[Jack Hydrazine]

Muzzies will make the claim it is a Muzzie language!

[yarddog]

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.

[Theoria]

Welsh is already covered: Searching for the Welsh-Hindi link

[dfwgator]

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

[DesertRhino]

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.

[LadyBuck]

Makes sense.

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

[kabumpo]

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.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

You may be interested.

[x]

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).

[expat2]

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).

[blueunicorn6]

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.”

[Utah Binger]

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.

[Zionist Conspirator]

A fascinating theory. Although there goes my incentive to ever learn Old English.

I notice that he says Middle English was a product of the merger of Old English and the Scandinavian language spoken in England. I always understood that Norman French was the greatest factor in the shift from Old to Middle English.

[editor-surveyor]

Not much of a linguist, I’d say.

English is a mix of French, German, and Hebrew, where do they get the scandinavian?

[Hammerhead]

I hope this doesn’t impact my ability to use the word ‘knave’ in my everyday venacular.

[Jeff Chandler]

* English and Scandinavian can have a preposition at the end of the sentence.

[clip]

“But why the inhabitants of the British Isles chose the Scandinavian grammar is something we can only speculate on,” says Jan Terje Faarlund.

[calex59]

Ok, let's look at actual history as to where English came from. The Germans(at the time called Anglo/Saxons)brought the early English over with them when they invaded England in about the 5th century(not sure of the exact date). Later huge influxes of Vikings may indeed have influenced the evolution of old English into Modern day English, but the original old English was Saxon in origin. However, the Vikings were firmly defeated by King Alfred and later their influence was wiped out(not their people, just the influence)completely by Alfred's descendents.

To be fair, early English bears little resemblance to modern day English.

[Terry L Smith]

And now a few words from Sven:

“Fleur der husker der, fleur der husker der, Fleurder der berger der bor!”

That was Sven, the Swedish cook, and his thoughts on the matter!

[trebb]

And to think that people actually get paid to research stuff that has no real relevance to today.

[MD Expat in PA]

BMFL