I think Stonehenge serves the same purpose as the Eiffel Tower here. It gives a reference that the reader may already be familiar with even though it makes little sense as a marker.
Looking back at the history of the British Isles is like looking across the Channel at northern Europe. A lot of those towns and cities date to Roman times or earlier, to the Gauls and have been renamed. I often wondered how the French language evolved to ignore so many consonants and wonder if they preserved the traditional spellings but chose to change pronunciation over time so it was simpler.
Pretty funny for a Texan who kinda-sorta speaks English, but with a noticeable accent.
English is nominally a Germanic language (German, English, Dutch etc) and French is a Romance language (French, Spanish, Italian etc).
Before the Romans rocked up, a Greek bloke called Pytheas sailed to the region and sailed around the mainland Britain and wrote up his travels and mentioned the Pretanike as the locals so that's an early description of the name that eventually became Britain/Britons.
You are a Texan and I'm sure that if you and I met we would understand each other perfectly well. My brother lived and worked in Plano for a couple of years and my niece was born there - she's a Texan!
English is what we make of it. It is just as much yours (US-TX) as mine (GB). I think the beauty of English is it shows a bit of thigh to everyone.
English is quite an odd language - it wants to be spoken by everyone and will quite happily take from other languages. I suspect that some languages may have evolved simply to be different ... to differentiate.
Anyway, it's probably time I visited a TL&C.
Just to reiterate: you speak English - the same one as me. I'm a Brit and you are a Yank but we both have exactly the same ownership of the language. It is very polite of you to say otherwise - and I think that is a Texan thing.
Looking back at the history of the British Isles is like looking across the Channel at northern Europe. A lot of those towns and cities date to Roman times or earlier, to the Gauls and have been renamed. I often wondered how the French language evolved to ignore so many consonants and wonder if they preserved the traditional spellings but chose to change pronunciation over time so it was simpler.
Pretty funny for a Texan who kinda-sorta speaks English, but with a noticeable accent.