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Linguist Makes Sensational Claim: English Is a Scandinavian Language
Apollon Magazine (via Science Daily) ^ | 11-27-2012 | Trine Nickelsen

Posted on 11/29/2012 2:59:29 PM PST by Renfield

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1 posted on 11/29/2012 2:59:32 PM PST by Renfield
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To: Renfield

Muzzies will make the claim it is a Muzzie language!


2 posted on 11/29/2012 3:02:55 PM PST by Jack Hydrazine (It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine!)
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To: Renfield

I always thought it was Germanic tho there are a lot of Latin root words too.

Despite the fact that there are a lot of free words, I failed German in college.


3 posted on 11/29/2012 3:04:19 PM PST by yarddog (One shot one miss.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine

I think it’s easier to support the idea that tribes broke off from Germany and went to Britain and Scandanavian than from Scandinavia to Britain.


4 posted on 11/29/2012 3:07:10 PM PST by Jonty30 (What Islam and secularism have in common is that they are both death cults.)
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To: Renfield
Welsh is already covered: Searching for the Welsh-Hindi link
5 posted on 11/29/2012 3:07:10 PM PST by Theoria (Romney is a Pyrrhic victory.)
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To: Renfield

“From this day on, the official language of San Marcos will be Swedish.”


6 posted on 11/29/2012 3:07:47 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: Renfield

His noticing some similar words is two things. Norwegian is a separate branch on the north Germanic tree. (some Angles spread north into Scandinavia, just as some spread to the British Isles. So of course there are similarities.
The other thing is that mouch more recently that the Angle’s migrations, Vikings raided and spread much influence in Britian. They left DNA, words, and technology.

But English is not accurately described as descended from Norwegian. Separate tree, with later contacts sharing a few words. And of course, as always, English readily incorporates the new words, as it did with French, Spanish, Latin, etc. This is the strength of English. No rules, and we absorb and grow.
In many cases this is how we wound up with two words for the same thing. “Sick” and “ill” are an example. One is old English, the other is Norse. So we just started using both.


7 posted on 11/29/2012 3:16:00 PM PST by DesertRhino (I was standing with a rifle, waiting for soviet paratroopers, but communists just ran for office.)
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To: Renfield

Makes sense.

Every time I say “Hinga Dinga Durgen”, the kiddies wish me a Happy Leif Erikson Day.


8 posted on 11/29/2012 3:16:50 PM PST by LadyBuck (Some day very soon, Life's little Twinkie gauge is gonna go......empty.)
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To: Renfield

As the offspring of an English teacher....I thought that was common knowledge. Of course, there was a huge impact of French on Old English after the Norman invasion.


9 posted on 11/29/2012 3:22:47 PM PST by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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To: SunkenCiv

You may be interested.


10 posted on 11/29/2012 3:23:40 PM PST by Lurkina.n.Learnin (Superciliousness is the essence of Obama)
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To: LadyBuck
Hakka palle!

/johnny

11 posted on 11/29/2012 3:24:16 PM PST by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: Renfield
My first response was: whenever you have things grouped together based on similarity it's always possible for somebody to suggest a different way of grouping them. The categories are something we (in a way) create.

Second response: he has an interesting point about the grammar or syntax. But that tends to become simplified over time. Who's to say that a "West Germanic" language didn't adopted a simpler grammar on its own -- or through later influence by North Germanic invaders? If English vocabulary is much closer to Dutch than to Norwegian, wouldn't that make English a West Germanic language (whatever later changes it went through)?

Be all that as it may, Scots (Lallans, not Gaelic, though there was some influence there as well) was heavily influenced by Scandinavian Vikings, as was English (only more so).

12 posted on 11/29/2012 3:33:24 PM PST by x
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To: DesertRhino
No rules, and we absorb and grow.

This works for languages and economies.

13 posted on 11/29/2012 3:35:37 PM PST by 1010RD (First, Do No Harm)
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To: Renfield

It’s not so far out. English is a mix of German (through the Saxons), French (through the Normans), Latin (through language of the scholars and the Church), and Scandinavian (through the Danes who settled in Eastern England, and indirectly through the Normans).


14 posted on 11/29/2012 3:37:51 PM PST by expat2
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To: DesertRhino
His noticing some similar words is two things.

Yes. I was skeptical till I read this paragraph.

The two researchers show that the sentence structure in Middle English -- and thus also Modern English -- is Scandinavian and not Western Germanic. "It is highly irregular to borrow the syntax and structure from one language and use it in another language. In our days the Norwegians are borrowing words from English, and many people are concerned about this. However, the Norwegian word structure is totally unaffected by English. It remains the same. The same goes for the structure in English: it is virtually unaffected by Old English."

That's a very powerful point. German word order is very different from English and the word order in English does not seem to have been affected by its heavy exposure to the Romans or the Normans though the vocabulary was. Very interesting theory, indeed.

15 posted on 11/29/2012 3:42:56 PM PST by BfloGuy (Workers and consumers are, of course, identical.)
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To: x

The categories are something we (in a way) create.”

Kant? Is that you? I thought you were long dead!


16 posted on 11/29/2012 3:46:33 PM PST by ConservativeDude
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To: expat2

One of my least favorite dates is 1066.

Dang Normans.


17 posted on 11/29/2012 3:48:23 PM PST by ConservativeDude
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To: Renfield

Leif Edison made the first functioning light bulb by passing an electrical current through a herring. I’ll never forget those words as the Norwegians landed on the moon.....”The Herring has landed.”


18 posted on 11/29/2012 3:49:33 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Renfield

I lived on Jylland, Denmark between October 1960 and December 1961 and in Copenhagen for another two years and became totally fluent in Danish. I always found it interesting when speaking with farmers in remote villages in that their dialect sounded more like English than Danish.

Norwegian and Danish are virtually the same written language but the Danish is in the throat and Norwegian is closer to the lips, hence the accents are totally different. It takes me a week of listening to Norwegian for my ear to begin to hear the language.

Fabulous people and great places. Their politics stink.


19 posted on 11/29/2012 3:52:53 PM PST by Utah Binger (Southern Utah where the world comes to see America)
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To: yarddog

I had to take German as a requirement for my course of college studies. I had a prof. from Germany who was not easy to understand. I passed with a good grade but have often wondered if it would have been easier learning if I had a German speaking English prof.


20 posted on 11/29/2012 3:54:17 PM PST by noinfringers2
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