How the Vikings Changed the English Language 

Being Norwegian and having a great deal of English speaking friends this is something that I been thinking about as well as talked about. Languages are like a history map.

Here's a surprising relic of norse in modern English: Dashboard! The "daskebord", "later daskebrett, was the vertikal plank in the very front of a sleigh or carriage on which the bridles would be slapped ("dasket"). Hence, "dashing" means slapping, in a sense of striking surprise. All the best from Norway! We love your beautififul grammar! 😁

Being Icelandic (icelandic had changed very little since old norse) this makes so much sense to me. Im a language buff and ive always been wondering how and why many of our words are similar to english, the grammar as well ofc, and it makes honestly more sense that english was more influenced by old norse than vice versa

I just discovered your channel. I'm a Costa Rican (Spanish) native speaker. You explain very clearly that for me to enjoy your videos very much. Thank you. Greetings from Costa Rica, América Central, Luisa

I always love these linguistic history videos. As a northerner but with Swedish heritage I am fascinated by this.

This is fascinating. I am English but speak Swedish (and therefore understand Norwegian and Danish to a fair extent) and am currently studying Icelandic. I have long thought that English had more in common with the Nordic languages than Dutch or German but I didn't realise any linguists had proposed it as a theory. I think it has a lot going for it. I am originally from county Durham and it is clear that the pronunciation of some vowels in this area is very similar to the Nordic languages. For example, the vowel in 'go, no, home' is not a diphthong in the north-east but sounds like the vowel written as å in Swedish. Similarly, the vowel in 'stay, play, day' is not a diphthong for us but similar to the way stressed 'e' is pronounced in many Swedish words like 'leka' (to play). The glottal stop said simultaneously with a consonant rather than instead of a consonant (glottal reinforcement) is reminiscent of Danish. You hear it in the way Geordies say 'happy, sticky, letter'. In terms of vocabulary you have words like bairn for child (Swedish/Icelandic - barn). I always remember my dad saying somebody looked 'loppy' if they looked dirty or unwashed. I later learned that the Swedish for a 'flea' is 'loppa'. Geordies talk about their snacks or packed lunches as 'bait' and I recently learned that Icelandic for a snack or a morsel is 'biti'.

I live in Denmark and grew up in the northwestern corner of Jutland called Thy. When i began learning the english language in school i thought the sounds in english reminded me of the sounds in “thybomål” which is the local dialect where i lived. Sometimes i suddenly switched to thybomål while speaking english because it was so similar in sounds and pronounciation of words.

Spot on about the English and Norwegian grammar. I have gotten conversational in French and Spanish and a bit more fluent in Norwegian. Norwegian was by far the easiest to get started in! I describe it broadly as English grammar, German words. You don’t have 30+ forms of the verb to learn (only about 7 in E & N), the sentence structure is very similar. You can almost start by speaking English, but using Norwegian words. You then learn and incorporate the particular Norwegian word orders so it doesn’t sound so odd to a Norwegian speaker. I have also learned many Norwegian expressions by hearing native speakers do the same in English! It is a beautiful and fascinating language!

I really appreciate the level of depth of this video, which is just right for me. I have learnt quite a bit of Norwegian over about 10 years, though I am far from fluent. The language varies widely around the country and they have a couple of written standards (Bokmål and Nynorsk - meaning "Book language" and "New Norwegian" respectively), but in general there are such a lot of similarities to English that it really is fun to learn, and I am happy to put my vote towards viewing English as a Scandinavian language. One thing that strikes me, apart from grammatical similarities, is the very large quantity of shared idiomatic phrases between English and Norwegian - far more overlap than I perceived existing between French and English when I was at school. Of course, my lack of knowledge of modern German or its neighbours puts my opinion on pretty shaky ground.

I am French from Paris and I appreciate you a lot, Gideon. Your videos are very interesting on the history of the English language. Plus, you bring a sensitive human dimension. It does us good in this world of violence. Thank you again, Gideon. Keep going.

In Norway we got 2 official written standards, namely Bokmål and Nynorsk. The examples of Norwegian in this text is given in "Nynorsk" which is a new standard that was contructed from several dialects of Norway of that time (ca 1800), but when given spoken examples, the reader in this case talks "Bokmål. Example on "I have read the book" is on Nynorsk "Eg har lese boka" while on "Bokmål" would be "Jeg har lest boken"" and Bokmål "Dronningen av Englands hatt" and Nynorsk "Dronninga av englands hatt" All Norwegian learn both written standards in school :-) Thank you for an excelent chanel !

Thanks for a brilliant and informative video. I can confirm your theory. I'm Danish and from the western part of Jutland born and bred ( Jutland is the peninsula of Denmark closest to the UK with the Northsea between us) The original dialect in this part of Denmark is very close to English. Many words are similar and the pronunciation sounds English. The grammar is closer to English than to correct Danish. Nowadays the dialect has faded away more or less. I only speak it when it comes naturally with people I know. Today day it has turned into an accent which immediately will tell people from the eastern part of Denmark that I'm from West Jutland. Comparable to a Scouser vs a Londoner. Being from West Jutland makes the pronunciation in English very easy. When Danes speak English I can normally tell from their accent if they are from West Jutland or Copenhagen. I had a DNA test taken some years ago, which showed that my roots were quite English. No doubt that we shared more than the language back in the Wiking age.🤔😉

I have studied German and could never understand how the two languages could be in the same family while having such radically different syntax. The notion that English is a Norse language makes perfect sense to me. Note: when I studied German the cases and syntax were very hard to get down. That and the whole gendering of all nouns and the associated inflection of articles. I am sorry to admit that it actually took me until my 3rd semester of German to reliably wrap my head around all the inflection in German. However having absorbed the idea of cases etc. while studying German, it actually made it easier to get into Koine Greek. Imagine that.

Two corrections from in the video. It's been pointed out that Irish, Manx and Scots Gaelic are Goidelic and not Brittonic. Secondly that in the language tree diagram West and East Scandinavian are labelled the wrong way round. Lots of comments about the two dialects of Norwegian. Bokmål and Nynorsk (a fact I did not know until after releasing the video). Apparently the written text is in Nynorsk which some commenters have said is unusual because it's only spoken by a small minority of Norwegians. I do not speak Norwegian (I wish I did because it sounds beautiful) but this is the text I found during my research. If I have blundered then please be gentle on me.

Brilliant presentation and brilliant presenter!! Please keep doing these fantastic expositions!!

good video. I am also an English speaker ( and ESL teacher) from Australia. In addition I also studied language families, Linguistics and majored in German, so I found this video fascinating. English is such a big mix of both related and unrelated languages.

Being from Yorkshire and a part of the Danelaw I have always felt Viking heritage was important. There's an island off the coast of Norway named Støtt so I'm claiming Norse origin.

This series has been very instructive, my knowledge only grows, I feel privileged to receive so much information, your effort to help us is precious. Thanks Gideon!🇬🇧❤️🇧🇷

This video was absolutely amazing!! I am a native English speaker with ancestry from Sweden. I found this SO fascinating! It makes me want to study Swedish or Norwegian, since it would be easy for me to learn. Seriously, this was a great treat.

"ill" really seems to be a proper antonym for "well" -- thank you for the thoroughly researched video

As a native English man born and bred in Yorkshire from Yorkshire stock I found this absolutely fascinating. I found that a lot of Yorkshire dialect has Norse/Dane roots.

Hi Gideon, thank you for this fascinating video. I just want to suggest a little mistake you made regarding the daughter languages of Brittonic language. Welsh, Breton and Cornish indeed are descended from Brittonic, but Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic came from Goidelic language, a different Celtic language. Cheers from Mexico!

Love it that you use Nynorsk as the written language and Bokmål as the spoken languauge in your video.

1 thing that has been somewhat forgotten in most discussions: the importance of dialects to trace a language. Since dialects tend to be a bit older, and kind of more rooted in the history of a landscape, words and the grammar can differ wildly to the "official" standard language. At least that goes for parts of Sweden.

My great grandparents lived in County Durham. They had some odd words, phrases in their language. On researching further, I found they were Norse words. I find this fascinating.

When I started learning Swedish I was shocked by how similar grammar is comparing to English. And lots of similar words as well.

I found it interesting how you mentioned that the words that came from old norse often used the SK sound, while the anglo-saxon words used sh, because in many Norwegian words starting with sk i is actually pronounced like sh. The word skinn (leather) is pronounced like shin.

Thank you for a very informative and accurate video. As a native Slavic speaker, I learnt German and English at the same time, as a child. To me, they felt somewhat similar. Then, as an adult, I learnt Swedish and it felt even more remarkably similar to English (and less to German), not only in vocab but especially in the sentence structure. I'd classify English as a hybrid between North-Germanic and West-Germanic, with a bit too much Latin/French thrown in! Not sure if it's helpful to strive to classify it West or North Germanic, when it's such an obvious mixture.

This is a very novel idea to me. My mother tongue is German, I have studied English at uni and I live in Sweden. It never occured to me to question the fact that English is a fundamentally Germanic language. But now that I am getting used to the idea and knowing what i know of Swedish it does make a certain amount of sense. It's why I have always felt that when translating, German also seems to be stumbling block whereas English and Swedish mold much easier into each other... this could be why.

This is just great content. My whole life I've been looking for such a depth of knowledge and analysis on the English language, especially origins. And so enjoyable to have someone always give the correct meaning for all the words defined. Laying it all out in such a concise organized manner. It is truly enjoyable.

Thank you Gideon for all the amazing vedios you're doing on youtube. What distinguishes you from others is the way you give the information, it's not the old boring one... You have a special way that attracts people such as including jokes or funny stuff in your vedios, in addition to your own life experience stories, and many other things.... Keep on the good work 👏👏👏 🇯🇴🇯🇴🇯🇴

Very informative video in terms of the English language history.

Great video, Gideon! I’ll be happy to spice up my english with more words of scandinavian origin.

I am a native Saxon from Westfalia......in Westgermany.....good to know we are one tribe with the english..

As a native english speaker learning danish, I must say the grammar is exceedingly similar and very easy to grasp. The hardest bit, for me, has been gaining the vocabulary and understanding the spoken language as it is so very different from english. But even then, compared to say, German or French, it is, on the whole, easier.

I’m currently volunteer-teaching ESL and constantly find myself totally at sea when trying to explain what appear to be the many idiosyncrasies of the language - ‘egging on’ being one such example. Having only just been utube ‘fed’ your videos , I can foresee that they are going to come in very handy. (Example ‘ill’ adjectives). Many thanks.

As an Italian who lives in Norway all I can say is that without my skill and partial command of English, especially in terms of grammar and syntax, learning Norwegian would have been far more difficult

I am Danish, and my husband is English. We lived in England for a considerable number of years before relocating to Denmark. We, both, found your video extremely interesting.

I’ve always been interested in languages and your delivery is a capper. I’m all in for your videos. Thanks!

Hi there. I'm Danish and a amateur historian. This really old news to me but it's a very good video and clear and concise explanation. Good job! Let me add here the Danish names now: 5:45 By - City (Landsby - village) Fæstning/Slot - Fortress/castle Kirke - Church Næs - Headland "-torp" and "-toft" we still use today. By the way, I live in Toften, it's a kind of street name in the small city I live. 9:45 How it is that Scandinavians have so much easier with English? We in Norway, Sweden and Denmark can speak English to a high degree. Some have said that we are bi-lingual in that English speakers can with no problem come to Scandinavia and be understood in their language. It's so easy to learn. 18:00 Æg - Egg, Skat - tax.

"Scot free" still exists in Danish language: "Skattefri" which is tax-free. Scot=Skat Ministry of Tax in Denmark is: Skatteministeriet (Scot ministry) We also use "ransack" similar way; danish: "Ransage" (eg. the Police look through everything in ones appartment)

In Swedish we have the word ’sjuk’, which means ’sick’ in english. ’Illa’ in Swedish means bad in english and is combined in similar way as in english.

So wonderful. The more I learn about language, the more I appreciate English.

I’m a native Texan . English is my native language. Mexican Spanish is the most common other language here. My DNA says I’m Nordic by origin. I find this very interesting because my family history takes me back to England. My last name is Norred.

Thank you. This was very interesting lesson. I am a native finn and speak finnish, but I understand also some swedish and english. We have also adapted meny words from swedish. Thorp is torppa etc.

Thanks for the video! I learned a lot with it 😊 As for the Scandinavian language theory, as a non-native English speaker, I think it sounds plausible and makes plenty of sense in terms of grammar, at least. An English language expert may disagree, though.😅

This is so much fun to watch and contemplate! I'm a Dutch native speaker, but I also understand German perfectly. Using your explanation and the tricks you came up with I can now very easily identify the Anglo Saxon words in English (which are close to German or Dutch) and the Norse words (which sound Germanic to me, but which are in general not familiar to me). Thanks for your explanation!

So fascinating…thanks..I have Scandinavian, mostly Irish..Scottish and English..this is so cool..

Thanks for a very informative series of videos.I've been especially interested in the origins of the English langage,particularly since studying Chaucer for my English A level many years ago!

I agree with the topical heading that the vikings changed the English language but it wasn’t that the old Norse words were borrowed into English. What happened is that prior to the 1066 Norman conquest, England was more or less linguistically and culturally divided into an Anglo-Saxon dominated southern and Southern west England called Wessex with its capital in Winchester. This included the Wessex dependencies in the Western half of the kingdom of Mercia or West Midlands. The rest of the country from London north of the Thames River, Essex, East Anglia, the East Midlands and Yorkshire as well as the North west was culturally Anglo-Norse and later became known as the Danelaw. Basically the area settled by Danish, Norwegian and Southern Swedish vikings and their families with their core settlements being the five boroughs of Lincoln, Stamford, Leicester, York and Derby. This part of England spoke Anglian dialects brought by the earlier Anglo Saxons invaders from the Danish peninsula. Old English or Anglo Saxon wasn’t a single language it was a group of related languages of which the most prominent at the time was the Wessex dialect which forms the bulk of the surviving old English documents we have today. That dialect was more or less the same as the Old Frisian language spoken in the Netherlands. The tribes that invaded England did not call themselves Anglo Saxons. There were three distinct groups the Saxons or Frisians from Lower Saxony and the northern Dutch coast, the Engels from the region of Schleswig Holstein in northern Germany and Denmark and Jutland peninsula and Jutes from the same region. They spoke related languages but they weren’t a single nation. It is possible that the Engles were the forebears of the people who later became known as Norse and perhaps spoke proto-Norse dialect or something closely related. Not much is known about the Jutes except that they settled in Kent and the Isle of Wight. Being described as the northernmost of the Anglo Saxon invaders, you would expect them to speak a more removed language from the Saxons but little to nothing is known about the Jutish language and the people people of Kent are akin to the Frisians than the people of Jutland in Denmark so it could simply have been a misnomer. So where did the English language as spoken today come from? As at the time of the Norman conquest in 1066. The kings of England were based in Winchester and they predominantly spoke Wessex Old English. This could be said to be the literary standard of English used at the time by scholars, scribes and clergy. The people of the Danelaw had received significant amounts of Danish and Norwegian settlers most of whom were not viking raiders but ordinary Danes and Norwegians settling to farm the land and a vast proportion of place names in the core Norse boroughs of England are today still of Scandinavian/Norse origin especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire and parts of East Anglia. The settlers lived and interacted with the native Angles and eventually over a 300 year period through intermarriages both communities would have merged and spoke various Anglo-Norse dialects which were significantly different from the standard old English of Wessex which by then was more like Old Frisian and Dutch and less like the Anglo-Danish dialects spoken in the Danelaw all the way down to london. The most important of the Anglo-Danish dialect was the Leicester dialect which became more prominent as Leicester became a wealthy trade centre in medieval times . In the meantime after the 5000 Norman troops (which consisted mainly of Flemings, Bretons, Normans, Gallo French, and other mercenary warriors such as the Burgundian’s ) invaded and conquered England not only were the English and their rulers reduced serfs by the Norman’s who confiscated their land , but after moving the capital of England from Winchester in Wessex back to London the Normans then proceeded to ban the English language or the Wessex dialect from being used in government and the royal courts for 200 years. In effect old English was banned from public places by the tiny but highly trained Norman conquerors. The Norman themselves were of Viking and Gallo french origin and had settled in Normandy in the way many vikings had settled in England. It was the banning of English that led to the disappearance of old English or the prestigious dialect of Wessex. S9 basically what happened was that the Wessex or what linguists today confusingly refer to as Old English faded into regional dialect status or what is today’s West Country dialect. By the time English was restored to its pride of place as the official language of the Kingdom of England in the late 13th century the population of London and its environs were already speaking a Norse based dialect of English based on the Anglo-Danish dialect of the important trading city of Leicester in additi9n to the many east midlanders and northern Danelaw and East Anglian immigrants who had flooded London over the two centuries. This version of English was grammatically and syntactically Scandinavian or North Germanic in nature and not Anglo Saxon or West Germanic. It was radically different from the Wessex based Old English that we often unjustly today call Old English or Anglo Saxon today. It was essentially a heavily scandinavianaised form of the old Anglian language . When the ban was lifted the language chosen to represent the official language of England was the variety of Anglo-Danish spoken in the English capital of London and that is what became Middle English and later evolved into the modern English we speak today. All our English pronouns are Norse in origin which in order for that to be the case it has to be the spoken language of the people and not loanwords, you can borrow as many nouns from a language but never pronouns and core words such as they their them and are. In essence what that means is Scandinavian English was already an established speech form in England having emerged from the interactions of the English and Dano-Norwegian inhabitants of the Danelaw. Most of the 41% Anglo french words borrowed into English do not come from Norman French but were imported whole sale by scholars in the 15th and 16th century after Latin ceased to be the language of education and our famed Oxbridge scholars didn’t see the standard of English at the time as being fit for educational purposes, so they went on a borrowing frenzy that brought in tens of thousands Latin Greek and french words into English the vast majority are redundant and not in use.

Great video again! Please never stop making them! 😊😉 I recently found out about the theory about English as a North Germanic language. And it makes a lot of sense I think. I speak Dutch, English and Swedish to some extent and the grammatical similarities between English and Swedish are striking: -(almost) no verb conjunction. And no cases. Old English had it, like old Dutch but in Dutch it gradually disappeared. In English it seems to have disappeared suddenly (or...) -English is weird in a European context since the infitive is not an ending (like Dutch and German and Frisian) but a separate word in front of the verb (to). This is only found in Scandinavian languages ("att" in Swedish) -you already mentioned the word order. In Dutch, German and Frisian the 2nd verb always comes at the end. Not in Scandinavia and in English. Etc... My theory however is a bit different. To me it seems logical to me that old English is both west and north Germanic. They came from Denmark in the first place! Now, I am not a specialist. But do we have any idea whether the Jutes for example spoke a western or a northern language? How many "old English" texts do we have beside the runic texts? And are the Saxon, Anglian or Juttish? If the 3 Germanic languages (dialects of 1 language??) were west-germanic when still in Denmark & northern Germany, when did Denmark became North-Germanic? After the Jutes had left? So many questions... Does anyone here have some answers? I hope so!

Incredibly good video! Very interesting and informative. Looking forward to more content like this.

Very interesting theory! But I‘d hesitate to regard the English grammar characteristics as exclusively of Scandinavian origin. As a German native speaker I find some comparable grammar structures also in regional German dialects. It just sounds awkward if you try to transform them into Standard German. But this seems more due to a historically grown convention for the form of the Standard speech. Originally there seems to have been a much wider range of possible forms of expression in Old West-Germanic languages. As this was presumeably also the case for the old Anglosaxons meeting Viking people, of course they would have switched to the form of grammar structure most easily intelligible for both sides. But they wouldn‘t have to take over or learn a completely new grammar structure which would be suggested by this new hypothesis.

This clears up an old mystery for me that I first noticed in Minnesota. When I would hear Norwegian or Swedish spoken, it so much like English, except with a different set of words. If we have inherited our language from them, no wonder this is the case.

Thanks again for a fun and informative video. You are right, we do speak English well here in Scandinavia. But you have to take into account that we start to learn English as second language pretty early (at least in Norway). I can only speak for Norwegians. But all kids today have to start to learn English already in second grade in the primary school ( 7 years old.). We learn from 4. grade when I was kid. Plus of course listing to pop music and watching video/series in English. My grandparents didn't speak as good as the children growing up today. And those today children speak even better than me and some in my generation. The English speakers moving here tend to learn Norwegian pretty easily. But so do German and Dutch speaker. I saw you mentioned that Old-Norse had more simpler grammar than Old-English. I have to disagree there. The grammar was as complex as the Anglo-Saxons. With three genders and cases (except from instrumental). The inflection of the verbs followed the personal pronouns the same degree as in Old-English. This is still preserved in modern Icelandic. There are a couple of interesting video about Old-Norse influence in English. Form an Old-Norse professor: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BaWgJq9OVGM.html From an Old-English enthusiast ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fzeneXX6MBU.html

That was very interesting, I have always been interested in word origins and similarities between languages, especially German and French. I'm a Yorkshireman with Geordie roots and use many dialect words and pronunciations from Norse and German.

I learned German in high school, and then lived in Sweden for 2 1/2 years and learned Swedish. I tend to agree that English is a Scandinavian language. Between knowing English and German, it was really easy to learn Swedish. The syntax of Swedish is much more similar to English than that of German.

Hi, thank you very much for your videos I'm discovering. I'm French and modestly a linguist myself. Learnt English back in the seventies as a child - my father (formerly a German teacher) was a soon-to-be teacher of English in France and my stepmother south african (anglo-dutch stock); back in France we continued to speak English at home. Living in Dunkirk, I studied Flemish and Dutch as well as German. Some years later after I had graduated as an architect in Elsass I went to Norway where I worked and lived for four years. I picked up Norwegian quite quickly. Reading Ibsen in the text (like Joyce ! closing on to Lowry's origins etc) I most certainly, unlike for German I'd studied earlier, got a whole other experience : Learning norwegian (and as I got also familiar with the other languages of the Scandinavian realm formostly icelandic ) I figured, had given me a "indepth view and knowledge of English". So although there's this precedence in time of Anglo-Saxon's coming to Britain, I would most certainly agree that modern English is a based Scandinavian language. I have a gut feeling about it and so many bells that ring towards that hypothesis. German never gave me that impression although of course I was fully aware these two languages were very much akin (Eng & GErm). Now I'm experiencing another fundamental in the core as I've managed to learn italian and somewhat what's left of corsican - came 25 years ago to the italic island under French rule. For a Frenchman it's back to latin in the flesh! Maltese is one of the ultimate adventure's I seek and perhaps one day Farsi! I'm looking forward to watching all your videos scoping the english language. Ta (thanks) which sounds so scandinavian (Tak). Hugues fj Rolland

Your videos are very interesting. You are a very good linguist and grammarian. You are explaining the origin of English language very well. I have a degree in English, but I don't speak this language as well as I used to.

My grandmother came to the United States from Norway at age 19. Within four years she was fluent in English. She practiced by doing crossword puzzles. By the time she was in her 50's she knew English better than most native born. She was always winning prizes on English vocabulary given out by the local radio station. However, she never lost her faculty in Norwegian and could pick it up at the drop of a hat. She spoke English, even with her brothers, while she was in America but spoke "Norse" when she needed to. One Norwegian word that has always fascinated me is skitte. It means dirty but pronounce it properly and you'll see the possible origins of another English word.

As a German speaker, I like to add something. The sentence 'I have read the book' might also be translated as 'Ich las das Buch' (Praeteritum, not Perfekt), but this kind of past tense dies slowly out in the German language for a long time and is replaced by the perfect tense. But some decades or centuries ago, 'Ich las das Buch' might have been a more commonly used sentence than 'Ich habe das Buch gelesen', since the Praeteritum was a way to describe the past tense, while the perfect described more an aspect. So, today it would be absolutely normal to translate the perfect-tense English sentence 'I have read the book' into a German Perfekt sentence 'Ich habe das Buch gelesen', but 100 or 200 years ago, it might have been more common to translate the English perfect into German Praeteritum, to lay the main emphasis on the past tense, not on the perfect aspect. Also, we do have some way to put prepositions in the end of sentences: 'Wir sprachen dadrüber' - 'dadrüber' is a conjunction of this and about. So, litteraly it would mean 'We talked this-about'. We also could use the phrase 'Da sprachen wir drüber', putting the this in the beginning of the sentence by dividing the dadrüber into da and drüber. The big difference is, that this dadrüber-construction is commonly used by many Germans, but that it might be not a part of Standard German - for some reason.

Very interesting. English being multi-rooted is now one of the greatest languages on earth and continues to evolve. I had no idea that the Nordic influence was so strong. Thank you, from west coast Ireland.

I absolutely LOVE THIS! I find the study of evolving languages so interesting! It’s like a history map!

As a native English speaker who works full-time as a freelance translator and subtitler, I can confirm the theory that Modern English and Norwegian share a whole lot of similar syntax. My specialty areas include translating Norwegian screenplays for feature films and TV series into English. However, my job security is based on my ability to convey the slight nuances which make English distinct from Norwegian. This also greatly helps when I’m “converting” bits of Norwegian dialogue into natural-sounding, fluent-feeling English. One challenging aspect of my work is dealing with the many Norwegian words and expressions that are currently being used in Modern Norwegian, but which are not found in Norwegian-English dictionaries. The Norwegian language may officially have a smaller total number of words than English, but Norwegian writers are masters at using obscure words that are sadly (for me) not easy to look up and translate. 😊 Thanks for sharing a very interesting and informative video on the roots of Modern English.

The very name England come for the Norse. Eng: meaning pasture and Land: mening land, so we have England meaning: Pasture-land. Also English grammar is unmistakeably related to Norse. The Anglo: - Anglii - have also impacted the language of the UK. The Anglo were the tribes that frequented the tribal border between what we call Denmark and Germany today, thus Anglo-Saxons. Old English and Norse, the tribes using theses languages, would have most probable, been able to converse with each-other. Old is a Norse word Old:Olde.

I think that "ill" is from "illa" or the scandinavian counterpart and it means to "got hurt". You dont simply say "illa" though but "gjorde du illa dig (did you get hurt)" or "jag gjorde illa mig (I got hurt)" so by removeing the "a" at the end it simply means hurt. Its something I never thought about untill now, great video!

Fascinating, i speak danish and english and i never realized why it was so easy for me to combine the two when i speak, the order of words being the same is a huge advantage to learning the language

Gideon, great series. I hail from the North-East and once worked in an open office (in London). One evening I mutted, 'cheors, am gannin hyam' to which I heard a reply 'hadawar'. this came from a Swede, who understood what I said, consequently, I understood the reply, we would have said 'hadaway'. A bit of Geordie/Swedish interaction there. Also, Eddie Izzard did a English origin programme where he chatted to a Friesian farmer in 'old English'....all good stuff! Thank you

Interesting theory. Personally, I'd call it a mixture of the two, with a heavy influence by Norman French afterwards. So you could make an argument for putting it into either the North or West Germanic branch. But I've always felt Scandinavians speak the best English of any non-native speakers. Some of them have little or no accent, if they've mastered it well enough.

Very interesting. As a native speaker of Swedish now living in the US I am very familiar with both languages. What is said about similarities to Norwegian can also be said about Swedish. The cognate of “scot” is “skatt“ that the Swedes render to the taxman. The word also means “treasure” in Swedish. Regarding East Germanic being extinct: I recall hearing that Gutnish, the indigenous dialect of the Gotland Island in the Baltic, is a surviving remnant of the East Germanic language branch. What is the status of that thought?

Thanks for the very interesting information!👍 You are an excellent connoisseur and analyst of linguistic issues!❤ Could you also tell us about the great influence of the Greek language on English? ..... speaking of the huge number of Greek words in the English language, something that is verified by the Oxford Dictionary!!!

This is the most fascinating video I've seen in quite some time. Thank you. Looking forward to viewing more of your content.

Something that should be noted is there is a fair amount of overlap between oldest known forms of Anglo-Saxon, coastal low German, and Old Norse. Usually when the 5% figure is given for Old Norse. this excludes words that Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse have in common. Any words in common tend to be categorized as Anglo-Saxon in origin.

This theory about modern English being (more) related to old Norse is interesting. When you consider old English, clearly related to the Saxons and the Angles, it's a complete different language and I have never been happy with the explanations about simplifications over time. The shift between old and middle English around the 11th /12th centuries rather shows a prominency of old Norse mixed with Norman/French. There is no real continuity between old and middle, but one clearly sees it between middle and early modern English. I am learning Swedish and I thought my German would help, but this is rarely the case. Whereas my English helps most of the time.

Interesting. I learned Norwegian whilst living there in the eighties and it certainly felt natural, etter jeg har lær litt vokabular I pretty much just spoke. It was much easier than learning French or German.

I don't speak any Scandinavian languages, but I watch a lot of things from those countries. I find that I can understand enough to get the gist, even without subtitles. I can't do that with French or German. I would definitely need subtitles. edit: A lot of their words are like old times English words, that aren't used much anymore. So, I tune my ear to hear them.

9:45 That was quite interesting. I think virtually everyone in Norway speak English. Even those with really poor English skills get by without struggling too hard. It definitely makes sense. Thank you.

On the issue of whether English is a Western Germanic or Scandinavian language, it seems to me that, as the Angles and Saxons came (in part) from what is now Denmark (which is where many of the Viking Age Scandinavian settlers originated) that much of their basic grammar may have been similar as well. I'm not knowledgeable enough in this area to have an opinion, just something I'm curious about - might not the underlying structure of Saxon and Norse been closer in structure than previously thought?

5:57 -thorpe= farm land. Interesting, in Tamil, a south Indian language, there's a word called "Thōppu" whose meaning is similar to "-thorpe". Thōppu is a special word for farm lands having certain trees. Ex: a farm land full of Mango trees, coconut trees are called as "Mānthōppu", "Thennanthōppu".

As a native Norwegian I find this theory to have merit too. Also, totally agree with the similarities in word placing in sentences. Words, pronunciations, but also just ways of saying things. But we lost you to the French I'm afraid 😅 But still, short way over the see, easily understood, and plenty of Brits work here. Doing great with their Norwegian too. Funny wowels for us. And for an entertaining take on this, let me recommend Norse on Netflix. The shot the takes first Norwegian and then English. Only they put a true Scandinavian accent on the English. Its hilarious.🤣🤣🤣

Ill-at-ease reminds me so much of a Spanish phrase, mal a gusto, which we used in the north (it is not well considered by RAE) and it makes me marvel at how languages come to the same conclusions...or share so many roots.

There is some debate about starting a sentence with a preposition, especially recently, with quantum syntax grammar entering the picture, but ending a sentence with a preposition is something which I was taught never to do in English class.

I only speak English. I also believe English now has a lot of French words. I heard the French have incorporated so many English words that they now are sort of forbidden to keep doing do. I can read French and easily understand it. I think modern English is probably loaded with a mix of Norse words after watching this video. Sure makes sense they mixed the two languages to make it easier to communicate since they were so similar in sentence structure. It's all about the structure for me that makes me believe it's possible that English is from the Norse. Interesting topic and great video. I learned a lot. Thank you🙂

Excellent presentation. Vikings from Denmark were similar people to Anglos who invaded England several centuries earlier. How much their language changed? Here are some examples using my (poor) knowledge of Norwegian: English vs. Norwegian. to have-(o) ha, I have-jeg (yay) har, we have-vi har, thick-tik, thin-tin, was-var, they-di, one-en, two-tu, three-tre, four-fire, five-fem.

Surprisingly, "Scot" meaning"tax" is found in Italian (to pay the scot / pagare lo scotto). My father's Swedish second wife always said that in Turin they speak Italian like Norwegians trying to speak French.... (-:

I've been trying to learn German for the last several months, and continually screw up the word order. It's very confusing to me. It's nice to know that the word order in Norwegian is similar, I'll be looking in to learning more about it.

Thank you. I have been thinking a lot on this subject and when words arrived, when it comes to britons, other celts, angles, latins etc. I have had the taught that Old English is derived from Scandinavian germanic proto norse. Geograppical origin in primarily Jutland would also support that. A thaught I got is that Anglo-Jutish-Saxons met a version of them self (when meeting vikings), as the Anglo-Saxons were before getting christened. When Anglo-Saxons arrived in Britain they were practicing germanic religion and since they had been so similar to vikings they might as well have arrived in longships. It is like Danes pushed Jutes, Angles and partly Saxons away from Jutland and since then forced them to move to Britain. Two centruries later the Danes followed.

Thanks for sharing this informative post for those of us with an English Heritage.

As a Dane who over the years have struggled with learing English, German, Russian and French I can indeed confirm that English is much easier when your starting point is Danish. English simply appear quite familiar - in words and grammar.

Thank you for this very interesting video! I'd never heard of the theory that English might actually be a Scandinavian language, and it sounds quite interesting. However, I find the statement that languages tend to borrow vocabulary from other languages but rarely or never grammar not very convincing. For example, all Germanic languages except English are V2 languages, which means that the verb is always the 2nd part in the main clause of a sentence. English, however, doesn't follow this rule due to Normannic-French influence, so here, English did in fact borrow a grammatical construction. There are a lot of other examples: Balkan langues like Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian have been borrowing grammatical constructs from each other, despite belonging to completely different language families; Bulgarian e.g. has a definite article, something that Romanian (a Romance language) has, but no other Slavic language. I can see this live in my own language: Some German dialects near the area where I live have dropped declension of reflexive pronouns in favour of just one universal immutable reflexive pronoun, a feature found in neighbouring Czech, but not in Standard German. And the German verb "erinnern" (remember) is currently shifting from being reflexive to being transitive due to English influence. So, grammatical constructs being borrowed from other languages happens all the time, and since Anglo-Saxons and Danes have been living alongside each other for such a long time, it's no surprise they also adopt the grammar from each other.

My grandfather came from Londonderry. He pronounced his last name with a long I. Sounding like Smythe. But spelled without the e. Although most people want to pronounce it Smith. I tell them, the Irish were too poor to buy a vowel. The English kept the e.

As a scandinaviian it's quite surprising when you think back of and realize how we where taught in school as children, that the reason they give for English and Nordic languages having similar words, is because Scandinavia "borrowed" words from the english language such as "arm", "hand" and "limb", because we "didn't have our own" appearently. It's absolutely ridiculous.

In the Geordie lingo, as spoken on Tyneside, there are several Norse words, like "hus" and "hjem". When the pub closes they will typically say something like "I am gannin hjem tuh the hus".

Its always fascinating to see how languages have (and still do) developed. Even short time influences can make a big impact sometimes. For example the Napoleonic occupation of the west of Germany. Although it only lasted a few years (almost nothing compared to the Roman occupation or the Vikings and the Normans in Britain) there are still many traces of french words in the german language. Often they have been butchered to make them more compatible with the german pronounciation, but they are still obvious. Just one example: the german word "tschüss" - a form of saying "good bye" - comes from the french "adieu".

Looking back in history it's a huge mistake to think of German as different from old Norse. English is not a Scandinavian language entirely but partly. Another large part seems to be of Latin origin. English have much if not most grammar from old Norse and is very similar to modern Nordic languages. It is fair to conclude it does have a strong connection. Many words are from old Norse phonetically while the spelling is not. Examples are tough, enough and similar words. "Tough" sounds and means the same as Norwegian "tøff". The "ough" type spelling seems to be of different origins but can hide old Norse words which were phonetically taken but used with a non-Norse spelling. If you also stop viewing Dutch and German as separate and instead view them south Norse and then look at their development with more other languages adjacent geographically. Looking at Scandinavian we see that the three languages or major dialects which have the most in common with old Norse are Icelandic, Faroeic and Norwegian. Danish have many similarities with Norwegian but also some with Dutch and north western German. Also Swedish have taken in influences from German through political import. Most of the things which have caused our languages to divert seems to have happened after the introduction of the printing press. And this have been made more pronounced by the linguistical institutions and universities. Looking back in history, the Norwegians and Danish most likely arrived in Brittan almost at the time of the Anglicans and Saxons. Just post 600 AD. At that time as peaceful traders and migrants. Calling all for Germanic is a Roman perspective title, while referring to them all as Norse is a more northern or western European perspective. Also, taking a word you mentioned as an example; knife. In Scandinavian it is "kniv". Now, the 'e' in knife is silent so that would make the words "knif" and "kniv". Going back a few centuries the rules for romanised spelling were freer than today and 'f' and 'v' were interchangeable. Similar can also be seen in the word "come" which is "kom" in Scandinavian. And there are loads more examples.

Plenty of Viking place names where I live, just north of Liverpool. Perhaps the best known is Aintree, which means a single (solitary) tree. The Anglo Saxon word for tree was similar to the Dutch boom and German Baum. It was beam, which now of course means a length of timber. I'm in Formby, which has the same origin as Fornebu in Norway....Forni's settlement.

A great summary of languages and history. Hats off...

I've been wondering how the ending of surnames with "son" came about in the English language. Now I know. (Being Swedish, being so common in Sweden.)

As a french native (but American and german ascendance - dad and mom) I agree with this vid talking about scandinavian basis of english language. When I learned norsk, svensk, and Dansk, I realised how it's true. How easy it is ( in particular when yu read scandinavian languages... Pronunciation is quite a different difficulty ! ) if yu learned english and german first. Fir months long, I had to read much more than try to talk. Then it came easier.

I am fascinated by English. This video adds a lot to my knowledge. I'll have to watch it again and again.