VIKING INFLUENCE on the English Language!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ม.ค. 2019
- This video is all about the Viking age and how it affected the English language. Special thanks to Oliver Jahren for his Norwegian samples!
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Sources referenced for this video include:
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. David Crystal.
The level of Old Norse influence on the development of Middle English. Hanna Dorthea. 2014. Hellem. brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstre...
*Old Norse Influence in Modern English: The Effect of the Viking Invasion*. Sandra Dögg Friðriksdóttir. 2014.
skemman.is/bitstream/1946/172...
*Middle English*. British Library. www.bl.uk/medieval-literature...
Do you make Scandinavian Mistakes? R.L.G. The Economist. 2012. www.economist.com/johnson/201...
English is a Scandinavian language. Trine Nickelsen. Science Nordic. 2012. sciencenordic.com/english-scan...
*The Norman Conquest*.D J A Matthew. 1966.
Music:
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Outro: Home Base Groove by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
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I’m hoping to learn Icelandic. It’s such an amazing sounding language.
I am a Norwegian. An interesting fact about the originally norse word; "bag", or "baggi": That word, "bag", has now been reintroduced into Norwegian as an English loan-word. Full circle!
Jeg har lagt merke til ganske mange eksempler på dette.
Man hittar det med de flesta nordiska språken, förutom Finska, och möligt vis Icelendska.
Fören du frågar, jag är Finlandssvensk.
There's a lot of such stories with French words ! (an example : la cour -> the court -> the (tennis) court -> le court (de tennis) I remember a teacher jokingly calling them ping pong words =D
Fun addition, in Danish, "Bag" also means behind. "bak" is move backward. Can this be from usually having your bag on the back (like a back-pack) ?
@@chadchampion9796
Älskar att di nordiska språken är så liknade. men trår inte at jag skulle kunna lässa Danska, I alla fall inte utan hjälp.
"Sky" ment "cloud" for some part of the population. This pretty much summarizes english weather.
Sky still means cloud in Norwegian
In Old English word for sky was: "wolcnum", which became "welkin" in Modern English.
The German word for clouds is "Wolken"
Dovregubben true but it's pronounced as Sh:y, not the English word rather SK became the SH sound.
In Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Danish sk is pronounced as sk, while Norwegian and Swedish underwent a common change that English and German also experienced where sk ->sh (Swedish also underwent further changes in some words of sh to hw). When the Danes brought us these words from Old Norse, though, they were still pronounced as sk (as they have remained in modern Danish) and so these words never underwent the sk->sh change that had already occurred in Old English before the Scandinavian migrations. This is a really easy way to tell if a word is from Old Norse or Old English: shell, shall, sheet, shoulder vs. scream, sky, skull, scare.
Максим Ряховский LoL. So true.
Being norwegian, I remember reading in school as a kid that the word bag came from old norse, but it sounded ridiculous to me since that word has been imported to norwegian from english in the past 50 years. Then my mom mentioned that her grandma called her backpack a bag, with a long ah sound instead of the short english sound. So this word has died out and been reintroduced into norwegian from english in two generations. Just thought it's a funny fact.
Æ sier sekk, har aldri hørt noen si bag. Me mindre det er baggasje.
vi skandinavere importerer også helvedes meget engelsk i øjeblikket. det er sindssygt. hvorfor ved jeg ikke? måske fordi vi ser op til USA og de befriede os..
@@CarpetHater mmmm what?
@@magnus00125 Danmark gjør, resten av Skandinavia gjør litt mindre. Har lagt merke til at danmark bruker ord som: poolen, teenagers og weekend.
Her i Norge bruker vi basseng, tenåringer og helg.
@@magnus00125 Det har nog med vår mediekonsumtion att göra. Engelskan har blivit en så stor del av vår vardag att det blir naturligt för oss att låna ord därifrån.
I’m Swedish, but lived in Middlesbrough for a couple of years as a young teen and did my secondary school there. What surprised me a lot was that quite a bit of the northern dialect that didnt match the English I had learned thus far was fairly comprehensible, since it kind of reminded me of a mixture of Norwegian and Swedish. Another thing I noticed was that when we studied literature, especially Shakespeare. A lot of the old words that my English class mates could not grasp was relatively easy for me to figure out, since it for me seemed fairly similar to Norwegian/Swedish. Not like identical, but you could often guess where it came from and thus being able to get the meaning of the phrase to a surprisingly high degree, thus greatly annoying my class mates “Whydo you get these obsolete English phrases when we dont?" They never fully accepted my statement that it sounded a bit like some kind of ancient Scandinavian.
You might find it interesting to learn that Standard English was heavily driven by the rich, elites of London who loved everything to do with Latin,. ancient Greece and French. They spent a lot of time trying to eliminate "lower class" native English words in favour of more "sophisticated" Latin/Greek origin words. They tried to impose Latin grammar rules on English. Even the s in Island, to make it more Latin.
Which is why Shakrespeare's English is more recognisable to you than to modern English people. I don't know how much English history you studied in school, but we tend to go from Rome to 1066 without ever really stopping to discuss the Anglo-saxons or the Vikings.
Did you ever come across thee, thar and thissen in Middlesbrough? We still use those on a daily basis in Yorkshire. So much in Sheffield, they are known as "dee dars" because of the way they pronounce it. Also water is often pronounced as watter and many norse words are still used such as laik.
@@Ashitaka255 That's a shame.
@@Ashitaka255 and the b in doubt
@@antonycharnock2993 do they shorten the a in father to a as in apple over the border, like Lancashire dialect ? Or sometimes use childer (I as in ill) for child? Or pad for path (pavement )?
as english learner in Korea, I think I have to appreciate vikings because they made english grammer so easier than old one.
As a native English speaker, even _I_ appreciate what the Vikings did for English-we don't have to know noun gender and cases (except in the case of pronouns _he, him, she, her, they, them_ ) and verb conjugations became much simpler-it's _way_ easier to help non-native speakers of English without all that stuff! (Too bad English did not go "all the way" and become _even more_ analytic like Chinese.)
@@jeff__w the downside is it makes learning other european languages harder. Especially as a kid in school, its such a foreign concept to have these weird rules because youve never conceived of such a thing.
@@BrendanBeckett I'm not sure it's that much of a downside but I guess it's something. (Think of how Chinese speakers feel, learning almost any other language-Chinese is highly analytic and doesn't have inflections, grammatical genders, etc. They probably find it all bewildering and unnecessary, at least at first.)
@@jeff__w you are absolutely right, man. when learning English, we have to spend 3 years in primary school memorizing the inflections for the most common verbs. At least students in my school did. The main problems are the articles, the concept of counterble and uncountable nouns and prepositions. However, the biggest problem is pronunciation. I have recently started learning German and the gender system and case system blew my mind off. But that was also the main reason why I suddenly love languages so much.
@@kuanhouchio9881 "The main problems are the articles, the concept of countable and uncountable nouns and prepositions. However, the biggest problem is pronunciation."
Yeah, I would have guessed all those _except_ pronunciation. I think native English speakers tend to think our lousy spelling system is the hardest but they're just not aware of this other stuff. (I tell my Korean friend learning English, "Well, if you learn any of this 'crazy stuff' in English, you're at least _a bit_ more prepared for some other Western language," not that it helps him.) To me, Chinese seems elegantly simple-it's almost like it's _constructed_ to show how much of all this other stuff you can do _without._ Cases and especially genders would blow my mind also-the latter seem _really_ unnecessary-one wonders why they developed at all. *Paul* should do a show on what makes English difficult for non-native speakers. In any case, Chinese (and Korean) speakers have my sympathy. ☺️
Our German word for ''window'' is ''Fenster'', which stems from the latin word ''fenestra''. However, the English word stems from the Old Norse word ''vindauga''. This is a fantastic video and it really goes into the depth of a topic I am currently obsessed with.
Meanwhile the Swedish word is "fönster", also from Latin.
I speak english and spanish but I'm studying german. I've realized that, vocab words between spanish and german sometimes share roots without english sharing these same roots. In your example it's the opposite, in spanish the word for window is Ventana that sounds a lot closer to Vindauga than Fenestra despite spanish being a romance.
The present day English word "fenestration" also comes from Latin.
In danish 'vindue' means 'window'
The wind's eye.
Fuinneog
I am native speaker of Icelandic and I can understand most of the of the old norse words in this video. It would be interesting if you could do a video about the similarities between modern day Icelandic and old norse!
The similarities? Dude, icelandic is the closest to Norse as you can get, Iceland consists of Vikings isolating in a deserted island with little to no foreign influence. Icelandic is modern norse
Old english and Old norse was very similar in the viking age. In Gunnlaug Ormstunge saga they tall that anglosaxons and scandinavians was able to speak with each other even without transelation. In the viking age old english also get many loanwords from old norse. But it ended in 1066. Sad that our beloved king Harald Hardrada not was the winner in 1066. Duke William damaged the old english language with so many loanwords from french.
Dr Jackson crawford has several videos on this.
@@drdal why would you want english to be just another germanic language? the way it is now makes it very convenient to learn french and german.
@@drdal
Ironically, Duke William, as a Norman, was also of Norse ancestry. It's just that the Norman's had been settled in Norman France long enough that their language had become much more French.
To boldly split infinitives no man has splat before.
Best reaction! Keep it up!
I think you may have made a mistake here, obviously its "split - splat - has splut"
splat, eh?
@@emdivine Given some of the language I see in these comments, perhaps it should be split - splat - has splurted. :P
@@txviking No, spluttered ;-)
I'm from Yorkshire, and when I was a boy, we still used words that were derived from Old Norse. "Ayup" is a standard Yorkshire greeting, and it's thought that it derives from the Old Norse "Se upp". We also used to use "thee" and "thou" in regular speech - something that died out elsewhere in the 1700s.
In "Scandinavian" we still use the equivalent words
du [doo*] ( orig. "thu" )
dig [digh] ( orig. thik ( ~ thee(k)) ->
dig [deeg] ... )
din [deen] ( thine / thy )
dig
We still use the 'thee and thou' in South Yorkshire (particularly around Barnsley) along with 'eyup', 'laikin' (playing) and 'a'gate (meaning going somewhere or doing something. "I'm a'gate to Huddersfield" (I'm going to Huddersfield) for example,. However, the younger locals are tending to lose these dialect words.
@@stevemarshall5266
Alle Engelsk-tal(k)ende personer kan ofte se hvad mening man{g}e ( many, OE moneGe ! ) af {v}ore (our) simple Danske (w)ord(s) ha(ve)r efter just få [foa] ( (a) few) sekunder ;-)
Yorkshire English should be standards English with all this old Anglonorse word👫 Greetings from Scandinavia and Sweden to siblings in Yorkshire England 🇬🇧🇳🇴🇸🇪🇩🇰🇦🇽🇮🇸🇫🇴👫🌟
@@erikeriksson3615 Yes, greetings to our Spare Viking brothers & sisters in York 😂
It's important to Remember that normans were french just for a few centuries: originally they came from scandinavia and were "vikings" too.
Indeed, even the name 'Norman' meant 'northmen/norsemen' in French.
Omg really?? I never knew that lol, that’s so interesting
Actually the Normans weren't Vikings at all, it was only the few lords and knights of Normandy who descended from vikings, and then were mixed with local population.
@@kanut5493 and if i aint mistaken, the locals in france were frankish mostly, which means they WERE germanic too
The Franks were a Gernanic people who invaded the Northern part of what we call France, yet the population was a mix of Celts (Gauls) and Romans who had mostly adopted Latin as a language. I dont think there was a huge population shift (Many Franks were warriors and became the noble elite) or language shift to a Germanic language but there was definitely Germanic influence on French (some words but not that many). I think I remember something about French not dropping subject pronouns and word order as being influenced by Frankish. Could be a great topic to cover in a video and to contrast with the evolution of English :)
You should come to Glasgow and listen to our Norwegian influenced huis (house) hajm (home) ut (out) brun (brown) coo (cow) nae mer (no more) stain (stone) nu (now) egen (own).
Similar to Geordie: home is hyem; house is hyuss. Brown is broon.
Surprising, some of these words are the same as in (coastal) west-flemish dialect huus, bruun, stain,...
@@paulwilliamdixon3674 I was shocked when a Geordie told me this the first time! in my dialekt (Gronings, from the north of NL) house is also Huus, or Hoes (húús/ Hus)
never expected Geordie and Gronings to have something in common :p
Wow, flawless Norwegian right there 🙂 we pronounce the word nu (no) and hajm heim, hus instead of huis.
A sentence could be: e går heimat te det brune huset mitt, som er byggd tå stein. Der har e ein kyr, som har ein kælv, og e mjølker kyre daglig.
Give me a wink if you understood that sentence 🙂😄
Paul William Dixon they say gan and ut to.
When I, an English speaker, watch Scandinavian TV shows, I feel like I’m listening to a half-tuned in radio station. IOW it’s so deeply familiar that I think I should be able to understand it-but I can’t quite. (Although some simple sentences do come through.) I never get this sensation when I hear German, or even Dutch.
Try learning some Middle English then listen to German. In high school I was taking German when we were reading Chaucer, and the similarities are striking.
Weird. I get that feeling mainly with Dutch and Frisian. Not German or Scandinavian languages tho.
Yes, that's true!!!!!
Same here with Scandinavian. It's like you're listening to someone in the background talking in English but you're not concentrating on what they're saying.
Yeah, I feel the same way about Swedish or Norwegian. These days I speak German so that definitely helps. 😂
All these example words are ones we still use in Iceland today, written exactly the same lol.
Yeah, I'm surprised he used Norwegian instead of Icelandic later in the video. I would love to see him do a video on Icelandic exclusively. That would be cool.
Am I right in thinking that 'hitta' means 'meet', rather than 'hit'?
Or has it possibly changed its meaning (from hit to meet) from Old Norse to modern Icelandic?
Or perhaps Paul was foiled by a false friend there?
+Joshua Taylor. "Að hitta" means "to meet". The word "hit" has a few words. You can use "lemja" "berja" or like when speaking of cars hitting "klessa". I didn't even notice him saying hit is hitta, but that's not correct. Icelanders can read Old Norse and understand what it says. So I'm disappointed that most big channels that talk about Norse people and the Viking Age and the language that they don't use Icelandic as examples. They all seem to use Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. Even though they have changed a lot over the years. Icelandic has barely changed in 1000 years lol.
@@Scarfaceman77 Thanks for clearing that up!
As someone who has lived in both Norway and Iceland with a conversational knowledge of both languages I agree with the last point!
@@Scarfaceman77 How about Jackson Crawford, self-taught Old Norse specialist . He often refers to Modern Icelandic.
My brothers and I are bilingual, with two languages from very different families: Hebrew and French.
A few years after having aquired both languages, our daily speaking became a complete mess of both languages, understandable mostly only to people speaking both languages.
But after watching this video and when trying to analyse the way we used to talk, I find out that the structure was mainly from our first language (French) while most vocabulary was from the new one (Hebrew).
It resulted even in conjugating Hebrew verbs with French rules.
Example for those who speak these two languages:
Je vais me mitkonnener pour le mivhan en Historia.
Which means:
I am going (French) to prepare (Hebrew verb in French conjugation) myself (French) for the (French) exam (Hebrew) in (French) history (Hebrew - borrowed from European languages).
I can easily understand how closer languages like old Norse and old English could merge into each other borrowing different parts from each other.
Both French and Hebrew are final-sylable stress languages so I see how the 'mixture' sounds ok to you.
Please Norse overlord ,don't beat me or rape me.
Please Norse overlord ,please buy my goods for a fair price at market.
Please Norse overlord please stop rack renting me.
Yes indeed ,mutual communication was a desired thing.
I wish I could speak Hebrew like you - the verbs are a real hassle...And then the writing...you see a word you have no clue how it is read, even if you learned the alphabet...French was much easier 😊
Francbrew must be really interesting! :)
This is definitely the most interesting language related story that I have ever heard! So cool!
I am Danish, and I was recently blown away by discovering that the Geordie dialect uses the word "yem" to mean "home". It is pronounced "hjem", and this is exactly how the Danish word for "home" is spelt and pronounced! I already knew that there are lots of other words that are the same, but I found this to be a surprising addition to the collection of same words. :)
Not just geordies but the north east uses that word. We also say bairn for child, or bait for food, like a packed lunch for example is the context we’d use it in
@@mikelitorous5570 I'm from the North West and I don't think I've ever heard 'bairn' but I always hear my family say bait when talking about a packed lunch. Also we say home as yam
I'm form North Western England and we say yam instead of yem
@@jamesanderson3633 Seems like a hybrid of "Ham" (OE for 'home') & "Hjem" (Norse equivalent).
“Yem” didn’t actually come from Old Norse. It came from Old English for “hām”. The Angles that settled in the North of England came from modern-day Northern Germany and Southern Denmark - more specifically the Schleswig-Holstein region. Most Geordie words come from Old English, the language of the Anglo Saxons, as the Vikings didn’t settle in large numbers in the North East. The Danelaw didn’t go as far north as Durham.
Early englishmen: we don't even know what to say
Viking: WELCOME
Early englishmen: perfect
well they did know what to say as they used the anglo-saxen WELKOM already
OE wilcumian (!), wilcume , D & N velkommen, S välkommen ;-)
@@Bjowolf2 German: willkommen :D
When I started learning Norwegian (as a native English speaker who speaks German) I could usually guess how to say something by sort of running German words through English grammar and then tweaking it to match the Norwegian structures and phonology I already knew. Really interesting video to learn more about why this worked!
Kick Start Languages Haha thanks! It works well with Italian too, once you’ve grasped basic grammar. I kind of see it as Spanish with French grammar. It’s amazing how many language families interact like that (at least on a basic level)
@@user-xe3ed7uu1x That thing you've said about Italian goes both ways many times. That sometimes though leads to Italians using this system way too often, making us make up words all the time. So, yeah, it would probably be better if we just did not do it
I recognize this pattern. As a native norwegian with passable english learning german in northern lower saxony I was challenged in a pub to read the frisian sayings on the walls - no problem - triangulation is a strong tool. I get dutch to a certain degree in the same way, but not as easily as frisian.
I am a native German speaker who speaks English. I got by well in Norway. For me it was mostly phonetics.
Pretty much how I felt about Norwegian. Whenever I saw something that was a bit irregular in Norwegian it was always irregular in the same way that it is in English and often on exactly the same words.
As to whether Old Norse or Old English influenced Middle English the most, I recently read an interesting book on the growth of English that pointed out that because so many Anglo-Saxon writings have survived from Wessex, that dialect tends to be overemphasized. The author claims that the Mercian dialect, which was far more heavily influenced by Old Norse, is more similar to the Middle English dialects that became Modern English than the Wessex dialect.
@Damian Welzandt I've been digging through my shelves, but I can't find it. All I can remember for sure was that the author was Walter W. Skeat.
An you can hear the remnants of the Wessex accent in the west country, esp- cornwall+devon.
My own pet theory is that Old English was mainly Old Saxon, it was the prestige language and the written language as there was no written Anglian. Middle english is so different because together with Norse influence the Anglian languages spoken and understood by the majority won out over the Old Saxon minority and written tradition, and the North Frisian languages have always been half way North Germanic with many grammatical features from North Germanic (unlike West Frisian, which does not).
No you are absolutely correct. Linguistics videos are all very well, but some people do this for three years at uni. All the anglo saxon texts do not exceed the length of the New testament - that is not much, and are in various dialects. Not many in Northern dialect as the monasteries were burnt by er the Vikings. So 1850-1900 the professors all got together and re rendered the existing texts in West Saxon. - giving a sameness to them all which you have noticed.
Middle english 500 years later the Mercian dialect was favoured at court - and so became the London language which everyone wanted to speak and seem important and rich, and this gave rise to BBC received pronunciation.Poor old west saxon being associated with the language of farm labourers
@@VCYT Actually, all over South West England. The old Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset and Devon accents today - you know the accent we all mimic when we want to sound like a yokel country farmer. All of them, I think give an idea of what Old English would have sounded like. Google 'Pam Ayers', as a great example.
Can this maybe explain the uncanny and impressive ability of the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish to speak English almost like a first language?
Very much so - we get a lot of basic words in English more or less for free ( very easy to remember ), and there are also many similarities between the basic grammar of English and those of the three Scandinavian languages ( 3 very similar languges with 80 - 90 % overlap in basic vocabulary and nearly the "same" grammars in most important respects - almost like three very close main dialects of the same mutual Scandinavian base language ).
Education in English in Scandinavia also starts from an early age these days - it used to be 3rd grade here in Denmark, but for the past 10 years or so, it has even been from the 1st grade.
And then we never use dubbing for foreign series and movies on TV ( mainly in English! ), but always prefer to use subtitles - except for programmes for small children - , so we are very used to hearing all sorts of spoken Englishes and their tonalities and stresses as well as new words and expressions on an daily basis from an early age.
The Germans however almost always use dubbing of foreign programmes, so the joke here in Denmark is that "Dubbing is only for small children ... and Germans" 😂
Examples:
D Hvad [vað] vil han synge for dem efter deres [dair-es] fine [feen-e] koncert for os [us]?
E What will he sing ( be singing ) for them after their(s) fine concert for us?
D Skal vi [ve] gå [go] ud igen [ee-gain] nu [noo*] for at finde min [meen] fader [fað-er !] / broder [bro(u)ð-er] / søn [s'oe"n], så [sO] (th)at han kan se det [de'] nye [ne(w)-e] hus [hoos]?
E Shall ( OE sceal ! ) we go out again now (for) to find my father / brother / son, so that he can see the new house?
D Vi ha(ve)r [hAr] så [sO] mange [mAng-e] (many, OE moneGe !) af de "samme" simple (w)ord(s) over her(e) [he(i)r] i(n) Skandinavien, så en Engelsk-tal(k)ende person kan ofte se deres mening direkte efter just få [foa] ((a) few) sekunder.
Han kan derfor lær(n)e at tal(k)e Dansk tunge i(n) en hast nær [nair] (near(ly)) uden ( without, OE be-utan !, S utan ! ) at tænke [taink-e] ( to think, "thinking") for ham [hAm] selv først [first]. 😊
As far as I know, most English words that start with a "sk" are actually from Scandinavian origin (also a good mnemonic: "sk" is Scandinavian). For instance: "skill", "skin", "sky", "skull". But there are also doublets like "skirt" (Old Norse origin) and "shirt" (Old English origin).
Once worked with a young guy from a Lincolnshire village who repeatedly used the word Skall instead of Shall in his speech, insisting that is the way it was used in his home locality. I didnt get around to asking him which village he came from, but it was north Lincs somewhere.
School is 'english' though.
@@edomeindertsma6669 - But "school" does not start with "sk" but with "sch".
@@edomeindertsma6669 - And also "school" is originally from Latin "scholae".
@@karlmall it’s pronounced sk though
I actually did a presentation on this topic last semester! I find it really interesting how the Viking influence still affects the English language hundred of years later! Some of the words of old Norse origin are more similar to old Norse in English then in my native language Swedish! 😅
/Hanna from 🇸🇪
Jag är också från Sverige och jag är en extrem språknörd
Kick Start Languages Yes, I agree! It is so very fascinating how languages have similarities and differences with one another!
Lord Henroriro Jag är också en språknörd! Så pass att jag pluggar till Svenska och Engelska lärare! 😅
@Kick Start Languages In any case, I've actually never heard of that. Maybe you are thinking about Norrländska or Älvdalska? Those are dialects (some concider Älvdalska as a separate language) quite distinct from the standard Swedish language.
@@hannawidman6135 Nice 👍 jag tänker antagligen studera lingvistik efter gymnasiet. Språk fascinerar mig eftersom det bevisar hur vi alla är relaterade till varandra
First of all, I want to thank you Paul, because it was this channel, and specifically the video "Is English really a Germanic language?" that inspired me to actually start to learn the language some of my ancestors spoke when they immigrated to Australia from Prussia in 1850. I'm really enjoying learning German, and while I now know it may have been a bit of a tough first second language to learn, and that there may have been better languages for me to learn at the age of 40, it's that personal link that keeps me interested. Also, I feel like I've really achieved something when a new concept finally sinks in, so to speak. So thank you very much.
Now, as someone who has become more and more fascinated with the evolution of the English language, I found this to be particularly interesting. I really appreciate the research that goes into these videos, and the way it makes me look at the language I use every day in a new light.
Keep up the great work my good man!
Thank you! I appreciate the comment!
Dont worry, i started to learn french, spanish and italian around the age of 54 and now (with 58) i am with them all about at level B1. (I am German, by the way).
@Troy Wilkins
I'm learning German as well, and I absolutely love it. I've just completed my own list of the strong stem verbs, slightly fewer than 200. My question for you: are you interested in learning Sanskrit and Paninian grammar?
Just wondering if Lithuanian or Latvian would have been closer to the language spoken by your ancestors. Old Prussian had been extinct only about 300 years ago.
@@melluzi Good question, but no, the part of Prussia they came from was a German speaking region (at least, at the time they fled to Australia) and up until World War 1 my family continued to speak German as well as learning English - my great-grandmother was the last person in our family who was fluent in German and English. In fact, while learning German, I've been surprised at how many words I already knew from my family calling household items their names in German and not English.
This has taken me back 40 plus years.Camping in the English lake district I played with two Swedish brothers who were holidaying also.Even as a child I could pick out individual words as they conversed with each other.We were throwing stones in a stream "Kastar sten" sten/stone and throw/cast .Being Northern English made it easier with similar pronunciation maybe ?Then only a few years ago holidaying in Croatia I was drinking with two Scandinavians and a American.The Scandinavians had no trouble understanding my not particularly strong northern English accent.But the American was struggling to understand me.I had to change my pronunciation for a fellow native English speaker not the Dutch and Norwegian second language speakers.
I have always lived in the Northeast USA, but my mother is from Germany and I worked for a while at an airport in the terminal that served airlines from India, Canada, and the UK, so I got to hear many distinct English dialects regularly, as well as many non-native English speakers’ accents, and I’ve been on the other side of your experience. One day I was serving two customers, and while I could understand their English, I felt certain from their accents that they were non-native English speakers from perhaps Scandinavia or Central Europe. I politely asked them where they were from and the happily told me “England!” and I later figured out that I was interpreting their Northern English accent as a Northern European accent! It was a learning experience.
I mostly work in various international IT projects. And I have observed this a lot. Most of us non-natives speak a somewhat flawed English, from time to time mixing grammar, using less obvious words in a given context, or building sentences that makes sense in our own language, but doesn't really work in propper English.
We usually joke about this saying that we speak Broken English. Funily enough, me being from Sweden I rarely have any trouble understanding a for example French person, saying something English with a pretty rich touch of French, its like I expect mistakes, and when they happen I just look at the context and can fill in the blanks.
The ones struggling with Broken English are always the natives. Every time we have somebody from UK,US,AU,NZ etc in the meeting everything slows down, since we have to explain to them what the speaker said in propper English. Its like they get so distracted by mistakes in delivery, that they focus on the mistake and forget to parse context, recent example a Spanish colleague used "By the beginning" and we had to explain to a NZ guy that he should just parse it as "In the beginning"
Wait are you also from Cumbria?
The American was being awkward! There is no English speaker I can't understand. Well, it depends on the speed they talk as much as their accent.
@@SusanaXpeace2u what if the English speaker isn't speaking English at that time
Regarding Anglo-Saxon and Viking integration, I recall watching a TV programme in the UK when DNA was first available. It was discovered that in the valley communities of West Yorkshire, those living in the lower parts of the valleys (the richer agricultural areas) were much more likely to have predominantly Scandinavian DNA and those in the upper parts (the less productive areas) were much more likely to possess Anglo-Saxon DNA. It was also remarked that, even up to the 1920's, those living in the lower and upper parts regarded each other with some reserve and were unlikely to socialise or inter-marry.
Questionable because even today geneticists have trouble distinguishing between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian DNA. Maybe instead they looked at grave goods or something like that to determine which groups lived where?
Geordie paternal ancestry,
Growing up in the 80s Bristol we knew who was from which side by sight, I don't doubt those people in the 1920s did too and mixing with "foreigners" was frowned upon in general.
It makes a lot of sense, sticking to your own is safest.
As a child I was always a bit confused by how English works (German is my native language) but now that I also learned danish, I understand the connections and history so much more.
Ja ich haette die gleiche Meinung aber merr nach Deutsch (Englisch ist meine Muttersprache). Am ersten Tag von der deutsche Klasse in der Schule, sagte meine Deutschelehrerin dass Englisch aus Deutsch kommte und ich haette schnell im Kopf "Wirklich? Wie?" (Ich haette schon deutsche Saetze vielmal aus denen Lieder gesehen, denen ich in meiner Deutschtanzgruppe singte).
Aber wenn ich Norwegisch angefangen zu lernen habe, koennte ich so einfach sehen, wie aehnlich zum beide Englisch und Deutsch Norwegisch war. Aber es macht so cool zu lernen woher spezifischeren Woerter, Satzbildungen, Grammatik, vsw. auf alle diese Sprachen kommen.
I am a German native speaker. But nevertheless, I have noticed some similarities about languages that are spoken nowadays, even if that is not so obvious in all spellings.
Examples for this are:
Wasser (German)
water (English)
vand (Danish)
vann (Norwegian)
vatten (Swedish)
vatn (Icelandic)
therefore (English)
derfor (Danish)
derfor (Norwegian)
därför (Swedish)
neu (German)
new (English)
nieuw (Dutch)
ny (Danish)
ny (Norwegian)
ny (Swedish)
ný (Icelandic)
Vater (German)
father (English)
far (Danish)
far (Norwegian)
far (Swedish)
faðir (Icelandic)
Sohn (German)
son (English)
son (Swedish)
sonur (Icelandic)
søn (Danish)
sønn (Norwegian)
Mutter (German)
mother (English)
mor (Danish)
mor (Norwegian)
mor (Swedish)
móðir (Icelandic)
Tochter (German)
daughter (English)
datter (Danish)
datter (Norwegian)
dotter (Swedish)
dóttir (Icelandic)
Bruder (German)
brother (English)
bror (Danish)
bror (Norwegian)
bror (Swedish)
bróðir (Icelandic)
Schwester (German)
sister (English)
søster (Danish)
søster (Norwegian)
syster (Swedish)
systir (Icelandic)
If you really want to knock your socks off, then check this out:
Lightning (english)
baraq (semitic)
pïrok (Uto-Aztec)
Spend the night, or lie down (English)
Bytu (semitic)
pïtu (Uto-Aztec)
Daughter (English)
batt (semitic)
pattï (Uto-Aztec)
Cry (English)
bakay( Semitic)
paka (Uto-Aztec)
Buttocks (English)
dubur (Semitic)
Tupur (Uto-Aztec)
Make flat, stamp, crush (English)
dakka (semitic)
takka (Uto-Aztec)
grass, pasture (English)
dobɛr (semitic)
tupi (Uto-Aztec)
revolve, whirl (English)
dwr (semitic)
tur (Uto-Aztec)
Male, man (English)
Dakar (Aramaic)
taka (Uto-Aztec)
Wolf (English)
di’b-aa (Aramaic)
tï’pa (Uto-Aztec)
Squirrel (English)
siggoob (semitic)
sikkuC (Uto-Aztec)
Lion, Mountain lion (English)
’ariy / ’arii (Arabic)
wari (Uto-Aztec)
Man (English)
’iiš (Hebrew)
wïsi (Uto-Aztec)
Woman, wife (English)
išaa (Hebrew)
wïCti (Uto-Aztec)
beautiful (English)
ya’ya’ / yaa’ayaa’ (Semitic)
yawáywa (Uto-Aztec)
sell (English)
Makar (Semitic)
Maka (Uto-Aztec)
Wash, bathe (English)
ђmm (Semitic)
Huma (Uto-Aztec)
round (English)
ʕagol (Phoenician/Semitic)
wakol (Uto-Aztec)
Vulva (English)
ʕɛrwaa (Phoenician/Semitic)
wowa (Uto-Aztec)
Vielleicht hättest du bei Norwegisch zwischen Bokmal und Nyorsk unterscheiden sollen... ;)
@@thubuntu
Mag sein. Aber ich kenne mich damit jetzt nicht so mega gut aus, sorry. Manche von den Übersetzungen habe ich auch nur aus Google-Übersetzer herauskopiert. Und da steht leider nur "Norwegisch" zur Auswahl. Irgendetwas konkretes zu "Bokmål" oder "Nynorsk" habe ich da bisher leider noch nicht gefunden.
That's probably words with similar roots in different Indo-European languages, not special for German languages. Russian is close in some cases:
water - вода (voda)
new - новый (novij)
son - сын (syn)
mother - мать (mat')
daughter - дочь (dotch)
brother - брат (brat)
sister - сестра (sestra)
The most interesting thing I see in your list of cognates is that many of the English words are most similar to the Icelandic cognates - meaning most similar to Old Norse.
I'm bilingual in English and Spanish and I started studying Norwegian and Swedish and I have to say they became sooo much easier to learn and understand because I was already fluent in English. They were so much easier for me than say, learning French as a Spanish speaker. And I did notice a lot of words and structures were similar to English.
As for your second question, you just did a video on the influence of Arabic on Spanish, but it's also interesting that a lot of vocabulary in Spanish and other languages comes from indigenous American languages like Nahuatl, Mayan, Quechua etc.
Chocolate for one from nahuatl iirc
@@soupdragon151 Avocado is another. It comes from the Nahuatl word for testicle because of the way the fruit hangs when it's fully mature.
Common fr*nch L
I love how Old Norse influenced English so much. Due to the vikings. So it makes sense that Scandinavians are especially good with English. I love both Old Norse and Old English, makes sense since they are similar. It’s so amazing.
I am currently learning Norwegian with Duolingo. Sometimes whole sentences sound like English with funny accent.. or sometimes Old English.
I am a Norwegian, so interesting to hear that you are learning our language (well, it's really Danish with a Norwegian accent, the only ones speaking true Norwegian is the Icelandic, but that's another story), why would you go to all the trouble to learn Norwegian, it isn't exactly a World language? :)
@@MrLundefaret Jeg lærer Norsk med Duolingo også. Jeg bo i de forente stater, men jeg vil bo Norge eller Sverige fordi dere har veldig penn natur og god ... the Norwegian word for standard of living.
@@SoteriosXI God levestandard.
Ok, da forstår jeg. Interessant å høre om. Hvilket yrke praktiserer du? Eller vil du komme til Norge for å studere?
effyleven Hvorfor lærer du norsk?
For us Norwegians it's very fun to listen to Old English, because it's like English with Norwegian vowels.
Yes! I can finally weigh in! I'm a native English speaker, but I've studied both Swedish and Norwegian and am pretty comfortable in Norwegian. I'll say that they are BY FAR the easiest foreign languages I've studied. So much of Norwegian just feels "intuitive" to my anglophone mind, so I didn't have to struggle and study hard to grasp the grammar. And I felt like I didn't need to work hard memorizing vocabulary because...well...I already knew a lot of it, but maybe with a different pronunciation or sense.
Interesting, I have the same experience, but the reverse. I'm a native Icelandic, but I know Faroese, Danish and Norwegian. I learned English more effortlessly than any other language outside of the Scandinavian language group. I always thought it was because English was simply so easy, but now I have started to think that it is due to these ancient relations between English and Old Norse.
I'm a native Spanish speaker that learned English as a kid in school. I find English frustrating at times not because of the grammar, rather all the hundreds of exceptions to the rules. I have found my knowledge of both English and Spanish helpful in my study of French.
I am a native English speaker, and I already had learned Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, and some Russian, Japanese, Hebrew, and modern Greek when I started studying Swedish. Swedish was by far the easiest language I have ever studied. Syntax in Swedish and English is so similar that you could translate Swedish literally word for word and end up with a reasonable-sounding English sentence. The grammar of Middle English and Modern English seem more similar to Swedish than to Dutch, which I am now learning and which some say is the easiest language for English speakers, but I still think Swedish is much easier.
I studied Swedish, English and German side by side at school and it was most annoying, because I was often unsure to which language certain words belonged to. The huge amount of exceptions of the English grammar are also annoying as well as Swedish word order rules that did not make sense for me.
My mother tongue is french, but I learnt english from very young. Since a couple of months, I've made a hobby in learning swedish. And I must say that, when you know both french and english, swedish is way easier than norweigian. Especially pronunciation. It also comes to help that there are a lot of influences from french vocabulary in swedish, more so than in any other north germanic language. Some words are literally or almost literally borrowed from french.
Citron (lemon), which comes from french 'citron'. Linje (line), which comes from french 'ligne'. Allé (avenue), which comes from french 'allée'. Ateljé (studio), which comes from french 'atelier'. Kostym (suit), which comes from french 'costume'. Kastrull (saucepan), which comes from french 'casserole'. Idé (idea), which comes from french 'idée'. Glass (ice cream), which comes from french 'glace'. Paraply (umbrella), which comes from french 'parapluie'. Roman (novel), which comes from french 'roman'. And so on...
I also think that there are some expressions that comes from french, since there are some sentences that you can literally translate word by word in french (and not in english or in norweigian). It's quite stunning. Pronunciation of swedish oddly ressemble spanish to my ears.
I'm Icelandic and in answer to question 1, here is how "the heavy stone" can inflect in my language.
6:50
No: Sá höfugi steinn
Ge: Þess höfuga steins
Da: Þeim höfuga steini
Ac: Þann höfuga stein
(Btw the word "höfugur" is not commonly used anymore, but we have it)
Fun fact about question 2:
The Icelandic word for "sweaters" is "Peysur" and that word entered into Icelandic through French fishermen. They wore sweaters and the French word for fisherman is "pêcheur". So when we Icelanders started to wear those kinds of sweaters then that became the word for it! XD
joelm33 That’s interesting because those classic french striped shirts are from sailors so in french they are called a “marinière”
Is it Þungur you use instead of höfugi? Asking since that one is just like (tung) that we use in Swedish/Norwegian/Danish.
@@aularound Yes. "Þungur" is the common word for heavy in Icelandic, and the root of the word is "Þung". Just like in the modern Scandinavian languages (of course with T replacing Þ).
@@joelm33 I noticed that we have replaced Þ with either T or D in Scandinavia, we don't have that sound at all anymore. It is also quite common that we struggle with that sound when learning english, especially the word "three" is hard for some people to pronounce and can become only "tree" instead :)
@@aularound Yes, Þ was merged with T or D over time. I have an idea about how it might have happened. Icelandic can contract words, just like in English. For example, in stead of saying "I am", "Let us" or "Can not" you can say "I'm", "Lets" or "Can't". The same can be done in Icelandic, like instead of saying "Kom þú!" (come here!) or "Ert þú?" (are you?), you can instead say "Komdu!" and "Ertu?". It may be possible that Scandinavians started doing the same thing and eventually the contract words became the new standard, since modern Scandinavians now say "Kom du" and "Er du?"
Tak for dine fantastiske serier 🇩🇰👌🏼
Bruh, I know nothing of danish yet that was extremely easy to understand, you said ‘thank you for the fantastic series’ the thank you part was a bit tough though.
i only speak english but i still understood you perfectly !
@@noahrice6671Vi [ve] ha(ve)r [hAr] så [sO] mange ( many, OE moneGe!) af de samme simple (w)ord(s) i(n) [ee*] Dansk, Norsk & Svensk, så (th)at en Engelsk-tal(k)ende person kan ofte se deres [dair-es] (their(s)) mening efter just få [foa] ((a) few) sekunder.
Deres grammatik-ker er [air] (are) også (also) nær [nair] (near) en simplificeret Engelsk, så han kan lær(n)e {v}ore ( our, OE ure) Skandinaviske tunger i(n) en hast uden ( without, OE be-utan! ) at skulle ("to should", OE sculan!, i.e. having to) tænke [taink-e] ( think) for ham [hAm] selv først [first] 😉
@@noahrice6671 Well done 😉
dine [deen-e] is actually the cognate of the older English "thine" ( plural form in this case ).
While I'm a Native English speaker with some experience in German, i was waiting for my brother to pack up at his Swedish friends house and I picked up a book about vikings.
I didn't understand everything but I could get the general idea of what was being said by using an unholy mix of English and German to decode the base meaning.
I have similar experiences currently studying in Germany.
I am a native Swedish speaker and speak English. A lot of times when I don't know the German word i can at least understand or make myself understood on some Germanised Swedish-English mixture.
I once, at uni, picked up a text from my friend's table, it was in French. I've read the whole thing and understood it, although I've never learned French! It was about Earth and environment. I guess all the scientific vocabulary borrowed from French/Latin.
*English is my second language, I also studied German and Latin*
@@RinaOvcharenko There are also a lot of french loan-words in russian, which probably helped in your case ;)
Whilst ich am a thedish Anglesaxish spreker with some undergang in Dutch, ich was biding for my brother to forbellow at his Sweanish friend's house and ich wale a book umbe wikings.
Ich understand not allthing but ich couthe begrasp the allmean mindbeleth of what was being quethen by brooking an unholy blending of Anglesaxish and Dutch to unkey the groundwork meaning.
@@dennisrheinhard5175 Your comment seemed to me a patchwork quilt of Germanic languages including archaic and obsolete English, yet I understood you 98%.
Update: Having just read @t,
"Language of the land or culture of the German tribes. Popular on
underground IRC networks. Reintroduced from Old English þeódisc," make
that 99%. "Furbellow" is a ruffled petticoat?
5:03 So "rotten" itself is from the state of Denmark!
Haha
Fun fact: The Danish word "gammel" just means "old", but in German "gammeln" means "to rot". It's not just a nice etymological relation to observe, but also potential cause for hilarity when unprepared Germans see product names like "Gammel Dansk" (a herbal liqueur) or "Den Gamle Fabrik" (various flavors of jam) in stores :D
He-he! So that's why Hamlet said it. Love it!
@@jillshort9241 ohh! Of course! I have always wondered where it came from! Thanks 😊
Algebra, rice, and lemon are from Arabic. English is very diverse!
I find English to be much more similar to Scandinavian languages than it is to Dutch and German. If I listen to Norwegian as a native English speaker, I sometimes understand full sentences and I’ve never studied it
See also the Ecolinguist Video on how good speakers of English can understand Dutch without having learned it, and the guy who studies Old English (which is much closer to Dutch and German than today's English) understood almost everything, much more than the two other guys not familiar with Old English.
Speaking Dutch, German and French with high a interest in North Germanic languages which I started studying recently. I can confirm that Dutch, Frisian and Low German are the most closely related languages to English. However, it should be pointed out that the West Germanic languages and North Germanic languages are highly related as well. And thus any Dutch, Frisian or German will be able to pick up a North Germanic language with ease and vice versa.
In the Northern parts of England, streets are often named "gate", while in Norwegian many streets are also called "gate", albeit with Norwegian pronunciation. My wife also had a course in this in university where they covered word pairs that exist in English, where a word already existed, but then was borrowed again from Old Norse after the original word's meaning had changed. One example I remember is "shirt" and "skirt" (not sure which is which), and in Norwegian "skjorte" (shirt). And the Scottish use the word "ken" for to know. (kjenne in Danish).The grammar of English is definitely much closer to Scandinavian, and our English pronunciation largely comes from Danish. When a Dane says "god dag", it is almost indistinguishable in pronunciation from "good day" in English.
ken is ken in dutch as wel,(ik ken jou) I know you.
Case in point- Wigan has Wigan Wallgate train station.
Idk if Danish and Norwegian are the same here but god morgen sounds like something I've heard before I started learning norsk
The presentation and cadence was riveting and first class.
I watched twice and I've the feeling I should keep looping until I memorize this.
As expected from Paul
A fascinating episode, Paul. And, as I am a native English speaker, perhaps one of your most interesting. I grew up in Cheshire, which is in the northwest on the dialect boundary between Midlands and Northern dialects. I also speak German, and learnt Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English as a subsidiary BA Degree subject (I was studying archaeology) at university. Your latter remarks about the origins and mixing of Old Norse and Old English within the Danelaw are particularly interesting, as is your speculation whether Middle English was a Creole, and whether modern English is in fact a Northern Germanic language rather than a West Germanic one. Learning languages, I certainly found Old Norse far easier to understand and pick up on the grammar, syntax and vocabulary than Old English, which is comparatively so hard to understand and as modern speakers we seem divorced from it in all those three particulars. So I tend to agree, modern English feels much closer to the Scandinavian languages. On the other hand, learning German, while relatively easy (I lived in Germany for years), I still stumble over the genders and word order (a common English speaker's trait!). So modern German was for me harder to learn than say, Old Norse, perhaps for the reasons you gave. Anyway, thank you for another engrossing video. I have been a subscriber for years. Keep making great videos! Thanks again. -Phil Copleston
Philc854 Fascinating - with that background you might want to give (modern) Danish, Norwegian and Swedish a chance.
They are almost a three for the price of one package because of the 80 - 90 % mutual (basic) vocabulary and the nearly identical grammars - like three dialects of a common Scandinavian base language - and then be even more baffled with the many deep similarties with English, which even today still makes English a fairly easy language for us to learn apart from a few hurdles here and there like the peculiar English use of "do" ( a relatively late addition to Middle English that is probably due to Welsh influence! ) and the use of "-ing" with verbs.
The word order is just like that of a crude ( "primitive") Old fashioned English, like in (modern) English there are no cases for nouns and their articles to battle with 😁, NO backward (SOV) sentences with the verbs or verb compounds at the end - and best of all - verbs are the same for all grammatical persons singular and plural (!), as English almost has it now. Maybe in a couple of hundred years English will finally be there as well? 😁
Many irregular verbs in D, N & S are also highly parallel with their English counterparts. And there even used to be more of those -
for instance "rang" for "ringede" and "svam" for "svømmede" ( svøm(me) = swim ) ) .
All in all you will often encounter whole simple sentences in Danish ( in particular) that will look like some weird form of perfectly understandable Early Middle Pseudo English.
D Vi [ve] var / kom her først [first] - lad os [us] gå [go] ud for at møde dem nu [noo] .
E We were / came here first - let us go out (for) to meet them now.
D Du kan finde min broder i det lille hvide hus under det høje [hoygh-e] birke-træ"
E You (thou) can find my brother in the little white house under the tall (" high") birch tree.
D Jeg [yigh !] vil synge en ny sang for dig [digh], så [so] du kan endelig høre [hoer-e] min nye stil.
E I will (want to) sing a new song for you ("thee"), so (that) you can finally ("endly") hear my new style.
D Du kan komme over til mig [migh] i aften / i morgen / i dag [day(gh)].
E You can come over to me tonight ( litt. in (this) even-ing, OE æfen / æften !!!) / tomorrow / today.
...
And so on and on and on 😁
@@Bjowolf2speaking Dutch and (low) German these sentences are absolutely mutually intelligible. I can see a connection between all these North and West Germanic languages.
This makes a good point for why it's so easy for us Scandinavians to learn English, as they share a not so distant past.
I live in Nottingham in the East Midlands, England. There is a lot of Norse influence in the local dialect. A common greeting is “ey up”, which is derived from Old Norse “se upp”. The complete greeting is “ey up me duck”, with “duck” (amazingly) deriving from the Anglo-Saxon “duka” (modern: “Duke”) eventually from the Latin “dux” - leader.
In a single greeting, you have a thousand years of invasions and cultural transmissions condensed into 4 words.
I was always made to feel (as someone from Yorkshire) that my dialect is not sophisticated or intellegent sounding, so should be shunned in favour of a "posher" way of speaking (i.e. Recieved Pronounciation). However, if you study the origins of the local dialect you realise that it's actually really cool that we have a meaningful connection to history and our ancestors. I now embrace my local dialect and will not feel bad about speaking in a way that is deemed uncouth by others.
My first sentence in Swedish was 'you must go home now' - 'du måste gå hem nu'.
And you were probably thinking "Whoa, this is gonna be easy!"
Same word order, unlike Dutch or German. Jij moet nu naar huis gaan. ("You must now to home go")
@@Girvid But the most basic Swedish sentences follow the V2 pattern like e.g. German.
Daniel Perry mine was „upp till dig“ = up to you. So many structures between English and Scandinavian languages are very similar!
@@alitalati "upp till dig" is a modern calque loan from English though. There are heaps of them, probably because they're so easy to adapt to Swedish because of the similar grammar.
Very interesting! I am a native Dutch speaker and I study both English (L2) and Swedish (L3). I sometimes find it helpful to translate a sentence to English before translating it to Swedish because the structure of Swedish is more similar to English than Dutch.
Als je opgegroeid bent met plat neder-saksisch als moedertaal dan hoef je dat omweggetje via engels niet te maken.
This is kind of weird as Norwgian and Dutch share the same grammar and Swedish is almost the same as Norwegian.
Gretchen Thunberg As a native Swedish speaker, I could understand that whole sentence :)
@@oskich that's interesting, this makes me think they should just scrap the whole "west and north Germanic" and just put them in one "Germanic" category lol.
I definitely lean on the third theory. There’s just too much similarity in the structures of English and the Scandinavian languages than there are between English and West Germanic languages. While Anglo-Saxon was likely a West Germanic language, highly similar to Old Dutch, the Old English that people spoke while under Danish rule definitely shifted to Old Norse rules. Therefore one could argue the Anglos spoke a form of Old Norse with an Anglo vocabulary and dialect. So at its core English is a Norse language with heavy vocabulary borrowings from French Normandy and Latin. Ironically French Normandy was influenced by the Vikings as well, making the Norse language theory come full circle.
The third theory makes sense to me too. As an American who has studied Swedish and German, Swedish seems much more natural, especially in terms of word order. It makes sense that the victors - the Scandinavians - would impose their language on the conquered.
Ernest Armstrong I’ve been studying Norwegian and I’ve been picking it up much more quickly than German or Spanish. If I really apply myself I could be fluent by the end of the year.
So you think an English Speaker could speak to a Norwgian and understand them just fine? I study Norwegian and yes it is very familiar to me, sometimes i understand without much thought but the writing sometimes more familiar then pronunciation. Sometimes the pronunciation does but grammar and spelling more than anything
@@SofiaBerruxSubs I don’t think an English speaker could talk to a Norwegian speaker and be able to understand the Norwegian speaker or vice versa. However an English speaker can pick up Norwegian quickly due to the similares. It all comes down to vocabulary and recognizing how questions are formatted.
@@ernestarmstrong7187 I'm not convinced for one there were whole swathes of the country that were not under viking influence which carried on with their dialects which still keep their old english verb form i.e. "we be going out" rather than "we are going out" the -are- derives from Norse but the rest is unchanged. If it was a language replacement there would just be be too many differences.
Very interesting video! I am norwegian, and a funny thing i noticed is that many (actually most) of those words you listed early in the video which english had gotten from norse have now been lost in our language and we use different words today. Some of those words have been reintroduced into norwegian back from english.
This loss of words might be partly due to our time under the danish, and from the black plague (which pretty much killed off the old norse language).
"egg" is an interesting word: It had two different plurals in Middle English, "eggs" and "eyren". The latter obviously stemming from Old English, the former from Old Norse.
The use of OE ey/eyren continued to exist alongside ON egg/eggs until the 1500s when it seems to have died out. Possibly because it became a homonym with 'eye', the latter having lost g/ȝ which persists in say the German 'Auge'.
Egg - eyren
Ei - Eier
BTW, "eyes" is still "een" in Scots. at least in some dialects. A similar form existed in Middle English, e,g Chaucer uses "eyen".
In Dutch it's ei and eieren.
Fried eggs: gebakken eitjes
Wow this may be your best video so far. As a speaker of English and German I was always puzzled by how all those Scandinavian words and patterns were present in very basic forms of the language. Very informative.
I've been interested in the Scandinavian influence on what we call English for quite some time now. I've made a few trips to Yorkshire, and York, and it's very apparent. A lot of the streets in York end in "gate", which doesn't mean gate in the English term, but is from the Danish word "gata", meaning "street". So Petergate is actually Peter Street. There are tons of other examples.
I do know that your comment is 11 months old but I just have to corret you. "Street" in Danish is "gade" not "gata" which I believe is a Swedish word (I'm Danish).
Edit: I just looked up that "gate" is in fact Norwegian for "street".
@@camillanorenlindgreen4608 Thanks for that. I have a friend who has a Danish background whose name before she was married was Gade.
Petergate would be 'Petersgade' or 'Pedersgade' in Danish.
@@raindropsneverfall and gate is pants in Slovakian :)
@@camillanorenlindgreen4608 It changed in Danish, it used to be gate - the Danish language has changed a lot since it influenced English (I mean it was 1000 years ago)
Good one! I am a Scot. I speak Danish, Swedish (and Norwegian) as well as German and a few romance languages. Learning (first) Swedish the similarities between modern English and Swedish are not only very evident, having lived in Northern England there are local words you come across common to both languages. As an anecdote, one of the main streets in Manchester is Deansgate. Nothing to do with a dean (from a church) nor a gate. It was from "Danes Gata" (or in Danish today "gade" = street) means "Street of the Dane" I believe this is where you had to go to visit the ruling Dane of the area to pay your taxes.
Having studied a little bit of german and norwegian, I can safely say that norwegian is much closer to english, especially in the grammar/structure.
As a Norwegian I can agree. Tried to learn some German in school, but the grammar was difficult. The words not so much.
@@_Viking Gernan grammar is similar to Old English grammar
i was just about to comment this (except i have studied swedish and german) I find swedish grammar much closer to english than german grammar. German grammar definitely seems very "old-fashioned"
Norwegian is the English of the north
Germanic is not synonymous with german
There was an influence of French in Russian language. It was a language of high prestige, we borrowed some vocabulary, but we also borrowed a way of talking and writing. French used to bulid big sentences with lots of verbs and objects, so we took this things into Russian.
It was fine for me until I started to learn Polish. It's also a Slavic language, it shares lots of common things, but when it came to building sentences my Polish friend said "You make your sentences big as hell. We don't do this at all". I just thought it's his opinion, but when I started to read books in Polish, English and German, I noticed one thing: their sentences are too short for me. I always can fit three or so sentences in one big sentence, but my friends just say it's not typical and I really shouldn't do it. :p
I hope my story is interesting for someone :)
that's fascinating. I've never thought about how different languages influence sentence length. Would you say Russian is just more comfortable with run-on sentences?
Ah, that's also the case for Italian. Indeed, it has been kind of a problem while I was learning English
@@keeganmoonshine7183 Well, yes. We study "subordinate" sentences in school. There are, I believe, 15 types of them, and it's very easy with that amount of types to create lots of sentences in just one big one. I always have troubles with creating essays with at least ten sentences, just because I always put my whole opinion in 5 or so colossal sentences and then I don't know what to write. It gets me pissed off sometimes.
german often has really long sentences too. in recent years sentences have been getting shorter, probably because of the influnce of english, but in older literature you'll often find sentences that stretch over whole paragraphs or sometimes even pages. try reading something by adalbert stifter.
@@tru7hhimself That's because of the fact that it's easier to form sentences like that having more profound GRAMMAR.
It's been great to rediscover this channel on TH-cam. Thanks, Paul.
Good job. Thanks for taking the time to post this video. What you stated corresponds with what I learned way back in college linguistics, but your presentation was more interesting.
When you listen to the Geordie dialect (from Newcastle) it's easy to hear the Scandinavian influence. They say "gan hyem" to mean "go home" - similar to Danish / Swedish / Norwegian.
This is the best video in the history of TH-cam ! 😍
Thanks! That's quite a proclamation. :)
But not in the "history of the entire world i guess".
What are you smoking? :)
But I agree it's extremely interesting.
I do not agree
@@franksellers7858 Indeed !
Vikings: **enter England, hoping to raid a different culture; finds out that the locals look, sound and smell like them**
Vikings: (visible confusion)
Great video, Paul, thanks for clarifying the movements of people and the linguistic adaptations that followed.
God tier content every time ❤️🙌🏻💋
Paul so pro
Thanx for making me chuckle with that comment of praise! I'll definitely be using the phrase "god-tier" again
Awesome again Paul. It's like taking in a college lecture. Thank you ! 👍
Hopefully that's a good thing! lol
It's my pleasure!
VERY food thing !!!! :)
As a native Kurdish speaker, I can confirm that our language and those of our neighbours only borrowed words from each other but never structure (as far as I am aware), we have been in continuous contact with speakers of Aramic (Neo-Aramic = Sureth = Siriani) but their Semitic language still sounds very much like other Semitic languages, they share vocabulary with Arabic (they have a different script though) .. the only language that we may share some structure with is Farsi, but I assume the fact our languages are sister languages so that may be the reason. However, it is worth mentioning that some of our neighbours weren't historically our neighbours (Arabs and Turks), maybe only over 1000 years now, we'll have to see what more contact will lead to 🙂
By the way, I speak English fluently and I live in England, I could see and hear the similarity between English and Scandinavian languages .. but again, Swedish and German do share a lot in common too, therefore, the way I see the north European languages (Finnish excluded); I see them as one happy big family 🙂
Kürtçe farsçadır..Kürtçede 5000 türkçe kelime var.Türkçe ve farsça olmadan kelime kuramıyorsunuz..Sen hindusun avrupalı değilsin..Fince türkçeye benzediği için ayırmışsın vay keko vay :)
Paul, I love your channel! You pack an incredible amount of research into videos that are relatively short!
Hey! I live in New Brunswick, in the Maritime region of Canada. We have a unique form of French spoken here by our Acadian population, primarily around Moncton. It is different from the Quebec form of French, which is also spoken in the province, mainly in the north around Edmondston. There is also a French-English creole based on Acadian French, called Chiac.
Some info from Wikipedia:
University of Orléans linguist Marie‑Ève Perrot describes Chiac as "the integration and transformation of English lexical, syntactic, morphological, and phonetic forms into French structures".
"Ej vas tanker mon truck de soir pis ej va le driver. Ça va être right d'la fun." (I am going to go put gas in my truck and drive it tonight. It's going to be so much fun.)
"Ton truck work tu? Ch'te baillra vingt piace pour une quick drive en ville." (Does your truck work? I'll give you twenty bucks for a quick drive to the city.)
"On decole tu su la brosse desoir?" (Are we going out drinking tonight?)
"Ton car é ti en pretty good shape?" (Is your car in working order?)
"Cousse-tu veux chte-dise?" (What do you want me to tell you?)
"Quossé tu parles about" (What are you talking about.)
"C'é pretty right on man, mon truck handle dans les trails." (It's really fun, my truck handles well off-road.)
Is it used? If so, how many people speak it?
C'est intéressant !!!
wow mec c'est formidable cette langue. Tres interessant, merci pour le partager avec nous. Ce serait trop dificile le connaitre sans etant la-bas donc grace a toi je le connais sur internet. Merci encore ! Et comment est la vie la-bas en Nouveau Brunswick ? C'est froid, pas ennuyeux ?
Theres another language like that i think here in Canada called Michif. Its blend of Cree and French.
Ben old one but a good one là: th-cam.com/video/iqSRvbsEcQc/w-d-xo.html
Better explained than in my university
Was that Trump university ?
VC YT 😆
What's your uni?
@@marekskawinski191 One in Spain hehehe
Been studying Japanese at my uni, and Paul's video on the Japanese language brought some light into the still-unclear areas of Japanese for me, in spite of the uni "teaching" me the "linguistics" of Japanese... Great job, uni, great indeed... (sarcasm)
England was invaded by the Anglo-Saxons, then by the Danes (their cousins), then by the Normans (their cousins who had learned to speak French).
The Jutes were actually the first that was invited to England (not an invasion), they were joined by the Angles, Saxons and probably also some Frisians. The Jutes were / are Danes, and so were the Angles. Today the Angles on the European mainland is a Danish minority i Northern Germany.
Invaded is not quite right, it was a migration over 100’s of years. The original Britons were not best pleased though, as they ended up in Wales 😏
Yes, the first Cousins' War in a sense 😊
@@DMC888 That is a fucking lie, they did not "end up in wales" They stayed where they were and integrated into anglo saxon cullture.
@@user-mq5xt5jf4o I think there was a historical Danish dialect called Angeldansk
As a Dutchman I noticed the following: English core vocabulary and pronunciation is definitely more West-Germanic. The closest you will get is with Frisian (spoken in North-Western Holland). This indicates to me that the core of English is West-Germanic. But when I started to learn Danish and Norwegian I immediately noticed that the word order/grammar of English is much more similar to Scandinavian languages. It seems to me that there must have been a point in time where old Norse and old English kinda merged together, where the West-Germanic core vocabulary was kept, but especially the grammar adapted to the more simple grammar that Old Norse used, so the two groups could communicate in an effective manner.
Actually the grammar of English/Danish are commonly identical, unlike for example Norwegian that in some sentence flip the word order. As an example: "skal jeg ta jakken din" = "shall I take the jacket yours". In Danish you could say it that way and it would make sense, but it would still be incorrect. Danes would say: "Skal jeg ta din jakke" = same as in English.
The theory that Old Norse is the core of transitional English into Middle English has a ring of truth. Norwegian was my first language; English is my dominant language; and Danish is my third language. I studied German and achieved a survival-level proficiency. I find it much easier to express myself--and follow along-- in Danish than German. I stumble over vocabulary sometimes, in Danish, but the grammar seems quite natural to me. German challenges on both fronts. Fascinating! Thank you, Paul!
Well, sometimes it's hard to make a difference between conservative use of bokmal and Danish, I guess, unless you're talking about spelling words and some differences in vocabulary. From that point of view, German is fairly different.
Survival level means you're able to express the basics, but not at ease when doing so. So I am not astonished you prefer Danish ...
As to my experience, Scandinavian languages are easy to pick up for a German speaker in terms of reading and listening comprehension, especially after having learnt a first one. English helps, of course, but so does Lower German.
I always thought old Norse was supposed to have grammar like Icelandic, which is more similar to German or Old English.
@@kekeke8988 you're right
@@kekeke8988 Old Norse is the same as Old Icelandic, just different names, but same language, and New Icelandic is still very similar to Old Icelandic.
Here in England, we have many places using the suffixes -by and -gate, the latter coming from 'gata'. You tend to find most of these places in the Midlands and North.
Daniel Perry i dont think -gate comes from «gata», but is rather in its original form. Gate = street, gata = the street
You must have so many scandals there...
You did a blinding job with that!
Great structure and presentation - you made what can be quite complex nice and digestible.
Language can be such a fascinating thing in and of itself.
Thanks a lot!
Excellent video, very well explained and in such clear English. I did not think, I would watch the whole thing. However, I watched the entire thing. Thank you.
When BBC made its first broadcast, there were complaints from all over England and so the accent chosen was mid England. Benny Hill made fun of the different accents that were funny. The American English showed a strain in WW II when those from the South could not understand those from the north east coast but all could understand the Midwest accent, so officers came from the Midwest for the most part. But the African influence was another factor with breaking from racial discrimination. So when an African-American sergeant told me "cat down the road, pick up the wire,' I looked down the road and didn't see a cat, and walked to the ditch to pick up the wire. I had to translate that I was to run down the road like a cat (jog) and pick up the telephone wire and put on the road to be rolled up. African English has 'you needs to, British you must', and American, 'You have to." One Norse word we all know is "Fog" and I haven't the foggiest idea what someone is talking about because their ideas are too nebulous (Latin for cloud and fog is a cloud that comes down to Earth our planet while soil is also call earth.
I'm loving the video Paul! I've wanted to see this for quite a while!
This video went deep. It blew me away. The part where you ‘speculate’ about how structure (i.e. blurred syntaxes ) might have occurred on a partial basis between Old English and Old Norse was convincing. Gave me pause to consider how , where they may have taken place elsewhere.
Incredible eye-opener on languages, many thanks Paul. As a multilinguist (3 foreign fluent and passive in some other). I do really enjoy your channel and enormous number of exquisite info. This really helps and enlarges my knowledge. Keep up with a great job
Another positive and great video on youtube. Thank you for your hard work Langfocus.
My favourite example is window. Something like ”vindauga” in Old Norse, directly translated means wind-eye, because the Vikings had a hole in the roof for smoke to get out of, and it might have looked like an eye. And i should be vindöga in Swedish, but we borrowed a word from french i think so the swedish word for window is ”fönster”.
Old English for window was eágh-þyrl, ie eye hole
So it’s basically the same thing, but they decided to borrow the norse word.
So we probably borrowed it from the germans who borrowed it from the french. Cool!
Oh, I thought it meant wind-screen, much like Spanish "ventana" (from "ventus" = wind in Latin).
But you may be right and the Spanish word is also "space for the wind" (i.e. for ventilation).
Luis Aldamiz cool!
A really fascinating and informative video - I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
The anthropology of languages is extremely fascinating to me. Thank you for these studies!
This video is absolutely superb. Brilliantly enlightening.
I recently spent a week in Norway, having travelled from the UK.
As a monolinguistic English speaker i found it remarkably easy to work out what written Norwegian meant, but spoken Norwegian was practically Greek. Norwegian is vastly more similar to English than Welsh or French, and possibly easier to understand than German.
Over 50% of all words in Norwegian are almost the same in Norwegian and English.
Many other words begin the same way or have as many letters as in English.
Had one from England and one from New Zealand, it took them 1 week before they understood what we were saying. After 3 weeks they spoke Norwegian.
German is very difficult even for a Norwegian to learn.
Danish sounds like Geordie (dialect/accent of Northumbrian, chiefly Newcastle, English). It's because of all the glottal stops. Norwegian is much more mellifluous! But - unsurprisingly as the Norwegians settled in northern Scotland - Norwegian is akin to some Scottish accents. I always feel like I should just 'tune the radio' a bit and then I'd key into spoken Norwegian, Danish and Swedish, but alas, it's just not possible.
@@ellaspeed6914 Norway has two written languages, bokmål which is similar to Danish, new Norwegian which is a mixture of Bokmål and old nors.
Norway has hundreds of dialects, some very similar to old nors, old norns, some very similar in Danish and some in Swedish.
Swedish is strongly influenced by German, Norwegian has some words that are purely German but bends from Norwegian to German are usually completely impossible.
Lev Kris I’m sorry but, Nynorsk is not based off of Bokmål and Old Norse. I have no idea why someone would tell you that. Okay, so basically Nynorsk was made by a guy who didn’t feel like writing in Danish was the right way to write Norwegian, and therefore went around Norway collecting traits from different dialects (though he didn’t go any higher up than Middle-Norway) and then made a written language based upon a mix of those dialects.
@@bordershader As a Geordie myself I find it's amazing that after all this time so many words we Geordies use sound in every day life Scandinavian.
Always enjoyed your video. They're very informative and learn something new every time. Thank you. 👍
Absolutely LOVED this!!!! Thank you!
How interesting. Thank you for discussion!
Absolutely fantastic video. So well researched and fascinating.
Loved this analysis! Thank you!
After watching some of this video I opened up Duolingo (that I normally use for Spanish) and out of curiosity I checked out the Norwegian course. I was able to make it through several rounds of exercises without getting lost. The sentence structure is legit the same, so you're basically word-swapping. Kinda cool too see how many similarities there are between English and Norwegian.
So you think an English Speaker could speak to a Norwgian and understand them just fine? I study Norwegian and yes it is very familiar to me, sometimes i understand without much thought but the writing sometimes more familiar then pronunciation. Sometimes the pronunciation does but grammar and spelling more than anything
@@SofiaBerruxSubs I think it is no wonder that Scandinavians all seem to speak English as a second language so much better than other folks. I didn't start studying Norwegian, but it definitely is less intimidating than the thought of learning a Slavic language or even some other Germanic languages. I think if you stuck with it and practiced the pronunciation that you'd be able to pick up the grammar easily.
Again... Disclaimer... I don't speak or study Norwegian. I merely made a short investigation and this is my assumption based on that. Take it with a grain of salt 😁
@@chrisg1621 nah you’re right. I’m learning Swedish on there now and it’s definitely easier for me than Italian, which I’m also learning, even though I do know Spanish.
I'm taking the norsk duolingo course, and mostly that is true, but in some cases (like questions or more complex sentences) the word order does get a bit funky for an english speaker. but, in a lot of the mixed up word orders, it seems like the word order of english maybe a few hundred years ago, "have you some food?" "har du som mat?"
sorry for the bad english, I'm a native speaker, I swear! haha I'm just too tired
The only major difference early on is V2 word order in Norwegian. So in Norwegian the verb always takes the second place in a sentence. For example “first made I breakfast” wouldn’t make grammatical sense in English but because the word first takes the first place in the sentence the verb made must take second.
One of the most interesting videos you have ever made.
Greetings from Italy!
One of your best videos so far! You got really deep into it, even including your own, well educated opinion. Your expertise really shows here!
I love these language sessions. Thank you!
Paul I just stumbled on to your page. Your awesome I cannot see how anybody could not learn from you your a great teacher.
As a Norwegian learner I've noticed so many similarities to English when I was studying it. You can almost translate Norwegian into English word-to-word and you'll get a perfect sentence! There are many similar words and, what really suprised me, almost identical grammar (The English one seems to be 'a little' more complicated but that's maybe a romance influence. Tenses, I'm speaking about you now!). Even constructions like "going to" have a Norwegian equivalent ("kommer til å").
Once I came across some simple sentences in Swedish and was struck by how similar they were in terms of word order with their English equivalents. I was surprised because, previously, I had regarded English as some weird outlier. (It might be still but not in terms of the similarities it shares with North Germanic languages.)
Hyggelig å møte noen som lærer norsk også!
@@ningi626 funny quirk of Norwegian: Hyggelig å møte noen som lærer norsk også! = I also think it's nice to meet someone who is learning Norwegian (not learning it myself); Hyggelig å møte noen som også lærer norsk! = Nice to meet someone who is learning Norwegian as well (learning it myself).
Yes, English speakers will find Norwegian a very logical language. And simple too.
A couple of things English speakers may find confusing/difficult:
1. The Scandinavian pecularity of post-fixing the definite article. Not "a cat - the cat", but "en katt - katten".
2. Grammatical gender. English: a book, a tree, a cow. Norwegian: en katt (masculine), et tre (neuter), ei ku (female). (Although many people don't use the female gender).
@LIQUID INFERNO Hah! I was about to comment this exact thing. That is pretty advanced, though. I'm assuming you're a native speaker as well?
I agree with your conclusion! And i like the idea of this ”semi-creol” to explain grammar regularization in general. Very impressive, balanced and very thought trough!
I just want to say how much I enjoy your videos. They are informative and entertaining. Well done!
Vraiment très très interessant Merci pour votre prononciation très claire permettant de comprendre même si je ne suis pas très avancé en Anglais THANKS
De rien
I took two years of French in high school many many years ago and I completely understood that so thank you.
Being fascinated with the impact of the Norse on British history and language, I was especially excited when you posted this video. You did a great job, as usual! Keep up the good work! I am going to pass this video along to my family and friends.
Thank you so much for your work! Now I have much more insight about my ancestry.
Thank you sir for sharing your knowledge with us
Thank you for this excellent video, Paul. I am a new subscriber, and a total convert. I learnt French, German and Latin at school, and latterly taught myself some Italian to appreciate opera. However, I love the history of the English language (the new Lingua Franca), and this video adds to this knowledge tremendously. I also love watching Scandi Noir TV shows, and it's amazing how many words I can recognize just by listening to people speaking in these shows.
I suspect that 1500 to 2000 years ago the Germanic languages (and even some of the Celtic languages) formed a dialect continuum. I encountered a theory somewhere (don`t remember where) that the Belgae spoke a language that was intermediate between Gaulish and German (of which the Frisians were probably the nearest). So along the Southern coast of the English Channel and North Sea you had a dialect continuum from going West to East from Gallic, to Belgic, to Frisian, to Saxon, to Old English (spoken by Angles and Jutes) to Old Norse (spoken by Danes and Norse). The Belgae had already settled in Southern England before the Roman Conquest, so you probably had a similar North-South dialect continuum in England, going from Belgic in the South to various dialects of British Gaelic as you moved North and West. So with the Anglo-Saxons then Norse invasions, you had Old English speakers settling among Belgic speakers in the South of England, and Saxon speakers settling among Celtic speakers in the Center and North, followed by Old Norse Speakers a few centuries later. By the time England was united, you probably had two very different Germanic dialects spoken in the country, with a language based on Old English and Belgic in the South, and a language based on Old Norse and Saxon with a few Celtic influences spoken in the North. English is probably not a full pidgin language, but a Semi-Pidgin spoken by people trying to use the features common to both related languages spoken in the South and in the North.
This video helped me tremendously for an etymology paper I had to do. Thank you!
I love the words we’ve inherited from the old Norse. So many important words, like “cake.” :)