Norse influence in the English Language

[Publius Nonius Severus]

Building upon Doc's and Sonic's explanation of the linguistical influences, I would like to throw my two cents in. I cannot speak with any academic authority, but as an amateur student of languages, I think one of the most enduring effects was the role that the Viking incursions may have had in the loss iof inflection in the eventual development of Modern English.

 

One of the reasons I think English is so heavily taught today as a second language is the simplification of grammatical rules that follows with minimal inflection. For the other languages I learned, the most difficult part was learning all the various rules for noun/adjective declension and verb conjugation. I never realized how simple English grammar was in comparison to so many other languages until you get the nominative, accusative, dative, genetive...subjunctive, conditional, etc. etc. thrown at you. Sure, there are still some elements of inflection in English (mostly seen in pronouns, marking possesive with a clitic "s", etc.)., but if English were heavily inflected and as difficult as it currently is to learn proper pronunciation, I think we would see and hear far less English in the world.

 

So, what does this have to do with the Vikings? Old English was a heavily inflected language. I had always wondered how and when what we today call Modern English lost its inflection. I found some interesting information at the following site:

 

The Loss of Inflections by Barry Rawling

 

Specifially on the claim of some academics that:

 

...a crucial aspect having a major influence on OE inflections was the incursion of the Vikings. It is argued that, in their attempts to communicate with each other, the English and the Scandinavians would have adopted a kind of pidgin. This may have subsequently evolved into a type of creole employed as a lingua franca for everyday communication between the two cultures. Because in the initial stages (as with pidgins the world over) there would have been a greater dependence on word order, the need for inflectional endings would have been greatly reduced....

 

Of course this may not be the only or even the primary reason English grammar became more simple, but if true, I think it is a very important influence on how we all communicate today even if only an indirect "benefit" of the viking incursions.

Edited September 20, 2007 by Publius Nonius Severus

[Nephele]

There's a wonderfully exciting book titled The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg (published in 2003) that contains an entire chapter on what the Vikings did (indirectly) to ensure the survival of the English language.

 

Bragg writes of three centuries of Viking raids beginning in 793 which "devastated huge tracts of the English islands and threatened to supplant the language which had begun to show such astonishing promise." But it was King Alfred who used the English language to unite the various tribes of the kingdom (already speaking some Celtic and various Germanic dialects) against the invaders. Alfred "was the first but by no means the last to see that loyalty and strength could come through an appeal to a shared language. He saw that inside the language itself, in the words of the day, there lay a community of history and continuity which could be invoked. He set out to teach the English English and make them proud of it, gather around it, be prepared to fight for it."

 

Bragg maintains that the English language not only survived these invasions, but eventually benefited as a result. Alfred used English to resurrect the written culture of the land, which had been destroyed by the invaders, through his promotion of the English language for translating Latin texts so that (as Alfred himself wrote) "we can all understand and also arrange it...so that all the youth of free men now among the English people...may be set to study...until the time that they are able to read English writing well."

 

So it was the Viking threat which provided the impetus for the English language to become a unifying tool to the extent that, even when the invaders returned and defeated the English at the Battle of Maldon in 991, and despite the fact that "authority in the land was once again decided on battlefields," it was thanks to Alfred's experience with these invaders a hundred years previously that "authority in the language had been settled."

 

Bragg states the old aphorism that it is the victors who write history -- however, "here the defeated English did that service, proving that although the Danes had the land again, they could not possess the language."

 

-- Nephele

Edited September 20, 2007 by Nephele

[docoflove1974]

Building upon Doc's and Sonic's explanation of the linguistical influences, I would like to throw my two cents in. I cannot speak with any academic authority, but as an amateur student of languages, I think one of the most enduring effects was the role that the Viking incursions may have had in the loss iof inflection in the eventual development of Modern English.

 

Well, I must say that the notion that that loss of inflection is due to contact is not one that is popularly held. ' External pressures' upon a language are often proven through internal means. IIRC, Germanic inflection is varied--from highly inflected (Icelandic, German) to a moderate amount (the Skandinavian languages, I believe) to little to none (Dutch, English). Note that with Dutch and English, both West Germanic languages, there is little in the way of inflection; certainly Dutch has been losing inflection at a much slower pace than English, which lost most of its inflection by the time Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales.

 

Furthermore, when one makes the argument for external pressure causing a change, one must look at all languages involved at that time. In this case, we're talking about a highly-inflected Old English/Saxon and a highly-inflected Old Norse...so there most likely is no connection between the Vikings and the loss of inflection in English.

 

The link you posted is an example of Creole Theory for English...and it's one that has been under constant critique for the reasons that I've given above, for starters. The other version of CT is that the Norman Conquest, with the increase of Norman French speakers at high levels, either caused or helped speed up changes in English. Again, there hasn't been much in the way of hard evidence of that time to support the claims, and so it is mostly avoided by historical linguists.

 

One of the reasons I think English is so heavily taught today as a second language is the simplification of grammatical rules that follows with minimal inflection. For the other languages I learned, the most difficult part was learning all the various rules for noun/adjective declension and verb conjugation. I never realized how simple English grammar was in comparison to so many other languages until you get the nominative, accusative, dative, genetive...subjunctive, conditional, etc. etc. thrown at you. Sure, there are still some elements of inflection in English (mostly seen in pronouns, marking possesive with a clitic "s", etc.)., but if English were heavily inflected and as difficult as it currently is to learn proper pronunciation, I think we would see and hear far less English in the world.

 

Oh man...try teaching an ESL course...it's horribly hard! It's as hard to learn English as it is any other language. Particularly if one comes from a highly-inflected language, and is used to everything being 'labeled' in the language...when they learn a minimally-inflected language, they have the worst time in trying to understand what they're saying. The truth is that there is no 'hard' or 'easy' language to learn; it completely depends on the linguistic background of the 'student' and on the way that they learn language in general--if they can see the 'logic' in a language. No, the reason that English is so heavily taught is purely business...if you want to do business on any level outside of your country, you pretty much have to learn English. That, and American and British (and perhaps Australian) culture is popular around the world.

[Publius Nonius Severus]

Excellent points and counter Doc...thanks for such a thorough treatment.

 

I am in no position to refute...I am an amateur at exploring the evolution of languages so your explanation is really inciteful....clearly English is popular because it makes "business" sense...I guess I thought that its weak inflection just hastened its popularity. I just had a hard time seeing English being as popular as it is if it were actually Icelandic (which is the hardest language I have ever had to learn ((even harder than Latin)).

[docoflove1974]

I myself didn't do so well with German...and the course I took was 'for reading knowledge'. I kept trying to make sense of it, but the subordinate clauses and verb particles really threw me! Then again, I wasn't into it much...just wanted to get a requirement done and over with. Next up for me is French; I can read it, but can't speak/understand it, and that's really not good in my field. I'm trying to figure out a way to study in France (perhaps the south of France?) and make it count for some academic reason...but first I think I need to find a tenure-track position. Then I can play with this idea more!

[sonic]

Furthermore, when one makes the argument for external pressure causing a change, one must look at all languages involved at that time. In this case, we're talking about a highly-inflected Old English/Saxon and a highly-inflected Old Norse...so there most likely is no connection between the Vikings and the loss of inflection in English.

 

Sorry Doc, but there's one thing that you and other linguists are forgetting: the Vikings were not an 'external pressure'. After the intial attacks many of them settled in England and became 'internal'. The need for a common language was not due to 'invaders' wishing to make their demands known, but of the 'neighbour-to-neighbour' variety used on a daily basis. The continuous interaction is likely to have embedded changes in the language rather than being relatively uncommon and so unlikely to have a great effect.

 

The fact that the two languages are highly inflected is mainly irrelevant, and can actually be used to support the opposing theory. Due to the complexity and differences of the two Germanic languages, the natives and immigrant Vikings are likely to have concentrated more on the similarities than the differences. Therefore, the different endings for the inflections could have been lost and, in the search for clarity, word order have become more important.

 

The invasion of the Normans - actually not true Vikings by the time of the conquest - who spoke French (a Romance language) probably gave a greater impetus to the simplification of the language and the greater reliance on word order to make sentences understandable.

 

Please note that I do not make these statements as a linguistic scholar, but as a historian who studied the period at university. The major difficulty with all such discussions is that too often one side or the other (ie linguists or historians) do not agree on something (such as the linguistic influence of the Vikings!! ) because the experts in both fields are approaching the question from entirely different viewpoints and with entirely valid arguments. Unfortunately, due to the irregular nature of these 'meetings', neither side has the chance to convince the other that they are correct, even when both sides have valid reasons for their assumptions,

 

For those not in the know about the Danelaw (as seems to be the case from some of the above posts), it is fairly easy to give a rough idea to anybody here interested in Roman history . Find Watling Street (yes, the Roman Road!!) on a map of England. To the north of this is the Danelaw, to the south is 'free' England. A section of the Kingdom of Northumbria remained free, sandwiched between the Viking Kingdom of York and the forming Kingdom of Scotland, but otherwise the rest was ruled by the Vikings and a substantial number settled in the area.

 

It was only after many wars that the Kings of Wessex managed to conquer the Viking-held lands and so create the Kingdom of England. In fact, for one glorious period Denmark, Norway and England formed a single 'Empire' under the control of Cnut (Canute). However, this collapsed soon after his death and the sorrowful events leading to the Norman conquest unrolled.

 

One final point; I'm working from a not-very-reliable memory here, but it was only during the reign of Athelstan (I think!!) that the term 'King of England' was used: prior to this, the kings were termed 'King of the English' This illustrates that only relatively late did the concept of 'land rule' emerge, following on from the concept of 'people rule'. I know that's got nothing to do with the question, but I like it!!

 

Sonic

Edited September 20, 2007 by sonic

[ASCLEPIADES]

One of the reasons I think English is so heavily taught today as a second language is the simplification of grammatical rules that follows with minimal inflection.

Oh man...try teaching an ESL course...it's horribly hard! It's as hard to learn English as it is any other language. Particularly if one comes from a highly-inflected language, and is used to everything being 'labeled' in the language...when they learn a minimally-inflected language, they have the worst time in trying to understand what they're saying. The truth is that there is no 'hard' or 'easy' language to learn; it completely depends on the linguistic background of the 'student' and on the way that they learn language in general--if they can see the 'logic' in a language. No, the reason that English is so heavily taught is purely business...if you want to do business on any level outside of your country, you pretty much have to learn English. That, and American and British (and perhaps Australian) culture is popular around the world.

And maybe also the last two centuries of British and American World preponderance. Excellent answer, Doc.

 

English has almost no problem with inflections because it relies heavily on word order (syntax).

Inflections because problem with English has almost no heavily on (syntax) relies order word.

Almost no heavily Inflections because with English has relies order inflections (syntax) word on.

 

Syntax is far less a problem with synthetic languages, like Latin.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Syntax is far less a problem with synthetic languages, like Latin.

 

An example may be in order:

Here comes Caius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Iulius, Ch. XXXIII, sec. I:

 

Alea iacta est (the most famous transcription)

Iacta alea est (what you actually find in the primary source)

Alea est iacta

Est iacta alea

Iacta est alea

Est iacta alea

 

Most Latin speakers would get the right idea with any choice.

[docoflove1974]

Furthermore, when one makes the argument for external pressure causing a change, one must look at all languages involved at that time. In this case, we're talking about a highly-inflected Old English/Saxon and a highly-inflected Old Norse...so there most likely is no connection between the Vikings and the loss of inflection in English.

 

Sorry Doc, but there's one thing that you and other linguists are forgetting: the Vikings were not an 'external pressure'. After the intial attacks many of them settled in England and became 'internal'. The need for a common language was not due to 'invaders' wishing to make their demands known, but of the 'neighbour-to-neighbour' variety used on a daily basis. The continuous interaction is likely to have embedded changes in the language rather than being relatively uncommon and so unlikely to have a great effect.

 

If they are not part of the original culture, they are external pressure. Even if they assimilate, as the Vikings did, they're still not part of the original culture. That's the linguistic perspective. The same is true of the Spaniards who 'colonized' (perhaps 'took over' is a better term) of the Naples kingdom in the late Medieval period; Spanish and (Sicilian/Neopolitan) Italian are sister languages, yet the Spaniards are an external pressure, since they are not Sicilians/Neopolitans.

 

The fact that the two languages are highly inflected is mainly irrelevant, and can actually be used to support the opposing theory. Due to the complexity and differences of the two Germanic languages, the natives and immigrant Vikings are likely to have concentrated more on the similarities than the differences. Therefore, the different endings for the inflections could have been lost and, in the search for clarity, word order have become more important.

 

That argument doesn't make any sense with respect to Old Norse and Old English. Now, if one wants to argue that there was a type of pidgin or lingua franca created by the two cultures, perhaps that is true. But the creation of a pidgin or lingua franca does not impact necessarily the original languages of the parties involved. The French spoken in Haiti, for example, is still 'standard' French; no doubt that French is the base language of Haitian Creole, and that is reflected in the various sociolects of the creole, but does not affect the French language. Same is true in Argentina, where a 'creole' (it's status is argued frequently) called Latifundo is spoken in the Porte

[docoflove1974]

And maybe also the last two centuries of British and American World preponderance. Excellent answer, Doc.

 

Duh me...forgot about that one...hehe

 

English has almost no problem with inflections because it relies heavily on word order (syntax).

Inflections because problem with English has almost no heavily on (syntax) relies order word.

Almost no heavily Inflections because with English has relies order inflections (syntax) word on.

 

Syntax is far less a problem with synthetic languages, like Latin.

 

Pretty much, yep. I know there are exceptions to this, but I can't recall them off the top of my head...but *usually* the more inflected the language, the less reliance on word order, as well as the reverse. Like I said, I'm sure there are counterexamples, but this is the general scale.

[Gaius Octavius]

"QUOTE(ASCLEPIADES @ Sep 20 2007, 04:37 PM)

Syntax is far less a problem with synthetic languages, like Latin.

 

An example may be in order:

Here comes Caius Suetonius Tranquillus, De Vita XII Caesarum, Divus Iulius, Ch. XXXIII, sec. I:

 

Alea iacta est (the most famous transcription)

Iacta alea est (what you actually find in the primary source)

Alea est iacta

Est iacta alea

Iacta est alea

Est iacta alea

 

Most Latin speakers would get the right idea with any choice"

 

----0----

 

 

I am going to London.

To London, I am going.

London, I am going to.

Going to London, I am.

I, to London am going.

 

Kemo Sabe

Edited September 21, 2007 by Gaius Octavius

[ASCLEPIADES]

----0----

 

 

I am going to London.

To London, I am going.

London, I am going to.

Going to London, I am.

I, to London am going.

 

Kemo Sabe

 

BUT:

 

Am London I to going

Going am London I to

To I London going am

To am going I London

London going am to I

I London am to going

Going am to I London

Am to I London going

 

And so on. In fact, with your example (or most English phrases, BTW), it is much more easier to get a non-sensical syntax than a right one, even with or without additional punctuation marks as your comma.

 

On the other hand, with my Latin example, I was almost syntactically exhaustive (I had a mistake and repeat myself; the last one should have been "Est alea Iacta"). There are no more possible sequences of those three words, and all of them make sense. With this little Latin phrase, non-sensical syntax is simply impossible.

[Gaius Octavius]

OK!, Tonto, you got me but good!

 

[The Augusta]

OK!, Tonto, you got me but good!

 

 

Not really, Gaius - don't give in so easily. To any native English speaker, all the sentences with varying syntax posted by Asclepiades make sense. That is because it is our language. The sense is clear because we view them with generations of usage.

 

What interests me more - and maybe Doc can come in here - is the fact of English losing its inflectiions - if any existed in the first place! I do not know how inflected a language old Nprse was, but German, certainly, to this day retains its inflections (at least in four cases). French, however, does not - and we all know that the Normans had a huge part to play both culturally and linguistically. French, Italian, Spanish et. al are not inflected today. What I would want to ask the Doc is - was old French (i.e. that which the Normans spoke) inflected? If not, was their grammatical influence on the English language perhaps more important than we admit?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Salve, amici!

I completely agree with this concrete statement of NS Gill:

 

Word Order Differences Between Latin and English

 

Speakers of English are used to putting the subject of the sentence at the beginning of the sentence, the verb in the middle, and the direct and indirect object at the end (SVO = Subject + Verb + Object), as in (1)Man bites dog,which means something entirely different from (2)Dog bites man.

 

When learning Latin, one of the obstacles to overcome is the word order, since it is rarely SVO. In Latin it is often SOV or OVS or OV, with the verb at the end and the subject included in it. At any rate, it wouldn't matter whether the dog or mailman came first, because who did the biting would always be clear.

 

(3)canem________ vir_____________ mordet

dog-acc_sg.(object) man-nom._sg.(subject) bites-3d_sg.

man bites dog

 

(4)canis___________ virum___________ mordet

dog-nom_sg.(subject) man-acc._sg.(object) bites-3d_sg.

 

Although English has a fixed word order, it is not entirely foreign to us to find the words in an order other than SVO.

 

When we utter a sentence in the imperative, like an order, we put the verb first:

(5)Beware of dog!Incidentally, the Latin imperative can have the same order:

 

(6)Cave canem!

beware dogVO with no stated subject. An English question has the verb first, too (even if it is an auxiliary), and the object last, as in (7)Will the dog bite the man?The point of these examples is that we are able to understand sentences that are not SVO.

 

The reason Latin is a more flexible language in terms of word order is that what English speakers encode by position in the sentence, Latin handles with case endings at the ends of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. English word order tells us that what is the subject is the (set of) word(s) that comes first in a declarative sentence, what is the object is the set of words at the sentence end, and what is the verb separates subject from object. We rarely confuse verb with noun, except in ambiguous cases like Bart Simpson's

 

(8)What has 4 legs and ticks?

 

There is ambiguity in Latin, as well, but most of the time, an ending will show, just as efficiently, what is the subject, what is the object, and what is the verb.

 

(9)omnia______________ vincit______________ amor

everything-acc._pl._neut. conquers-3d_pers._sg. love-nom._sg._masc.

'Love conquers all.' (Attributed to Vergil.)