narcissus1 (narcissus1) wrote in linguaphiles,
2013-01-02 23:51:00

On the roots of the Modern English

I stumbled across this interesting article the other day, about how English might actually be a Scandinavian language and not a West Germanic language. According to this theory, Middle English and Old English are not directly related. When the Scandinavians arrived their language stuck, with the Scandinavian languages borrowing from Old English instead of the other way around, forming Middle English as Old English died out.

I wonder if any of you have come across similar theories before, because it's totally new to me. Unfortunately I've forgotten too sizeable a chunk of the History of the English Language course I took many semesters ago to really weigh in on this, but this theory has certainly piqued my curiosity.
Tags: english

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