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I'm amazed! Late Middle English ‘boat’ sounds just like modern Norwegian ‘båt.’ :p I heard the stories that Scandinavians could go to Britain and it would only
by kebman 6y ago
I'm amazed! Late Middle English ‘boat’ sounds just like modern Norwegian ‘båt.’ :p I heard the stories that Scandinavians could go to Britain and it would only take a short while to get used to the language. Kind of like Norwegians going to Denmark today. In writing Danish and Norwegian is almost the same, but it takes some getting used to the pronounciation.
There's a fantastic dialogue illustrating the similarity of Old Danish / Norse vs Old English by Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzJEIUSWtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKzJEIUSWtc
- simonh 6y agoMy mother’s family is from the Durham area in the north east so I’m very familiar with the broadly Geordie accent. To me Norwegian sounds a bit like German spoken by a Geordie. It’s not really surprising considering that region of England used to be colonised by “Danes” and was called The Danelaw before the Norman conquest, as against the south Germanic tribes that settled southern England. I suppose the Norman french influence peters out the further north you go.
- brabel 6y agoWow, so English sounded just like a Scandinavian language! I knew old English words are often similar to the equivalent modern Scandinavian languages in writing (Swedish, Norwegian, Danish) but I was not sure if they sounded similar.
- kebman 5y agoWell, to be fair, Danish doesn't really sound so similar to Norwegian, but since most of the words are written the exact same way, it's usually not hard to decipher the pronunciation, especially after a day or two among them (I'm Norwegian). We've got some pretty special old mountain dialects in Norway too. Technically they are Norwegian, but it's nigh impossible to understand a word they say lol.