The effect of Norse

The second big linguistic invasion came as a result of the Viking raids on Britain, which began in AD 787 and continued at intervals for some 200 years. Regular settlement began in the mid-9th century, and within a few years the Danes controlled most of eastern England. They were prevented from further gains by their defeat in 878 at Ethandun. By the Treaty of Wedmore (886) the Danes agreed to settle only in the north-east third of the country - east of a line running roughly from Chester to London - an area that was subject to Danish law, and which thus became known as the Danelaw. In 991, a further invasion brought a serious of victories for the Danish army, and resulted in the English king AEthelred, being forced into exile, and the Danes ceasing the throne. England then stayed under Danish rule for 25 years.

The linguistic result of this prolonged period of contact was threefold. A large number of settlements with Danish names appeared in England. There was a marked increase in personal names of Scandinavian origin. And many general words entered the language, nearly 1,000 eventually becoming part of Standard English. Only c. 150 of these words appear in Old English manuscripts. They include landing, score, beck, fellow, take, busting, and steersman as well as many words which did not survive in later English. The vast majority of loans do not begin to appear until the early 12th century. These include many of our modern words which use [sk] sounds (an Old Norse feature), such as skirt, sky, and skin.

The closeness of the contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Danish settlers is clearly shown by the extensive borrowings. Some of the commonest words in Modern English came into the language at that time such as both, same, get, and give. Even the personal pronoun system was affected, with they, them, and their replacing the earlier forms. And – the most remarkable invasion of all – Old Norse influenced the verb to be. The replacement of sindon by are is almost certainly the result of Scandinavian influence, as is the spread of the 3rd person singular -s ending in the present tense in other verbs.

AND A FEW MORE NORSE LOANS:

again, anger, awkward, bag, band, bank, birth, brink, bull, cake, call, clip, crawl, crook, die, dirt, dregs, egg, flat, fog, freckle, gap, gasp, get, guess, happy, husband, ill, keel, kid, knife, law, leg, loan, low, muggy, neck, odd, outlaw, race, raise. ransack, reindeer, rid, root, rugged, scant, scare, scowl, scrap, seat, seem, silver, sister, skill, skirt, sly, smile, snub, sprint, steak. take, thrift, Thursday, tight, trust, want, weak, window.

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST?

With two cultures in such close contact for so long, a large number of duplicate words must have arisen, both Old Norse (ON) and Old English (OE) providing ways of describing the same objects or situations. It is hardly ever possible in such cases to explain why one word proves to be fitter than another to survive. All we know is that there is evidence of three subsequent developments.

ON 1 OE 0

Sometimes the Scandinavian word was kept. This is what happened with egg vs ey (OE), sister vs sweostor(OE), silver vs seolfor (OE), and many more.

ON 0 OE 1

In other cases, the Old English word stayed, as in path vs reike (ON), sorrow vs site (ON), swell vs bolnen (ON) and also many more. The linguistic situation must have been quite confusing at times, especially when people travelled about the country, and were uncertain about which form to use (as shown by William Caxton's famous story about the words for 'egg').

ON 1 OE 1

In several cases, both words have been retained. For this to happen, of course, the two words would need to develop a useful difference in meaning. These cases include:

In many cases, one form has become standard, and the other kept in a regional dialect:

VOCABULARY THEN AND NOW

There are, it is thought, around 24,000 different lexical items in the Old English corpus. This lexicon, however, is fundamentally different from the one we find in Modern English. About 85 per cent of Old English words are no longer in use. Moreover, only 3 per cent of the words in Old English are loan words, compared with over 70 percent today. Old English vocabulary was thus profoundly Germanic, in a way that is no longer the case. Nearly half of Modern English general vocabulary comes from Latin or French, as a result of the huge influx of words in the Middle English period. And the readiness to absorb foreign elements has given the modern language a remarkable etymological variety which was totally lacking in Old English.

BASIC VOCABULARY AND SOME SIMPLE SENTENCES

Here are some samples of Anglo-Saxon by Catherine N. Ball:

• Ic grete þe – I greet you

• Wes þu hal; Hal wes þu; Sy þu hal; Wes gesund; Beoð ge gesunde – Hail! Farewell!

• Wilcume – Welcome!

• Wilcuman la, mine hlafordas – Welcome, my lords!

• Leofe broðra – Dear brothers

• Sweostor min – My sister, ...

• Leof–Friend, ... (or Sir, ...)

• Hlaford min – My lord, ...

• Hlæfdige min – My lady, ...

• Hwæt eart þu? – Who are you?

• Beowulf is min nama – My name is Beowulf

• Min nama is Michael – My name is Michael

• Wa me – Woe is me!

• Eala – Alas! Lo!

• La – Lo! Oh! Ah!

• Wa la wa – Woe!

• Giese; Gea – Yes

• Nese – No

• Ic þe þancas do – Thank you [I give you thanks]

• Ic sæcge eow þancas – Thank you [I say you thanks]

• Ic þancie þe – I thank you

• Soð is þæt þu segst! – What you say is true!

• Wel þu writst – You write well

• Ic nat – I don't know