FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   >>  
PART II. A List of Scandinavian Loanwords taken chiefly from "The Bruce," "The Wallace," Wyntoun's Chronicle, Dunbar, Douglas, Lyndsay, Alexander Scott, Montgomery, Ramsay and Burns. PART III. 1. The Dialectal Provenience of Loanwords. 2. (a) The Old Northern Vowels in the Loanwords. Short Vowels, Long Vowels, Diphthongs. (b) The Old Northern Consonants. * * * * * PART I. INTRODUCTION. 1. GENERAL REMARKS. Worsaae's list of 1400 place-names in England gives us an idea of the extent, as well as the distribution of Scandinavian settlements in the 9th and 10th centuries. How long Scandinavian was spoken in England we do not know, but it is probable that it began to merge into English at an early date. The result was a language largely mixed with Norse and Danish elements. These are especially prominent in the M.E. works "Ormulum," "Cursor Mundi," and "Havelok." We have historical records of the Danes in Central and Eastern England. We have no such records of Scandinavian settlements in Northwestern England, but that they took place on an extensive scale 300 place- names in Cumberland and Westmoreland prove. In Southern Scotland, there are only about 100 Scandinavian place-names, which would indicate that such settlements here were on a far smaller scale than in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, or Cumberland--which inference, however, the large number of Scandinavian elements in Early Scotch seems to disprove. I have attempted to ascertain how extensive these elements are in the literature of Scotland. It is possible that the settlements were more numerous than place-names indicate, that they took place at a later date, for instance, than those in Central England. Brate showed that the general character of Scandinavian loanwords in the Ormulum is East Scandinavian. Wall concludes that it is not possible to determine the exact source of the loanwords in modern English dialects because "the dialect spoken by the Norsemen and the Danes at the time of settlement had not become sufficiently differentiated to leave any distinctive trace in the loanwords borrowed from them, or (that) neither race preponderated in any district so far as to leave any distinctive mark upon the dialect of the English peasantry." It is true that the general character of the language of the two races was at the time very much the same, but some very definite dialectal differentiati
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   9   10   11   12   13   14   >>  



Top keywords:

Scandinavian

 

England

 

settlements

 

loanwords

 
Vowels
 

English

 

Loanwords

 

elements

 

character

 

general


spoken

 

Ormulum

 

dialect

 
Cumberland
 
extensive
 
distinctive
 

records

 

language

 

Scotland

 

Northern


Central

 

literature

 

smaller

 
Lincolnshire
 

inference

 

Scotch

 
number
 
disprove
 

Yorkshire

 
ascertain

attempted
 

preponderated

 
district
 

borrowed

 
peasantry
 

definite

 

dialectal

 
differentiati
 

differentiated

 

sufficiently


showed

 
concludes
 

determine

 

instance

 
source
 

settlement

 

Norsemen

 

modern

 
dialects
 

numerous