The Billinge dialect

[Treffie]

That area was heavily Scandinavianised in comparison to my still rather Anglian part of the shire. It might also be worth noting that the area round Billinge has an unusually high survival rate of Welsh toponymy. They had barely changed from Welsh to English by the time the Norse turned up - no wonder they sound different!

Really? How intriguing!

[Hilding]

Hehe. And then, reading Norwegian, Danish and Dutch, is like reading misspelled swedish, in the same fashion

So, no wonder, Scandinavians become very fluent in English and from a very young age. The languages are so related!
And Scandinavian, being an older form, makes it logical that Scandinavians can very easily learn English, but the English cannot so easily learn Scandinavian.

Thoughts?

Scandinavians and the people of todays Great Britain could talk to eachother without interpreters back in the viking era, it is suspected that the dialects of course would have varied but the language back then was pretty much the same actually. Probably as swedish and norwegian is today. The major differences are actually the more modern words. Spoon and fork (sked and gaffel) for instance differ alot while knife/kniv don't.

You also forget that we scandinavians are constantly being americanized. We see american films, learn english in early school classes etc. I believe that englishmen would be pretty good at speaking swedish aswell if they had the same swedish influence as we have influence from america.

[Absinthe]

Scandinavians and the people of todays Great Britain could talk to eachother without interpreters back in the viking era,

Really?! That's amazingly interesting...

[Hilding]

Really?! That's amazingly interesting...

Atleast that is what Fredrik Lindström claimed in the swedish tv-series Värsta Språket. He answered the question to why there are so many words that are pretty much the same in both swedish and english.

[Osweo]

Really?! That's amazingly interesting...

That's why so much free borrowing was able to take place between us. Such vitally necessary words as she, they, and so on.

There are plenty of instances in our old chronicles and poetry, of conversations between English and Norsemen. Often shouted over battlefields or from clifftops, so the differences can't have been that profound!

[Hrolf Kraki]

Atleast that is what Fredrik Lindström claimed in the swedish tv-series Värsta Språket. He answered the question to why there are so many words that are pretty much the same in both swedish and english.

Snorri also makes mention of the mutual intelligibility of Old Norse and Old English in the Heimskringla.

In fact, I believe Harald Gilli was born in the British Isles and when coming to Norway, people could understand him but said that his speech was funny.

[Osweo]

Snorri also makes mention of the mutual intelligibility of Old Norse and Old English in the Heimskringla.

In fact, I believe Harald Gilli was born in the British Isles and when coming to Norway, people could understand him but said that his speech was funny.

Interesting, I looked on Wiki:

Haraldr gillikristr) (1103 – 1136), king of Norway, was born in Ireland.

Thanks for bringing his example up, but he's an example more of another phenomenon, that of mixing with the Irish, the creation of the Hiberno-Norse, Norse Gaels, or 'Gall Gaidhel' (Foreign Gaels, who gave their name to Galloway in south west Scotland).

This man probably had an odd Irish accent.

Eeee, nasty business all these bastard half-brothers turning up all the time. Norway's successsion laws were not the most exemplary, if you could even say they existed as such!

[Heimmacht]

I think Danish is the easiest to read for the Dutch from all the Scandinavian languages.

[Hrolf Kraki]

I think Danish is the easiest to read for the Dutch from all the Scandinavian languages.

Coming from a background in English and German, I also find this to be true.

If anyone has interest, I recommend a book called "The Mother Tongue" by Bill Bryson. The book recounts much of the origins of the English language and the influences that shaped its current form.

[Grafbob]

It's hardly surprising that English is so like the Scandinavian languages is some ways. The Norsemen conquered at least a third of England and all of Scotland and lived there for a long time. Even people who lived close to the "Danelaw" would have heard the language and no doubt their Anglo-Saxon slowly changed. There are not a huge number of direct loan words from Norse, but it seems likely that having two vaguely similar Germanic languages in close contact would have had an effect. My guess is that this is when English started to lose its genders (we used to have three, like modern German). During the short time I spent learning Swedish - 3 months over 50 years ago - I was, however, surprised at how difficult it is to pronounce for an English speaker.