Scandinavian Borrowings

Apart from many place names (over 1400) in -by (< Sc town), -thorp (< Sc village), -thwaite (< Sc clearing) the number of Scandinavian borrowings was not very great, but they were mostly everyday words of very high frequency. According to the estimates of scientists, the total number of Scandinavian borrowings makes up about 900 words; about 700 of them belong to Standard English. A semantic range of Scandinavian borrowings varies from everyday words to military and legal terms.

Some of the Scandinavian words found their way into the oral speech of Anglo-Saxons as early as the IX c., but it was not until ME that Scandinavian borrowings became part and parcel of the English vocabulary.

The greater part of Scandinavian borrowings was not recorded until the XIII c.

As the two languages were closely related, English and Scandinavian dialects shared a considerable part of the vocabulary. Cf

OSc steinn – OE stān (NE stone), Osc dōmr – OE dōm (NE doom), OSc kyn – OE cyn (NE kin),

and it is often difficult to say whether the form of a given word is Scandinavian or English. The word «sister», for instance, is usually regarded a development of the Scandinavian systir, but it might be also a development of the OE sweostor under the Scandinavian influence. OE ʒiefan, ʒietan would have normally developed into E yev (yiv), yet but under the influence of Sc giva, geta they have become E give, get.

The reliable criteria of distinguishing Scandinavian loans from native words is the consonant cluster sk: skill (NE skill), Sc skinn (NE skin), Sc sky (NE sky), which does not occur in native words, as OE [sk] has been palatalized and modified to [ò] fish < OE fisc, ship < OE scip.

Other criteria are the sounds [k], [g] before front vowels, which in native words became [ʧʤ]: kid (Sc) – chin (< OE kin), girth (Sc) – yield (OE ʒieldan). These criteria, however, are not always reliable, as [k] was retained in some native words: king < OE cyninʒ, keep < OE cēpan.

The sounds [sk] and [ò] are sometimes found in related words in the two languages: shirt (native) –skirt (Sc loan), shatter (native) –scatter (Sc loan), shriek (native) –scream (Sc loan), which are etymological doublets, i.e. which go back to the same Gc root but have undergone different phonetic and semantic changes.

The extent of Scandinavian influence can be inferred from the fact that even personal pronouns were borrowed. The Scandinavian forms þeir (>E they), þeim (>them), þeirra (> E their) gradually ousted the respective forms hīe, him, hira. The Scandinavian conjunction þo (> E though) replaced the OE conjuction þeah.

The earliest Scandinavian borrowings are

(1) the nouns:

Sc vindauga (the eye of wind) > ME windoʒe (NE window)

Sc Angr > ME anger (NE anger)

Sc happ > ME hap (luck), which yielded the words happy, happiness, happen, perhaps

OSc hūsbōndi (householder) > OE hūsbōnda > husbonde (the head of the family) (NE husband)

OSc felaga (a partner, a shareholder) > OE fēolaʒa > ME felawe (NE fellow)

OSc laʒu > OE laʒa > ME lawe (NE law), which yielded ME outlaw, bylaw (town, local law), NE in-law, NE lawyer

OSc knifr > OE cnīf > ME knyf (NE knife)

(2) the verbs:

OSc taka > OE tacan> ME taken (NE take)

OSc kalla > OE ceallian > ME callen

The English language adopted many Scandinavian adjectives:

Sc illr (bad, sick) > NE ill

SC mjukr > NE meek (gentle and quiet)

Sc laus > NE loose

Sc lagr > NE low

Sc veikr > NE weak

Sc vrangr > NE wrong

The fate of borrowed Scandinavian words was different.

(1) Some of them, which denoted new things or phenomena, entered the English language without replacing any words of the English vocabulary. This is the case of law, outlaw and fellow.

(2) Others ousted the original English words, e.g. The Scandinavian verbs callen and taken ousted the native English verbs clipian and niman respectively.

The Scandinavian verb kasta > ME casten (NE cast) ousted the OE verb werpan with the same meaning. The same notion came to be denoted by the original English verb throw < OE þrāwan (turn).

The Scandinavian adjective veikr > NE weak ousted the native adjective wāc, from which the verb weaken was built. Thus, in ModE the verb weaken is native and the adjective weak is a borrowing.

(3) Both the borrowed and the native words survived as synonyms with a slight difference in meaning. Cf. NE bloom (< OSc blōm) and native blossom, NE ill (< OSc illr) and native evil, NE sky (< OSc sky – cloud) and native heaven, NE die (OSc deyia) and native starve.

In this case the meaning of one or both of the words narrowed and the spheres of reference of the synonyms were divided, e.g. OE steorfan (NE starve) had had a more general meaning (die) before deyen was adopted from OSc deyia (NE die); then it narrowed its meaning to «die of hunger». The verb deyen joined easily the noun death (< OE dēað) and the adjective dead (< OE dēad), forming a family of words: to die – dead – death.

(4) In some cases only the meaning of an English word, not its form was influenced, e.g. the word bread, which meant «a piece of bread» in OE, gained its present meaning (food) due to the Scandinavian influence.

The OE word drēam meant «joy», its present meaning came with the Scandinavians.

In OE wiþ (NE with) meant «against», whereas in Scandinavian it had the sense of accompaniment, expressed in OE by «mid».

(5) Some Scandinavian borrowings disappeared with the disappearance of objects they denoted, e.g. barda, cnearr, cseʒð (different types of ships).

(6) Scandinavian military and legal terms were replaced by French terms, e.g. Sc liþ – Fr navy, Sc orrest – Fr battaile (NE battle).