| , Source Material for The Facts About English, continued Nist, John, A Structural History of English, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1966), 99. The author writes: "The influence of Latin like that of Norman French later on was aristocratic. The impact of Scandinavian upon English was democratic. Danes and Anglo-Saxons, as North Teutons and West Teutons, fought and made peace together like members of the same family; they lived side by side, intermarried, and eventually became truly one. Culturally, the two peoples were about equal; linguistically, they shared a common basic vocabulary, for Old English and Old Norse were very much alike - indeed identical in such important words as man, wife, father, folk, mother, house, thing, life, sorrow, winter, summer; will, can, meet, come, bring, hear, see, think, smile, ride, stand, sit, set, spin; full, wise, well, better, best, mine, thine, over, under......Scandinavian is the source of about eighteen hundred entries into the standard vocabulary of the language and of hundreds of others in the various British dialects." Myres, L. M., The Roots of Modern English, (Boston: Little, Brown and Company,1966), 37. "We now trace the Northern dialect to Northumbria, and the 'middle speech' - East and West Midland - to Mercian, both of which were basically Anglian dialects in Old English times. The Southern dialect developed from the speech of the other two 'manner people'..." What the author is saying is that Old Saxon developed from the Anglian dialects. Myres goes on to say that: "...Anglian has had the strongest influence on the development of standard Modern English......The Angles took possession of about the northern two-thirds of what is now called England (from Anglaland) after them......the West Saxon kings...ruled (when they could manage it) the whole southern fifth of the country." Crystal, David, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, (Cambridge University Press, 1995). "Some scholars cite the Viking settlement as the decisive factor. During the period of the danelaw, they argue, the contact between English and Scandinavian would have led to the emergence of a pidgin-like variety of speech between the two cultures, and perhaps eventually to a kind of creole which was used as a lingua franca. As with pidgins everywhere, there would have been a loss of word endings, and greater reliance on word order. Gradually, this pattern would have spread until it affected the whole of the East Midlands area - from which Standard English was to eventually emerge......we can tell from the surviving Middle English texts that the Danelaw was a much more progressive area, linguistically speaking, than the rest of the country. Change which began here affected southern areas later......There is no direct connection between West Saxon, the written standard of Old English, and the modern standard." In other words, the author is saying that Modern English is not derived from West Saxon. "Not even Chaucer's writing, traditionally thought to be a precursor of modern Standard English, exercised a specific influence on the form this standard took......the main influence on the standard language was the Central Midlands area..." In other words, Modern English is derived from an Anglian dialect. Wakelin, Martyn, The Archaeology of English, (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble Books, 1988), 22-23, 72, 98. The author writes: "Initial invasions and settlements in the east were followed by others to the west, until extensive areas of England were heavily Scandinavianised. With settlement came intermarriage and complete fusion of the two peoples - a fusion which resulted, linguistically speaking, in a massive influx of loan-words into English (eg. window, keel, the pronouns they, them, and their), especially in northern dialect, but also in others, and of new place-names on the map (especially as represented by the ending -by: Grimsby, Forby, etc.). Scandinavian personal names are also well attested, and there are a number of inscriptions, including a few in the Scandinavian version of the runic alphabet......Various types of linguistic evidence emphasize the profound and lasting Scandinavian influence on English, which survives to this day in the vocabulary both of the dialects and of Standard English." The author examines numerous documents that make it "clear what a great influence Old Norse had on late Old English - on its vocabulary, and also on its sounds and grammar." Concerning the beginnings of Middle English, the author writes: "There is a monument, however, where Scandinavian runes are used for an inscription which is definitely English. This is the font at Bridekirk (Cumbria). The elaborate carving on the east face of the pedestal, is in the form of a rhyming couplet. We may regard it as a very early form of Middle English, and it is evidence that at least here, in NW England, Viking runes were so far naturalized as to be used by speakers and readers of English." The author also states that the "Chancery type of English", that is the language of official documents where the Court Chaplains wrote the King's letters, became Standard English. It had a "central Midland origin" and was therefore an Anglian dialect. Kendrick, T. D., A History of the Vikings, (NY: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1968), 76. Concerning the Old English poem Beowulf: "The oldest version of it is a manuscript of tenth-century date, but the poem was composed, it is confidently believed, in England, probably by an Anglian poet, in the early eighth century. Its interest here, of course, is that it has a Scandinavian theme, and that it is plainly a version of a Scandinavian epic or of a group of Scandinavian lays." Arnold, C. J., An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, (London, New York: Routledge, 1997), 152. The author shows a map locating the distribution of all the known runic and rune-like inscriptions in early Anglo-Saxon England up to AD 650. There are concentrations in Kent, the Isle of Wight, and the region around the Wash from the River Humber to Norfolk. There are none in the areas where the Saxons are thought to have been dominant. Hodgkin, R. H., History of the Anglo-Saxons. The author had the dawning realization that: "From the purely linguistic standpoint it must be admitted that the Anglian dialects in England do seem to have some affinities with the Old Scandinavian language..." This was in 1935. And yet, to this day some scholars seem to have trouble realizing the importance of this fact. Previous Page......Next Page |