A couple of linguists (one Norwegian) do argue that Old English/Anglo-Saxon died out in the wake of the Danish invasions, and that Middle English (and hence mod

A couple of linguists (one Norwegian) do argue that Old English/Anglo-Saxon died out in the wake of the Danish invasions, and that Middle English (and hence modern English) descends directly from Old Norse (with a large amount of vocabulary borrowed from Old English): https://www.apollon.uio.no/english/articles/2012/4-english-scandinavian.html https://www.apollon.uio.no/english/articles/2012/4-english-s... This theory is far from uncontroversial, however.