Sgt. Howard wrote:English as a language did not exist prior to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Incorrect. Old English goes back to the middle of the 5th century as a language identifiably distinct from its close relatives on the continent.
William the Bastard (Norman- Dane blood settled in France and speaking French) conquered Alfred King of Brittany (Saxon speaking Saxon German and ruling Britons)
The King of Brittany would presumably rule in Brittany. Which is the northwestern part of modern France - not England. The last Alfred to have ruled England prior to the Norman Conquest, died in 899.
As it happens, a ruler of Brittany did die in 1066. His name, though, was Conan, and his title was Duke. He was succeeded by his little sister Hawise who ruled until 1072, jointly with her husband Hoel who continued on as regent for their son Alan.
As for England and the Norman Conquest, the fight was to see who would succeed King Edward the Confessor after his death in January 1066. Edward was born in England and spent his childhood there; he would certainly have spoken English, although probably also Norman French as that was his mother's native language. As he had no children, there were several competing claimants to the throne.
The first to take the throne was Harold Godwinson, Earl of Wessex, who had been born and raised speaking English. He ruled from January through October 1066, in that time defeating and killing another claimant: Harald Haradra the king of Norway. However, with his forces weakened from that battle, he could not also stand off the Normans, and in October he fell to a Norman arrow and William of Normandy took the throne. After that there was just a bit of clean-up.
English is the only language;
...
3) that does NOT assign sex to nouns
You mean the only one aside from...
* the approximately 2/3 of languages that have no grammatical gender at all
* languages where the male and female genders have merged: Danish, and most dialects of Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish
* languages with non-sex-related genders: Basque, Elamite, Hittite, and several Native American language families
(By the way, if you take a close look at our third-person pronouns - pretty much the only place were English retains grammatical gender - we have FOUR. Male, female, neutral, and non-person. Yes, the difference between "he or she" and "it", or between "them" and "those", is just as much a gender difference as the difference between "he" and "she".)
4) that uses inconsistent conjugation of verbs
Gee, I remember memorizing irregular verbs in both French and Spanish. I must have been confused.
5) in the English/European world that was DEVOID of written literature as late as the 5th century
How odd that there would be no literature in a language before that language existed.
However, there *could not* have been any literature in Old French prior to the 5th century, because the Franks (who were Germanic) had not arrived in France (where they would absorb Vulgar Latin and merge it with their Old Frankish tongue to produce Old French). In fact the oldest verified documents written in Old French are from the 8th Century.
6) that the overwhelming majority of Americans speak or undersand
A true but over-emphasized point. The average American speaks the dominant language of a much larger area around his/her home than most Europeans do.
