3.4. Scandinavian loanwords in English

From the end of the 8-th century to the middle of the 11-th century Britain suffered from several Danish or Viking raids, which in 878 resulted in the occupation of a great part of the country. The linguistic effect of the Danish conquest was a contribution of a great many Scandinavian words in the English vocabulary.

Since the varieties of Old Norse brought to England were close to English of that time, the Scandinavian invaders did not have too many difficulties in making themselves understood and the contact between the invaders and the natives was intense. Given the fact that the two languages, Old Norse and Old English were so similar, the consciousness of Old Norse words being foreign must not have been high. In many cases the forms in both languages were similar (due to their generic relationship) and so cannot be retrospectively distinguished. However, there are certain characteristic features of Scandinavian as opposed to English which are reliable in identifying borrowings. The most evident one is the consonant sound cluster [sk]. In Old English it has been palatalized at an early stage; in Scandinavian this sequence had been retained in its unpalatalized form. This means that the native English words have [sh]: ship, shin, fish, while the Scandinavian loans have [sk]: score, scowl, scrape, scrub, sky, skirt, skill, bask, whisk.

The vowel in a word can also be an indication of the Scandinavian borrowing. Thus, the Old English diphthongs were replaced by long vowels, but in Old Norse they remained and this fact can explain an unexpected vocalism in some later English words such as: dairy, die, hale, swain.

Due to the fact that the Scandinavian invaders were in close contact with the native English population, the loan words could be found in all spheres of everyday life. All in all there are about 2000 of Scandinavian loanwords in English, which can be grouped into word classes.

1. Nouns: anger, bag, booth, bulwark, cake, cart, club, crook, dirt, egg, fellow, fir, fog, gate, gun, gap, guess, harbour, husband, kid, leg link, race, lump, rug, reef, scales, skin, slang, snob, window, wind.

2. Verbs: blend, call, cast, clip, crave, crawl, cut, dash, die, droop, gape, grasp, give, glitter, happen, hit, hurry, jump, kick, lift, leak, nag, raise, rid scare, sniff, struggle, stumble, take, wag, want, welcome.

3. Adjectives: awkward, big, cosy, flat, happy, nasty, odd, shy, sly, tight, tipsy, ugly, wrong, weak.

4. Pronouns: they, them, their, same, both.

Sometimes Scandinavian loans involve little more than the substitution of one word for another, but some borrowings expressed new concepts (such as certain Scandinavian legal terms) or new things (for various kinds of Viking warship) (See H. Jackson, p.43). A large number of duplicate words also arouse from this contact. In some cases the OE word was retained, in others it was ON borrowing, as egg vs. OE ey, sister vs. OE sweoster, etc. In a number of cases both words survived, but while OE words are standard, their ON equivalents are dialectal: yard vs. garth, church vs. kirk, leap vs. laup, lum vs. chimney, neep vs turnip, vennel vs alley, true vs. trigg (See h. Jackson, p. 43).

Doublets are similar in their phonetic form as can be recognized from the examples above. However in many cases there are loans which have developed a certain difference in meaning:

OE ON

Whole hale

Shriek screak

Ditch dike

Rise raise

Craft skill

Shirt skirt

Ill sick

The extent of Scandinavian influence on English can be determined by looking at the place names of Scandinavian origin on the British Isles. There are a great many places with the suffix -by (meaning ‘village’): Fleckeby, Appleby, Derby, Ashby, Schysby; suffix -toft (meaning ‘a piece of ground or homestead’): Eastoft, Nortoft, Brimtoft; suffix -thwaite (meaning ‘an isolated piece of land or clearing’) as in Applethwaite, Braithwaite, Satterthwaite.

It should be mentioned that English continued borrowing from Scandinavian in later periods; among the recent borrowings are the following: rug, ski, rune, saga, easel and ombudsman.