Re: [tied] Germanic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 10:39:52 PM on Thursday, August 30, 2007, Rick
> McCallister wrote:
>
> > Supposedly the Anglo-Saxons and the Danes understood
> > one another,
>
> I'm familiar with the textual source of that claim; I flatly
> don't believe it. No doubt some basic level of
> communication was possible, but not anything approaching
> fluent communication.

Danes and Swedes trying to communicate will replace words in their own
language with words from the other language in the cases where
synonyms aren't cognates. The more you communicate, the larger your
stock of those 'difficult' words becomes and the more of them are
replaced in your language. That would be one way for English to become
what it is today. Anglo-Saxons and Danes might not have understood
each other, but they had to.


Torten