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from the and-the-colts-and-the-jets... dept.
This research indicates that the Vikings were not the worst invaders to land on English shores at that time. That title goes to the Anglo-Saxons, 400 years earlier.
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One support for this contention is the impact, or rather the lack of impact, that the Viking Old Norse had on contemporary Old English language of the Anglo Saxons in the ninth and 10th centuries. This should be compared to the absence of Celtic language in England in the fifth and sixth centuries after the Anglo-Saxons had arrived.In the fifth and sixth centuries, Old English wiped out the earlier Celtic language in a similar way that modern English eradicated the language of the Native Americans in U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is clear in the almost non-existent impact that Native American words have on the English spoken today in the U.S. Modern American English has retained around 40 Native American words. Similarly, only a dozen Celtic words made it into the Old English of the Anglo Saxons.
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If the Anglo-Saxons eradicated the Celtic language, the Viking's impact was significantly less. Linguists do see some influence from the Old Norse of the Vikings in the Old English language. But it doesn't come close to the eradication of Celtic by the Anglo-Saxons.
Hmm, perhaps, but the Vikings did introduce 900 glorious ways to say, "I smite thee!"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nuke on Wednesday December 19 2018, @08:21PM
Agreed with most of what you said except for that bit. It is a fallacy to think that "well spoken" or "BBC English" or "Received pronounciation" or whatever you like to call it is the native manner of SE England. That is cockney, which is not just a London thing but can be heard throughout the home counties, particularly in Essex and Kent, among blue collar workers. The family I came from spoke cockney, and BBC English was to us just as different from our own as it might be to a Liverpudlian, and was very often the subject of ridicule.
Today I live far from the SE, in an area with a different regional accent, and when I go back to the SE I am immediately struck by its accent which now sounds somewhat foreign and unusual to me, and nothing like BBC which of course can be heard anywhere and every day on the media and among the "professional" classes.
Which is my point - BBC pronounciation exists as a kind of layer thoughout Britain. Far from London, my doctor speaks it, so does my solicitor, estate agent, supermarket manager (and half his staff), dentist, the bank staff, most shopkeepers and so on. If you are looking for the spiritual capital of the English language, it is Oxford, not even in the South East, the home of the dictionary and the alma mater of David Dimbleby, the textbook example of a BBC presenter.