/
12051-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though
12168-505: The west coast of Scotland, the Solway Firth has only a few islands. They are: The Solway Firth is the estuary of the River Eden and the River Esk . Below are links to lists of the other rivers that flow into the firth: The name 'Solway' (recorded as Sulewad in 1218) is of Scandinavian origin, and was originally the name of a ford across the mud flats at Eskmouth . The first element of
12285-452: The western and northern regions. It is surrounded by over 1,000 smaller islands and islets . The greatest distance between two points is 968.0 km ( 601 + 1 ⁄ 2 mi) (between Land's End , Cornwall and John o' Groats , Caithness ), 838 miles (1,349 km) by road. The English Channel is thought to have been created between 450,000 and 180,000 years ago by two catastrophic glacial lake outburst floods caused by
12402-502: The word are quotations of the periplus by later authors, such as those within Strabo's Geographica , Pliny's Natural History and Diodorus of Sicily's Bibliotheca historica . Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79) in his Natural History records of Great Britain: "Its former name was Albion; but at a later period, all the islands, of which we shall just now briefly make mention, were included under
12519-476: Was conquered by the Normans , who introduced a Norman -speaking administration that was eventually assimilated. Wales came under Anglo-Norman control in 1282, and was officially annexed to England in the 16th century. On 20 October 1604 King James , who had succeeded separately to the two thrones of England and Scotland, proclaimed himself "King of Great Brittaine, France , and Ireland". When James died in 1625 and
12636-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to
12753-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in
12870-503: Was by Aristotle (384–322 BC), or possibly by Pseudo-Aristotle , in his text On the Universe , Vol. III. To quote his works, "There are two very large islands in it, called the British Isles, Albion and Ierne ". The first known written use of the word Britain was an ancient Greek transliteration of the original Proto-Celtic term in a work on the travels and discoveries of Pytheas that has not survived. The earliest existing records of
12987-571: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of
13104-498: Was inhabited by hunter gatherers. Neolithic farmers , of Anatolian origin, arrived in Britain around 4000 BC, replacing the pre-existing hunter gatherers. Around 2000 BC, the Bronze Age Bell Beaker Culture arrived in Britain, which genetic evidence suggests was associated with another episode of nearly complete population replacement. Later significant migration to southern Britain around 1000 BC may have brought
13221-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut
13338-518: Was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in
13455-734: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into
13572-592: Was used by the Romans from the 1st century BC for the British Isles taken together. It is derived from the travel writings of Pytheas around 320 BC, which described various islands in the North Atlantic as far north as Thule (probably Norway ). The peoples of these islands of Prettanike were called the Πρεττανοί, Priteni or Pretani . Priteni is the source of the Welsh language term Prydain , Britain , which has
13689-487: Was used for the island of Great Britain, and later Roman-occupied Britain south of Caledonia . The earliest known name for Great Britain is Albion ( Greek : Ἀλβιών ) or insula Albionum , from either the Latin albus meaning "white" (possibly referring to the white cliffs of Dover , the first view of Britain from the continent) or the "island of the Albiones ". The oldest mention of terms related to Great Britain
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