From: mona striewe
Message: 4006
Date: 2004-01-10
----- Original Message -----
From: "Haukur Thorgeirsson" <haukurth@...>
To: <norse_course@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 3:38 AM
Subject: Re: [norse_course] Old Norse in English
> > What perent of the English language
> > is rooted in Old Norse?
>
> I don't know and the question isn't really
> well defined. Here are two suggestions for
> better defined questions:
>
> 1. What percentage of the daily vocabulary of
> English (say, the 2000 most common words) is
> derived from Old Norse?
>
> 2. What percentage of the total dictionary
> vocabulary of English is derived from Old Norse words?
>
> I don't know about the absolute percentages but
> it is clear that the answer to question 2 is significantly
> lower than the answer to question 1. Most of the "extended"
> vocabulary of English is Graeco-Latin goobledygook.
>
> If you want my wild guess rather than your own then maybe
> 10-20% for question 1 and 1-2% for question 2. (But even
> those questions aren't very carefully defined.)
>
> There are certainly very many very common English words
> derived from Old Norse. Words like 'take' and 'knife' and
> even the pronoun 'they'.
>
> KveĆ°ja,
> Haukur
>
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