Words of the Scandinavian Origin

Scandinavian invasions had a great impact for the course of the English history and the development of the English language. Scandinavian raids into the territory of Britain started in the 8th century. By the second half of the 9th century the Scandinavians had conquered a considerable part of England to the North of the Thames and according to the conditions of the Wedmore treaty of 878 that territory was passed to the invaders. The part of the country occupied by the Scandinavians acquired a special status and was called Danelag (the “Territory of the Danish Law). The treaty obliged the Scandinavians to recognize the sovereignty of the English king. But the peace between England and the Scandinavians was not stable. In the end of the 10th century the war resumed and at the beginning of the 11th century all England was conquered by the Scandinavians. England became a part of the vast Scandinavian Empire and was ruled by the Danish king Cnut (or Canut). The Scandinavian reign in England lasted up to 1042 when the restoration of the Anglo-Saxon dynasty took place in the country.

The Scandinavian dialects spoken by the invaders were well understood by the inhabitants of England. The influence of the Scandinavian dialects, especially in the lexicon, was considerable already in the Old English period. It is natural that the lexical influence was stronger in the North of the country, in the “Territory of the Danish Law”.

The fact that The English population and the Scandinavian invaders could understand each other comparatively easily is explained by the close relation of their languages: both English and Old Scandinavian belong to the same West Germanic subgroup of the Germanic group of the Indo-European family of languages. Besides, The English population and the invaders were approximately on the same level social, economic and cultural development.

Many words in English and in Scandinavian had no distinctions above the structural phonetic and morphological characteristics of the two languages. Cf.:

OE fisc ‘fish’ – vs. – OScan fiskr

OE sunu ‘son’ – vs. – OScan sunr

The above mentioned close relation of Old English and Old Scandinavian caused the specific mechanism of the penetration of Scandinavian words into the English lexicon. There was interaction between English and Scandinavian dialect variants which were perceived as regular variants of one and the same word. As a result of this interaction in the language there appeared a third variant which combined the features of both the dialectal variants – English and Scandinavian.

The Scandinavian words borrowed by the English language on the verge of the Old English and Middle English periods were mainly words of everyday life. The Scandinavian borrowings enriched the Middle English lexicon with synonyms.

Thus, from the Old Scandinavian word angr ‘grief’ the Middle English anger ‘grief; anger’ was originated. The derivative adjective angry ‘angry, irritated’ came into use as a synonym of the original adjective wrooth ‘angry, cross’.

The Scandinavian word skye ‘sky’ came into use alongside with original heven ‘sky, heaven’. Later these synonyms developed as stylistically differentiated words.

The word skile ‘skill’ of the Scandinavian origin replaced a more bulky Old English word orthanc ‘art, skill’.

The Scandinavian verb taka ‘to take’ was borrowed in the Middle English language in the form taken ‘to take’ and gradually replaced the original verb niman having the same meaning.

Among the Scandinavian borrowings there is such a word as sister ‘sister’. This word was phonetically close to the original word with the same meaning. The Old English noun sweostor through the intermediate form swustor by the 14th century had passed into the form suster. But the form suster replaced by the Scandinavian form syster which later changed into sister.

Alongside with the frequent words of everyday use some military terms were borrowed from the Scandinavian language, e.g.: fylcian ‘to form up the troops’, lith ‘fleet’. Later these words were replaced by French borrowings.

 Other words that have come from the Scandinavian language are as follows: lagu ‘law’; wrang ‘injustice’; husbonda ‘host’; casten ‘to cast’; callen ‘to call’; feolaga ‘companion, fellow-traveler’; egg ‘egg’; fitten ‘to fit’; fro ‘back’; hap ‘chance, luck’; hitten ‘to hit’; leg ‘leg’; low ‘low’; meek ‘meek’; scathe ‘harm, damage’; swayn ‘boy, young man’; til ‘before, till, until’; thwert ‘across’; want ‘need, want’, etc.

It is remarkable that even the system of pronouns underwent the Scandinavian influence.

The Scandinavian form of the personal pronoun of the 3^rd person plural thei or they (from the Scandinavian form their) replaced the original pronoun hie. From the Scandinavian form of the Genitive case theirra and the Dative case theim the Middle English forms their and them were produced.

According to V. Arakin’s evaluation the Middle English lexicon was enriched by 650 words of the Scandinavian origin.

 

Words of the French Origin

After the Norman Conquest of 1066 the situation bilinguism, or diglossy, developed in England. Diglossy is the coexistence of two languages in any society or historic formation – from a primitive community to a national state.

The cause of the development of diglossy is quite understandable.

The Norman aristocracy was unable to exist under the conditions of complete linguistic isolation from the English speaking lower strata of the society. That is why a certain part of the population – officials, servants, tax collectors, etc. – had to know the two languages: French for the communication with the aristocracy and English for the communication with common people. Thus, there appeared a large group of bilingual population in England, i.e. people who spoke two languages. It may be expected that it was in the speech of the bilinguals that the French words penetrated into English lexicon most intensively and were assimilated in the lexical system of the English language.

Alongside with English bilinguals who had to learn the language of the conquerors another group of people contributed the English language with the French elements – that were the Norman immigrants who learned the tongue of the conquered country and introduced elements of their native language into it.

The words that came into Middle English from the French language of the Norman conquerors are divided into two groups. The first group includes the words that denoted things and phenomena which were new for English. These were the words of abstract meaning and lexical elements expressing realia of medieval France. The second group includes the word which did not express new notions yet masses of such words entered the English language causing not only quantitative but also qualitative changes in its semantics and structure.

B. Ilyish distinguishes the following semantic classes of French borrowings in the Middle English language:

1) state, government and court;

2) army and military life;

3) notions or religion and church;

4) names of town trades;

5) notions from the field of art;

6) entertainment and feasts;

7) a great number of everyday word which are not connected with any particular semantic sphere.

The sphere “ state, government and court” includes the following words:

prince ‘prince’ < OF prince

baron or baroun ‘baron’ < OF ber, baron

noble ‘noble’ < OF noble

royal ‘royal’ < OF royal

court ‘court’ < OF curt, cort

justice ‘justice’ < OF justice

coroune ‘crown’ < OF corone, coroune

countee ‘county’ < OF conte

duk ‘duke’ < OF duc

emperesse ‘empress’ < OF emperice

The sphere “ army and military life” includes the following words:

werre ‘war’ < OF werre

army ‘army’ < OF arme

bataille ‘battle’ < OF bataille

array ‘array’ < OF arrai

chyvalerie ‘chivalry’ < OF chevalerie

conqueste ‘conquest’ < OE conqueste

degree ‘rank’ < OF degret

regiment ‘regiment’ < OF regiment

banner ‘banner’ < OF banner

siege ‘siege’ < OF siege

The sphere “notions of religion and church” includes such words as:

religion ‘religion’ < OF religioun

saint ‘saint’ < OF saint

frere ‘monk’ < OF fraire

preyen ‘to pray’ < OF preirer

sermon ‘sermon’ < OF sermon

conscience ‘conscience’ < OF conscience

cloistre ‘cloister’ < OF cloistre

chapel ‘chapel’ < OF chapel

pilgrimage ‘pilgrimage’ < OF pilgrimage

The sphere “names of town trades” includes the following words:

carpenter ‘carpenter’ < OF carpentier

bocher ‘butcher’ < OF bocher

tailor ‘tailor’ < OF tailour

peintre ‘painter’ < OF peintre

Among the “notions of the field of art” we can find the following words:

art ‘art’ < OF arte

colour ‘colour’ < OF colour

figure ‘figure’ < OF figure

image ‘image’ < OF image

column ‘column’ < OF colomn

ornament ‘ornament’ < OF ornament

fantasye ‘fantasy’ < OF fantasie

soun ‘musical sound’ < OF soun

sounen ‘to sound’ < OF suner

dauncen ‘to dance’ < OF dancer

The sphere “entertainment and feasts” includes the following:

apareil ‘dress’ < OF apareil

plesir ‘pleasure’ < OF plesir

leysir ‘leisure’ < OF leisir

ese ‘satisfaction’ < OF ese

feste ‘feast’ < OF feste

dinner ‘dinner’ < OF diner

soper ‘supper’ < OF soper

rosten ‘to roast’ < OF roster

daintee ‘dainty’ < OF dainte

corteis ‘courteous, polite’ < OF curteis

Among the words of everyday life there were such as:

face ‘face’ < OF face

gay ‘gay, merry’ < OF gai

hour ‘hour’ < OF heur

ink ‘ink’ < OF ink

letter ‘letter’ < OF letter

place ‘place’ < OF place

table ‘table’ < OF table

air ‘air’ < OF ær

river ‘river’ < OF riviere

chambre ‘chamber’ < OF chambre

The formation of a great number of synonyms occasionally caused excess in the lexical system of the Middle English language and there appeared a kind of competition among the synonyms.

In many instances a French word replaced the original (Old English) one. For example the word mountain replaced the Old English word beorg of the same meaning, the French word paix ‘peace’ replaced the original frith.

In other cases the French word failed to survive for this or that reason and after being used in English for some period gave up its place to the original English word. It happened so, for example, to the word amity ‘friendship’ which was replaced by the original friendship and the word moiety ‘half’ which finally lost in the competition with the original halh.

Of special interest are the instances when both the French and the original English words survived in the language. The condition for such coexistence is the semantic or stylistic differentiation of the synonyms. Thus, the meaning ‘autumn’ was expressed in Old English by the word hærfest. In the Middle English language the borrowed word autumn (from the Old French automne) began to compete with it. Finally the word autumn fixed its position in the English lexicon while the word harvest also survived due to the fact that it had acquired a new meaning – ‘the time of the year when crops are gathered in’.

Alongside with the original verb beginnen ‘to begin’ in the Middle English language there was a verb of French origin of the same meaning commencen. The coexistence of these two verbs was possible due to their stylistic differentiation: beginnen fixed as a word of everyday use while commencen became a stylistically marked word mainly used in the official sphere.

Borrowings from the Old French language had one more important consequence for the further development of English. They stimulated conversion in the English language. The matter is many parallel borrowings from the same stem took place which joined different paradigms in the system of the English language and thus formed pairs of words characterized by the relations of conversion. E.g.:

honour ‘honour’ // honouren ‘to honour’ < OF honur

labour ‘labour’ // labouren ‘to labour’ < OF labour

note ‘note’ // noten ‘to make a note’ < OF note

poison ‘poison’ // poisonen ‘to poison’ < OF poison