From: Rick McCallister
Message: 62903
Date: 2009-02-07
> From: Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>Look at a historic map of the Danelaw. That should tell you where to find the greatest concentration of Norse words. Remember there was a Norse kingdom centered in York.
> Subject: [tied] Re: s-stems in Slavic and Germanic
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 2:21 PM
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
> >
> > At 2:06:17 PM on Friday, February 6, 2009, Andrew
> Jarrette
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Then again, England's North spoke a
> Scandinavian language
> > > for quite some time,
> >
> > There were significant numbers of speakers of
> Scandinavian
> > languages up to about 1100, but English never
> disappeared.
> > There was enough Scandinavian influence to suggest a
> fair
> > degree of bilingualism, and it's likely that
> English exerted
> > a comparable influence on the local Norse dialect(s).
> The
> > centre of Norse influence on ME seems to have been the
> East
> > Midlands (e.g., Lindsey): 'Norsified' ME shows
> a core of
> > Midlands traits and does not appear to have an Old
> > Northumbrian basis. (I recommend the extensive and
> detailed
> > discussion in Thomason & Kaufman.)
> >
> > Brian
> >
>
>
> OK. I was basing the description "North" on my
> impression, from
> extensive consultation, that the majority of words of
> Scandinavian
> origin in the OED are labelled "Scot. and
> north.", i.e. survive only
> in Scots and northern dialects. This led me to believe
> that the
> centre of surviving Scandinavian speech must have been
> fairly
> northern. Were there two or several areas of major
> Scandinavian
> influence, one in Scotland, one in England's North, and
> one in the
> East Midlands? By the way, what are the traits in these
> Scandinavian-origin words or language that are
> distinctively Midlands
> rather than Old Northumbrian?
>
> Andrew