l The Scandinavian invasions resulted into considerable mixture of 2 nations and 2 languages
Scandinavian impact
l In Yorkshire & North Lincolnshire 60% of the names recorded in Middle English sources are of Scandinavian origin: -by in Old Norse ‘town’ – Burnby, Westerby, -thorpe ‘village’ – Althorp, Milthorpe…
l The everyday flavor of the Scandinavian loans can be seen in the two dozen words which survived into modern Standard English: anger, awkward, bond, cake, crooked, dirt, egg, fog, freckle, get, kid, leg, lurk, meek, muggy, neck, seem, skill, skirt, smile, window
Some words changed their meaning coming from the same source.
Doublets:
l Craft & skill,
l Wish & want
l Skirt VS shirt
l Stick VS stitch
l Wake VS watch
l Break VS breach
l Scandinavian impact on vovabulary
l Sky, skin, skill, skirt, scrape, scrub, scream
l husband
l get, give, gild, leg
l take, lift, trust, crawl, dazzle
l they, them, their
l Place-names: Derby, Rugby
Old English: [sk] sc →/∫/ →sh
l In very early Old English, the consonant sequence /sk/ changed into the single sound /∫/ we spell <sh> today. So, for example, Old English fisc had once been pronounced /fisk/ but by the time of King Alfred it was pronounced in a similar manner to the modern pronunciation. As a result of this change, no native English word ever contains the sequence /sk/ – with a couple of exceptions like ask and tusk, which have complicated histories.
Old English – Old Norse
l But Old Norse retained /sk/: most everyday words in English beginning with this sequence come from Old Norse, including sky, skin, skid, scales (for weighing), skip, skittish, scant, skittle, skulk, skull, scare, scathe, scoff, scold, scorch, score, scrap, scream and scrape.
l Interestingly, native English shirt and Scandinavian skirt are the same word in origin. We can assume, I think, that the word meant ‘large garment worn close to the skin’; over time – and perhaps through developments in fashion (and greater affluence) – the English form came to be associated with a garment covering the torso, while the Norse word now refers to a garment covering the upper legs.
l Also from Old Norse is leg. The Old English word was sceanca, which has become our word shank, remembered now largely in the nickname of Edward I of England, called Langshanks because of his long legs. But shank has now become specialised to denoting the lower part of the leg and to certain metaphorical uses, and the Old Norse word has taken over as the ordinary anatomical term.
l Scandinavian they, them, their replaced Old English inflected forms (hi, hie, hira, heora, heom). Pronouns do not change very often in the history of a language, and to see one set of forms replaced by another is noteworthy. It took 300 years for the substitution to work through the language.
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