Is English a North Germanic language?

[TheOldNorth]

Most of them are only used in formal speech though.

makes me wonder what the percentages would really be in informal speech

[Gwydion]

English is indeed West Germanic but was strongly influenced by North Germanic languages.

Interestingly I've read that Anglian was likely already closer to North Germanic languages compared to Saxon and it so happens it was Anglian territories where the Danes/Norse settled and further influenced the language.

[Peterski]

It's likely that all the old Norse words where just from the higher class Norse men in the Danelaw

There was large-scale settlement of Scandinavians - women, men and children, whole families - in Danelaw. Not just some "elite". That's why there are so many Scandinavian placenames (villages with Old Norse names) there.

Remember that Scandinavia had huge problems with flooding at that time, which is why they were forced to live on terps (terps were mounds made of huge piles of horse, cow and dog shit):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terp

^^^
When you live on a pile of stinking crap, any opportunity to emigrate is good - even to a cloudy depressive place like England.

[TheOldNorth]

There was large-scale settlement of Scandinavians - women, men and children, whole families - in Danelaw. Not just some "elite". That's why there are so many Scandinavian placenames (villages with Old Norse names) there.

Remember that Scandinavia had huge problems with flooding at that time, which is why they were forced to live on terps (terps were mounds made of huge piles of horse, cow and dog shit):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terp

^^^
When you live on a pile of stinking crap, any opportunity to emigrate is good - even to a cloudy depressive place like England.

yeah but even if so, they only contributed to about 5-10% of the overall gene pool, maybe slightly more do to them already having a lot of genetic similarity to the more Germanic blooded Englishmen

[TheOldNorth]

English is indeed West Germanic but was strongly influenced by North Germanic languages.

Interestingly I've read that Anglian was likely already closer to North Germanic languages compared to Saxon and it so happens it was Anglian territories where the Danes/Norse settled and further influenced the language.

likely true, germanic maybe grouped in branches, but there was definitely some early overlap in certain features

[Peterski]

they only contributed to about 5-10% of the overall gene pool

How do you know this? Some scientists and other people have claimed that it is impossible to tell apart Anglo-Saxon DNA from Danish DNA.

So if the modern English people are for example 30% Germanic, we can't be certain how much of it is Danish and how much Anglo-Saxon.

They might as well be more Danish Viking than Saxon.

[TheOldNorth]

How do you know this? Some scientists and other people have claimed that it is impossible to tell apart Anglo-Saxon DNA from Danish DNA.

So if the modern English people are for example 30% Germanic, we can't be certain how much of it is Danish and how much Anglo-Saxon.

They might as well be more Danish Viking than Saxon.

and that's why I said possibly slightly more considering they were both similar groups anyway. 5-10% is considered 'exclusively' Scandinavian in origin, meaning a quarter of English blood could be Scandinavian for all we know, although I'd estimate probably between a fourth and a sixth on average

[TheOldNorth]

Poor Saxons got cucked by Charlemagne in Saxonia Proper and by Vikings in Anglo-Saxonia:

no, the vikings conquered mostly Anglish lands, the Saxons of Wessex remained independent of the Danelaw

[Jägerstaffel]

... with a comparatively tiny old Norse word count

It's interesting how the Norse words that entered English are such core words though. Like they and die and take and leg and wrong and give. These aren't words for complex things that had no Saxon equivalent. They're words that people would have known from a very young age.

English really got mangled in its relative infancy.

[tipirneni]

no, the vikings conquered mostly Anglish lands, the Saxons of Wessex remained independent of the Danelaw

Oxford https://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/ study found Viking genetic-signature is limited to places near Yorkshire