Old Norse And Scandinavian Influence On English

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The history of English language is usually divided up into four major periods that can be justified both on the basis of linguistic differences and on the basis of historical events that influenced the later development of English language [1] . These periods are Old English (450-1150), Middle English (1150-1500), Early Modern English (1500-1700) and Modern English (1700-present). These years are not strict boundaries but rough approximations.

1. christianozation

In the fifth century AD Britain was invaded by the Germanic tribes, the founders of the English nation, the Anglo-Saxons.

In the ninth century Vikings repeatedly attacked Britain. The Vikings were people from Scandinavia; mainly from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Initially, the Vikings would come at spring to plunder and plummage?? places on the coast/shore but eventually, they decided to stay over winter.

Danelaw is the territory to the north

OLD ENGLISH

The earliest sources of Old English date from the eighth century (Jucker, p.7). Old English is very different from Modern English – Old English was fully inflected. Nouns were assigned gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) and had five grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and, rarely, instrumental) [2] . As Jucker points out (?) Old English syntax is freer than Modern English syntax because of the richness of inflections. The vocabulary of Old English is mostly of Germanic origin (prezentacija…) althoush there are some ? and ? loan words.

influence of other languages on English

what is Old English

OLD NORSE

They are

Scandinavian loanwords and their character

- after the Danes begun to settle down peaceably – Scandinavian words enter in numbers into the language

- the civilization of the invaders – very much like that of the English themselves  we cannot divide words into different domains of thought or experience

- the Scandinavian elements –

- varied and yet simple character of the borrowings

NOUNS

axle-tree

band

bank

birth

boon

booth

brink

bull

calf (of leg)

crook

dirt

down (feathers)

dregs

egg

fellow

freckle

gait

gap

girth

guess

hap

keel

kid

leg

link

loan

mire

race

reef (of sail)

reindeer

rift

root

scab

scales

score

scrap

seat

sister

skill

skin

skirt

sky

slaughter

snare

stack

steak

swain

thrift

tidings

trust

want

window

ADJECTIVES

awkward

flat

ill

loose

low

meek

muggy

odd

rotten

rugged

scant

seemly

sly

tattered

tight

weak

VERBS

bait

bask

batten

cal

cast

slip

cow

crave

crawl

die

droop

egg (on)

flit

gape

gasp

get

give

glitter

kindle

lift

lug

nag

raise

rake

ran-sack

rid

rive

scare

scout (an idea),

scowl

screech

snub

sprint

take

thrive

thrust

- familiar, everyday character of the words that the Scandinavian invasions and subsequent settlement brought into English (vs. French & Latin?)

We do not know much about the relation of two languages. In some places the Scandinavians gave up their language early, but there were also communities in which Danish or Norse remained for some time the usual language (in some parts of Scotland, Norse was still spoken as late as the seventeenth century). The similarity between the two languages and the

- bilingual – frequent intermarriage between the two peoples, the similarity between the two languages

- the Anglian dialect and Norse – may even have been mutually intelligible to a limited extent

- the basis existed for an extensive interaction of the two languages upon each other

- this conclusion is amply borne out by the large number of Scandinavian elements subsequently found in English

The tests of borrowed words

- the similarity between Old English and the language of Scandinavian invaders makes it at times very difficult to decide whether a given word in Modern English is native or a borrowed word

- many of the more common words of the two languages were identical

- Old English literature

- in certain cases, very reliable criteria by which we can recognize a borrowed word; these tests – not such as the lay person can generally apply

- the most reliable test – depend upon differences in the development of certain sounds in the North Germanic and West Germanic areas

 one of the simplest to recognize is the development of the sound sk

in OE – early palatalized to sh (written sc), except in the combination scr vs.

in Scandinavian countries it retained its hard sk sound

- consequently, while native words like ship, shall, fish have sh in Modern English, words borrowed from Scandinavian are generally still pronounced with sk: sky, skin, skill, scrape, scrub, bask, whisk

- the OE scyrte has become shirt, while the corresponding ON form skyrta gives us skirt

- in the same way the retention of the hard pronunciation of k and g in such words as kid, get, give, gild and egg – an indication of Scandinavian origin

occasionally, though not very often, the vowel of a word gives clear proof of borrowing...

aye, nay, hale, reindeer, swain – borrowed words

...

- such tests as these, based on sound-developments in the two languages, are the most reliable means of distinguishing Scandinavian from native words

- occasionally meaning – fairly reliable test

e.g. bloom (flower) – from OE blōma or Scandinavian blōm – BUT the OE word meant an ‘ingot of iron’, whereas the Scandinavian word meant ‘flower, bloom’ – the OE word has survived as a term in metallurgy

- gift – the cognate OE word gift meant ‘price of a wife’ an ‘marriage’ in the plural, the ON word had more general sense of ‘gift, present’

- plow

Scandinavian place-names

- the large number of places that bear Scandinavian names (more than 1,400!) – among the most notable evidences of the extensive settlement in England

- more than 600 places with names ending in –by (Whitby, Grimsby)

- in the district occupied by the Danes

- the Danish word by, meaning ‘farm’ or ‘town’, a word that is also seen in by-law (town law)

- some 300 names like Althorp, Bishopsthorpe, Linthorpe – the Scandinavian word thorp (village)

- thwaite (an isolated piece of land) – Applethwaite, Langthwaite

- toft (a piece of ground, a messuage) – Brimtoft, Nortoft

- names – not uniformly distributed over the Danelaw – the largest number are found in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire ...

- similarly high percentage of Scandinavian personal names found in the medieval records of these ditricts

- names ending in –son like Stevenson or Johnson  the equivalent of OE patronymic –ing, as in Browning

The earliest borrowings

-Scandinavian words in Old English

- two groups: associated with sea-roving and predatory people

words relating to the law or characteristic of the social and administrative system of Danelaw (the word ‘law’ itself is of Scandinavian origin)

- English legal terminology underwent a complete reshaping after the Norman Conquest, most of these words have been replaced now by terms from the French

The relation of borrowed and native words

- in many cases the new words could have supplied no real need in the English vocabulary

- made their way into English simply as the result of the mixture of the two peoples

- at that time, both languages were used side by side  a number of things might happen under such circumstances:

(1) words in the two languages coincided more or less in form and meaning, the modern word stands at the same time for both its English and its Scandinavian ancestors. examples: burn, cole, drag, fast, hang, murk(y), scrape, thick.

(2) where there are differences of form, the English word often survived. Beside such English words as bench, goat, heathen, yarn, few, grey, loath, leap, flay, corresponding Scandinavian forms are quite often found in ME literature and in some cases still exist in dialectal use. ... (p.101)

(3) in some cases, the Scandinavian word replaces the native word, often after two had long remained in use concurrently. awe (S) and its cognate eye (aye) (OE) – in the earlier part of the ME period the English word is more common, but by 1300 the Scandinavian form appears more often and finally replaces the Old English word. ....

- two words for egg (ey & egg) p.101

- the verb take replaced the OE niman

(4) occasionally both the English and Scandinavian words were retained/survived with a difference of meaning or use (the English word is given first):

no – nay

whole – hale

rear – raise

from – fro

craft – skill

hide – skin

sick – ill

(5) native word that was not in common use was reinforced or reintroduced from the Scandinavian

examples: till, dale, rim, blend, run and the Scottish bairn

(6) the English word – modified, taking on some characteristics of the corresonding Scandinavian word

give and get – hard g

.....

-the intimate mingling of the two tongues

Form words

- Scandinavian words that made their way into English were not confined to nouns and adjectives and verbs but extended to pronouns, prepositions, adverbs, and even a part of the verb to be  not very often and common

- the pronouns they, their, them – Scandinavian (OE were hie, hiera, him – An Old English Grammar, p. 63)

- not the only Scandinavian pronouns to be found in English (some in OE, p. 102, Baugh& Cable)

- both and same – although not pronouns, have pronominal uses, Scandinavian origin

- prepositions till and fro

- conjunction though

- ado (at-do)

- adverbs aloft, athwart, aye (ever) and seemly – derived from the Scandinavian

- the present plural of the verb ‘to be’ – are ... (p.102)

SYNTAX

- Max S. Kitch

CONCLUSION