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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: 2) by kazzie on Thursday December 20 2018, @07:08AM (5 children)
My recollection (from Terry Deary) is that it was spelt "kwene" . But that's mainly an example of the Normans swinging their "qu" s about. I think the root word is Saxon or Old English (it certainly doesn't sound Celtic to me).
Or were you aiming for a republican joke, given that "cwn" is Welsh for "dogs" ?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday December 20 2018, @04:48PM (4 children)
Well my Welsh is non-existent, though I do know a few words of Irish Gaelic. In which "cu" is dog.
However Google returned:
Search Results
Featured snippet from the web
From Middle English quene, queen, cwen, from Old English cwēn, cwǣn (“woman; wife, consort; queen, empress, royal princess”), from Proto-Germanic *kwēniz (“woman”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʷénh₂s (“woman”).
queen - Wiktionary
So I'm going to stand by my position.
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(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 21 2018, @06:09AM (3 children)
That quotation looks sensible, there's nothing there I'd disagree with.
I can believe that "cwn" may have been used as another alternative spelling, but I don't see anything to suggest that the word would be Celtic in origin.
(For comparison, relevant Welsh terms would include "brenin/brenhines" for king/queen (from Middle Welsh, Middle Cornish and Old Breton), "teyrn" for ruler (from Middle Gaelic or Old Breton), or "tywysog" for leader or prince (from Old Breton and Old Gaelic), as per the University of Wales Dictionary.)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 21 2018, @04:53PM (2 children)
Well, the main thing that suggests it to me is the spelling. Also it seems similar to Guinevere, as if that were a composite word. (Queen of what?) A few other suggestive but only suggestive bits here and there. The alternate spelling inserting vowels would be expected as a regularization into the norm of the English.
OTOH, that was long enough ago that most of the evidence has gone. And what evidence do you have that it was Anglo-Saxon, other than that it ended up in English, a notoriously acquisitive language.
For that matter, I'd be surprised of English doesn't include a few words whose histories trace them back to the Phoenicians who traded to Britain for tin. But trying to identify them would probably be an exercise in futility.
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(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday December 22 2018, @01:27PM (1 child)
In Welsh we know her as Gwenhwyfar [wikipedia.org], where the Gwen is a feminine form of 'gwyn' (white/fair). Gwen, Gwennan, Gwenno, Gwenda, etc. are common Welsh given names to this day, but Gwenhwyfar has fallen out of fashion a bit. ;)
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday December 22 2018, @05:11PM
So that "gwyn" is a likely parallel descendant of the word that turned into the English "queen". It's a guess, but it's more plausible than most.
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