Source Material for The Facts About English Knowles, Gerry, A Cultural History of the English Language, (London, New York, Sidney, Aukland: St. Martin's Press, 1997). The following are some excerpts from the book: "People who read and write about the English language are just as likely as anyone else to accept racial myths, and to treat them as common sense. It may seem self-evident, for instance, that the Anglo-Saxons were the ancestors of the English, and that the Danes were foreign invaders. The reality is that - leaving aside the British - both Danes and Anglo-Saxons were among the ancestors of the population of the north of England. People who think of themselves as English may support the Anglo-Saxons against the native British, then against the Danes, and finally against the Normans. But this is the intellectual equivalent of supporting a football team." Concerning the misplaced emphasis on the Saxons, the author writes: "The concept of pure Saxon English first appears at the time of the Protestant Reformation, and is associated with radical opponents of the medieval church such as Sir John Cheke. The Society of Antiquaries later had political reasons for taking a particular interest in the Saxon past, and in the seventeenth century Saxon history was used in radical propaganda. The (Anglo-)Saxon language has since become an important stage in the received account of the origin of English. According to this account Celts took no part whatsoever in the formation of the language......The influence of the Vikings and the Normans is likewise minimized. But this Saxon language was a fiction." For hundreds of years the English language was constantly being modified by Scandinavian influences. On this subject the author writes: "There is some evidence in English dialects to suggest that contact was maintained with the homeland across the North Sea much as Americans later maintained contact across the Atlantic. New forms could have been brought to England by later Angle settlers, or in the course of trade." Likewise, "...Danish influence in English is not to be interpreted as something new, but the intensification of a long established process." Concerning the Viking influence: "Norse influenced English in many different ways in vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and everyday expressions. The Norse area included the east midlands, which was later to be of importance in the development of Standard English, and in this way a number of modern standard forms derive from the usage of the Danelaw rather than England under the control of Wessex. There are even indications of a southward movement of linguistic influence, presumably from York." Logan, F. Donald, The Vikings In History, (London, New York: Routledge, reprinted 1992), 170. "No other single outside force has influenced the English language to the extent the Danes did. The number of loan-words would fill columns......Furthermore, there was not merely wholesale borrowing of Danish words: there were substantial changes in the structure of the language, particularly in the development of clear pronoun forms for the third-person plural......the term 'Anglo-Scandinavian' can be used to describe the language during this later period. No one can provide numbers for the settlers who gave names to places and who changed the English language, but thousands upon thousands of them must have entered the Danelaw under the protection of the warrior-settlers." Davies, Norman, The Isles, A History, (Oxford University Press, 1999). Concerning the Anglo-Scandinavian dialect spoken in the Danelaw, the author writes: "In this region, a new Germanic language began to germinate. It was related to, but distinct from, the other Germanic idioms further south. To begin with, in an age when all those idioms were in a state of competitive flux, the most northerly variant enjoyed no special status. But just as one of the southern variants was destined to be raised above the others through its association with a powerful political community, so too, in time, was its northern counterpart. Many centuries into the future it would become the language of courts and kings." Freeborn, Dennis, From Old English to Standard English, (University of Ottawa Press, 1992). On the influence of Old Norse, the author writes: "The long-term effects are still with us, in the present-day dialects and accents of East Anglia, the Midlands, northern England and southern Scotland." Wernick, Robert, The Vikings, (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1979) 73. The author writes: "...instead of loosing their language, as did the Vikings who began to speak French in Normandy, the Danes had a powerful influence on the English language: linguistically, they led, rather than followed, the local culture." Niles, John D. and Amodio, Mark, "Introduction: The Vikings and England", in Anglo-Scandinavian England: Norse-English Relations in the Period Before the Conquest, ed. John D. Niles and Mark Amodio, (Lanham, MD and London, England: University Press of America, Inc., 1989), ix. The authors write: "Norse borrowings extend so pervasively into common English speech, even including bedrock forms in the pronoun and verb systems, as to indicate a long symbiosis of two peoples of similar status and culture." The authors also state that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles omit the fact that the English-ruled and Danish-ruled regions became "integrated into a single kingdom, Anglo-Scandinavian England." The use of the term 'Anglo-Scandinavian England'... "will perhaps surprise those who are accustomed to the anglocentric views that find expression in some of the older histories." This 'anglocentric' view, ..."which owes much to the patriotic prose of the Chronicle, ignores the restructuring of English society and culture that resulted from the Norse settlements." Frank, Roberta, "Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have a Skaldic Tooth?", in Anglo-Scandinavian England: Norse-English Relations in the Period Before the Conquest, ed. by John D. Niles and Mark Amodio, 53: The author writes: "...there were Scandinavians in England, so numerous and so influential that some historians of English prefer to speak of 'an Anglo-Danish language rather than of English with high absorption of Scandinavian elements' (Strang 340). For most of the Anglo-Saxon period, the Danes and the English seem not to have formed discrete, mutually hostile communities. When the English-Scandinavians became literate it was in English; the coinage, inscriptions, sculpture, even poetry of the first Scandinavian settlers show them striving to be more Christian and English than the English." Previous Page......Next Page |