Is English a Scandinavian Language?

Philip Andrews writes:

It is surprising how little attention is paid to the influence of the Danelaw on the English language. no one in Old English academia seems to want to touch it. It’s a Norwegian article that has claimed English is a Scandinavian language. Anglo-Saxon and the Early post-Norman Conquest English church put the dampers on the Scandinavian influence. Even the story of the Norman Conquest’ reads quite differently in the Norse Saga version to how it comes through the AS Chronicle. AS lost most of its grammar to the Norse of the Danelaw. That’s why English has not the inflection system of Continental Germanic but rather that of Norse. I’m happy to think of English as Norse in grammar and Syntax but mostly Latin-French in vocabulary. About 60 Personally I question the old story of the Normans being ‘Northmen’. Another AS/Norman manipulation. It was 1,000 years ago but the Normands were in what is now France earlier. Records 1,000 years ago as now were subject to political manipulation. Why did William go to the Pope for a Blessing for a Crusade? Because he was intent on driving the pagan Vikings out of England and Christianizing the place under Norman tutelage. Hence the Harrying of the North. Yorkshire is still far more ‘Norse’ than any other part of England. Listening to people north of Watford speak English and you’re listening to Norse accents speaking English. With Norse words in dialects. If William hadn’t come with mounted archers (from the East) he could never have defeated the Vikings. Much of English history abroad (empire etc.) equates to versions of Viking raiding. Old Norse habits die hard.

I don’t really agree with this, but it is an interesting idea anyway. I did some research on this question recently. England was settled by the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. There is a Low German language called Anglish which is spoken in an areas of the far north of Germany called Schlesweig-Holstein. Anglish is apparently the remains of the Low German language spoken by the Angles. This is a peninsula that connects Germany with Denmark. The southern half of the peninsula is Germany, and the north half is Denmark. Anglish is not readily intelligible with any other Low German language, even those nearby. The Saxons were found a bit to the south, but I believe that they also came from this peninsula. And it is interesting that in this part of Germany, especially around Fleisburg on the border, the dialect of Low German that they speak is more or less intelligible not with Danish but with a Danish dialect called South Jutnish that is so divergent that in my opinion, it is a separate language from Danish. Danish speakers have poor intelligibility of South Jutnish. From the Net:

Sønderjysk is often seen as very difficult for other speakers of Danish even other Jysk or Jutnish dialects to understand. Instead of the normal Danish stød, it has tonal accents like Swedish. Many of the phonemes are also different, including velar fricatives much like in German. It also has the definite article before the noun, as opposed to the standard Danish postclitic article. South Jutlandic is surely a separate language.

So in this part of Germany, there are Low German lects that are actually intelligible with Danish lects. So here is where “German” and “Danish” are nearly transitional. However, Standard German and Standard Danish are not intelligible with each other at all. Nevertheless, German speakers can pick up Danish and other Scandinavian languages pretty easily. And South Jutnish itself is interesting in that Jutnish was one of the languages spoken by one of the tribes that invaded England, the Jutes. So one of “Anglo-Saxon” tribes that invaded England actually spoke something like “Danish.” South Jutnish itself is said to be quite a bit like English, especially the older forms of English. There are stories about speakers of the pure Scots language spoken in Scotland going to the South Jutnish area and being able to converse with South Jutnish speakers.Scots can be thought of as English  from 500 years ago because Scots split from English about 500 years ago. So in this case we have West Germanic and North Germanic speakers who are able to actually converse. There is also a suggestion based on the fact that North Germanic South Jutnish is intelligible with whatever odd West Germanic Low German lect is spoken near Fleisburg that South Jutnish itself may be nearly German-Danish transitional. A few take-home points: the “Anglo-Saxons” actually something a lot more like Low German than Standard German. Low German and Standard German are separate languages and German speakers cannot understand Low German. And the “Anglo-Saxons” also spoke something like “Danish” in the form of Jutnish. Also all of these Low German lects that made up “Anglo-Saxon” came from the far north of Germany where “German” and “Danish” start to nearly blend into each other or better yet where West Germanic and North Germanic are almost transitional. In addition to the evidence coming from the Danelaw area of England where actual Danish speakers settled, it appears that the Scandinavian or North Germanic influence in English is more with Danish than with any other Scandinavian language. However, 2/3 of the Anglo-Saxon components were actually from West Germanic Low German lects which are not readily intelligible with any Danish, not even with South Jutnish. It is often said that the closest language to English is West Frisian, spoken in the northwest of the Netherlands. This is a Germanic language that is close to Dutch. In fact, some say that West Frisian itself is straight up from Old Saxon, which is the language that the Saxons of the Anglo-Saxons spoke. A man who is able to speak Old English went to the West Frisia area of the Netherlands and spoke to an old farmer there who spoke good West Frisian. They were actually able to hold a conversation in English from 1,000 years ago and West Frisian of today. West Frisian of course is a West Germanic language. However, if you look into the mater a bit more, the language that is closest to English is the endangered North Frisian, with 6 North Frisian, which actually may be up to five separate languages, is also spoken in that same peninsula of far northern Germany that Anglish, Saxon and Jutnish were spoken in. However, it is spoken on the east coast of the peninsula whereas Anglish and Saxon were spoken more to the west. So once again with North Frisian and English we see one more connection with this far northern part of Germany that borders on Denmark. Yet North Frisian is a West Germanic language, not a North Germanic Scandinavian language. A language called Ingeavonic was spoken long ago in this region, and some put “Anglo-Frisian” in a West Germanic node under Ingeavonic. For a long time there was something called the North Sea Fisherman’s lect that originated in this same part of Germany but over on the west coast by Fleisburg rather than on the east coast by the North Frisian language. It was said that fishermen from all over the North Sea from the nations of Germany, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Norway and Sweden spoke this lingua franca or trade language. This North Sea Fisherman’s language is said to have looked a lot like Ingaevonic.

25 Different Collectors

The Collector is a famous classic novel written in 1963 by the great British author John Fowles. It was immediately greeted with much acclaim, and the success of the book enabled Fowles to quit his day job and work full-time as an author. I found versions of this book that had been translated into 25 different languages. I have grouped the titles according to language family, so many adjacent books are written in languages from the same family. See how many you can get!

  1. Коллекционер
  2. Колекціонер
  3. Колекционер
  4. Колекционерът
  5. Kolekcjoner
  6. Kolekcionar
  7. Zbiratelj
  8. Sběratel
  9. El coleccionista
  10. Colecţionarul, Colectionarul
  11. O Colecionador
  12. Il collezionista
  13. L’obsédé
  14. De verzamelaar
  15. Samleren, Offer for en samler
  16. Der Sammler
  17. Kolekcionierius
  18. Kolekcionārs
  19. Ο συλλέκτης
  20. Neitoperho
  21. Liblikapüüdja
  22. A Lepkegyűjtő
  23. Koleksiyoncu
  24. جامع الفراشات
  25. კოლექციონერი

More Answers to the Citrus Questions

Sam writes:

Must be the Persian Lime, as the other main lime is said to be called just “lime” in the US. A factoid. Navel Oranges come from a mutation of a single plant in Brazil. All the rest are cuttings. I’m guessing since these are crossings that all citrus varieties come from cuttings. Let’s hope they don’t start having fungus problems like bananas. I can’t remember the name, but I remember when I was young bananas tasted better. All of that breed were killed off by fungus. They didn’t seem to rot as fast either. Bananas rot super fast now. I think the present breed is succumbing to fungus also and will not be around too long. If you ever want to read about breeding plants and crossing them, Luther Burbank is good to read about. He wasn’t an academic, so academic types hate him, but he was a great plant breeder. He has made a stupendous amount of edible useful plants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burbank He’s got a lot of books at the internet archive. A couple. https://archive.org/details/lutherburbankhis00willrich https://archive.org/details/lutherburbankman00wick

Yes! Sam is correct! The other lime is indeed the Persian lime. Another part of the question asked where this Persian lime first appeared and when. Curiously, it did not first appear in Iran where one might expect to have shown up. Instead, the Persian Lime made its first appearance in…drum roll…Morocco! I am not sure when it first appeared, but it was in the recent past. The other main citrus that appeared only in recent yeas is the grapefruit. It shows up first in the Caribbean around 1700! All of the others except the Persian lime go much further back than that.

Answers to the Citrus Questions

Noneofmany writes:

Actually, no one can really tell for certain which ancestral plants are responsible any given cultivar we know today except for very recent ones. There are several American citrus plants like for instance clementine that started showing up in Texas and the panhandle in the last century whose origin is still debated. That said the mandarin orange is likely the only really wild citrus fruit we eat today that hasn’t been totally altered beyond recognition. Although I do see Pomelo-flavored stuff here and there. Citron and papeda are the other two ancestral species. All oranges, grapefruits, and tangerines are essentially a cross between a mandarin orange (wild) and a pomelo, except many of them were perfected via cross-breeding back along there own lines. Lemons and limes are the other side of the family. You can tell there ancestry lies with the citron and papeda. That said I’m not even really sure anyone knows when or exactly where the the first lemons/limes were bred, as this event significantly predates the genesis of oranges and has virtually no known documentation or verbal history associated with it. Most likely it happened in Southeast Asia. It bears mentioning that kumquats are not considered to be in the same family as other citrus. In fact many botanists deny that they are actually a citrus and say they are just a tiny family of plants that are very closely related. They were not made edible through hybridization – just selective breeding. Nevertheless they have now been crossed with mandarins. Wild types can still be found with edible berries. They’re not very tasty though as there mostly seed and pulp. All citrus plants, like so many other plants used by man, are from a fairly primitive lineage of flowering plants like roses and magnolias.

These answers are superb! In general, most of the fruits listed above like oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits, tangerines and mandarins come from an area where Northeastern India, Myanmar and Yunnan, China all come together. To some extent Southeast Asia in general is also listed. In one case, Assam, India is listed as an origin. For a few of the fruits, other places like the Indian Ghats, Japan and Vietnam are also listed. But as you can see, they all come from that part of the world. This was discovered via genetic testing. So these fruits were created via hybrid breeding in that part of the world a long time ago. I know that human-created oranges are known from Southern China for thousands of years. The commenter is correct. All citrus derives from mandarins, pomelos, citrons and papadas. The other commenter is correct that one of the two main lime varieties is the Key Lime. But that is not where it comes from. The Florida Keys are simply one of the late places where it was cultivated, where it gained fame in particular for Key Lime Pie, which I like myself. The Key Lime ended up there after creation in the aforementioned part of East Asia. From there it went via the Middle East -> Sicily -> Sardinia -> Spain -> the West Indies -> Florida Keys. Mandarin oranges are the only one of the above that is actually a native plant, correct.

  • However, we still do not know which one – grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, tangerine – is a very recent breed. I will tell you that it goes back only to the 1700’s. And we would also like to know where it first showed up.
  • Although a commenter mentioned one of the two main lime varieties – Key Lime – we still do not know what the other main lime variety is. Any guesses? I think this is actually the most popular lime variety in the stores and is seen much more often than the Key Lime.
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