The Scandinavian Influence on English Language.

The Old English language was essentially self-sufficing. But in course of time, three important foreign influences modified or enriched large parts of its vocabulary, grammar and sound- structure. The Scandinavian is one of these great influences that worked on English. In 787 A.D, a long series of Viking inroads into England began and they continued through the next two centuries, leading to the settlement of quite a large Danish population in England. This settlement resulted in introducing the Scandinavian element into English Language.

The Scandinavian were culturally, racially and linguistically almost identical with the conquered English. As such the conquerors could not lend a large number of ideas or words to the English people. Since the Scandinavian were a little superior to the English in legal administration and sea-faring, they lent some terms associate with these activities such as law, bylaw, crave, thrall etc. Some of the legal and nautical terms which the English borrowed from the Scandinavian were later superseded by Norman-French terms.

The Scandinavian loan words that are still in use in Standard English are about nine hundred in number. The vast majority of them are non-technical words of everyday importance and essential parts of the English vocabulary. Among them the nouns are husband, anger, sky, skull, skin, etc. The adjectives are loose, long, wrong, odd, ill, ugly, happy, etc. The verbs are thrive, die, want, call, take, etc. These non-technical words also do not indicate any higher culture of the attackers. The Scandinavian modified either the form or the significance of quite a few numbers of native words. Among them we find everyday words like get, give, sister, birth, dream, etc.

It is because of the racial fusion between the native English and the Scandinavian, a quantity of small coin entered into the Old English from the Old Norse, e.g. pronouns like they, them, their, both, etc., prepositions like fro, till, etc., conjunction like through, some, etc. The Scandinavian element crept into the place-names of England and also into English personal names. Numerous names of places ending in ---by, ---thwaite, ---wick, ---shire etc. bear the testimony of the superiority of the invaders in great parts of England. The Scandinavian also influenced the suffix like ---son (as Richardson, Johnson etc.)

A number of Scandinavian words existed side by side for a long time with their slightly differing but cognate counterparts in the native Old English as whole-hole, shirt-skirt, rear-raise, no-nay etc. Some of these doublets coming from Old Norse flourished only in the northern and Scottish dialects such as church-kirk, yard-girth. In some words the Scandinavian from survived, but they are modified or specialized under the Scandinavian influence. Some of them are dream, bread, earl etc. Sometimes the Scandinavian gave a fresh lease of life to obsolete native words like dead or death.

The Scandinavian impact affected the system of the English language in a lesser degree. It gave an increased facility in sentence-construction. It caused the omission of the relative pronoun in certain adjective clauses. The Middle English usage of shall, will and should are found to be in conformity with Scandinavian usage. The interpolated have in such a sentence as he could have done it was adopted from Old Norse. The Scandinavian and the English could understand one another without much difficulty. So naturally many niceties of grammar had been sacrificed, the intelligibility of either tongue coming to depend mainly on its mere vocabulary. The most important effect on the grammar of the English Language was the wearing away and leveling of Old English inflections, thus, paving the way for the development of English into an analytical language.

Therefore, it is seen that the Scandinavian elements in English are of everybody’s everyday importance. Indeed, an Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and egg are to the daily fare. To the Scandinavian element of the English language one can very well apply what William Wordsworth says of the daisy: “Thou-unassuming commonplace / Of Nature, with that homely face, / And yet with something of a grace / Which love makes for thee.

 

 

 

Comton Mullick, [M. A in English (C.U), B.Ed (Ramakrishna Mission)]