"Old English or Anglo Saxon, a mish-mash of ancient Britannic languages, Latin, Old Norse, and some West Germanic languages"

I disagree.

The Old English was a Germanic Language. The Term "Anglo Saxon" itself refers to the people that influxed into Britain from Angeln (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angeln), Lower Saxony (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Saxony) and Jutland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jutland). As West-Germanic as it gets.

Of course languages get influenced from its neigbours. But twisting it into "a mish-mash of ... [a lot of important stuff] and some West Germanic languages" is exactly what proves the point of the story: Languages are tied to races and depending on point of view, are viewed as inferior.

In Europe it has always been problematic for linguists to prove to their own society that their language is a descendant of the arch-enemy's language (therefor "inferior").

E.G. the country of Luxembourg has been pushing legislature within the EU to recognize Luxembourgish as an official language, while linguists consider it part of a greater German dialect family. This illustrates the political implications, that arise out of "esteeming" languages. Luxembourg on the one hand tries to secure it's heritage. On the other Hand: Making it an official language may give a Luxembuorgish "Führer" of a horrible future leverage to claim those lands in Germany where this dialect is spoken too (or even the greater dialect family).

The Netherlands did exactly that after WWII, claiming chunks of northern Germany on behalf of linguistic similarities of the spoken dialect there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_annexation_of_German_terr...). And speaking of a "Führer" one could understand why it was controversial in the Netherlands to tie the Dutch language to the German language, while "Dutch" stands for what the English heard how the Dutch called themselves: "Deutsch", German.

Also "Old Norse" was a Germanic language too. Northern Germanic: North, Norse, Norsemen, Normans. The English also never spoke German, but they speak a Germanic language. And this is what the Germans do too. Why linguists under imaginable pressure in the past still call it 'Germanic', I don't know but I rather just go with it. And attaching feelings to stuff like that again proves the point of the story.

"Also, it wasn't "French" that was brought over to England." As English is a Germanic language, the similarities do not apply to e.g. the english clause syntax. But for a non-English-native-speaker the impact of french words in English vocabulary is overwhelming as is the way English words are written "frenchy". Just consider this HTML-Tag and attributes <titLE ... vertical-al IGN: middLE; Since in Germany we're taught British English in schools, the CSS-Attribute "colOUR" drove me nuts.

French was the lingua-franca (well, where does this term derive from?) in all of western europe, since it was the modern Latin, the language of rulers, intellectuals and clerics. It does not mean, that those who spoke it in Germany, England or Russia were of french descent. But speaking anything else was indeed seen as being inferior. As it is seen inferior in non-English speaking countries nowadays, if you don't use English words in specialized industries.

The eliteness of french is the root of the conflict that keeps Belgium from forming a government for 4 years now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemish_movement#History), as Flemish was seen inferior back in the days.

It's what made Martin Luther successful with reaching the masses, since he un-elited Christianity by making the bible available in German for the first time ever.

It's what made Pushkin THE national poet, since he un-elited literature by writing in Russian for the first time, instead of french. The russian rulers didn't even understood the people they ruled upon!

I wonder if Hitler knew, that the first German words ever written down in his thousand-year old Reich, were written in Hebrew letters, since Yiddish is Germanic and Jews (as anyone not-speaking elitish) were inferior people, but yet capable of writing.