Old Norse and Old English

A look at the relationship between Old Norse and Old English, including their common origins, mutual intelligibility, and the many words English borrowed from Old Norse.
Jackson Crawford, Ph.D.: Sharing real expertise in Norse language and myth with people hungry to learn, free of both ivory tower elitism and the agendas of self-appointed gurus. Visit JacksonWCrawford.com (includes bio and linked list of all videos).
Jackson Crawford’s translation of Hávamál, with complete Old Norse text: www.hackettpublishing.com/the...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Poetic Edda: www.hackettpublishing.com/the...
Audiobook: www.audible.com/pd/The-Poetic...
Jackson Crawford’s translation of The Saga of the Volsungs: www.hackettpublishing.com/the...
Audiobook: www.audible.com/pd/The-Saga-o...
Latest FAQs: vimeo.com/375149287 (updated Nov. 2019).
Jackson Crawford’s Patreon page: / norsebysw
Music © I See Hawks in L.A., courtesy of the artist. Visit www.iseehawks.com/
Logos by Elizabeth Porter (snowbringer at gmail).

[@raskolnikov9067]

I was fascinated when i realized there is a village called Sculthorpe in eastern England, since i live in a place called Skultorp in Sweden.

[@alexbowman7582]

raskolnikov the Geordies sae "ut" for out "gang" for going and "nae" for no

[@LittleV179]

we do :D its more like "ga-an" than "gang" instead of going but it depends what part of the northeast you're from. Also my grandad says "Polis" instead of "Police".

[@alexbowman7582]

When Gothrum and his army of Vikings landed in the NE of England in 865 the people called it the mycel haeben heer the great heathen army. Mycel means large and is where the phrase taking the mickey comes from meaning your getting more. Heer is the same as the German for army.

[@rudde7918]

Alex Bowman I wonder if OE mycel and Swedish mycke are related?

[@frbo9002]

Jonah Mansel: "Polis" in swedish is not pronunced exactly like "police" in english. I don't know how "polis" is pronunced in Scots though so can't say if it's the same. And "sky" in swedish means the same as in english (not pronunced the same though), but in everyday speak we use the word "himmel" more often nowadays.

[@Kristian-li7uk]

This man's knowledge of the germanic languages is outstanding. And his lectures are out of this world regarding his ability to explain historic relations between languages.

[@JensOverby]

I remember that my grandparents (who spoke West Jutlandic), in their dialect pronounced 'wednesday' like 'Wonsdae'. I've always been impressed of how close these two words are, and many other words in West Jutlandic and English. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jutlandic_dialect

[@Bjowolf2]

Yes, exactly - especially since it's "Onsdag" [ ons-day(gh) ] in standard Danish, a shortened form of Odin's Dag / Day - but West Jutish dialects, which are partially derived from a West Germanic (!) language have preserved the W of Woden or Wodin in this word.

[@royalwayne7244]

@@cottagecheese2481 Woden is just the the old english work for oden

[@Temujin1206]

Interesting, particularly for someone with family from North East England. In fact one of my Mum's relatives is married to a Norwegian man who says a lot of the Geordie slang/dialect/accent they use are almost or completely identical to Norwegian (e.g. ut for out, bairn for child or nae for no).

[@ivarara]

he would probably say "barn" for child, but barnum is plural for barn and is in the old english hymn by Cædmon

[@chicagoman58]

Wikipedia says, this, "Geordie is a continuation and development of the language spoken by Anglo-Saxon settlers, initially employed by the ancient Brythons to fight the Pictish invaders after the end of Roman rule in Britain in the 5th century." It blows my mind that the dialect survives to this day and is closely related to Norwegian!

[@Bjowolf2]

Do try watching our Danish public service TV with many programmes with (selectable) subtitles in Danish, and be amazed by how many basic words your are able to spot directly or guess without too much effort with an English-speaking background ( and even loads more as you learn to see past our peculiar spelling 🙄 ). www.dr.dk App. DRTV

[@Snapo9]

I'm sorry but every time you mention your high school experience I want to give you a big and long hug

[@hubertblastinoff9001]

@Walter why does any necessity exist to affirm one's sexuality when affirming that some other human is indeed handsome?

[@ShyBoy6ty9]

@@bobthabuilda1525 Because anything you say about someone else's looks gets called into question. The only real option is to not say anything at all.

[@johnsmith-ir1ne]

@@bobthabuilda1525 RREEEEEeeeee cries the snowflake 🤭

[@johnsmith-ir1ne]

@@bobthabuilda1525 5 years can pass yet insecure snowflakes are still crying cuz their egos got wounded :(

[@johnsmith-ir1ne]

@@bobthabuilda1525 see? even your emoji's crying too :D RREEEeeeeeeee my ego's hurt! :o

[@saxoman1]

As someone who has studied English language history for years, I must say I enjoyed and appreciated this video tremendously. Well done. Thank you!

[@frbo9002]

Regarding the they/them loan into english: What is interesting in Sweden is that many swedes, especially the younger generation (me included), sometimes have a hard time differentiate between "de" and "dem" in writing, because both are now pronounced "dom" in speech. The usual tip is to translate the sentence in your head into english. If it's a "they" it should be "de", and if it's a "them" it should be "dem". In english you immediately have a feeling which one sounds correct, so it really works. It's cool and I think it shows how related our laguages still are after all these years! :) Thank you for your interesting videos!

[@frbo9002]

Oh I didn't know it was a problem in Norway as well! I understand and can relate in certain situations, especially if for example a journalist can't get it right :) (but as I said I sometimes do the mistake myself so I don't want to "throw rocks in the glass houses"..) But generally I don't think people are ignorant or dumb. I don't know, but I believe most people don't tend to think too much about the grammatics of their native language. It all just works naturally anyway. So because we never hear "de" and "dem" it can be easy to mix up for many people, and I think it's OK! Maybe it would be better to replace both with "dom", but it looks kind of strange and wrong in writing ^^

[@rudde7918]

You guys should just drop those "de, dem" if they aren't actually a part of the spoken language anymore.

[@andeve3]

Norwegians in the 1900s and 1800s also got de/dem mixed up, because most Norwegian dialects had "dei", "dem" or "dom" exclusively. This was, and is, not really a problem. In German "sie" is both they and them ("Sie werden es für sie tun" = "They will do it for they"). So it's not a necessary distinction to have. A more substantial problem in Norwegian writing is that in the most widely used writing norm, Bokmål, the writer cannot distinguish between "their" and "your". So a sentence such as "is that their cottage, or yours?" becomes "er det deres eller deres hytte?", and "den er deres" signifies both "it is theirs" and "it is yours". This defect has existed ever since Bokmål was created, in spite of the fact that all Norwegian dialects distinguish between "their" and "your". I has never been fixed. But people keep talking about trivial changes in the language instead.

[@rudde7918]

Andreven How could such a mistake be in the Bokmål?

[@FiikusMaximus]

HJAA actually, as someone learning Norwegian myself, thanks for that explanation. I've always had bit of a hard time working all of that out (both of the issues you referred to). Could you elaborate on the sk sound thing though? What do you mean by that?

[@alexreid1173]

Uh I would love a video on the change from [w] to [v] in old Norse! Please 😂 it’s one of my favorite sound changes

[@gunjfur8633]

There isnt much to say about it

[@bertram238]

We still have Old Norse (or more accurately Old Danish I guess) words in the Yorkshire dialect, although usually used with English present participles (-ing). We don't tend to use them in future or past tense, now that I'm thinking about it. They don't have standard spellings since they're dialect, but some examples are: "kalling" (talking, chatting) - O.N. "kalla"; "ligging" (to lie down/relax, implication of laziness) - O.N. "liggja"; "leiking" (playing with something, not necessarily a toy) - O.N. "leikr".

[@Scottishenglish]

"Ista laikin oot?" = Are you coming out to play?

[@bertram238]

Wow I'm not old enough for that to be in me vernacular. That's proper yorkshire.

[@Scottishenglish]

Indeed. More my grandparents' generation. My late grandad Arthur used to greet folks with 'Noo den, ooista?", meaning of course, "Now then, how are you?" 'Ooista" was a Yorkshire-fied contraction of 'how art thou?"

[@Bjowolf2]

Du ( thou, ON thu! ) kan ofte se hvad mening mange ( many, OE monege! ) af {v}ore (our, OE ure! ) simple Danske (w)ord(s) haver efter just få [foa] ( (a) few ) sekunder. 😉

[@Darrenski]

Where does 'me sen' come from. I'm only over the hills in lancs and although I obviously know what it means it puzzles me where that came from. It must have stuck around from somewhere.

[@DannyLovesWalrus]

I study OE, it's a great experience and this was a really interesting video. The real unsung part of this though is [20:55] hearing the '-shire' (Lincolnshire, Yorkshire given as examples in this case) affix for English county names pronounced correctly by someone who is from North America. Americans almost always pronounce the '-shire' in county names the same way as when the word shire is found on its own ('shy-er') as opposed to the British 'sher' or 'shur', where one of which is used depending on the local dialect. An example from an OE grammar book is useful here, in that the difference between the two pronunciations is like saying 'red D' as opposed to 'ready', in that many speakers from abroad pronounce the second part of the word as if it were independent from the first half. This is also highly noticeable in the difference between British and American pronunciations of a city which we both share, 'Birmingham', i.e. American "Birming-ham" vs British "Birming-um". This isn't a criticism of Americans' pronunciations, just highlighting an interesting difference.

[@ivarara]

And where did he ever hear Ragnar Loðbrók give a speech so he would hear his pronunciation.

[@jacquelinevanderkooij4301]

Question: what is the ..ham stand for? I'm frisian and many of our towns end in ...um. pronouncatian is almost simular. So ham and um sounds familiar to me. Do you know?

[@daivskinner8968]

@@jacquelinevanderkooij4301 -hām means home. So Birmingham (Beormingasham) means the home/place (-hām) of the people (-ingas-) of Beorm.

[@MrVvulf]

As an American who lived in Gloucestershire for 3 years of my early teens, I feel your pain. But it definitely goes both ways. For example, Maryland is almost universally pronounced "Mary-Land" by Brits. But, it is actually pronounced "Mair-uh-lund" or even "Mair-uh-lun" by natives of that state.

[@Tsotha]

@@daivskinner8968 Same root as "Hjem" in modern Danish and "Heim" in modern German.

[@Hvitserk67]

Today's Danish and Norwegian words for "guess" are "gætte" and "gjette" respectively (from old norse "gæta"). In Danish you can say "Gæt mit navn" (guess my name). It sounds somewhat similar. Mange takk for veldig interessante videoer :)

[@ronaldderooij1774]

The word "window" is also from Norse origin. (wind eye, as for opening where wind blows through and where you can look out).

[@antoinebeauman]

this would be a 'Windoog' in Dutch ... I think it's more beautiful than 'Raam' :)

[@antoinebeauman]

This would be a 'Windoog' in Dutch ... I think it's better (more poetic) than the word 'Raam' we use now

[@alanfraser7666]

Yep! from ON vindaugr...wind-eye. The OE was eagþyrl ...literally eye hole. I'm assuming the Anglo Saxons differentiated between a hole meaning a hollow...be it a cave or just a hole in the ground; and a hole which went clear through something, which þyrl would seem to suggest. It would be quite a useful distinction TBH.

[@Tsotha]

It would be "vindue" in modern Danish.

[@ddemaine]

One of your best videos-- and that's saying something! Derby is counter-intuitively pronounced "Dar-bi": There was a historic trend for "er" to be pronounced "ar" (in Elizabethan time, if I recall), which has stuck with some English place names. Berkshire and Clerkenwell to give two other examples, I'm sure there are others. This trend also gave us the word "parson", from "person". Excellent backdrop for the video, by the way.

[@petsdinner]

Regarding English place names, I recently drove the entire length of the country and it was so fascinating to see how the place names changed, especially how places in the north are more likely to end in -wick (e.g. Warwick, Keswick) while in the south they are more likely to end in -wich (e.g. Woolwich, Harwich), likely reflecting the historic Anglo-Norse divisions in the country. However the one thing that unites them all again is that none are pronounced how they're written! (*Worrik *kezzik *wulitch *harritch) P.S. I have a wild idea that Jorvik became York for this reason: Jorvik became semi-Anglicised back to Yorwick, pronounced like Yorrik, then York

[@mikewellwood1412]

"alas poor Yorick I knew him Horatio..."

[@geoffboxell9301]

In some Yorkshire dialects said as "Yaark".

[@JonCarlo_]

very good video thats easy to follow. thanks for making these, very interesting! also the landscapes in your videos are beautiful

[@juliaconnell]

I liked the artistic look of the black and white videos - but the landscape is so lovely grateful to see colour again - and awesome content as usual of course - this topic has been of great interest to me - thank you so much, very much appreciated

[@graeme011]

A very interesting video! It certainly answered a few of my questions, that I've had for a while. Nice background scenery, too!

[@kathartog3227]

Just became a Patreon supporter! Keep it up, Dr. Crawford.

[@WillaLamour]

Hello Dr Crawford - thank you for the wonderful video. It was very informative.

[@gnuling296]

The first grammatical treatise is so great! This author really had a linguistic understanding and left us with an invaluable text.

[@CocoAzoitei]

The best looking "ugly" person I've ever seen. Thanks for the amazing info, after learning French, German, Italian and then becoming fluent in Romanian, I learned some basic Icelandic and Swedish and found myself absolutely hooked on the idea of learning Old Norse and Old English, having no idea how connected they were! (I'm not a linguist of any kind, I'm a musician but just interested as a hobby). Only now getting into starting to learn them properly and delighted to find so much info of the highest quality for free on KZbin! Great channel…

[@MrCearl]

Yeah, it's interesting. Had Eoforwic survived in its Old English form it could've ended up as something completely different from modern York like Everwich, pronounced 'Evrich'. It would be interesting to see a hypothetical version of Modern English free from Norse influence.

[@ivarara]

It did sort of survive in icelandic "Jórvík"

[@yourmum69_420]

@@ivarara "York" comes from "Jórvík"; he's saying it would be interesting if "Eoforwic" had not been replaced by "Jórvík"

[@donk525]

Jackson, your work has provided me with an invaluable source of Old Norse etymology and history. Your videos have proven to be incredible research for my latest novel. Because of this I am going to give you a shout out in the novel! Thank you for everything you do.

[@joshmiller4152]

Great content! I have always been interested in learning other languages and more pointedly the lineage history as well.

[@Melissa-tz9hv]

One of your best, Dr. C!

[@RHS_video_club]

What a priceless gift to the public. This is the kind of thing I hope stays on the internet for generations.

[@ReidarWasenius]

Tack så mycket för dessa fina videon! De är verkligen lärorika och det är en njutning att titta på dem.

[@jessicalee-botes1107]

Wow that view is breathtaking id say its amazing to experience such a place. Also interesting vid thanks

[@mikewellwood1412]

Fascinating material. Many thanks.

[@glenmccall8854]

ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC VIDEO!!! Through my years at University, Koine Greek, Hebrew, and Cuneiform was added to my hillbilly English. Now I am trying to add Proto-Norwegian and tie them together. AMAZED by YOUR WEALTH of KNOWLEDGE

[@henrymaccus]

Wow you are a very smart and an excellent communicator!

[@jeffreyadamo]

I love that you had to guess on the word guess

[@danielgustafsson9780]

Great video! To this day, the w-sound in its original positions is still preserved in some swedish dialects and language varieties, like Elfdalian and other dalecarlian vernaculars along with some of the bothnian dialects in Norrland and some dialects in southern Västergötland

[@geoffboxell9301]

Yes I found that not only in Denmark (Wiking - not Viking) and in the speech of a mate who rode speedway here in NZ. He brought over a team of riders from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland and named the touring team Norse Vikings. He always said "Wikings" and when you challenged him it should be "Vikings" he always replied "But that is what I said!" Interestingly he was actually from the Swedish minority in Finland.

[@bradnotbread]

I live near Maldon. You can still see the causeway at low tide where the Vikings crossed from Northey Island to the mainland.

[@Tina06019]

Excellent as always,

[@fitzchivalryfarseer313]

Thanks for your work. I’m gonna visit your patreon.

[@kthornbladh]

Det här är väldigt bra min professor.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

Good job overall. One thing that might be added: English does not descend directly from the standardized form of Old English used and encouraged by the old court of Wessex, originally founded by King Alfred. Instead, English derived from the area around London and the Home Counties, where forms not commonly used in that chancellery language were common, including northern forms of English in which palatalization did not occur. These forms would have sounded much more like the Old Norse forms, so we can't be sure in every case that every case of /k/ or /g/ rather than /ch/ or /y/ is of Norse origin unless there is a double today, as is the case in shirt/skirt. Also, the vowel shift mentioned in some varieties of Southern American English is no longer productive, and has not been for about 50 years, give or take. Older spoken Southern American English did feature the minophthkngization of the diphthong /ai/ to /aa/, but at about the time of the Civil Rights Movement, this began to shift, with white speakers adopting the diphthong again, while black speakers generally continued to use that monophthong. Simultaneously, white Southerners adopted a more rhotic pronunciation, further marking a difference in speech, as black American speech remains largely non-rhotic. An easy example marking how social interactions can force speakers to innovate or change their speech habits, just as they did a thousand years ago in England.

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

HJAA sure. The Old South dialect used by most peiple, black and white and mixed, from sometime around the turn of the twentieth century up to the sixties of so, often substituted a broad /a/ for the diphthong /ai/, as I mentioned. This was exceptionally common in the spoken registers at the top and bottom of the speech continuum, so that rich and affluent white speakers and the black people who worked for them shared many speech habits, while white middle income people often used a rather different phonology. So you might hear the following sentence at a party: May I introduce my wife to you? My godparents were of the generation in question, and my godfather would pronounce this as: /Mey aa intra-dyūs maa waaf ta you/. Approximately. Or this: My dog got out of his pen last night. /Ma dawg got awtta hiz pinn lass naat/. As well as this: Our homecoming is spread out over three days next week. /aa howmkommin' iz sprey-id awt ohva thrī dayz next week/. The pronunciation shown (sorry for the poor phonetcs, but maybe you get the idea) was fairly common before the sixties among many whites, and is similar to the stage dialect heard in Gone with the Wind, for example. Most of those people are dead now, and few whites still speak this way. You can see that only a slight shift among blacks who speak only African-American Vernacular English, mostly in intonation, is required to show their speech community. This is typical of the speech heard in much hip-hop and rap. I no longer live in the South, so anytime I want to hear the language I grew up hearing, I just go to my black friends or an African-American business or restaurant: they speak something like the language I grew up surrounded by. Southern English is still rather different to General American, but not as much as it was when I was a boy.

[@BarryBishop]

Native Texan here. I can attest that the monophthong is alive and well. I'm 41 and there are many younger than me that say the long I sound as "aa". We tend to be rural but it is a general Texan thing.

[@wenqiweiabcd]

I read somewhere that modern Standard English mostly comes from Mercian Old English. How accurate is this statement?

[@jeffreyoliver4370]

The Saxon standard was based on West Saxon as used around the court in Winchester. Mercian features are present in many surviving documents, as are other dialectal variants. Middle English developed under the domination of Anglo-Norman French, emerging as a new form of English by the 1300s. The speech of London is the basis for Early Modern English, although there remain many Englishes in spoken use to our day. There are many theories as to how English became what it is: various creolization or koiné ideas. London is located where many different dialects come into contact. Most would agree that the basis is an East Midland dialect with features from some others, even from northern dialects. London being the center of government, commerce, and near the dominant universities meant that people from across England would travel there, ultimately leaving a mark on the local speech community.

[@EvgeniyShmukler]

Thank you, sir. It was indeed interesting.

[@kaptnhansenpresidentjamaic9577]

19:52 “If your Highschool experience was anything like mine” I love this humour

[@ErasmusPrime239]

Hello there Doctor, I have a question, How similar is Old English to the other Germanic languages that existed roughly at the same time, for example how similar is old English to the Visigothic language or the Frankish language? Would it be very mutual intelligible or not? Would they have the same structure like old English? How about the Vandalic language? Is it also written like old English?

[@saftobulle]

The sk-sh cognates are fun because there are so many of them still in the modern languages. Shall-skall (should-skulle) Shell-skal Shower-skur Wash-vaska Shit-skit Shot-skott Shake-skaka Shame-skam Ash-aska Flesh-fläsk Shape-skapa?? Not sure about that one because we seem to lack the noun variety in Swedish but the verbs have similar enough meanings that they could be. Should also be noted that in Swedish and Norwegian, the sk isn’t pronounced sk before a soft vowel (e i y ä/æ ö/ø) on accentuated syllables. In Norway, northern Sweden and Finland it becomes a similar sound to the English sh, but for most Swedish speakers it becomes a throaty sound similar to the Spanish j-sound or the German ch-sound.

[@nechtandalriata9916]

Thank you Bard...

[@Bastillian]

Being born and bred in Yorkshire, a former Viking kingdom, i am acutely aware of ancient strands of kinship with Danes. This nourishes my interest in ON and OE. I regard the defeat of Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge and the subsequent victory of the Normans as an enduring tragedy. Knut deserves his "The Great" epithet for his North Sea Empire, more than Alfred of Wessex, who merely survived. Perhaps Scandinavia and England will forge greater bonds which a thousand years of separation has not quite severed. But first Danes and Swedes need to leave the EU.

[@mikewellwood1412]

Yes...the UK should have stuck to EFTA and not joined the EEC...

[@faithlesshound5621]

Maybe if suicidal ideation increases in Scandinavia?

[@sunshinesilverarrow5292]

Thank you!🌞

[@danjustice1751]

Very interesting to think that the Norse and English could pretty easily understand each other with a little bit of practice. The part about learning the standard sound deviations is often helpful with increased mutual intelligibility. For instance, I speak Danish and can understand a fair bit more of spoken Swedish by learning the ways in which their sounds deviate from ours (for example, the prefix un- is o- in Swedish instead of the Danish u-, and the g in "gö" becomes a "sh" sort of sound, while it does not in Danish "gø", for example, göra versus gøre)

[@lividlivius7618]

3:30 then Modern German meets them all right in the middle, "Wir sind Wikinger".

[@gunslinger11bravo]

I grew up in a bi-lingual household in northern New Mexico where people speak the oldest extant form of Spanish in the world. The best analogy I can make is that for me listening to someone from Spain speak Spanish is a lot like me listening to an Australian speak English. The thing I enjoyed the most about my linguistics courses in college was the study of glottal chronology.

[@notme1797]

Just curious is there a name to it or perhaps some article on it I may read?

[@brettmeldahl4456]

Thanks!

[@maxsvensson5891]

We have folklore and Saxo Grammaticus that have some East Scandinavian mythology. Like the story of Thor getting his hammer back was told until the 1600-hundreds in Sweden.

[@maxsvensson5891]

One of the persons writing it down was Erich Sparrman, for Riksantikvarieämbetet år 1678. The woman that knew it was born 1601-2. She was singing ballads so at that time many must have herd it and known it.

[@ivarara]

Was Saxo Grammaticus cited in Sweden? Some icelandic manuscripts ended up in Sweden. Is it possible to see the text of the ballad you mention in the internet?

[@Kitty39ish]

Ekki ertu bara myndarlegur madur, en vel gefinn lika. LOL. I enjoyed this video very much, thank you for making it.

[@jonko82]

Really interesting video. I'm very interested in how Old Norse affected English and vice versa. Also, one thing I do for fun is that I pick a word in Icelandic and I try to guess it's English cognate without looking it up. It's not that hard most of the time. My mind was blown when I learned that the English word 'queen' is related to 'kven' in Icelandic as in the word 'kvenmaður' which means 'woman' or 'female'.

[@swinhelm389]

So does that mean that 'kvenmaður' comes from 'queen-man'? Weird.

[@hansmahr8627]

Kvinne is also the general word for woman in Norwegian (and in the other continental Scandinavian languages I believe), coming from Old Norse kona, the genitive plural of which was kvenna (it's still the same in Modern Icelandic). In Proto-Germanic it was *kwenǭ and in Proto-Indo-European *gʷḗn (see Greek γυνή, as in gynecology or Russian жена́). In the Proto-languages it just meant woman. Already in Old English cwēn had its modern meaning but it could also mean woman. However, the latter meaning disappeared in Middle English as far as I know.

[@ivarara]

Weird, no, icelandic and the nordic languages are extremely logical, and in fact these languages are very well alive and when a new word is needed one can most often make up a good one or reuse and old one. Since you mentioned "kvenmaður as queen-man" the "drottning" (queen) is simply a female version of the "drottinn" (lord) who is the ruler of the "drott" (man).

[@wenqiweiabcd]

So a female is a "wifeman" in English and a "queenman" in Scandinavian lol

[@Neophema]

Nah, just queen in Scandinavian. ;) Kvinne/a.

[@npickard4218]

This was an amazing video. It wasn't too "heavy" but it was short and light and comparative. Even somebody who is not a linguist would be interested in this video. Of course, the Wyoming background makes it groovy too! It'd probably be better to see an Icelandic fyord but, hey, Wyoming is the next best thing. LOL

[@LooniJoose]

Dr Crawford's hair is always on point. Lol

[@matfalarn]

Man I'd love to hear you speak modern Norwegian. Do you have any such videos?

[@Frosmad]

You seem like the real life version of Indiana Jones, cool video btw!

[@diannepetersson1940]

My husband and Í were börn and ive in an ancient Danish fishing town on the East coast of England, Grimsby. Bý being the Danish word for town or village pronounced Beu, Gríms town Grimsbeu

[@bendthebow]

There's a lot of Norse in Scots Gaelic and in the place names in my part of the world. I went to Iceland and was shocked the place names they have in common between the Hebrides

[@Bjowolf2]

Tak for en god video, Mr. Crawford - vi [ve] er [air] man(g)e her(e) i(n) Skandinavien, som (who, OE swa ) ofte ser og lær{n}er af dine ( your, thine ) fine videoer. Det er en god ting (th)at så [so] mange ( many, OE monege! ) folk her(e) FØLger (fol-low) alle disse fantastiske videoer om vore old-Nordiske tunge og (and) alle {v}ore (our) nær [nair] (near(ly)) identiske (w)ord(s), så (th)at alle kan se hvad deres mening er ("are", is) efter just få [foa] ( (a) few) sekunder. Hav en god dag [daygh], min frænde 😉b

[@jonh8488]

it's fun to see the spelling of the old English Friday reminds of how we pronounce it in the Faroe islands .... pronunced Frígadæ ( a strong english G sound)

[@hennobrandsma4755]

Why cannot thorpe be Anglo-Saxon? It’s well-attested in other West-Germanic varieties like Dutch “dorp”, German “Dorf”, WFrisian “terp”.

[@MasiukA]

It might have cognate similarities in other Germanic languages but I assume "thorpe" is the direct borrowing from Norse.

[@hennobrandsma4755]

I think it already existed in Anglo Saxon and would have been identical to the Old Norse form, so why would it be a borrowing?

[@sameash3153]

Yes, this one is confusing. The word for village in both languages is þorp, and it's not a borrowing in either language, they both ended up with the same word separately from the original root þurpa in PGm.

[@existentiavirae]

The wind noise in the microphone was the only element detracting from an otherwise fascinating and well-presented talk.

[@aaronaltizer3288]

interesting to hear you mention the southern US "I". Some of us (I'm from West Virginia) use both. Studying my own speech, we use the Southern or 'flat' I in most words. But use your more standard or 'round' I when it's followed in the same syllable by a voiceless consonant. So 'rye' and 'rise' have a different vowel sound than 'rice'. The examples you give here, i.e. 'night' and 'fly' show the same difference. I say 'night' the same as you do, but 'fly' I pronounce with the flat Southern vowel.

[@StaraptorEagle]

Thank you for making this knowledge public. Shouldn’t need a degree to learn this!

[@Nikita-jj2lk]

Hi i want to make a sentence in old english and there isn't a right translator so if i put words in old english but put them in a modern english word order in a sentence that would be right or wrong ? I be thankful if you help me please.

[@christosmpourazanis9284]

And a question Is it possible for an archaeologist of classical or Mycenaean era to study abroad Norse or Anglo-Saxon archaeology? I'm still a graduate student of archaeology in Athens but I love as well the history, languages and archaeology of Germanic people so I'd like to combine that with what I already study as something extra

[@brianknezevich9894]

Excellent video as always. Any chance you could get your audio a bit louder so I'd have an easier time hearing you over the kids?

[@CocoAzoitei]

I have the same problem with my kids and I highly recommend noise cancelling headphones if you can afford to splash out on a pair!

[@Aeslyth]

Any chance you could do an old english havámal?

[@UltimateNinjaSrb]

Great video! P.S. I think the 'windig' in that OE line should be a strong adjective: 'windigum *māde on'. And I think the 'allu' should be 'alla'? (At least in textbook OE). :-) P.S. I am not coming after you!

[@christosmpourazanis9284]

Hello Dr Crawford! Where can I find old Norse grammar books for the variations of old Norse before the 12th century, around Viking age?

[@noahriding5780]

Do you also have a video talking about the difference between old english and anglo saxon? (They seem pretty similar, so it feels confusing.)

[@mikewellwood1412]

So far as I know, they are simply two terms meaning the same thing.

[@dianeteeter6650]

Stay safe, crazy weather happening in your area

[@lanaharlow2515]

Ugly and awkward at high school? If that were true, it’s not now. My version of perfect

[@MSchmitz77]

Would the similarity between Old English and Old Norse also be analogous to that of German and Dutch?

[@Darrenski]

Mãde might have meant maiden, as my mum used to call the old wooden rack she dried clothes on. We are in what was old northhumbria.

[@erikeriksson3615]

Thank so much/ Tack så mycket/ for all word's and name/ för alla ord och namn.❤️🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇮🇪🇺🇲🇨🇦🇸🇪🇸🇯🇮🇸🇫🇮🇫🇴🇩🇰🇦🇽👑🗡️🛡️💪⚔️ Knut THE Mighty rule's almost the whole Norse world. Commen ancestry, history and culture.⚔️💪🤗🕺💃👑 We should have a great empire together 👑

[@JangoBlader]

The Anglo Celtic Norse Empire

[@andrewraymond3657]

I watched a couple of your videos and can’t help but think of this silly question; when you attend conferences overseas, do you wear your cowboy hat? Is it difficult to bring with you on an airplane?

[@vegvisir6695]

My last name is Howe. It is my understanding that in Old English it means “hill dweller”. Is this accurate? Thank you for your time. I truly enjoy the lessons.

[@alanfraser7666]

It's not just NE England. I'm over on the NW coast in the small town of Formby. This was spelled Fornebei in the Domesday Book...very close to the name for Oslo airport ...Fornebu. Both likely mean Forni's homestead. There are plenty of other Norse or Anglo Norse place names within a few miles too. Ainsdale (Einnar's dale), Crosby (Cross byr), Ormskirk, Kirkdale etc. Everton uses the same element as in your York example; Eofor tun...boar farm; and the famous racecourse at Aintree is also Anglo Norse for solitary tree...an treow. Maritime terms are a very rich source of cognate words. Mast, of course; and sail; even ship / skip. The American term dumpster is skip in UK English, because that's what it looks like. "Man overboard!" is pronounced almost exactly the same in Norwegian. Starboard itself refers to the side of the ship where the steer board was located...styrbord in Danish and Norwegian; and the ambidextrous OE use of tree and beam can still be seen in terms for the uppermost spars...crosstrees. Then there's all the associated words like swim, sink, float, deep...and drown. Incidentally, I've been to Boulder a few times for business and leisure. Lovely town. Can never get over how, after nearly 2000 miles of pancake flatness, the Rockies just rise straight up at the end of Walnut street. :)

[@mikewellwood1412]

Well of course, the Vikings "invaded" the north and north west of England, as well as the north east (and Ireland of course). My parents and extended family are from the north west, and we often visited there when I was growing up, and was made fully aware of the many place names of Viking origin, both official names and also local names, such as "Oosteds" (probably never written down, so that's just my spelling for it) from something like "hus steds" meaning "housesteads" or "homesteads".

[@gavinrogers5246]

Is there another way North Germanic could slip earlier into Old English via the Jutes? Speaking of which, were the Jutes the most northerly West Germanic speakers heavily influenced by North Germanic, or were they the southwestern-most North Germanic speakers heavily influenced by West Germanic?

[@antoinebeauman]

Interesting 'Ok' in Old Norse means the same as 'And' in Old English. I'm Dutch and 'Ook' in Dutch means 'Also' in English and the Dutch 'En' means 'And' in English.

[@Greenfield-yf1wh]

OK is nothing to do with OE nor ON. It is an abbreviation of "Oll Korrect" and was invented in the 19th century.

[@justinpool8628]

What's a good book for predicate translatability kus I'm making up words for fun.

[@LeoxandarMagnus]

So would the word shield be an example of shifting to the ‘sh’ sound as opposed to ‘sk’?

[@rudde7918]

You can still see it in the Norse cognates' spelling. Swedish "sköld" means shield.

[@andeve3]

The Old English "scield" looks more like Modern German "schild" than Old Norse "skjoldr".

[@rudde7918]

Andreven That's because Old English and German both have the sound change of /sk/ becoming /sh/.

[@gnuling296]

Well, sometimes the text book forms of the languages reflect features of the spoken language more clearly than the manuscripts did. (For example, if the long-short vowel pairs are not distinguished, this can reduce intelligibility.) The extent of features of the spoken language not appearing in manuscripts can be seen by comparative linguistics or texts like the first grammatical treatise. If you want to make a statement about the intelligibility of two extinct languages, you should always work with a reconstructed phonological inventory. It's problematic that we have to know what it looked like at a specific point in time, when in other cases (that are not about intelligibility) it is usually sufficient to know what feature is older than another.

[@fab006]

One question: in long /o:/, you seem to slightly diphthongize into [oʊ]. Is that part of the reconstructed pronunciation, or modern English accent shining through? Same perhaps for /e:/ as [eɪ] in “wē”.

[@sameash3153]

He's an American. It's very hard for us to remove those diphthongs. He does a good job most of the time pronouncing them as monophthongs but sometimes stuff like that just comes out because our mouths have been working that way since we were babies. I personally share the same struggle.

[@hennobrandsma4755]

West Frisian has wytsingen, so palatalised. This suggests OEng. probably had a palatal sound as well.

[@iceomistar4302]

Not surprising since on the continents the Angles, Danes and Jutes all lived in close proximity with one another, there are even legends of the Danes and Angles interacting long before the fifth century when the Angles, Jutes and Saxons started colonising Britain and Friesland, Old English can really be considered the middle ground linguistically between the West Germanic and North Germanic diaects.

[@antoinebeauman]

I thought Norse was maybe closer to English than nowadays Dutch ..... but if I take a look at all the example words. English - Dutch Worm - Worm Wolf - Wolf Word - Woord Wound - Wond Weather - Weer Book - Boek Two - Twee Go - Ga Sister - Zuster (Zus) Stood - Stond There - Daar West - West Glass - Glas Come - Kom Thing - Ding Give - Geef Wife - Wijf (Vrouw) Brother - Broeder (Broer) Egg - Ei He - Hij She - Zij Some English words have their roots in northern Germanic and others in western Germanic. Like the beautiful word 'Window' what means 'Eye for the Wind' in Norse. In Dutch we use 'Raam' or 'Venster'

[@trondranorquoy5154]

But these are all examples of words which are common to all Germanic root languages, including modern Scandianvian ones. If you actually compare the pronunciation and slang words outside London and the south east, its a lot closer to Scandinavian. e.g. give becomes "gie". Home becomes "hame". House becomes "hus". Out becomes "ut". To becomes "ti". Moving house to a new home becomes "flitting hus ti a new hame" or if you spell it in a more Scandinavian way "flyting hus ti a nu hjem". Which is almost the same as modern Norwegian. There are many other examples. In Aberdeenshire, a woman or girl is a "quine". Today is "I-day". Tomorrow is "I-moren". An older female, or one from your own locality, has long been known as that all encompassing word, "hen". And so on. I wish someone would make a collection of Scandinavian sounding words in the majority of Britain, outwith the southeast. It took me a long time to realise that a horsefly was the same thing as a "clegg"!

[@molecatcher3383]

@@trondranorquoy5154 Most of the "slang" words (I disagree with the term slang) are still part of the Scots language which developed from Northumbrian Anglian with a heavy Old Norse influence. The North of England once spoke in much the same manner but today it now speaks a more standard (southern) kind of English albeit with a strong accent. Scots was also isolated from England politically for hundreds of years so the Scots language avoided many of the language changes that happened in England. Here are a few more Scots words with Norse cognates: redd (to clean/tidy up) = rydde ; bairn - barn (child) ; braw = bra ; mair = mer (more); speir = spørre (ask) etc. There are text books and dictionaries of Scots language and words. I have "The Concise Scots Dictionary", published by Aberdeen University Press. It gives the gives the origin of all the words, including those of Norse origin.

[@raskolnikov9067]

Got your cheat sheet in the hat?

[@ivarara]

he is just sweating, (sveittur á enninu) :)

[@ingvarharaldsson677]

This video could be topped only by comparison of Old Norse, Old English and Old High German!))

[@DrINTJ]

Not awkward or ugly, but would you please explain where German and Dutch fall in this relationship?

[@MDE1992]

With your knowledge of Old Norse, would you say that Scandinavian languages are closer to English, than Dutch is? Usually I hear Dutch is closer, but as a Dutchman I also see striking similarities between English and Scandinavian languages, especially in the grammatical structure.

[@morvil73]

Historically, in terms of language development English and Dutch are ‘closer’ in that they shared more changes from the common Proto-Germanic ancestor. Later English was heavily influenced by the Viking-period Norse, so this highlights some of the similarities between English and Scandinavian. Suffice it to say, it’s complicated ;-)

[@mikewellwood1412]

@@morvil73 We also have to consider in the mix Frisian (spoken in coastal parts of what are now The Netherlands and Germany).

[@faithlesshound5621]

@@morvil73 Early Old English and Old Dutch were half-sisters, as were later Old English and Old Norse, but after that English was fostered by French.

[@aharonfernandez6359]

Italians and Spanish underatand eachother pretty good actually

[@Bbq7272]

I like the example sentence we are Vikings. Yes the men standing in front of you with their battle axes and all your gold and silver in their arms are explaining who they are.

[@denisevast2273]

Yeah, I know what you mean about the high school thing

[@happymelon271]

It would be cool to have a detailed account of how Norse influenced the dialects of modern English spoken in the British isles. I'm from North East England and I often encounter conflicting statements about whether the distinctive features of our accent and lexicon can be explained by the retention of features from Norse or Old English.

[@iainbowie3945]

Is it just me or are the more recent offerings very quiet? I had a lot of difficulty hearing this one.

[@drithligh]

Iain Bowie It sounds loud to me.

[@AltrightBuddha]

So manngi actually means no man or no one. In modern norwegian/danish "mange" means many. Is there any correlation perhaps a "false friend"? I've noticed, when learning Icelandic, that some of the words scandinavian languages share with old norse have changed meaning.

[@robinviden9148]

'Mange' really is the plural form of 'mang' (as in 'mang en') which is from Middle Norwegian 'mangr' which in turn probably is from Old East Norse. The English cognate is 'many' (Anglo-Saxon 'maneġ'). Both 'mangr' and 'maneġ' come from Proto-Germanic *managaz meaning 'many'. So there probably hasn't been a time when 'mang' meant 'no one'. The Icelandic cognate to Norwegian 'mang' and English 'many' is 'margur' (probably from Old West Norse 'margr').

[@ivarara]

Some words actually have switched, in icelandic "dýna" is where one lies on in bed and pulls over him self "sæng" in danish this is turned over, the danes lie on the "seng" and pull "dyne" on to them. There are several more words that have switched meaning in danish/icelandic but I am not so familiar with norwegian and swedish that I can tell.

[@robinviden9148]

Isn't Icelandic dýna a 'mattress'? Mattress in the Scandinavian languages is madras (Dan.) and madrass (No. and Swe.). Seng (No. and Dan.) and säng (Swe.) means 'bed'. Dyne (No. and Dan.) means 'duvet', but Swedish dyna means 'cushion' (in Swedish, the word for duvet is täcke).

[@ivarara]

Yes, dýna would be a mattress, but mattress is hardly used in icelandic, and I don't quite recall similar word. I also suspect that the present english word "roof" might also have evolved from "hróf" but a hróf was some undertaking in the place were one landed his ship on the coast, to make sure the ship would be safe while stored there, and this would not have been a house. In Cædmons Hymn hróf is mentioned, but now God has made the sky to a sort of a harbour i.e. hrof and since the sky is above it turns into a roof. But, I am not sure how old the word roof is.

[@robinviden9148]

Roof (from OE hrōf) and hróf are cognates. Both descending from Proto-Germanic hrōfą (which meant 'roof'). OE hrōf was not a Norse loan, and it looks like it's the Icelandic word that's gotten a more specific meaning.

[@tamasmarcuis4455]

I always wonder why Scots is completely ignored in this subject. It's closer to Old English and has significantly more Norse words. Even excluding later Norwegian, Danish and Dutch borrowings.

[@inidbil7277]

I didn't know the Marlboro man was a linguist professor