4 ms·
It's not sensational to claim that English is Scandinavian. German and English are both descended from Norse, so they are both Scandinavian if you go back 1500
by oofabz 14y ago
It's not sensational to claim that English is Scandinavian. German and English are both descended from Norse, so they are both Scandinavian if you go back 1500 years.
What this linguist is saying is that modern English is more Scandinavian than Old English. But Old English was never spoken throughout the island, back then many British inhabitants spoke Norse! So I am not surprised that over time, they standardized on a language halfway between Old English and Norse.
Middle English developed around 1100. Take a look at this map of languages circa 900:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_norse,_ca_900.PNG http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_norse,_ca_900.PNG
- kylebgorman 14y agoNo, English is not thought to be descended from Norse until this press release: see Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages#Diachronic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages#Diachronic]. It's thought to be related to the modern Scandinavian languages by a split that occurred around two millennia ago. You're confusing "descended from" and "related to". Linguists, like biologists, draw a distinction between "descent" and "convergent evolution" (with "lateral gene transfer" being like what linguists call "contact-induced change"). [edited to add wiki link]
- oofabz 14y agoThank you, I stand corrected. I believe they are still both Scandinavian. Proto-Germanic, which all of these languages descended from, was spoken primarily in Denmark and Sweden: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Germanic_language
- jonsterling 14y agoYeah, but you're still sensationally wrong. PGe may have been spoken in Scandinavia, but that's not even close to what people mean when they say “Scandinavian languages”. That means “North Germanic”, or, languages which are descended from Old Norse. As opposed to every other Germanic language, like German, Frisian, Dutch, Old Saxon, Old English, Gothic, etc.