These videos talk about so much that a native like myself wouldn't otherwise learn. These aren't a final stage of learning, they're the cherry on top, part of the appendix of the book.
As a Swedish person who loves languages, I got SO excited a while ago when I learned that some Geordie and Scottish slang sounds almost exactly like our words. Like house (hus) and mouse (mus). This video was the highlight of my day!
@@melancholiac Possibly. The counterpart would be "Se upp!" in modern spelling. Or in English ""See up!" This is a quite common expression nowadays. But, possibly, the first word could be 'Eye' which (of course!) is of Germanic origin with cognates still in use in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
I'm a Northern Englishman but have been outside Europe for 20 years. Apart from teaching me a lot about my mother tongue, your delivery and presentation and demeanour are super comforting 👍 Many thanks from Hong Kong
As far as I know, the Viking settlers who came in from Northern Scotland and settled down to Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Lake District were mostly from what’s now Norway, whereas the Vikings who settled in the eastern half of England came more from Denmark, so maybe they did have different dialects entering English in different places
The PoBI genetics study suggests this as well. Danish DNA is prevalent in England, decreasing in Scotland where there's a larger Norwegian contribution, especially in the Orkneys and Western Isles. Some of this reflects historic kingdoms/settlements, for example the Dál Riata in western Scotland, which was Gaelic but supposedly strongly influenced by Scandinavia.
My family are from Yorkshire & Angus, Scotland; my DNA analysis, via Ancestry.com, shows 17% Norwegian, no Danish, and is attributed to Danelaw, in their analysis.
@@susanritter2520 Well, there's more than one explanation as to why you would have Norwegian genetics, which aren't necessarily to do with the Danelaw. It seems Norway had a significant impact on Britain (particularly Scotland) regardless of that. It's also true that Scandinavian genetics have changed since the Danelaw, and west Norway has a lot of British admixture, so it could possibly be identifying other inputs as Norwegian. Interesting that it's so high though, I also came back with high % of Swedish and Norwegian, despite most of my known ancestry being English/Scottish.
@@susanritter2520 Ancestry DNA doesn't actually have a Danish category by my understanding, they just have Denmark as an overlap zone on the fringes of Norwegian and Swedish.
Simon, I hope you get a PhD in linguistics. You should teach this stuff and develop audio books. I've always been interested in accents and how they vary from town to town and even neighborhood to neighborhood. I think language is a kind of living history book. Thank you for the work you are doing.
The words wood and len cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be edited out! But, anyways, those little vogeltjes in the video are so cute!
@@simonroper9218 Hello and GM from the far south east of the Sth island of the far south pacific country Of New Zealand Simon , On a brisk but clear early/mid autumn morning autumn 🍃🍁🍂 I seen the video shots on my YT feed a lot and never got around to watching your videos properly until the last few days and they are brilliant. I also am very interested in language , dialects , accents and etc and although is different one area of world I truly am interested in in regards to that is the Himalayas, Tibet , etc but also England. Now tell me about Northumberland accent /dialect in a village or near village named Elsdon. My grandma (paternal) was born in Elsdon Northumberland in about 1916 & came to NZ as a very young girl & the village of Elsdon looks absolutely amazing simon!! It has much Traditional buildings still and is secluded and tiny. Like you I also love history , Archaeology and etc and I love medieval era (especially early/mid) My grandfather was born in Kirkintilloch Scotland and also came NZ young age. I can not even imagine the vast differences between dialect , accent of Northumberland and somewhere like Devon or somewhere far south UK. I think Scottish influence in parts of Northumberland? Also I am interested in how the vikings came to Northumbria as we have a teeny bit of danish and or Norwegian & I have a feeling (maybe I'm wrong) but I have a feeling that may be from the viking invaders as we have no relatives /ancestors that we know of from Scandinavia & also is such small percent DNA. As a parting gift I will give you some Kiwi slang (although I get annoyed with kiwi slang and accent myself haha) Ok. She'll be right (means everything will be fine , No problem etc) Yeeeah , Naaah (means Yeah uhh maybe hmm not sure) A I seen you took about swear words one I do not use and think is stupid is ( What a queer c**t) which means what a strange guy or weird person etc and I do not like that phrase. Bugger (of course that has bad connotations but in NZ for example would be "Bugger , the tyre is stuck in mud" or "Bloody bugger is late" , In nz we have people of Croatian background (which many don not realise) They came I guess over 100 years ago and most are in far of north island and kiwis (especially back in the day) called them Dallys or Dalmatians (I dont know why so dont ask simon hahahaha) I'll do two more I like. Chocka means full or overflowing , "The box is chocka with fruit" and one I love is Yarn (not meaning the ball of yarn but yarn meaning "We had a nice yarn" which means a chat, talk etc. Personally I think thats a sweet one. Anyway Simon I will watch your videos more often now, Sorry for my fan boy rant and hope to hear back from you mate. Thanks for all ,
I really appreciate that you put a disclaimer at the beginning establish your background and lack of credentials in linguistics. So many “essayists” on TH-cam speak on these kinds of topics with a tone of authority but without the years of demanding training that comes with actually becoming a true expert in any given field. This is not to say that they shouldn’t be giving their opinions, quite the contrary actually, but that it is an ethical necessity to establish ones position as either expert or enthusiast. Hats off to you for actually going the extra step and providing us with your background. You’re quite knowledgeable for an enthusiast, I have to say, but then again, that comes from another layman since my background isn’t in linguistics but rather Literature, European History and Classics lol. I sure do like historical linguistics tho!
The words boss and big and ross and bob and appreciate cannot be in someone’s name / yt name or comments etc, and must be changed - I am the only Boss / Master / Leader / Idol / Mistress etc and the only Ross / Rose / Roos / Rosa etc!
Yes Simon's humility and clarity are much appreciated. I've watched a couple TH-camrs who neither claimed credentials nor said anything about their background, but who turned out to be highly qualified. I wish these people would be up front, so we know how much weight to give to their opinions.
I remember reading in the Dalesman an article about 40 years ago. It stated that those who spoke Yorkshire dialects would be understood in Denmark (I think,) although they would not understand Danish. Similar to those who speak patois in the Channel Islands can understand French tourists but the French cannot understand them or so it was observed to me by a local in Guernsey.
Finnish is a great asset when it comes to Germanic languages, since Finnish nicely preserved some of the oldest available loans from Germanic. There is a whole list of borrowings from Proto-Germanic which i find really cool en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Finnish_terms_derived_from_Proto-Germanic
@@c.norbertneumann4986 And in norway we say (kjøpe)..that have almost the same said in dialect sound as Kaupe...or Kupp.. thats means you made a good bargain..
Absolutely fascinating. This really gives me perspective on Celtic historical linguistics, which is my unqualified obsession, without having to go to the trouble of studying yet another set of languages.
@Banana Man I thought Simon said yow, but after rewatching the video I see I was wrong. I looked it up on a website and “ewe” was the word in Old Norse for a female sheep.
Did you miss the disclaimer at the beginning of the video where Simon specifically states he is a hobbyist and he welcomes any corrections which he will credit in the Description section above?
@@TanaCramp i didn't miss anything. I'm amazed with his knowledge. On the contrary, I'm saying that he may know even more than qualified specialists at my uni.
As a dutchman I love the similarities so much! For example: dweorg => dwerg stan => steen hatan => heten blake => bleek wath => wad cowp => kopen lowp => lopen We call this 'een feest van herkenning' haha
@@durellacell Merriam-Webster says that “bairn” is from OE “bearn” and ON “barn”. I suspect that the ON word contributed to bairn’s survival in northern areas.
@@Jablicek The Norwegian pronunciation of r (Bergen excepted) likely reflects the original Germanic pronunciation. The Bergen pronunciation is from Danish and/or German.
I noticed your exceptions to the loss of the -r are meldr and gymbr, well, these words did not lose the -r in Faroese either even though these are prime candidates to do so, so we still have meldur and gimbur (< we probably should spell this *gymbur) but we did however keep the -r in galtur (galtr) and bleikur. As for the first question if different dialects influenced different areas of the British Isles: Most definitely, yes, Old West Norse Norwegian Vikings concentrated in Scotland and Ireland while the Danelaw was mainly settled by Old East Norse speaking Danish Vikings. It's also worth mentioning that OEN seems to have lost the /w/ much later than OWN since you can still find Jutish dialects of Danish which have /w/ (in fact, when imitating a Jute, replacing one's /v/-s with /w/-s is the first thing you do).
0:03 I am from NZ and a city dweller, but I remember hearing when young in the late Fifties/early Sixties the word "Hogget" in reference to the meat of a young sheep, perhaps older than lamb, but younger than mutton. (You don't hear it in shops now, but Wikipedia says our farmers still use the term to mean "a sheep of either sex having no more than two permanent incisors in wear...") Back then, English was as invisible as air to me, until at thirteen I saw Tolkien's LOTR Appendices, and I realised there was depth and history and pattern to language.
Hi Simon, after watching this video we went and found Jackson Crawford's channel. It highlighted how much we like the way that you give very clear examples of how old words were used and pronounced within normal speech. You're the best. Also you should wear a cowboy hat more often.
English: window, door, tree, little, they like, bride, life, go, bake, see, think, room, clock, drink, snore, sailboat, deep, hand, shoulder, cloud. Norwegian: vindu, dør, tre, lite, de liker, brud, liv, gå, bake, se, tenk, rom, klokke, drikke, snorke, seilbåt, dyp, hånd, skulder, sky (well, clouds are in the sky). Not to mention that English has a very similar syntax as that of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and even icelandic. Random example: English: You can see what I do with these papers. Norwegian: Du kan se hva jeg gjør med disse papirene. Swedish: Du kan se vad jag gör med dessa papper. Danish: Du kan se, hvad jeg laver med disse papirer. Icelandic: Þú sérð hvað ég geri við þessi blöð.
Excellent content. Noticed some Norse influence and pronounciaton on frequent trips to Newcastle and Northumberland. The wonderful TV drama series WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN worth a look at for Geordie accent and dialect Well done
Interesting about the exchange of language around agriculture. All farmers are involved in buying and selling at a market which seems a possible social mechanism through which language is exchanged. Trade at merchantile levels also provides a 'locus for translation'. As trade is a very old human activity, even suggested in homo Erectus archaeology, maybe looking at trade routes in linguistic terms is interesting (probably already done?). For example, tracing a linguistic map along the Silk Road and looking to see how far words travel within populations may prove fascinating.
Mythologies by Jack Adam - Isn't that how the "Indo" climbed up the "European" language tree, so to speak? Or something similar to that, perhaps? Migration or herding/hunting routes?
@@karlmuller3690 I think it's more like the Euro grew branches in the Indo sphere, as the tree's roots are more or less in Western Russia/Ukraine. Still much debate, but conquest and intermarriage between conquering males and local females seems to be a predominant pattern. This expansion also followed ancient, pre-existing trade routes.
@@rtlinson Calling him "dude" doesn't imply disrespect. I instinctively use "dude" when I want to be earnest and familiar with someone whom I otherwise wouldn't be on those terms with, when I want to level with them and show genuine appreciation. This feels like that to me. It's disarming and genuine. Also Simon is just a regular bloke, bro. He's, like, a cool guy that, you know, probably doesn't take offense to being called normal things, like some kind of stuck-up prudish weirdo. Do you want people to call him "sir"? Wtf, it's 2021. Formality is dead.
@@floofytown Thank you floofy, you get it. I have just woke up and had no patience for the idiot, thank you for being the polite I couldn't be with this douche bag and for explaining how things are to him. :)
Mr. Roper, I thoroughly enjoy your channel. Once upon a time, I learned to speak read and write Anglo-Saxon...but that was 40 years gone by and since I've left academia some 27 year since...I've lost my language. So I deeply appreciate you're videos on a subject once I held dear.
I grew up Lancashire, I always wondered whether "skriking" (crying, moaning) was from ON "skríka" or a divergent form of an OE word that didn't become shriek. We also used to say "gorp"(verb and noun) and "gormless", and someone could be a "skegg". THere are lots more dialect words but they always struck me as the most obvious possible ON relics.
I'm from Yorkshire and we use the terms "owt or "nowt" quite frequently especially my grandad and people from the older generation. Originally I thought the term was all old Norse but it's interesting that part of the word also comes from old English too. Thanks for your video mate and I hope your TH-cam channel goes well.
Great stuff, I've always found Viking influences on English a really interesting topic. Shoutout to the birds fighting in the background, too. And the lovely birds featured throughout this video.
The dynamic you propose for Old Norse and Old English is very similar to the current dynamic between Spanish and English in the USA today. Pretty much ever english speaker in the us speaks very basic Spanish and understands Spanish morphology
That's interesting. As the boys and girls on the street lose the ability to read and write, the two languages will interact more in their spoken, colloquial forms as Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman French once did. Colonial English and Spanish may merge to form 'Murcan, a lingo distinct from World English and Spanish.
@@faithlesshound5621 How…how the fuck would children loose the ability to read and write? Like, I’m sorry for my rudeness, but that is just a phenomenally stupid sounding statement.
Very informative, interesting and relaxing, as usual ! Learners and non native users of english only get their imput of english from various american dialects and from "regular" british ones, at least I, and know next to nothing about british dialects, which is a shame, and I have a very hard time understanding them. And although most of the time I couldn't even place on a map the places and dialects you're talking about nor distinguish them, I do enjoy very much learning about that additionnal layer of cultural and historical complexity. Thanks !
Takk for en god og interessant film. Jeg føler at norsk og engelsk er mye det samme. And then in a "direct translation" to english: Thank you for a good and interesting film. I feel that norwegian and english are much the same...
The birds are wonderful. English is so complex with so many influences. My own speciality is Celtic influences on English, but you're great trying to take on Old Norse and referring us to Jackson. You also have an amazing voice. Good tone.
Some of these cognates go back to PIE or at least before Germanic, Celtic and Romance languages went their separate ways, like bull and name. Norse also influenced Welsh and Irish, so you have words like "bord" for table literally across the board in Britain and Ireland.
Really enjoy your videos, Simon. I speak Gaelic, a bit of Scots, and German - it's lovely to make the linguistic connections here, and in particular to be able to hear the Old Norse and Old English. 'Gimmer' and 'gowk' in use today in Scots. Many thanks/mòran taing!
Very informative. Thanks. I also enjoyed your format throughout, including later shots of action at the bird feeders. English varieties vs. our American varieties!
Hi Simon another absolutely fascinating video in which you obviously know much more than you let on! I was motivated to comment on blake --> bleich (=pale) and it also related to bleach (Bleiche) in German. The other thing you mentioned 10:40 was that there was a certain bilinguality. Some time ago (1986) there was a documentary series by CBS and BBC called "The Story of English" with broadcaster Robert MacNeil and there's a book also by this name (ISBN 0 563 20247 5 or ISBN 0 571 13828 4) I remember in the series they enacted a horse trade deal between two farmers of different language origin - but they understood each other. Prof. Tom Shippey is cited on p.70 with the example, (Anglo-Saxon) "Ic selle the that hors the draegeth minne waegn" and (Norse) "Ek mun seljya ther hrossit er dregr vagn mine" they understood the basic vocab. but not really the grammar - the Norse-speaker doesn't know if the Anglo-Saxon speaker means one horse or two. I find this period particularly interesting as both languages were lived simultaneously in the same country. Thank you for this episode, Simon. All the best, Rob in Switzerland.
Hi! Interesting that you mention gymbr as an exception to the rule with the inflectional endings being dropped - to my knowledge no modern Norwegian dialect drops the r either, despite the endings being lost in most other cases (compare hundr > hujnn, but gymbr > gjømmer in my dialect) To my knowledge this is because in gymbr the r was actually a part of the stem! Even today it's a feminine word, so the r would never have been inflectional. I'd be interested to know if there are Cumbrian dialects that have kept the r in other cases where modern Norwegian dialects have too. The words that immediately come to mind for me are mast = master, yeast = jester, gust = gjoster, flower = blomster. (English = my Norwegian dialect, from Senja)
A while ago I watched a video about some old and unusual counting system some old farmers still use in Yorkshire for counting sheep, which is said to descend from Danish viking settlers. Cumbria certainly has plenty of old Norse place names. An obvious one being Fell, from fjell - which means mountain in modern Norwegian. My own last name ending gle - originally spelt gill which is old Norse for ravine/narrow valley.
In general when speaking of Scottish languages I think it's important to stress the influence of Dutch (coming back to my other comment here). I just did a bit of reading and turns out that there's around 200 old-dutch words that got absorbed into Scottish from the middle ages onward alone! Of which around half never made it into English. There was extensive trading going on with Schotland and a significant number of Dutch settlers migrated there. In general I think you really overlook the Dutch-English connection, we're neighbouring countries and there has been extensive exchange of peoples and goods from pre-roman times onwards. Many times when you are unsure or puzzled about a word's origins or pronunciation I can hear those words sounding exactly like some form of Dutch, or standard Dutch. And their meaning also being identical or at least very similar. Dutch has very different linguistic influences and it can help to figure out what is OE and what is not through exclusion. My $0.01
Interesting. That would tie in with Beryl Platts’ thesis in “Scottish Hazard” that the Flemish troops who played a largely forgotten role in William’s victory in 1066 were subsequently given (or won) vast tracts of Scotland.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 yes! flemmish, dutch..potato, potato haha. Interesting! I also know (but this is even later) that many scottish soldiers were stationed in Holland after the ..16th? century I believe. They had their own neighborhoods, bars and even churches!
@@mdkooter - That’s a lot later, 16th to 18th centuries. The OP referred to changes in the Medieval period. There were in fact lots of Englishmen in Holland at the same time. With no fighting in Great Britain, serving in the Dutch army was the only way for soldiers to get field experience.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 It was much easier for Englishmen to get to the Low Countries to take part in the religious wars than it had been for their ancestors to go crusading in the Levant or Prussia. Scots and Irishmen also went over. Famous examples of foreign fighters on both sides include the poet Sir Philip Sidney and Guy Fawkes, who returned as a jihadi.
@@simonroper9218 Simon! Nice to hear from you mate. Yeah thats interesting... Good to see it can still snow tho haha... Yes we get a lot of snow here in Big Sky Montana ! I live for the snow, my job is snow removal so I deal with it everyday! Love your videos btw... Very calming and informative... love the fact that you use nature scenes as well! Keep it up Simon! Thanks a bunch
Kent came under strong Frankish influence including royal links. Even today you're likely to find a Frank or two if you ask around in remote Kentish villages. Be sure to offer him a pint if you do happen upon him without warning.
I love the word lowp for jump. My granny used it a lot in Northumberland. I often wonder where our dialect word plodge (meaning walk in the sea) and clart (or glar) for mud comes from.
Fascinating, your videos are testament to the value of personal interest. I know "Hoggin" to be a sheep older than a lamb but not mature in the context of food animals, I heard this in the New Forest and have no idea if it's used country wide or remains only in the forest.
Interesting stuff. As a Yorkshire kid, 40 years ago, we used leik (play) quite a lot. My kids have probablt never heard of it. Also of interest, it was pronounced two ways: as in "lake" and "lekk". I'm not sure why, but both pronunciations were used.
What I find fascinating about looking at the old words from related languages is how similar they are, in this case reflecting their common Indo-European Germanic root. I'd never heard of blake/blāc/bleikr before, but a quick search reveals the modern German word bleich, meaning pale, pallid, wan, sallow, pale-faced. Similarly, the modern Norwegian for pale is blek.
Do you think the tendency of Cumbrian and Yorkshire dialects to reduce the word "the" to a glottal stop may have come from the way Norse languages lack a definite article?
The Norwegian word fjell meaning mountain is the same word used in the lake district except the j sound is dropped, the lake district fells. My uncle once told a story of Norwegian tourists in the lake district. They visited a pub and were amazed that they could understand the locals who were speaking in Cumberland dialect.
Simon, thank you for this and for your other excellent videos. One topic which might be worth looking at is whether there is any systematic difference between urban and rural accents, in English or other languages. Anecdotally, urban accents are often considered 'harsher' or 'rougher' (consider a soft Hampshire burr versus a Southampton accent) but have there been any systematic studies of this, or perhaps of why urban accents are heard as rougher? I'd assume that urban accents change more quickly and are subject to more outside influences. Scouse is an example of an urban (port) accent which pretty much stops within a few miles of the city boundaries, and in this case it's obvious that Irish influence is very important, but can anything valid be said about urban accents in general? (does the category even exist?) thanks again
Joan Washington has an hour-long video on "How the Edwardians Spoke" in the course of which she mentions her theory that local dialects are influenced by topography and microclimate, which affect how one holds one's face and mouth.
Growing up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in the 90s/2000s we would only ever say, “are you lekking [leik-ing] out?” And never, “are you playing out?” To say “playing” would be thought the height of fay-ness and you were likely to be called gay/call the other person gay. Out of curiosity I’ve asked other people around my age from elsewhere in Yorkshire and even West Yorkshire if they said it as kids but haven’t found anybody yet.
People still 'leik' in 'Wath' - a village in Barnsley on the river Dearne - and pronounced locally with a hard 'a' as in 'back'. So that's where we get it from eh?
Aye, that's common throughout Yorkshire. When I went to Sweden, their word for "to play" was "leken". There were a few other cases that I noticed as well. A child is a "barn". Running water is a "bjeck". Easy for a Yorkshireman to remember.
I've just remembered too that the suffix -thorpe for a place name is Old Norse. You get a lot of those in Yorkshire, especially where the Vikings would have landed on the coast, and inland as far as around Dewsbury or Barnsley. It becomes less common when you get as far west as Bradford or the Pennines. The Vikings must have not got that far, at least not before changing their word for a thorpe.
@@ravenwood1405 Weird. I saw a toy shop on Google Earth in a town called Honningsvag in the far North of Norway recently called the "Lekehuset" Do you also use the word "bray" as in to hit someone/thing?
@@antonycharnock2993 Hey hmm. Bryte is closest thing i can think of at the moment..wrestle fight someone. .Bryte or Braut in dialect means to uproot something as many meanings you can use that word..tare down something or someone..that can also be used as..jeg braut han ned....I tared him down..as to hit him down..or..Han var en( brautanes mann )..means he is a man you never mess with because he is huge and know how to use his fist..and have wide shoulders to plow thru people as he please and never care about what other think.A man that do what he wants as he please in other matters aswel. cheers
The book "The Story of English" (a PBS series back in the 1980s) noted that Norse settlers took the less desirable lands that were sparsely settled. The place names help to bear this out. We should also resurrect the 2 letters for the hard "th" and the soft "th".
@@Pteromandias The "Y" in spellings of words like "ye" is actually an attempt to use the "thorn" letter. French speaking Norman scribes didn't recognize it and confused it with "Y".
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 The presses came from Flanders as did the printers from what I remember. They were also responsible for inserting the H into ghost because it seemed more natural to them.
i'd be interested in something about the similarities between some aspects of some yorkshire dialects and the black country dialect that i keep noticing the more i hear both
Wade is cognate to Old Norse “Vaða” according to Etymonline and Bleak is also related to the old norse Bleikr, Cumbrian Blake, etc. (Also according to Etymonline) I was thinking the exact same thing 😂
would this explain the scottish word ‘ken’ - to know, and the german word ‘kennen’- which is also to know ? seeing as old norse and german have similar roots
In diffrent dialect in Norway we say Kven veit or Kem veit..Kæm veit = who knows..My dialect we say kjennen = do you know of...or most common said Kjenne.
German kennen is to know But it is about knowing a person. We have it in Danish aswell. Kende. I believe that weiss is to know in german when it is about knowledge. Again in Danish that is: vide
@@mikesaunders4775 I have a background in Linguistics, yet I'm just learning abt the details of Germanic languages as created thru the process of the development of Anglo-Saxon sources. Do u have a sense of whether the Old English words are cognates, or ' cousins', so to speak, direct descendents from a common source of language, as the Old Norse?
@@cassstephens9910 Yes, a great many would be cognates, the similarities between the vocabularies of the two languages is immediately apparent even after the most cursory referrals to their respective dictionaries. I am unable to say how many would also be derived from a common ancestor for other Germanic or Indo-European tongues, but the verbal diaspora from Proto Indo- European throws up many strange bedfellows. Romany 'Venig' and German 'Weinig' ,for example (both mean 'Few'). Best of luck on your quest.
@@mikesaunders4775 great! i will refer to the dictionaries as primary source materials, it's so fascinating to see what others with such interest have found. thnx for ur quick response
It makes sense that OE speakers would be able to recognise and pare away ON inflections because many cognates between OE and ON would share very similar stems and differ only in terms of their inflections. That is to say, if an OE speaker wanted to try and understand what an ON speaker was saying they might well be in the habit of mentally stripping off the inflection to reach a likely more recognisable form. It strikes me that '-r' and '-a' inflections would have been considered to be 'that strange way danes end all their words' and it would be only natural to remove them when adopting ON words into ones everyday speech.
We have a term similar to the Cumbrian "blake" where I'm from in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York. We have a local term "blech" (-ch standing for rough breathing) that we use to mean "pale, unwell". It's interesting to see to that term has deep roots!
How different was Old English from Old Norse? The Anglo Saxons came from somewhere between Holland and Denmark in the 5th century; the first Viking raids (from Denmark and Norway) to GB came some 300+ years later. According to Egil Skallagrimson's saga (mercenary, poet; Skallagrim means "Ugly face", or something) who raided in GB in the 9th century, he could understand and communicate with the locals (it is not clear whether the "locals" were Anglo Saxons or Danes). As a Norwegian, I can easily understand Danish and Swedish. As a kid, I read books by Robert Louis Stevenson, and found words such as "kirk" = "church". The form "kirk" is very similar to the word in Eastern Norway today (and similar to Danish). The "church" form is very similar to the way the word is pronounced in some dialects around the city of Ålesund. Another obvious word from "Kidnapped" is "bairn" (child) = "barn" in Norwegian. The word "gimmer" is well known to me, having grown up on a farm with sheep. A "gimmer" or "gimre" means a female sheep (ca. one year) before it has produced offspring. You find it in place names such as "Gimsøy" = "gimmer island" in the city of Skien, which was named so because they put sheep on the island for the summer -- the river island is separated by just a few yards from the mainland, and it was simple to transport sheep there for the summer with the benefit of no need for sheperding them. English "ford" is found in "va" (noun) and "va" or "vade" (verbs) in modern Norwegian -- an OE version of this word is mentioned. Spider -- "edderkopp" in Norwegian -- OE version mentioned in the video. "Bleik" means pale or whitish color, like for a person who is about to faint. "Kaup", as in "Copenhagen" and "Kaupang"... Interesting word, and one of several in Norwegian words that have not been influenced by Grimm's law... the verb "kaup" [or "kjøpe" in modern Norwegian] is the same as German "kaufen". My grandparents sometimes used the form "epta" -> "efter" in conservative Norwegian/Danish -> "etter" in modern Norwegian, related to English "after". My grandparents also used the form "lopt" -> Norwegian "loft", found in English "lofty", and probably in the Norwegian word "luft" = English "air".
In modern Austro-Bavarian some of them can also be found: bleik=>bloach kaup=>kåfer or kaafer epta, efter, etc.=>åft, åftat, åfter lopt, loft, luft=>luft
@@johngavin1175 And the E word "cheap" is derived from that 😉 The Swedes still pronounce "København" (Copenhagen ) - orig. "Kaup-manna-hafn ( -harbour / -haven )" - as [ choep-en-ham(n) ] (Köpenhamn) - like it's some older version of the name. Interestingly this Swedish version of the name is very close to your Chippenhams 🤔 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chippenham Etymology The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the town as Cippanhamme: this could refer to Cippa who had his Hamm, an enclosure in a river meadow. An alternative theory suggests that the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word ceap, meaning market.[16][17] The name is recorded variously as Cippanhamm (878), Cepen (1042), Cheppeham (1155), Chippenham (1227), Shippenham (1319) and Chippyngham (1541).[18] In John Speed's map of Wiltshire (1611), the name is spelt both "Chippenham" (for the hundred) and "Chipnam" (for the town). (There is another Chippenham, Cambridgeshire as well as Cippenham, Berkshire near Slough.) From Chapman's harbour. It might share toponomy with Copenhagen (København - "Market harbour". Older name: Køpmannæhafn, "Chapman's Harbour" ). In Swedish, Köpenhamn (pronounced "Shopenham"). In Norwegian, Kjøpenhavn (Pronounced "Shiopenhavn")
Yes, even today loads of simple core words are still very similar between English and "Scandinavian" ( three very similar languages - more or less like accents of the same mutual base language 😉 ) - or they only differ by some rather predictable sound shifts. And the basic grammars also have many similarities, which fortunately all in all makes it fairly easy for Scandinavians to learn English. It's as if we by "magic" already nearly "know" a simplified older (AS + ON) core English in advance and then just need to fill in all the gaps and climb a few hurdles - like the rather peculiar use of the word "do" 🙄 and "-ing" with verbs to express the progressive mood - without even having to think very much most of the time, so that we somehow feel at home in English before very long. Check out this brilliant video from Langfocus about "Viking Influence on the English Language " 😊 th-cam.com/video/CDAU3TpunwM/w-d-xo.html
Ah - just love these videos. They're like relaxing in a hot bubble bath. Would you consider doing one on the Romany (Romanichal) influence on the English language, please?
Your thoughts about bi lingual people brought my grandsons to mind. The elder was 3 when the family moved to Andalucia the younger 18 months. Now young men the elder speaks both Spanish and English well but the younger, just 16 on Friday sometimes struggles with his English. Also Andalucian is sort of in a similar pisition to Castellano as northern English is to southern. It is not as different, however, as Catalan.
Please do a video on the influence of Brythonic/Old Welsh on Northern English! We’ll have to get you on a tour from the Scottish lowlands and down the west coast to Liverpool!
Thank you for another interesting video, Simon. Do you think it's possible that some of the words loaned from Old Norse / Old Danish may have retained their -r ending because there was another commonly used Old English word that was the same sound as it without the ending?
Its more to do with the pronunciation of words. Like, "maybe" in other parts of Britain they say "may-be" where as in Hull and some of the Ridings we say "mebbe" and the "meb" part is spoken in full but the "be" is much more subtle. At the end of the 1800s people from East Riding and North Riding who spoke broad Yorkshire dialect would easily be able to communicate with Western Danish Islanders and farmers from Jutland peninsula at that time. Sermons would be given by vicars every Sunday in Yorkshire and vicars who where not from Yorkshire would ask folk did they like the service, folk would reply it sounded beautiful but in all honesty folk didnt have a clue what he was saying and if they spoke broad Yorkshire the vicar didnt have a clue what they said either. Ill give you a few more "Hull" words that are just words but its in the pronunciation and how we organise them, "purrin" or "purrit" "putting" or "put it" even the words "i where" sounds like "owa" or "hour without the H, our" so as in " owa purrin it down n pull me back" "pulled" wouldnt be pronounced fully, the words "brun" and "rund" the way they are pronounced, if you can imagine a southerner saying "brun" it would be pronounced fast and the word would end fast, but when we say it its more like "bruune" we say the middle part for longer and the ending has an extra bit on the end of it when pronouncing the "N" like it extends out the end of the word. "rund" does the same if you notice, we go longer in the middle and add an extra bit on the end like "ruunde" when you start to write these words down how they are pronounced and then go read some Danish writing you see how words are pronounced and you will have a eureka moment where you actually realise how they pronounce words and how you pronounce words are extremely similar. A real weird one is speaking about yourself or other people, this one is a real quirky one which im not sure of its origins it might just be crazy Hull, "mi'sen" as in "myself" or "is'sen" as in "himself" or "er'sen" as in "herself" "ye'sen" as in "yourself" "ill come by mi'sen" or "come by ye'sen" or "i seen er walkin down road by er'sen". "Giz a skeg a what ye got" "giz" is "give us" i really arent sure on the evolution of "skeg" as "look" and where it came from, but we also say "ye" for you a lot. If you where to change the word "ye" to "je" as the "j" in Germanic languages is a "y", so. "Giz a skeg a what je got mebbe ill tek one fe mi'sen" thats how its pronounced, its really not starting to look like English anymore is it, "there are loads of words we say much different" we would say "thiz" for "there are" or "there is" as in "thiz loads of words we say much different" if you sit there and start noticing them when people talk then write them down in a saved message on your phone and see how many crazy ways we say things....
Also if you have a really keen ear you can tell that Hull has 2 different accents, the east sound more like farmers and the west have more of the dock influences, Hessle Road and so on, that is before all the migrants started moving in, but still i can usually tell someone from either side of the river just by sitting and listening...
Thank you for another excellent video. I'd be really interested in a video on why there is virtually no remnants of Brittonic language in English and by what point it had disappeared, if you ever feel like making one!
Very interesting! 👏🏻 Old norse In modern Icelandic bleikr is “bleikur” - the color pink. “Vað” is still the current word for where to cross the river. The verb “vaða” is to wade. The letter ð is the soft th ending. The letter þ is the firmer version of th as in Thor hence “Þór.” Most if not all the Old Norse words presented are still fully modern Icelandic. “Hlaupa” - run. “Kaupa” - buy. “au” we pronounce as “öj” but the English pronouciation of “au” Icelandic has the letter “á” as in “sápa” - soap. “Súpa” is soup (and the verb to sip) and sounds exactly like soupa. Old Norse words ending with -r like haugr and gaukr have taken on -ur; “haugur” - heap “gaukur” - gawk (?) in modern Icelandic. Many common Icelandic names have taken on -ur instead of -r. Sigurðr - Sigurður. Haraldr - Haraldur. Would we understand our early Norse settlers in Iceland from 874 AD? Probably somewhat, but the old writing is quite easy to read. Thus all the Sagas. We were alone for 1000 years. Still crazy. Still Vikings. Still Planet Iceland. 😂
Simon, I was once talking to a Norwegian in the late 90's, originating from Yorkshire I gave him examples of the dialect of my county of birth. What facinated me was 't' (to the) he told me old people in more remote parts of Norway also used 't' with the same meaning. Have you come across this? Thanks
It's fading nowadays, but where I'm from (North Liverpool), some words with double-O have a pronunciation similar to, but possibly distinct from, dialects further north. I'm no expert at phonetics, but it's a more open sound than in RP 'goose', for example. Look, cook, book are something like leukh, ceukh, and beukh, if you imagine the vowels as dipthongs. I need to get the IPA for this. I don't think it's in Standard English. A lot of vowels in Scouse seem to be more open-mouthed than RP. Hope you can do a video on Scouse - maybe stick to the vowel sounds?
Heard Scouse just once, but for me the oo in book sounded like the ü in German (Maybe a little bit like a mix of ü and ö) and the k sounded like the German ch. So book = büüch.
There is some viral video about a young woman's Scouse accent, She pronounced book as [bʏx]. th-cam.com/video/sWAUrHODRWM/w-d-xo.html Actually I hear the ü often in English words like goose, moose, who, could th-cam.com/video/VPCLe55LBjo/w-d-xo.html His ou in through sounds like a German ü to me.
Oh how I wish these words were used in the standard language. Oh and I was reading that the American slang word "to cop" meaning "to obtain/buy" has a French origin, but is it possible that it could have also come from the northern word "cowp" and thus from ON? I'm probably wrong, but it would be cool if that were the case
Never heard "to cop" (I am not a native English speaker), but German has kaufen which comes from an Latin word (caupō) loaned into Proto-Germanic.(*kaupōną). Other germanic languages have similar words.
@@RobbeSeolh fenster is also a more modern loanword from latin. Ironically English actually uses a germanic word for it (Old Norse Vind+Auga, meaning ‘wind-eye’)
Dam! Im English and only speak English and i cant keep up lol. Then a Russian comments that this is helpful in learning my language. Ill pretend that i have a grasp of all this.
once you learn some basic linguistic terms and concepts, simon's videos are not really that hard to understand, at least thats what i find. and i think that scientific jargon is kind of independant of actual ability to use a language, im learning german and i'd say im around a2-b1 level but i could make the argument that i know more linguistic terminology than the average german native speaker. that is to say that overall level is more important to understanding something than just terminology as new terminology can just simply be learned and understanding concepts is independant of language. but anyways, if you stay interested in this kinda stuff you should be able to learn the terms pretty quickly. in my opinion simon does a good job at explaining things in a linguistic way without making it too complex.
I'm from South Liverpool. Part old Northumbrian Kingdom, in Danelaw, north bank of Mersey, I believe means boundary river. Many Scandinavian names up the road from me Thingwall, Croxteth, Toxteth, W Derby. Further north. Hesketh, Ormskirk, Bescar. I'm a Lancashire lass (pre 70s Merseyside) Dad born in Gateacre, then outside Liverpool boundary. I'm 81.
Hi, your channel helps at the final stage of learning English, gives a depth of understanding. Thank you very much from Russia.
I've been speaking english all my life and this channel gives me a lot of new understanding
It helps me a lot too. Greeting from Ukraine and many, many thanks😊
These videos talk about so much that a native like myself wouldn't otherwise learn. These aren't a final stage of learning, they're the cherry on top, part of the appendix of the book.
Cool I feel the same way too, growing up in Nigeria, I always thought English was English , I never knew it was so complicated
Hey, I'm studying advanced English as well,and this channel is my favourite "textbook"
As a Swedish person who loves languages, I got SO excited a while ago when I learned that some Geordie and Scottish slang sounds almost exactly like our words. Like house (hus) and mouse (mus). This video was the highlight of my day!
One of the most iconic Northern English expressions is "Ay Up" or "Ey Op" which means 'watch out'.
Does this phrase originate in Swedish?
Braw.
@@melancholiac 'Ay up' is a variant of the modern phrase 'hey up'. Both words come from Anglo-Saxon and not Old Norse.
@@melancholiac
Possibly.
The counterpart would be "Se upp!" in modern spelling. Or in English ""See up!"
This is a quite common expression nowadays.
But, possibly, the first word could be 'Eye' which (of course!) is of Germanic origin with cognates still in use in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian.
Look at the function. Se upp is for giving a warning like if you told to look out.
I'm a Northern Englishman but have been outside Europe for 20 years. Apart from teaching me a lot about my mother tongue, your delivery and presentation and demeanour are super comforting 👍
Many thanks from Hong Kong
As far as I know, the Viking settlers who came in from Northern Scotland and settled down to Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Lake District were mostly from what’s now Norway, whereas the Vikings who settled in the eastern half of England came more from Denmark, so maybe they did have different dialects entering English in different places
The PoBI genetics study suggests this as well. Danish DNA is prevalent in England, decreasing in Scotland where there's a larger Norwegian contribution, especially in the Orkneys and Western Isles. Some of this reflects historic kingdoms/settlements, for example the Dál Riata in western Scotland, which was Gaelic but supposedly strongly influenced by Scandinavia.
Hence the Danelaw.
My family are from Yorkshire & Angus, Scotland; my DNA analysis, via Ancestry.com, shows 17% Norwegian, no Danish, and is attributed to Danelaw, in their analysis.
@@susanritter2520 Well, there's more than one explanation as to why you would have Norwegian genetics, which aren't necessarily to do with the Danelaw. It seems Norway had a significant impact on Britain (particularly Scotland) regardless of that. It's also true that Scandinavian genetics have changed since the Danelaw, and west Norway has a lot of British admixture, so it could possibly be identifying other inputs as Norwegian. Interesting that it's so high though, I also came back with high % of Swedish and Norwegian, despite most of my known ancestry being English/Scottish.
@@susanritter2520 Ancestry DNA doesn't actually have a Danish category by my understanding, they just have Denmark as an overlap zone on the fringes of Norwegian and Swedish.
Simon, I hope you get a PhD in linguistics. You should teach this stuff and develop audio books. I've always been interested in accents and how they vary from town to town and even neighborhood to neighborhood. I think language is a kind of living history book. Thank you for the work you are doing.
Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad other people are interested :)
The words wood and len cannot be in someone’s name, and all unsuitable names must be edited out! But, anyways, those little vogeltjes in the video are so cute!
@@simonroper9218 Hello and GM from the far south east of the Sth island of the far south pacific country Of New Zealand Simon , On a brisk but clear early/mid autumn morning autumn 🍃🍁🍂 I seen the video shots on my YT feed a lot and never got around to watching your videos properly until the last few days and they are brilliant. I also am very interested in language , dialects , accents and etc and although is different one area of world I truly am interested in in regards to that is the Himalayas, Tibet , etc but also England. Now tell me about Northumberland accent /dialect in a village or near village named Elsdon.
My grandma (paternal) was born in Elsdon Northumberland in about 1916 & came to NZ as a very young girl & the village of Elsdon looks absolutely amazing simon!! It has much Traditional buildings still and is secluded and tiny. Like you I also love history , Archaeology and etc and I love medieval era (especially early/mid) My grandfather was born in Kirkintilloch Scotland and also came NZ young age. I can not even imagine the vast differences between dialect , accent of Northumberland and somewhere like Devon or somewhere far south UK. I think Scottish influence in parts of Northumberland? Also I am interested in how the vikings came to Northumbria as we have a teeny bit of danish and or Norwegian & I have a feeling (maybe I'm wrong) but I have a feeling that may be from the viking invaders as we have no relatives /ancestors that we know of from Scandinavia & also is such small percent DNA. As a parting gift I will give you some Kiwi slang (although I get annoyed with kiwi slang and accent myself haha) Ok. She'll be right (means everything will be fine , No problem etc) Yeeeah , Naaah (means Yeah uhh maybe hmm not sure) A I seen you took about swear words one I do not use and think is stupid is ( What a queer c**t) which means what a strange guy or weird person etc and I do not like that phrase. Bugger (of course that has bad connotations but in NZ for example would be "Bugger , the tyre is stuck in mud" or "Bloody bugger is late" , In nz we have people of Croatian background (which many don not realise) They came I guess over 100 years ago and most are in far of north island and kiwis (especially back in the day) called them Dallys or Dalmatians (I dont know why so dont ask simon hahahaha) I'll do two more I like. Chocka means full or overflowing , "The box is chocka with fruit" and one I love is Yarn (not meaning the ball of yarn but yarn meaning "We had a nice yarn" which means a chat, talk etc. Personally I think thats a sweet one. Anyway Simon I will watch your videos more often now, Sorry for my fan boy rant and hope to hear back from you mate. Thanks for all ,
"and now it's time to answer some questions. Dunno, dunno, maybe, won't be going into that".
Beautiful
@@madisntit6547 first lesson if you're going to teach online, if you don't know, you don't have to bring it up
I really appreciate that you put a disclaimer at the beginning establish your background and lack of credentials in linguistics. So many “essayists” on TH-cam speak on these kinds of topics with a tone of authority but without the years of demanding training that comes with actually becoming a true expert in any given field. This is not to say that they shouldn’t be giving their opinions, quite the contrary actually, but that it is an ethical necessity to establish ones position as either expert or enthusiast. Hats off to you for actually going the extra step and providing us with your background. You’re quite knowledgeable for an enthusiast, I have to say, but then again, that comes from another layman since my background isn’t in linguistics but rather Literature, European History and Classics lol. I sure do like historical linguistics tho!
The words boss and big and ross and bob and appreciate cannot be in someone’s name / yt name or comments etc, and must be changed - I am the only Boss / Master / Leader / Idol / Mistress etc and the only Ross / Rose / Roos / Rosa etc!
Yes Simon's humility and clarity are much appreciated. I've watched a couple TH-camrs who neither claimed credentials nor said anything about their background, but who turned out to be highly qualified. I wish these people would be up front, so we know how much weight to give to their opinions.
I remember reading in the Dalesman an article about 40 years ago. It stated that those who spoke Yorkshire dialects would be understood in Denmark (I think,) although they would not understand Danish. Similar to those who speak patois in the Channel Islands can understand French tourists but the French cannot understand them or so it was observed to me by a local in Guernsey.
I found an article stating. East Yorkshire fishermen could talk with Danes. A few decades ago.
There are so many similarities between Faroese (my mother language) and English, so this was really informative!
Finally Jackson Crawford doing a video with you! Praise Odin and Woden for this!
Oh Simon, I just find your sideburns quite complimentary.
So interesting! I realised we have similar loanwords in Finnish that are in common use... kauppa = shop, leikkiä = to play
Finnish is a great asset when it comes to Germanic languages, since Finnish nicely preserved some of the oldest available loans from Germanic. There is a whole list of borrowings from Proto-Germanic which i find really cool en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Finnish_terms_derived_from_Proto-Germanic
@@kala_asi fascinating! Thanks for the link;
"Kaup" is linguistically related to German "kaufen" (to buy). If you're buying something, you exchange goods for money.
@@c.norbertneumann4986 Or the Swedish "köp"
@@c.norbertneumann4986 And in norway we say (kjøpe)..that have almost the same said in dialect sound as Kaupe...or Kupp.. thats means you made a good bargain..
Absolutely fascinating. This really gives me perspective on Celtic historical linguistics, which is my unqualified obsession, without having to go to the trouble of studying yet another set of languages.
We use "yow" (rhymes with "show") to describe a female sheep here in the midlands of Ireland although I think it's always written as "ewe"
There's a well-known Scots song, "Ca the yowes tae the knowes". th-cam.com/video/IQBUC2q2rto/w-d-xo.html
Old Norse influenced and was influenced by the Irish language at the time both were contemporaries.
@Banana Man I thought Simon said yow, but after rewatching the video I see I was wrong. I looked it up on a website and “ewe” was the word in Old Norse for a female sheep.
Aue is somewhat dialectal in German and not widely understood at all.
Funny in the black country accent
Ewe is ewe, but you is yow
I guess this guy, not being a linguist, knows about linguistics more than qualified professors at my uni.
Having studied _some_ linguistics back at university, I'm very much impressed by Simon's lecturing qualities.
Did you miss the disclaimer at the beginning of the video where Simon specifically states he is a hobbyist and he welcomes any corrections which he will credit in the Description section above?
@@TanaCramp i didn't miss anything. I'm amazed with his knowledge. On the contrary, I'm saying that he may know even more than qualified specialists at my uni.
@@ScottMannion
Who's Feyman?
(He's right of course!)
@@jmolofsson He may mean the US physicist Richard Feynman, a brilliant and witty lecturer, in addition to being an academician.
As a dutchman I love the similarities so much! For example:
dweorg => dwerg
stan => steen
hatan => heten
blake => bleek
wath => wad
cowp => kopen
lowp => lopen
We call this 'een feest van herkenning' haha
“Bairn” meaning “child” is my favorite Old Norse loan.
“Bairn” is native to Old English, it’s just the Scots equivalent to ModE “Barn”
And by “barn” I mean the word for child that isn’t used much anymore, not the building
@@durellacell Merriam-Webster says that “bairn” is from OE “bearn” and ON “barn”. I suspect that the ON word contributed to bairn’s survival in northern areas.
@@joshadams8761 "barn" is modern Norsk, so it's kept its morphology well.
@@Jablicek The Norwegian pronunciation of r (Bergen excepted) likely reflects the original Germanic pronunciation. The Bergen pronunciation is from Danish and/or German.
I noticed your exceptions to the loss of the -r are meldr and gymbr, well, these words did not lose the -r in Faroese either even though these are prime candidates to do so, so we still have meldur and gimbur (< we probably should spell this *gymbur) but we did however keep the -r in galtur (galtr) and bleikur.
As for the first question if different dialects influenced different areas of the British Isles: Most definitely, yes, Old West Norse Norwegian Vikings concentrated in Scotland and Ireland while the Danelaw was mainly settled by Old East Norse speaking Danish Vikings. It's also worth mentioning that OEN seems to have lost the /w/ much later than OWN since you can still find Jutish dialects of Danish which have /w/ (in fact, when imitating a Jute, replacing one's /v/-s with /w/-s is the first thing you do).
0:03 I am from NZ and a city dweller, but I remember hearing when young in the late Fifties/early Sixties the word "Hogget" in reference to the meat of a young sheep, perhaps older than lamb, but younger than mutton. (You don't hear it in shops now, but Wikipedia says our farmers still use the term to mean "a sheep of either sex having no more than two permanent incisors in wear...")
Back then, English was as invisible as air to me, until at thirteen I saw Tolkien's LOTR Appendices, and I realised there was depth and history and pattern to language.
It's still used in the northwest here (England)
I love the setting and the bird sounds. Very informative, love your videos!
Hi Simon, after watching this video we went and found Jackson Crawford's channel. It highlighted how much we like the way that you give very clear examples of how old words were used and pronounced within normal speech. You're the best. Also you should wear a cowboy hat more often.
hey hey it's a good day whenever you upload, dear friend
Love it how dalesman and cumbrians still use stean and stan for stone. Still hear this a lot! Another great video 👍🏻
English: window, door, tree, little, they like, bride, life, go, bake, see, think, room, clock, drink, snore, sailboat, deep, hand, shoulder, cloud.
Norwegian: vindu, dør, tre, lite, de liker, brud, liv, gå, bake, se, tenk, rom, klokke, drikke, snorke, seilbåt, dyp, hånd, skulder, sky (well, clouds are in the sky).
Not to mention that English has a very similar syntax as that of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and even icelandic. Random example:
English: You can see what I do with these papers.
Norwegian: Du kan se hva jeg gjør med disse papirene.
Swedish: Du kan se vad jag gör med dessa papper.
Danish: Du kan se, hvad jeg laver med disse papirer.
Icelandic: Þú sérð hvað ég geri við þessi blöð.
Excellent content. Noticed some Norse influence and pronounciaton on frequent trips to Newcastle and Northumberland. The wonderful TV drama series WHEN THE BOAT COMES IN worth a look at for Geordie accent and dialect
Well done
Interesting about the exchange of language around agriculture. All farmers are involved in buying and selling at a market which seems a possible social mechanism through which language is exchanged. Trade at merchantile levels also provides a 'locus for translation'. As trade is a very old human activity, even suggested in homo Erectus archaeology, maybe looking at trade routes in linguistic terms is interesting (probably already done?). For example, tracing a linguistic map along the Silk Road and looking to see how far words travel within populations may prove fascinating.
Mythologies by Jack Adam - Isn't that how the "Indo" climbed up the "European"
language tree, so to speak? Or something similar to that, perhaps? Migration or
herding/hunting routes?
@@karlmuller3690 I think it's more like the Euro grew branches in the Indo sphere, as the tree's roots are more or less in Western Russia/Ukraine. Still much debate, but conquest and intermarriage between conquering males and local females seems to be a predominant pattern. This expansion also followed ancient, pre-existing trade routes.
@@cathjj840 Are you saying Proto Indo European came about in Russia/Ukraine? I don't believe that's correct.
Man, I love your videos dude. Thanks for the upload, truly fascinating! :)
He's not a dude. Show some respect
@@rtlinson Calling him "dude" doesn't imply disrespect. I instinctively use "dude" when I want to be earnest and familiar with someone whom I otherwise wouldn't be on those terms with, when I want to level with them and show genuine appreciation. This feels like that to me. It's disarming and genuine. Also Simon is just a regular bloke, bro. He's, like, a cool guy that, you know, probably doesn't take offense to being called normal things, like some kind of stuck-up prudish weirdo. Do you want people to call him "sir"? Wtf, it's 2021. Formality is dead.
@@floofytown Thank you floofy, you get it. I have just woke up and had no patience for the idiot, thank you for being the polite I couldn't be with this douche bag and for explaining how things are to him. :)
Mr. Roper, I thoroughly enjoy your channel. Once upon a time, I learned to speak read and write Anglo-Saxon...but that was 40 years gone by and since I've left academia some 27 year since...I've lost my language. So I deeply appreciate you're videos on a subject once I held dear.
4:00 "Attercop" is sung by Bilbo Baggins while fighting the spiders of Mirkwood in "The Hobbit"!
I knew I'd heard that word before somewhere! And Tolkien was a philologist and professor of Anglo-Saxon of course.
I love the word attercop. My 4 year old knows it as another word for spider. And we live about as far away from northern England as you can get.
In DnD, Ettercap is a type of monster known for its affinity with spiders.
It is edderkop in modern Danish.
Same in Norwegian we say ..edderkopp...
I grew up Lancashire, I always wondered whether "skriking" (crying, moaning) was from ON "skríka" or a divergent form of an OE word that didn't become shriek. We also used to say "gorp"(verb and noun) and "gormless", and someone could be a "skegg". THere are lots more dialect words but they always struck me as the most obvious possible ON relics.
Skrika and skriking still in swedish and Scandinavian.
Greetings from Sweden 👱🤺⚔️👋
I'm from Yorkshire and we use the terms "owt or "nowt" quite frequently especially my grandad and people from the older generation. Originally I thought the term was all old Norse but it's interesting that part of the word also comes from old English too. Thanks for your video mate and I hope your TH-cam channel goes well.
Great stuff, I've always found Viking influences on English a really interesting topic. Shoutout to the birds fighting in the background, too. And the lovely birds featured throughout this video.
The dynamic you propose for Old Norse and Old English is very similar to the current dynamic between Spanish and English in the USA today. Pretty much ever english speaker in the us speaks very basic Spanish and understands Spanish morphology
That's interesting, I would say Old English and Old Norse were closer languages to begin with as well from what I can glean.
That's interesting. As the boys and girls on the street lose the ability to read and write, the two languages will interact more in their spoken, colloquial forms as Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Norman French once did. Colonial English and Spanish may merge to form 'Murcan, a lingo distinct from World English and Spanish.
@@faithlesshound5621 How…how the fuck would children loose the ability to read and write? Like, I’m sorry for my rudeness, but that is just a phenomenally stupid sounding statement.
Jackson mentioned you today in his video apologizing in advance for his Old English pronunciation pertaining to a text about a Viking Haircut...lol
Very informative, interesting and relaxing, as usual ! Learners and non native users of english only get their imput of english from various american dialects and from "regular" british ones, at least I, and know next to nothing about british dialects, which is a shame, and I have a very hard time understanding them. And although most of the time I couldn't even place on a map the places and dialects you're talking about nor distinguish them, I do enjoy very much learning about that additionnal layer of cultural and historical complexity. Thanks !
Takk for en god og interessant film. Jeg føler at norsk og engelsk er mye det samme. And then in a "direct translation" to english: Thank you for a good and interesting film. I feel that norwegian and english are much the same...
Simon - I look forward to seeing where your mind travels in decades to come. Great places, I am sure.
The birds are wonderful. English is so complex with so many influences. My own speciality is Celtic influences on English, but you're great trying to take on Old Norse and referring us to Jackson. You also have an amazing voice. Good tone.
Some of these cognates go back to PIE or at least before Germanic, Celtic and Romance languages went their separate ways, like bull and name. Norse also influenced Welsh and Irish, so you have words like "bord" for table literally across the board in Britain and Ireland.
Really enjoy your videos, Simon. I speak Gaelic, a bit of Scots, and German - it's lovely to make the linguistic connections here, and in particular to be able to hear the Old Norse and Old English. 'Gimmer' and 'gowk' in use today in Scots. Many thanks/mòran taing!
Very informative. Thanks. I also enjoyed your format throughout, including later shots of action at the bird feeders. English varieties vs. our American varieties!
Hi Simon another absolutely fascinating video in which you obviously know much more than you let on!
I was motivated to comment on blake --> bleich (=pale) and it also related to bleach (Bleiche) in German. The other thing you mentioned 10:40 was that there was a certain bilinguality. Some time ago (1986) there was a documentary series by CBS and BBC called "The Story of English" with broadcaster Robert MacNeil and there's a book also by this name
(ISBN 0 563 20247 5 or ISBN 0 571 13828 4) I remember in the series they enacted a horse trade deal between two farmers of different language origin - but they understood each other. Prof. Tom Shippey is cited on p.70 with the example, (Anglo-Saxon) "Ic selle the that hors the draegeth minne waegn" and (Norse) "Ek mun seljya ther hrossit er dregr vagn mine" they understood the basic vocab. but not really the grammar - the Norse-speaker doesn't know if the Anglo-Saxon speaker means one horse or two. I find this period particularly interesting as both languages were lived simultaneously in the same country. Thank you for this episode, Simon. All the best, Rob in Switzerland.
Simon, you and Jackson Crawford should jointly teach a class on Old English and Ild Norse. That would be amazing.
Looking forward to your Norn video when it comes out as an Orcadian!
Another outstanding video from Mr. Roper.
id love to hear about norn if you ever find you know more about it
Hi!
Interesting that you mention gymbr as an exception to the rule with the inflectional endings being dropped - to my knowledge no modern Norwegian dialect drops the r either, despite the endings being lost in most other cases (compare hundr > hujnn, but gymbr > gjømmer in my dialect)
To my knowledge this is because in gymbr the r was actually a part of the stem! Even today it's a feminine word, so the r would never have been inflectional.
I'd be interested to know if there are Cumbrian dialects that have kept the r in other cases where modern Norwegian dialects have too. The words that immediately come to mind for me are mast = master, yeast = jester, gust = gjoster, flower = blomster. (English = my Norwegian dialect, from Senja)
Loving this channel and just wanted to compliment Simon's great baritone speaking voice.
Seriously, Simon.
DROP THE DISCLAIMER !!
You're the authority.
A while ago I watched a video about some old and unusual counting system some old farmers still use in Yorkshire for counting sheep, which is said to descend from Danish viking settlers. Cumbria certainly has plenty of old Norse place names. An obvious one being Fell, from fjell - which means mountain in modern Norwegian. My own last name ending gle - originally spelt gill which is old Norse for ravine/narrow valley.
Great video! Looking forward to Scots/Norn content.
In general when speaking of Scottish languages I think it's important to stress the influence of Dutch (coming back to my other comment here). I just did a bit of reading and turns out that there's around 200 old-dutch words that got absorbed into Scottish from the middle ages onward alone! Of which around half never made it into English. There was extensive trading going on with Schotland and a significant number of Dutch settlers migrated there. In general I think you really overlook the Dutch-English connection, we're neighbouring countries and there has been extensive exchange of peoples and goods from pre-roman times onwards. Many times when you are unsure or puzzled about a word's origins or pronunciation I can hear those words sounding exactly like some form of Dutch, or standard Dutch. And their meaning also being identical or at least very similar. Dutch has very different linguistic influences and it can help to figure out what is OE and what is not through exclusion. My $0.01
Interesting. That would tie in with Beryl Platts’ thesis in “Scottish Hazard” that the Flemish troops who played a largely forgotten role in William’s victory in 1066 were subsequently given (or won) vast tracts of Scotland.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 yes! flemmish, dutch..potato, potato haha. Interesting! I also know (but this is even later) that many scottish soldiers were stationed in Holland after the ..16th? century I believe. They had their own neighborhoods, bars and even churches!
@@mdkooter - That’s a lot later, 16th to 18th centuries. The OP referred to changes in the Medieval period. There were in fact lots of Englishmen in Holland at the same time. With no fighting in Great Britain, serving in the Dutch army was the only way for soldiers to get field experience.
@@sirrathersplendid4825 yes yes I know that's why I said (even later) ! :)) Interesting about the experience thing! wow!
@@sirrathersplendid4825 It was much easier for Englishmen to get to the Low Countries to take part in the religious wars than it had been for their ancestors to go crusading in the Levant or Prussia. Scots and Irishmen also went over.
Famous examples of foreign fighters on both sides include the poet Sir Philip Sidney and Guy Fawkes, who returned as a jihadi.
Wow you guys got some snow over there ! I like seeing it snow in Southern England ... Very cool
It's been rarer over the last decade, but we get it sometimes! Hopefully you get a nice amount where you are.
@@simonroper9218 Simon! Nice to hear from you mate. Yeah thats interesting... Good to see it can still snow tho haha... Yes we get a lot of snow here in Big Sky Montana ! I live for the snow, my job is snow removal so I deal with it everyday! Love your videos btw... Very calming and informative... love the fact that you use nature scenes as well! Keep it up Simon! Thanks a bunch
Frisians are often overlooked as part of the Anglo-Saxon and Jutish immigrants that came over from Germany, as well as, believe it or not, Franks too.
Kent came under strong Frankish influence including royal links. Even today you're likely to find a Frank or two if you ask around in remote Kentish villages. Be sure to offer him a pint if you do happen upon him without warning.
@@wodenravens I will be sure to do just that bud, ... if pubs still exist. 😊👍🏻
Jutland is not in Germany.
@@Correctrix A fair chunk of Jutland is in Germany.
@@Correctrix Part of it is. Wrongtrix. 🤣
Keep 'em coming! Love both the collab videos as well as these!
I love the word lowp for jump. My granny used it a lot in Northumberland. I often wonder where our dialect word plodge (meaning walk in the sea) and clart (or glar) for mud comes from.
Man, just become a linguist. Get the piece of paper or whatever
I can sense how pretentious you are
@@James-Sunderland010 Sounds like someone fell for the uni meme
Ehhh I have some hobbies I'm very deeply invested in but I don't particularly want to study... Honestly it's good to have a broader set of interests.
@@wigster600 what the hell is the "uni meme" ?
lol, agreed.
Fascinating, your videos are testament to the value of personal interest.
I know "Hoggin" to be a sheep older than a lamb but not mature in the context of food animals, I heard this in the New Forest and have no idea if it's used country wide or remains only in the forest.
*Hoggit sorry
Enjoying these videos so much, Simon. Particularly loved the shots of the starlings in the snow.
Interesting stuff. As a Yorkshire kid, 40 years ago, we used leik (play) quite a lot. My kids have probablt never heard of it. Also of interest, it was pronounced two ways: as in "lake" and "lekk". I'm not sure why, but both pronunciations were used.
What I find fascinating about looking at the old words from related languages is how similar they are, in this case reflecting their common Indo-European Germanic root. I'd never heard of blake/blāc/bleikr before, but a quick search reveals the modern German word bleich, meaning pale, pallid, wan, sallow, pale-faced. Similarly, the modern Norwegian for pale is blek.
Blake/blāc/bleikr through the usual sound shifts gives us modern bleach - to make pale.
Simon, you’re so gifted. Be a teacher. You have dignified passion for language and culture.
Do you think the tendency of Cumbrian and Yorkshire dialects to reduce the word "the" to a glottal stop may have come from the way Norse languages lack a definite article?
The Norwegian word fjell meaning mountain is the same word used in the lake district except the j sound is dropped, the lake district fells.
My uncle once told a story of Norwegian tourists in the lake district. They visited a pub and were amazed that they could understand the locals who were speaking in Cumberland dialect.
Simon, thank you for this and for your other excellent videos. One topic which might be worth looking at is whether there is any systematic difference between urban and rural accents, in English or other languages. Anecdotally, urban accents are often considered 'harsher' or 'rougher' (consider a soft Hampshire burr versus a Southampton accent) but have there been any systematic studies of this, or perhaps of why urban accents are heard as rougher? I'd assume that urban accents change more quickly and are subject to more outside influences. Scouse is an example of an urban (port) accent which pretty much stops within a few miles of the city boundaries, and in this case it's obvious that Irish influence is very important, but can anything valid be said about urban accents in general? (does the category even exist?) thanks again
Joan Washington has an hour-long video on "How the Edwardians Spoke" in the course of which she mentions her theory that local dialects are influenced by topography and microclimate, which affect how one holds one's face and mouth.
Bloody marvellous video. Once again, thank you for uploading.
Growing up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in the 90s/2000s we would only ever say, “are you lekking [leik-ing] out?” And never, “are you playing out?” To say “playing” would be thought the height of fay-ness and you were likely to be called gay/call the other person gay. Out of curiosity I’ve asked other people around my age from elsewhere in Yorkshire and even West Yorkshire if they said it as kids but haven’t found anybody yet.
I'm from Dewsbury and we always used the word "laikin" in the '50s and '60s. Still do. Can also mean not going into work, a "laikin day".
People still 'leik' in 'Wath' - a village in Barnsley on the river Dearne - and pronounced locally with a hard 'a' as in 'back'. So that's where we get it from eh?
Aye, that's common throughout Yorkshire. When I went to Sweden, their word for "to play" was "leken".
There were a few other cases that I noticed as well. A child is a "barn". Running water is a "bjeck". Easy for a Yorkshireman to remember.
I've just remembered too that the suffix -thorpe for a place name is Old Norse. You get a lot of those in Yorkshire, especially where the Vikings would have landed on the coast, and inland as far as around Dewsbury or Barnsley. It becomes less common when you get as far west as Bradford or the Pennines. The Vikings must have not got that far, at least not before changing their word for a thorpe.
We say Leik in Norway today :) and common used and means to play
@@ravenwood1405 Weird. I saw a toy shop on Google Earth in a town called Honningsvag in the far North of Norway recently called the "Lekehuset" Do you also use the word "bray" as in to hit someone/thing?
@@antonycharnock2993 Hey hmm. Bryte is closest thing i can think of at the moment..wrestle fight someone. .Bryte or Braut in dialect means to uproot something as many meanings you can use that word..tare down something or someone..that can also be used as..jeg braut han ned....I tared him down..as to hit him down..or..Han var en( brautanes mann )..means he is a man you never mess with because he is huge and know how to use his fist..and have wide shoulders to plow thru people as he please and never care about what other think.A man that do what he wants as he please in other matters aswel. cheers
The book "The Story of English" (a PBS series back in the 1980s) noted that Norse settlers took the less desirable lands that were sparsely settled. The place names help to bear this out.
We should also resurrect the 2 letters for the hard "th" and the soft "th".
Damn you printing press!
@@Pteromandias The "Y" in spellings of words like "ye" is actually an attempt to use the "thorn" letter. French speaking Norman scribes didn't recognize it and confused it with "Y".
@@thumbstruck I didn't know that. I'd read that printers would use y instead of the thorn, and that's why you ended up words like ye.
@@Pteromandias it isn’t the printing press’ fault English printers were too cheap to have eth and thorn types special made.
@@donkeysaurusrex7881 The presses came from Flanders as did the printers from what I remember. They were also responsible for inserting the H into ghost because it seemed more natural to them.
i'd be interested in something about the similarities between some aspects of some yorkshire dialects and the black country dialect that i keep noticing the more i hear both
lots of miners from the black country moved up to work in the Yorkshire coal mines in the industrial revolution
1:45 is that Cumbrian "blake" cognate with Standard Modern English "bleak"? Seems reasonable to think it might be.
And is the "wath" meaning river crossing cognate with Modern English "wade"?
Wade is cognate to Old Norse “Vaða” according to Etymonline and Bleak is also related to the old norse Bleikr, Cumbrian Blake, etc. (Also according to Etymonline)
I was thinking the exact same thing 😂
It is cognate with bleach.
We still use the verb "laik" instead of "play" in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. I've always wondered if it came from the Old Norse "leikr"
It does and we still say Leik..leika..in Norway... same meaning :)
would this explain the scottish word ‘ken’ - to know, and the german word ‘kennen’- which is also to know ? seeing as old norse and german have similar roots
In diffrent dialect in Norway we say Kven veit or Kem veit..Kæm veit = who knows..My dialect we say kjennen = do you know of...or most common said Kjenne.
The Norwegian word is "kjenne". The imperative form is "kjenn".
'Ken' is also Geordie but for home
German kennen is to know But it is about knowing a person. We have it in Danish aswell. Kende. I believe that weiss is to know in german when it is about knowledge. Again in Danish that is: vide
Here are some other English words with Old Norse roots, according to books on the history of English that I got (also checked with etymology lexicons). Most via the Danes (the Danelaw), others via Norwegian Vikings. A few probably introduced even by the Normans (despite them learning French so well): _anger, are, awk(ward), axle, awe, bag, bait, ball, band, bark, bat, berserk, birth, bleak, bloom, blunder, both, bull, brink, bulk, cake, calf, call, cast, clip, club, crawl, creek, crook, cruse, cut, cosy, die, dirt, drag, dream, egg, eider, equip, fjord, fog, flat, freckle, flake, flaw, flag, fellow, flana/flaneur (fr.ending), gad, gain, gig, get, gear, give, gate, gap, gape, gaze, gift, glitter, guest, gun, girth, gang, harbour, haunt, hell, hit, hug, husband, ill, jolly, keel, kid, kink, knife, knot, knowledge, law, leg, likely, loose, low, lad, link, loan, loathe, loft, log, lump, lift, maze, mistake, muck, mug, muggy, meek, neck, outlaw, plow, rag, raise, rotten, ransack, reindeer, rid, root, rugged, rug, rump, saga, sale, same, scale, scalp, scant, scamp, scare, scarf, scathe, score, scrape, scrap, scrub, seat, seem, simper, shake, ship, skill, skin, skip, skirt, skull, sky, slaughter, sly, snag, snug, snare, sprint, stagger, sway, stain, smile, steak, stick, sister, slang (vulgar lang.), snipe, stang, stump, stack, take, time, till, they, them, their, thrust, though, tight, thrift, tidings (news), troll, trust, thrall (slave), trash, town (tuna), ugly, until, viking, wand, want, weak, whirl, whisk, wicket, windlass, window, wing, wrong, walrus,_ ...
What a fantastic list. Thank you.
A fair few are actually Old English as well, eg Town (Old English Tun, enclosure)
@@mikesaunders4775 I have a background in Linguistics, yet I'm just learning abt the details of Germanic languages as created thru the process of the development of Anglo-Saxon sources. Do u have a sense of whether the Old English words are cognates, or ' cousins', so to speak, direct descendents from a common source of language, as the Old Norse?
@@cassstephens9910 Yes, a great many would be cognates, the similarities between the vocabularies of the two languages is immediately apparent even after the most cursory referrals to their respective dictionaries. I am unable to say how many would also be derived from a common ancestor for other Germanic or Indo-European tongues, but the verbal diaspora from Proto Indo- European throws up many strange bedfellows. Romany 'Venig' and German 'Weinig' ,for example (both mean 'Few'). Best of luck on your quest.
@@mikesaunders4775 great! i will refer to the dictionaries as primary source materials, it's so fascinating to see what others with such interest have found. thnx for ur quick response
It makes sense that OE speakers would be able to recognise and pare away ON inflections because many cognates between OE and ON would share very similar stems and differ only in terms of their inflections. That is to say, if an OE speaker wanted to try and understand what an ON speaker was saying they might well be in the habit of mentally stripping off the inflection to reach a likely more recognisable form. It strikes me that '-r' and '-a' inflections would have been considered to be 'that strange way danes end all their words' and it would be only natural to remove them when adopting ON words into ones everyday speech.
We have a term similar to the Cumbrian "blake" where I'm from in the Hudson Valley in Upstate New York. We have a local term "blech" (-ch standing for rough breathing) that we use to mean "pale, unwell". It's interesting to see to that term has deep roots!
How different was Old English from Old Norse? The Anglo Saxons came from somewhere between Holland and Denmark in the 5th century; the first Viking raids (from Denmark and Norway) to GB came some 300+ years later. According to Egil Skallagrimson's saga (mercenary, poet; Skallagrim means "Ugly face", or something) who raided in GB in the 9th century, he could understand and communicate with the locals (it is not clear whether the "locals" were Anglo Saxons or Danes). As a Norwegian, I can easily understand Danish and Swedish.
As a kid, I read books by Robert Louis Stevenson, and found words such as "kirk" = "church". The form "kirk" is very similar to the word in Eastern Norway today (and similar to Danish). The "church" form is very similar to the way the word is pronounced in some dialects around the city of Ålesund. Another obvious word from "Kidnapped" is "bairn" (child) = "barn" in Norwegian.
The word "gimmer" is well known to me, having grown up on a farm with sheep. A "gimmer" or "gimre" means a female sheep (ca. one year) before it has produced offspring. You find it in place names such as "Gimsøy" = "gimmer island" in the city of Skien, which was named so because they put sheep on the island for the summer -- the river island is separated by just a few yards from the mainland, and it was simple to transport sheep there for the summer with the benefit of no need for sheperding them.
English "ford" is found in "va" (noun) and "va" or "vade" (verbs) in modern Norwegian -- an OE version of this word is mentioned.
Spider -- "edderkopp" in Norwegian -- OE version mentioned in the video.
"Bleik" means pale or whitish color, like for a person who is about to faint.
"Kaup", as in "Copenhagen" and "Kaupang"... Interesting word, and one of several in Norwegian words that have not been influenced by Grimm's law... the verb "kaup" [or "kjøpe" in modern Norwegian] is the same as German "kaufen". My grandparents sometimes used the form "epta" -> "efter" in conservative Norwegian/Danish -> "etter" in modern Norwegian, related to English "after". My grandparents also used the form "lopt" -> Norwegian "loft", found in English "lofty", and probably in the Norwegian word "luft" = English "air".
In modern Austro-Bavarian some of them can also be found:
bleik=>bloach
kaup=>kåfer or kaafer
epta, efter, etc.=>åft, åftat, åfter
lopt, loft, luft=>luft
There is a cognate for Kaup in English. The Chap part of Chapman. Not sure if he mentioned it in the video.
@@johngavin1175 And the E word "cheap" is derived from that 😉
The Swedes still pronounce "København" (Copenhagen ) - orig. "Kaup-manna-hafn ( -harbour / -haven )" - as [ choep-en-ham(n) ] (Köpenhamn) - like it's some older version of the name.
Interestingly this Swedish version of the name is very close to your Chippenhams 🤔
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chippenham
Etymology
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the town as Cippanhamme: this could refer to Cippa who had his Hamm, an enclosure in a river meadow. An alternative theory suggests that the name is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word ceap, meaning market.[16][17] The name is recorded variously as Cippanhamm (878), Cepen (1042), Cheppeham (1155), Chippenham (1227), Shippenham (1319) and Chippyngham (1541).[18] In John Speed's map of Wiltshire (1611), the name is spelt both "Chippenham" (for the hundred) and "Chipnam" (for the town). (There is another Chippenham, Cambridgeshire as well as Cippenham, Berkshire near Slough.) From Chapman's harbour. It might share toponomy with Copenhagen (København - "Market harbour". Older name: Køpmannæhafn, "Chapman's Harbour" ). In Swedish, Köpenhamn (pronounced "Shopenham"). In Norwegian, Kjøpenhavn (Pronounced "Shiopenhavn")
Yes, even today loads of simple core words are still very similar between English and "Scandinavian" ( three very similar languages - more or less like accents of the same mutual base language 😉 ) - or they only differ by some rather predictable sound shifts. And the basic grammars also have many similarities, which fortunately all in all makes it fairly easy for Scandinavians to learn English. It's as if we by "magic" already nearly "know" a simplified older (AS + ON) core English in advance and then just need to fill in all the gaps and climb a few hurdles - like the rather peculiar use of the word "do" 🙄 and "-ing" with verbs to express the progressive mood - without even having to think very much most of the time, so that we somehow feel at home in English before very long.
Check out this brilliant video from Langfocus about "Viking Influence on the English Language " 😊
th-cam.com/video/CDAU3TpunwM/w-d-xo.html
@@johngavin1175 Ah! Chapman = kjøpmann
Ah - just love these videos. They're like relaxing in a hot bubble bath.
Would you consider doing one on the Romany (Romanichal) influence on the English language, please?
I often wonder how/why modern English grammar aligned with the Scandinavian languages more so than the other west Germanic languages?
Love you Simon, and the subject matter - thank you for the videos
Your thoughts about bi lingual people brought my grandsons to mind. The elder was 3 when the family moved to Andalucia the younger 18 months. Now young men the elder speaks both Spanish and English well but the younger, just 16 on Friday sometimes struggles with his English. Also Andalucian is sort of in a similar pisition to Castellano as northern English is to southern. It is not as different, however, as Catalan.
I'd be interested in seeing an old norse comparison with Yorkshire dialect given its namesake!
Please do a video on the influence of Brythonic/Old Welsh on Northern English! We’ll have to get you on a tour from the Scottish lowlands and down the west coast to Liverpool!
Thank you for another interesting video, Simon.
Do you think it's possible that some of the words loaned from Old Norse / Old Danish may have retained their -r ending because there was another commonly used Old English word that was the same sound as it without the ending?
Interestingly, in Hull, we say:
To lark (meaning to play), which sounds like ‘laika’
Bai(r)n (meaning child or kid), which sounds like Danish ‘barn’
I grew up in Leicestershire, a lot further south but was also part of the Danelaw. Lark is widely used there as well.
We say bairn on the East Coast of Scotland too
We still say "laik" and "bairn" in Barnsley
Its more to do with the pronunciation of words. Like, "maybe" in other parts of Britain they say "may-be" where as in Hull and some of the Ridings we say "mebbe" and the "meb" part is spoken in full but the "be" is much more subtle. At the end of the 1800s people from East Riding and North Riding who spoke broad Yorkshire dialect would easily be able to communicate with Western Danish Islanders and farmers from Jutland peninsula at that time. Sermons would be given by vicars every Sunday in Yorkshire and vicars who where not from Yorkshire would ask folk did they like the service, folk would reply it sounded beautiful but in all honesty folk didnt have a clue what he was saying and if they spoke broad Yorkshire the vicar didnt have a clue what they said either. Ill give you a few more "Hull" words that are just words but its in the pronunciation and how we organise them, "purrin" or "purrit" "putting" or "put it" even the words "i where" sounds like "owa" or "hour without the H, our" so as in " owa purrin it down n pull me back" "pulled" wouldnt be pronounced fully, the words "brun" and "rund" the way they are pronounced, if you can imagine a southerner saying "brun" it would be pronounced fast and the word would end fast, but when we say it its more like "bruune" we say the middle part for longer and the ending has an extra bit on the end of it when pronouncing the "N" like it extends out the end of the word. "rund" does the same if you notice, we go longer in the middle and add an extra bit on the end like "ruunde" when you start to write these words down how they are pronounced and then go read some Danish writing you see how words are pronounced and you will have a eureka moment where you actually realise how they pronounce words and how you pronounce words are extremely similar. A real weird one is speaking about yourself or other people, this one is a real quirky one which im not sure of its origins it might just be crazy Hull, "mi'sen" as in "myself" or "is'sen" as in "himself" or "er'sen" as in "herself" "ye'sen" as in "yourself" "ill come by mi'sen" or "come by ye'sen" or "i seen er walkin down road by er'sen". "Giz a skeg a what ye got" "giz" is "give us" i really arent sure on the evolution of "skeg" as "look" and where it came from, but we also say "ye" for you a lot. If you where to change the word "ye" to "je" as the "j" in Germanic languages is a "y", so. "Giz a skeg a what je got mebbe ill tek one fe mi'sen" thats how its pronounced, its really not starting to look like English anymore is it, "there are loads of words we say much different" we would say "thiz" for "there are" or "there is" as in "thiz loads of words we say much different" if you sit there and start noticing them when people talk then write them down in a saved message on your phone and see how many crazy ways we say things....
Also if you have a really keen ear you can tell that Hull has 2 different accents, the east sound more like farmers and the west have more of the dock influences, Hessle Road and so on, that is before all the migrants started moving in, but still i can usually tell someone from either side of the river just by sitting and listening...
Thank you for another excellent video. I'd be really interested in a video on why there is virtually no remnants of Brittonic language in English and by what point it had disappeared, if you ever feel like making one!
Very helpful as always.
Very interesting! 👏🏻 Old norse
In modern Icelandic bleikr is “bleikur” - the color pink. “Vað” is still the current word for where to cross the river. The verb “vaða” is to wade. The letter ð is the soft th ending. The letter þ is the firmer version of th as in Thor hence “Þór.” Most if not all the Old Norse words presented are still fully modern Icelandic. “Hlaupa” - run. “Kaupa” - buy. “au” we pronounce as “öj” but the English pronouciation of “au” Icelandic has the letter “á” as in “sápa” - soap. “Súpa” is soup (and the verb to sip) and sounds exactly like soupa. Old Norse words ending with -r like haugr and gaukr have taken on -ur; “haugur” - heap “gaukur” - gawk (?) in modern Icelandic. Many common Icelandic names have taken on -ur instead of -r. Sigurðr - Sigurður. Haraldr - Haraldur. Would we understand our early Norse settlers in Iceland from 874 AD? Probably somewhat, but the old writing is quite easy to read. Thus all the Sagas. We were alone for 1000 years. Still crazy. Still Vikings. Still Planet Iceland. 😂
Simon, I was once talking to a Norwegian in the late 90's, originating from Yorkshire I gave him examples of the dialect of my county of birth. What facinated me was 't' (to the) he told me old people in more remote parts of Norway also used 't' with the same meaning. Have you come across this? Thanks
It's fading nowadays, but where I'm from (North Liverpool), some words with double-O have a pronunciation similar to, but possibly distinct from, dialects further north. I'm no expert at phonetics, but it's a more open sound than in RP 'goose', for example. Look, cook, book are something like leukh, ceukh, and beukh, if you imagine the vowels as dipthongs. I need to get the IPA for this. I don't think it's in Standard English. A lot of vowels in Scouse seem to be more open-mouthed than RP. Hope you can do a video on Scouse - maybe stick to the vowel sounds?
Heard Scouse just once, but for me the oo in book sounded like the ü in German (Maybe a little bit like a mix of ü and ö) and the k sounded like the German ch. So book = büüch.
There is some viral video about a young woman's Scouse accent, She pronounced book as [bʏx]. th-cam.com/video/sWAUrHODRWM/w-d-xo.html
Actually I hear the ü often in English words like goose, moose, who, could
th-cam.com/video/VPCLe55LBjo/w-d-xo.html His ou in through sounds like a German ü to me.
Oh how I wish these words were used in the standard language. Oh and I was reading that the American slang word "to cop" meaning "to obtain/buy" has a French origin, but is it possible that it could have also come from the northern word "cowp" and thus from ON? I'm probably wrong, but it would be cool if that were the case
Never heard "to cop" (I am not a native English speaker), but German has kaufen which comes from an Latin word (caupō) loaned into Proto-Germanic.(*kaupōną). Other germanic languages have similar words.
@@RobbeSeolh interesting! i’ve studied German a bit before, but I didn’t realize kaufen was a latin loanword
@@archeofutura_4606 nice, Kopf, schreiben, Schrift, Föhn, Zwiebel are more ancient Latin loans into German.
@@RobbeSeolh fenster is also a more modern loanword from latin. Ironically English actually uses a germanic word for it (Old Norse Vind+Auga, meaning ‘wind-eye’)
An interesting exception to the pattern of core vocabulary not being borrowed is the Tagalog word for “but”: “pero”, which is a Spanish loan.
Dam! Im English and only speak English and i cant keep up lol. Then a Russian comments that this is helpful in learning my language. Ill pretend that i have a grasp of all this.
once you learn some basic linguistic terms and concepts, simon's videos are not really that hard to understand, at least thats what i find. and i think that scientific jargon is kind of independant of actual ability to use a language, im learning german and i'd say im around a2-b1 level but i could make the argument that i know more linguistic terminology than the average german native speaker. that is to say that overall level is more important to understanding something than just terminology as new terminology can just simply be learned and understanding concepts is independant of language. but anyways, if you stay interested in this kinda stuff you should be able to learn the terms pretty quickly. in my opinion simon does a good job at explaining things in a linguistic way without making it too complex.
English is my first language and my husband's second language. I always need his help with vocabulary.
Nice shout out to Jackson Crawford. I enjoy his channel, too.
At 9:01 cf Gaelic breac meaning mottled or speckled.
Another brilliant video. You've managed to make me interested in a field I thought I had zero interest in.
I love your channel brother
All the best 💯💯💯
Great video. The word for spider in modern Norwegian is very similar to the example you show.
As a scouser, I would all for you dong a video about it.
I have recently moved to North County Dublin, and there are distinct Scouse sounds in the way people talk here.
I'm from South Liverpool. Part old Northumbrian Kingdom, in Danelaw, north bank of Mersey, I believe means boundary river. Many Scandinavian names up the road from me Thingwall, Croxteth, Toxteth, W Derby. Further north. Hesketh, Ormskirk, Bescar. I'm a Lancashire lass (pre 70s Merseyside) Dad born in Gateacre, then outside Liverpool boundary. I'm 81.
Big thanks from the US for these fantastic episodes