There ia also a cultural element to ethnicity that needs to be addressed but much of this discussion seems to be people just expressing opinions with no real debate I don t understand the claim that English culture is Germanic and somehow different to Welsh and Scottish culture I also do not see any great similarities between Scottish and Welsh culture except for those that they also share with the English I think it would be better to discuss the sources of peoples POVs and try to come to a consensus on how to incorporate all points of view There is clearly a POV that somehow English people are ethnically Germanic and distinct from the rest of the people of Great Britain I personally find this difficult to believe Even if one does subscribe to this POV then one has to accept that British English people have shared the same Island for over a millenium and a half and the claim that some sort of ethnic apartheid occured during these centuries doesn t strike me as very believable Nevertheless I am prepared to accept that this is a valid POV contingent on properly verified sources There is also the question of Scots which is also a Teutonic language so should we consider the speakers of Scots Germanic as well If one accepts that the English are the descendants of the indigenous British inhabitants of Great Britain which they are and also of some immigrating people who possibly but not certainly constituted an invading force that the observed cultural changed introduced by the Anglo Saxons may just have equally been introduced by cultural diffusion over several centuries and no one disputes that there was some migration but Danes settled in the Danelaw at the end of the nineth century and there certainly doesn t seem to have been any great displacement of indigenous people and that the English language is not necessarily an indication of mass migration or a rapid cultural change then it is also a reasonable point of view that the indigenous culture changed over time as it had in previous times Most archaeologists now point to greater continuity rather than any rapid change From a linguistic point of view Welsh serves as a good example here at the start of the 20th century the vast majority of people spoke Welsh as a first language in Wales indeed immigrating English people who came to work in the heavy industries of South Wales in the nineteenth century had to learn Welsh By the 1940s Welsh was a minority language In A History of Wales John Davies argues that the Welsh gave up speaking Welsh voluntarily He reasons that the internationalist nature of Socialism strong in Wales and the progressive nature of Non conformists led to a consensus that language could be a barrier He also argues that there is no evidence that coercive measures like the Welsh not had any significant impact No one is arguing that there was a mass migration in Wales at the beggining of the 20th century nor is anyone arguing that Welsh people gave up their identity or culture they just stopped speaking Welsh