II MA- HEL- The Scandinavian Influence on the English Language

The Scandinavian Influence on the English Language

Near the end of the Old English period, the English language underwent the Scandinavian influence. (other names- The Teutons of the North, Northmen, Norsemen, Danes, Vikings) In the fifth century AD, Britain was invaded by the Germanic tribes, the founders of the English nation, the Anglo-Saxons. For some centuries the Scandinavians remained quietly in their home, but in the eighth century, they began a series of attacks on all the lands near to the North Sea and the Baltic. In the ninth century Vikings (who were people from Scandinavia; mainly from Denmark, Norway and Sweden) repeatedly attacked Britain. The Vikings initially came to plunder the places on the coast/shore but later they settled in England.

They founded the dukedom of Normandy and finally conquered England. At the beginning of the eleventh century Cnut, king of Denmark obtained the throne of England. The daring sea-rovers who made these unusual achievements were known as the Vikings, and their period, extending from the middle of the eighth century to the beginning of the eleventh is known as the Viking Age.

Scandinavian farmers intermarried with the English. And in the districts where peaceful settlement took place, conditions were favourable for an extensive Scandinavian influence on Old English.

A. Scandinavian Place-names and Personal Names in England

A large number of places bears Scandinavian names (more than 1,400!) (among the most notable pieces of evidence of the extensive settlement in England)

1. More than 600 places bear Scandinavian names which end in –by- (farm or town in Danish) e.g. Grimsby, Whitby, Derby, Rugby, Tenby and Thoresby,

2. About 300 names contain the Scandinavian word thorp (village). e.g. Althorp, Bishopthorpe, Goldthorpe, Linthorpe, Mablethorpe and Northrope

3. An almost equal number contain the word thwaite (an isolated piece of land/ a forest clearing). e.g.  Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Cowperthwaite, Gunthwaite, Langthwaite, Linthwaite, and Satterthwaite.

4. There are also a hundred places bearing names ending in toft (a piece of ground) e.g. Brimtoft, Eastoft, Langtoft, Lowestoft, and Nortoft.

5. The Danish word by (meaning ‘farm’ or ‘town’), and the word by-law (town law)

6. The Danish influence can also be found in beck (stream), fell (ill or table-land), force (waterfall) and kirk (church)

7. In some districts in the counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, about 75 percentages of the place-names are of Scandinavian origin. A similarly high percentage of Scandinavian personal names are found, e.g. names ending in –son e.g. Stevenson, and Johnson and names ending in –ing, as in Browning

B. The Earliest Borrowing by Old English from the Scandinavian Languages

1. The largest group of Scandinavian words was associated with sea-roving

e.g. barda (beaked ship), cnearr (small warship), vessel (fleet), mann (pirate), dreng (warrior), bātswegen (boatman), haven (port), hofding (chief), orrest (battle), rān (robbery, and fylcian (to collect a force), skipper (captain of a ship) (from the Norse ‘skip’ which means ‘ship’)

2. The names of the days of the week are from Norse mythology and folklore.

3. Several words relating to the law or the social and administrative system entered into English. Examples: law, outlaw, wapentake (an administrative district), hūsting (assembly)

C. The Character of Scandinavian Loanwords

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, thrall, thrift, tidings, trust, want, window,

Adjectives

Awkward, flat, ill, loose, low, meek, muggy, murky, odd, rotten, rugged, scant, seemly, sly, tattered, tight, weak

Verbs

Bait, bask, batten, call, cast, clip, 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

D. Scandinavian Structure Words and Adverbs in Old English

The pronouns ‘they’, ‘their’, and ‘them’ are Scandinavian, replacing the Old English pronouns hīe, hiera, and hīe, which were confusing because of their similarity to the singular forms hit (it), "his, and hit. The words “both” and “same” are of Scandinavian origin, too. The prepositions “till” and “fro” (from) and the conjunction ‘though’ are Scandinavian; the latter survives in the phrase to and fro. The present plural of the verb ‘to be’ “are” of the verb to be is a very important adoption. The practice of using ‘to’ before an infinitive and the formation of -‘s’ in the plural and the genitive are from Danish. The adverbs aloft, athwart, aye (ever), seemly, and the earlier; all have their origin in the Scandinavian.

E. The nature of Scandinavian borrowings

The relationship of Scandinavian can be quite complex and go beyond the above instances of direct loans. For instance, there are cases where the form of a word is Scandinavian rather than English.

OE ceallian	Scan kalla	call
OE lyft‘air’	Scan loft	loft
OE sweoster	Scan suster	sister (cf. G Schwester)
OE seolfor	Scan silfr	silver

Doublets (There exists both a continuation of the original Old English forms and a loan from Scandinavian)

Inherited English	Scandinavian loan
shin (< OE scinn)	skin (< Sc scinn)
shriek	screak
whole	hale
ditch	dike

F. 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. The most reliable test – depend upon differences in the development of certain sounds in the North Germanic and West Germanic areas. They can be considered a fairly reliable test.

 1. Development of the sound ‘sk’

One of the simplest to recognize is the development of the sound ‘sk’. In OE was early palatalized to ‘sh’ (written sc) but in Scandinavian countries, it retained its hard ‘sk’ sound. It gave rise to closely related pairs such as shirt, skirt, skip, ship, shrub, scrub. 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.

2. Retention of the hard pronunciation of ‘k’ and ‘g’

In the same way, the retention of the hard pronunciation of ‘k’ and ‘g’ in such words as ‘kid’, ‘get’, ‘give’, ‘gild’ and ‘egg’ is an indication of Scandinavian origin.

3. Vowel words

Occasionally, though not very often, the vowel of a word gives clear proof of borrowing. e.g. aye, nay, hale, reindeer, swain – borrowed words

            The number of words borrowed from Scandinavian in Standard English is about 900.  In addition to these Standard English words, there are thousands of Scandinavian words that are still a part of the everyday speech of people in the north and east of England. The period during which the Danish element was making its way into the English vocabulary was the tenth and eleventh centuries, the period of the fusion of the two peoples. Because of its extent and the intimate way in which the borrowed elements were incorporated, the Scandinavian influence is one of the most important foreign influences that have contributed to the English language.