Skandinavski utjecaj na povijesni razvoj engleskog jezika

The English language belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. The connection between English and other Indo-European languages can be recognized in the words such as father or brother, which are composed of similar sounds in almost all languages in the family. Although the pre-history of the Indo-European family of languages is relatively unknown, linguists managed to reconstruct the language that is a common ancestor to all Indo-European languages and it is called Proto Indo-European (PIE). The English language belongs to the Germanic group of languages. Germanic languages are divided into East, West and North Germanic. In that categorization English falls in the West Germanic group. Its development can be divided into periods: Old English (450 – 1150), Middle English (1150 – 1500) and Modern English (since 1500). The development of the English language is characterized by several foreign influences which caused major changes in English when it comes to vocabulary, but also grammar. One such significant influencecame from Scandinavian countris which began with the Viking raids in the eighth century and was reinforced with the establishment of the Danelaw. The influence can be seen in surnames and place names. The contact between the English and Scandinavian people was the contact of two similar cultures. The vocabulary that entered from Scandinavian languages into English proves that the interaction between the speakers of those languages included everyday-life activities. The influence also extended to syntax and some of the key morphological classes, e. g. pronouns. The last chapter shows the corpus research of the lexemes from Scandinavian languages that entered English. Our research conducted on the etymological corpus from The Online Etymological Dictionary and the Oxford Engleish Dictionary showed that he words of Scandinavian origin were usually adopted in the early Middle English andthat most of them have retained the same meaning that they had upon entering English