Vikingälamningar: den nordiska påverkan på de olika språken i Storbritannien

© 1994 Mindy Jane MacLeodFrom English abstract: This study is my investigation into the effects of the Scandinavian languages on English, and to a lesser extent, on the other languages of Great Britain. It is not meant to be an exhaustive work: rather its aim is to consider the influence which the Nordic languages have exerted on the languages of Britain and Ireland at various times in history, and to note the similarities and differences by which the languages were affected. The greatest influence on English occurred during the Viking period, when England was invaded and settled by hordes of Danes and Norwegians. As Old Norse and Old English were mutually comprehensible languages, a great deal of ‘language mixing’ took place, with Old English adopting many Old Norse words into its vocabulary. Since the languages were so similar, however, with many words identical in both languages, it is often hard to determine the extent of the language borrowing. I have categorised the Old English borrowings from Scandinavian into various groups of influence. Often the English adopted Scandinavian words needles sly; in these cases the Norse words either replaced the native ones, or were kept to form synonyms. Sometimes a distinction developed over time between two words which originally had the same meaning. Often such 'Word pairs did not endure into standard English, and are best preserved in the northern dialects of England, and in Lowland Scots. Sometimes, owing to the similarity of the languages in question, an English word underwent a subtle change in meaning, keeping its English form but becoming semantically closer to the Scandinavian word. Many words were evidently borrowed to describe things with which the English people had not previously come into contact: the sailing expertise of the Vikings accounts for a large borrowed nautical vocabulary, much of which did not survive. Terms relating to battle, and conversely, to law and order were adopted, although most of these were later replaced by Norman expressions. A great many words which were, however, taken into the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary were so called 'homely' words; and these common, everyday words are the ones which have lasted to form a core of the basic English vocabulary. These can be used to illustrate the close degree of intermingling which must have taken place between the Anglo Saxons and Vikings, people who shared a common German heritage. Many of the words were given English inflections, and are thus hard to distinguish from the native vocabulary. The linguistic effect of the Norsemen was not restricted to loanwords. The Anglo Saxons borrowed the Norse pronouns 'they', 'them' and 'their'; and many prepositions, if not directly borrowed from the invaders, probably owe their existence to being reinforced by their language. Many grammatical peculiarities attributable to the Scandinavians survive in the various dialects, particularly those of the Danelaw. Even the elimination of grammatical inflexions has been thought to have been traced to the Norsemen. Since the two peoples did not need to become bilingual in order to understand each other, it is natural to assume that they conversed in a kind of pidgin, which stripped the language of its grammatical complexities. Many Norse elements can also be found in place names dating from this time all over Britain, and the Nordic suffix '-son', found in so many English surnames, is a perpetual reminder of the Viking presence. The influence of the Viking languages was not confined to English, but its effect on the other languages was decidedly less. The Celtic languages differed so markedly from the Germanic ones that the integration of Norse words which were decidedly foreign was not nearly so smooth. In Wales the Norse influence is restricted almost exclusively to place names, but in the Gaelic of Ireland, Scotland and Man, where the Vikings settled for centuries, their legacy is easily discernible. Most noticeable is the impact on the languages of the Orkney and Shetland Isles: although Norn died out a few centuries ago, many words survive in local dialect, and the Islanders are proud of their Scandinavian heritage. Scandinavian loanwords from later times are scarcer, and their sphere of influence much reduced. Literary borrowings were popular in the Romantic period, and several technical terms have entered the English language at a later date, but these are not common. Later borrowings are often restricted to describing Scandinavian concepts. The Scandinavian languages in America may at first be thought to form a parallel case to the earlier Norse in England, but this is shown not to be the case. Since the languages had become so different, most Scandinavians were forced to learn English to survive in America, and although English borrowings are common in 'American-Swedish' and, American-Norwegian', the reverse is not true. English loanwords' are, indeed, numerous in all the Scandinavian languages today, and now it is English which exerts a great influence on all its northern cousins. That this has not always been the case, however, and that the consequences of the Scandinavian invasion are still felt in the English language and its neighbours is shown by my investigation: Den nordiska paverkan pa de olika spdiken i Storbritannien