There are even more differences that I did not mention. - Merger of plural verb forms in OE - Neuter adjective ending -t in ON - Loss of prefixes like ge- in ON - Different pronouns 3rd person pronouns - English copula like "beon" and "sind" not found in ON - Lots of different vocab/false friends
I have always thought of (old) English as the missing language from a dialect continuum between (old) Danish and (old) Plattdeutsch and (old) Frisian. Old English is sort of a mix between Old Anglic, Old Saxon and (Pre-Danish) Old Jutlandic from the 6th and 7th centuries. However due to the English language being relatively isolated it just developed differently.
Old Jutlandic is fascinating. It had "ak" and "æk" for "I", and umlaut in the second and third person singular forms of strong verbs. It had "ak/æk kom" for "I come", "þú kømr" for "thou comest" and "hann kømr" for "he comes". Modern South Jutlandic still has "kømmer", but it's also used in the first person nowadays. Modern Jutlandic is just as fascinating. There is a lot of dialectal variation in Jutland. I have Jutlandic in playlists on my channel.
One very interesting observation: In the First Grammatical Treatise for Old Norse, the writer claims the English and Nords were "of the same language". There's poetry showing the English communicating with the Nords as well. Given the differences in OE dialects I wouldn't be shocked if the Germanic Sprachsbund of the time just required linguistic flexibility to navigate and resulted in what we see today. Earliest Yiddish went through similarly odd changes not long after Old English's grammar started collapsing.
This is why I think there is some truth to the "English is a creole from the Danelaw" idea. The roots were familiar so they dropped the case endings and English ended up as an analytic language instead of a fusional language
It's like that in Swedish too, "än sen?", "än du då?". Older Swedish could use än as a sort of och or men (but) as late as 1800. We probably stopped doing it in the 19th century.
But we all know modern English too, which I suppose must be of some help in understanding Old English in its basic West Germanic outline. Speakers of Old Norse didn't have that advantage.
@@magical11Well, maybe it's the other way around: the lexical and morphological archaicness of both languages as compared to modern English specifically, which is the most remote of the Germanic languages in that respect, may suggest to a modern speaker that they are more alike than they actually were in the perception of contemporary speakers. West Germanic languages like Old English and Old Saxon, for instance, have a number of basal characteristics almost on a sentence-to-sentence level that set them apart from Old Norse and the modern Scandinavian languages but are recognizable to a speaker of modern English. In my personal experience (admittedly being a native speaker of Dutch), texts written in Old English and especially Old Saxon, which is not identical but closely related, are generally speaking an easier and more intuitive read than those in Old Norse. Maybe it's an unconscious process, but there is a feeling of an underlying familiarity in the basic way of 'saying things' that seems absent in the northern branch. Not that I am a specialist though, I just like to dabble around in this stuff, like most of us casuals.
I've always been of the belief that they *could* understand each other if speaking basic speech, and that the Old Norse "borrowings" into Old English are the left over attempts at finding cognates both could understand rather than direct borrowings. The word Sky for example, "Himinn" and "Heofon" are vaguely similar, and were the words used more often in each language, but they are less recognisably related than the cognates for Cloud: Ský and Sċēo. I think it's kind of like an Englishman reading Robert Burns poems, clearly related, can get the gist, but can easily misunderstand. For example, today "Why?" in England is typically expressed as "How?" in Scotland. (I believe from "How come?", but that's just a guess) A simplified example: "I need to go into town today" In England, the answer to the question "Why?" is: "I need to get some Bread". In Scotland, they are expecting the same answer, but someone unaware of "How?" being "Why?" will answer with "I'll get the bus". So I think it would be misunderstandings similar to this, though more complicated of course.
@@SIC647 yes of course but I’m talking about the way the words are stressed if you hear the Navajo Nation speaking you would notices that sounds similar to
@@jorgesantell7220 People say Elfdalian sounds like Navajo. I have good recordings of Elfdalian and closely related dialects in my Dalecarlian playlist. You should check it out.
Yes, but the Germanic words are generally the more common ones, so the distribution of Germanic to non-Germanic is not what you might think. In the above comment, there are only 5 non-Germanic words, with the majority being Germanic
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
There are even more differences that I did not mention.
- Merger of plural verb forms in OE
- Neuter adjective ending -t in ON
- Loss of prefixes like ge- in ON
- Different pronouns 3rd person pronouns
- English copula like "beon" and "sind" not found in ON
- Lots of different vocab/false friends
I did a paper on this in high-school. My conclusion was that they could not communicate very well, but would learn each others languages quickly.
I have always thought of (old) English as the missing language from a dialect continuum between (old) Danish and (old) Plattdeutsch and (old) Frisian. Old English is sort of a mix between Old Anglic, Old Saxon and (Pre-Danish) Old Jutlandic from the 6th and 7th centuries. However due to the English language being relatively isolated it just developed differently.
I thought Old Saxon and Old Frisian were closer to Scandinavian than Old English was.
Old Jutlandic is fascinating. It had "ak" and "æk" for "I", and umlaut in the second and third person singular forms of strong verbs. It had "ak/æk kom" for "I come", "þú kømr" for "thou comest" and "hann kømr" for "he comes". Modern South Jutlandic still has "kømmer", but it's also used in the first person nowadays. Modern Jutlandic is just as fascinating. There is a lot of dialectal variation in Jutland. I have Jutlandic in playlists on my channel.
One very interesting observation: In the First Grammatical Treatise for Old Norse, the writer claims the English and Nords were "of the same language". There's poetry showing the English communicating with the Nords as well. Given the differences in OE dialects I wouldn't be shocked if the Germanic Sprachsbund of the time just required linguistic flexibility to navigate and resulted in what we see today. Earliest Yiddish went through similarly odd changes not long after Old English's grammar started collapsing.
This is why I think there is some truth to the "English is a creole from the Danelaw" idea. The roots were familiar so they dropped the case endings and English ended up as an analytic language instead of a fusional language
You're spoiling us!!!
1:45 did you just call me a stinky Scandinavian?
Yes
Wiktionary says that "en" could mean "and" in Old Norse. Norwegian and Icelandic also have "Enn du?" and "En þú?" respectively for "And you?"
It's like that in Swedish too, "än sen?", "än du då?". Older Swedish could use än as a sort of och or men (but) as late as 1800. We probably stopped doing it in the 19th century.
@ "Men" kjem frå millomlågsaksisk. Eg visste ikkje at "än" fyre "men" enno fanst på attanhundradtalet.
If u know Old Norse, then u get 75% of Beowulf. Imo, the languages are comparable to Swedish vs Danish or English vs Jamaican Patois.
But we all know modern English too, which I suppose must be of some help in understanding Old English in its basic West Germanic outline. Speakers of Old Norse didn't have that advantage.
@@ansibarius4633 Probably the opposite. Old English was far far more similar to Old Norse than Modern English is to Old English.
@@magical11Well, maybe it's the other way around: the lexical and morphological archaicness of both languages as compared to modern English specifically, which is the most remote of the Germanic languages in that respect, may suggest to a modern speaker that they are more alike than they actually were in the perception of contemporary speakers. West Germanic languages like Old English and Old Saxon, for instance, have a number of basal characteristics almost on a sentence-to-sentence level that set them apart from Old Norse and the modern Scandinavian languages but are recognizable to a speaker of modern English. In my personal experience (admittedly being a native speaker of Dutch), texts written in Old English and especially Old Saxon, which is not identical but closely related, are generally speaking an easier and more intuitive read than those in Old Norse. Maybe it's an unconscious process, but there is a feeling of an underlying familiarity in the basic way of 'saying things' that seems absent in the northern branch. Not that I am a specialist though, I just like to dabble around in this stuff, like most of us casuals.
@@ansibarius4633 Modern English helps with some words and phrases but overall not really. English changed a lot after the fire nation attacked.
@@ansibarius4633 Dutch defenitely helps with Old English, or any Frisian base.
I've always been of the belief that they *could* understand each other if speaking basic speech, and that the Old Norse "borrowings" into Old English are the left over attempts at finding cognates both could understand rather than direct borrowings. The word Sky for example, "Himinn" and "Heofon" are vaguely similar, and were the words used more often in each language, but they are less recognisably related than the cognates for Cloud: Ský and Sċēo.
I think it's kind of like an Englishman reading Robert Burns poems, clearly related, can get the gist, but can easily misunderstand. For example, today "Why?" in England is typically expressed as "How?" in Scotland. (I believe from "How come?", but that's just a guess)
A simplified example: "I need to go into town today"
In England, the answer to the question "Why?" is: "I need to get some Bread". In Scotland, they are expecting the same answer, but someone unaware of "How?" being "Why?" will answer with "I'll get the bus". So I think it would be misunderstandings similar to this, though more complicated of course.
Old Norse "nema" also meant "to take".
Still "nehmen" in modern German.
@@francisdec1615 In Low Saxon too.
They were likely similar and different in similar ways that Ukrainian and Polish are to each other
You should see my Engelsaxisch, a fictional language as if Old English developed as slowly as OHG to NHG.
They could, english is half swedish and half german.
Modern English has a majority of French loanwords, but back then they certainly could.
Sounds like some of the native Americans languages here are you sure you have the right pronunciation here ?
Pronunciation is in this case quite distinctly Scandinavian.
It sounds very Scandinavian to this Scandinav.
@@SIC647 yes of course but I’m talking about the way the words are stressed if you hear the Navajo Nation speaking you would notices that sounds similar to
The accent has some tonality in common with dialects from the present southern border between Sweden and Norway.
@@jorgesantell7220 People say Elfdalian sounds like Navajo. I have good recordings of Elfdalian and closely related dialects in my Dalecarlian playlist. You should check it out.
Modern day English is just 26% Germanic so it’s basically a different language to Old English. To many foreign influences.
Yes, but the Germanic words are generally the more common ones, so the distribution of Germanic to non-Germanic is not what you might think.
In the above comment, there are only 5 non-Germanic words, with the majority being Germanic
The syntax is almost 100% germanic.
@@jimmerd Only 5?
@@dan74695 if you include the explanation below the comment, it comes to 7 (not counting double words)
@@jimmerd Which comment? Jorge Santell's comment?