OLD NORSE IN ENGLISH: The words the Vikings left behind
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The Vikings raided, pillaged... and changed our language. Their Old Norse words invaded English and many remain to this day (I used one right there - watch to find out which!). In this video, discover:
⚔️ The everyday words that the Vikings gave us.
🥚 Why they stopped us confusing our eyes and our eggs.
🛡️ The Old Norse place names that are still around.
🪓 The names for people that come from Old Norse.
📅 The days of the week that we get from the Vikings.
⚧ How the Vikings are changing gender politics.
...and loads more!
#Vikings #etymology #OldNorse
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==CHAPTERS==
0:00 Introduction
0:54 Rosetta Stone
2:09 Old Norse and Old English
3:47 Viking pronouns - gender politics (non-binary they, them, their)
4:39 Viking verbs - "are", "take", "dazzle", "crawl", "guess", "trust"
5:57 Violent words
6:22 Everyday Old Norse
6:57 Shirt and skirt
8:08 Doubling up - "egg" and "ey"
9:15 Old Norse place names
9:54 York - gates, bars and pubs
10:29 Scottish place names
11:08 Old Norse dialect words
11:53 Viking surnames
12:37 Days of the week
13:43 Goodbye
Thanks so much for watching! I'd love some good Scandinavian language facts. If you have any, pop them below. And don't forget to check out my limited time offer from Rosetta Stone of a Lifetime Subscription for $179 instead of $299: tryrosettastone.com/robwords-1
I always had spelling problems in school and my mom said "you're American, just try and don't stress too much."
See also church and kirk. If you’re that way out you can trace a line from Odin to the Sanskrit word for sky father, which is not dissimilar to the Latin term for those words.
I like your channel because it’s all about White people and things White people invented. You can’t see Whites cast in a positive light in the media anymore.
I think for the "sky" there must have been some mistake during all the pillaging and raping, because "sky" means cloud, and and what you call sky is "himmel" or heaven, so I think the moral are, do not both attack others and teach them language at the same time
I'm from Norrviken (today Bohuslän) a part of the old area of Viken thought to be where the vikings got their name from. Here in Scandinavia we have mostly the same week-day-names as in the english language (as said in the video) except for saturday which is called lördag, short for lögaredagen = the day that you wash yourself.
I am a Scandinavian. A Dane. And when I learned English in school, I found it so easy because so many words in Danish, were so similar to english. Just look at the body parts. Finger is finger. Hand is hånd, Nail is negl. Hair is hår. Arm is arm. Albow is albue. Shoulder is skulder (sk). Nose is næse. Eye is øje (sounds very similar to oye). Ear is øre. Foot is fod. Toe is tå. Så there are so many words I could easily remember.
Ojo is eye and oreja is ear in Spanish. Even some similarities there
Could say the same as a Frisian or Dutch or German 😂
Same in Norwegian. "Leg" is "Ben" and "Shin" is "Legg" (going from English to Scandinavian) so that's a weird deviance. Also "Bone" is "Bein" (or "Ben" I guess). So this particular part can be a bit confusing. Vowels in Scandinavian are long by the way most often, only short if there's double consonants behind; "Ben" is a long vowel not a short one. Chin and cheek was confusing to me for the longest time. "Chin" is "Hake" and "Cheek" is "Kinn". "Chin" sounds like "Kinn" so I got the meaning of those swapped for the longest time.
Bella. Please pass your knowledge on kiddo.x xx
Elbow
I love “ransack”, because the Icelandic word “rannsaka” means “to investigate”. Kinda tells you how the Vikings “investigated” things
Ransake in Norwegian is a physical investigation as well. But then again rane means to rob 😅
Also I believe I've heard UK English speakers use the word rucksack. I know Scandinavians use that word, but don't know how you Nordics spell it. I'm American, and yes many Americans still use the word rucksack for that bag for going out, like a backpack. I know it's a completely different word than ransack, but the closeness of the sound reminded me of rucksack.
@@Anna-ftf88 In Norwegian we use "ryggsekk", its pretty much a direct translation to backpack. Rygg means back and sekk means sack/bag
Rannsaka also in Swedish!
@@Anna-ftf88"Rucksack" is only known to me as your backpack in Harvest Moon, a _very_ Japanese farming game lol
In the town in northern Jutland I grew up in, there is this tale of an elderly woman who visited her daughter in England. While the daughter and husband were at work, the old lady decided to go shopping. When later hearing about this the daughters family were impressed, because the old lady didn’t know any English. When asked how she managed, she told them that she just used a heavy northern Jutland dialect and everything was fine.
Cute story, but rather fanciful.
Honestly, my grandmother have a heavy old "middle Jutland" accent, and I realize more and more that even though she would claim that she doesn't get a word of english, her dialect is actually very, very similar to english - both in the words, as well as the word composition, she use (in the way that it differs from "modern" Danish). One thing in partucular I noticed can be shown in the phrase "Han er nede på MARKEN" ("He is down on THE FIELD"). Definite singular is shown by the "the" in english (THE field), whereas it is shown in Danish by the ending "-EN" after the word "MARK" In her dialect she would say "Han er nede å æ mark" which doesn't comply at all with the mordern way of showing definite singular, but it mimicks the english word composition - "æ" basically being use just like "the" in english. And this is just one of many examples.
@@andrewwigglesworth3030 Not at all. Go read a few Frisian sentences. It's just South of Jutland. Frisian is basically as English a foreign language can become without actually being English.
@@kebman I seem to have heard that second-hand from someone else. Very interesting. I reckon the intonation is pretty close to English, like Dutch, but not sure an English person would understand very much conversationally. 🤔
@@kebman depends which part of England. From East Anglia up to Edinburgh is more influenced by old Danish than other regions. Some older folk speaking dialect years ago might have had more in common, than ‘standard’ English and Danish speakers.
I'm from Sweden. It's always funny to see a person with a thick northern english accent and see english speakers go "what?" whereas we definitly understand some of the old words they still use. We all know england has a ton of accents but it's funny when they can be so similair to another language. I've had several instances where people think i'm from the uk, for some reason
Because of the Danelaw, you will find even North London working class have similar pronunciations in many words. I am 10% Norse. I am from London.
@@prodigygirl1 v:
When skandies become really proficient in English usually after living here for a few years they tend to take on a somewhat northern english accent
I worked for Ericsson some years back, and had the pleasure of visiting Stockholm pretty often. People I worked with there said their accents mainly depended on what English-language tv shows they watched, so some of them had American accents, while others sounded more British. One time I had a waitress in Copenhagen who sounded straight up Cockney. She said she had spent some time in that area and picked up most of her English from there.
I'm from Yorkshire and we have traditionally thought of ourselves as separate from the rest of England - lol - probably due to the Danelaw, but I recall most kings or tribes who ever held the area were pretty independent types. Loidis was a Celtic settlement but everywhere you see the Dane influence. I used to wonder as a child why old people like my grandparents seemed to use so many Scottish words, until I realised that they were just using the same Scandanavian words that the Scotts did - lol
As a Scot who has several Swedish friends, I can confirm that we still have a lot of cognates, for example bairn is cognate with Swedish barn, both meaning child. We also have quine(y), which means girl in Scotland (particularly around Aberdeen), cognate with kvinna, meaning woman, moving house is known as flitting in Scotland, cognate with flytta, also meaning to move house, braw is cognate with bra, both meaning good, and greet (to cry) is cognate with gråta
Same in danish
But there were no viking Swedes in Scotland or elsewhere. They were considered trells. All the words you mention , in Norwegian barn for child, kvinne for quine, flytting, for moving house, bra for braw, and gråte (dialect: gret) for greet, are somwhat more like Norwegian than Swedish. Especially flytting and kvinne and the dialectal gret.
@@perperald21 Yes I just used Swedish as the example because my friends are Swedish, I was talking about a connection with the Old Norse language that has survived in both of them though
@@perperald21 There are many more Scots to Norse word similarities. Here are some of them in Scots(S), Norse(N) and English(E) :- :doo(S), due(N), pigeon (E) / dram (S), dram (N) , short alcholic drink ( E) / host (S), hoste(N), cough (E) / gie(S), gi(N), give (E) / stappet (S), Stappet(N), stuffed(E) / lang(S), lang (N), long(e) / kye(S), kyr (N), cows (E) / clegg (S), klegg(N), horse fly (E).
@@notaname8140 Definition of Norse (Entry 1 of 2) 1a: NORWEGIAN sense 2
These etymology videos bring me an unreasonable amount of joy.
Likewise!!! This has quickly become one of my favorite subscriptions!
Me too Kasey!
Aye, me n aw!
W(e) Ahl agree
Simon ropers’ channel might be an interesting one for you. It’s about linguistics mainly but it’s fascinating in the same way as this channel.
As you say, 1200 years ago, the differences weren't so pronounced. Some years ago, I had an Icelandic penfriend - for those who don't know, modern Icelandic is essentially the same as Old Norse, with some words added for new inventions and ideas. Anyway, I sent my penfriend some links to pages of Old English poetry - Beowulf, The Seafarer etc, and she responded, very excited, saying, 'I can read this! To me, this looks like Icelandic with some German words included.' Now, native speakers of modern English can't get very far with Old English without taking a course in it, so that tells you something about how much English has changed over the last 1200 years, and also how little Icelandic has changed.
Languages evolve at breathtaking speed. In Holland we had to read some old Dutch classics in school: Marieke van Nimwegen en de Vos Reynaerde (11th century?). Very hard to understand. Greek friends tell me that ancient Greek, which is twice or thrice as far back, is incomprehensible to them.
Rather like Chaucer in English or Dante in Italian. I learnt Italian at university and studied Dante. I used to use many Danteesque (?) expressions in my essays which made my teachers laugh.
In Irish Gaelic, the word for skirt is "sciorta". Interesting how you can sometimes tell where the Vikings invaded based on their effect on language.
In modern danish we spell it it: skjorte
In Swedish it’s “skjorta”, but pronounced “sciorta” will work fine. Only one problem, Swedish has changed and it now means shirt. Today Swedish “kjol“ is the English skirt.
@@wilhelmloof8752 what i find interesting is that many words in old english are similar to today's german. like the example ei ey. ... but due to the scandinavian influence, these words changed and moved away a little. but this shows that the scandinavian languages first split off and then the three languages german english dutch formed from old saxon or old high german. the influence of latin and french in the high middle ages allowed a few words to move away from german. so that today's English is no longer so closely related to German and Dutch. Today it is the case that a German without having learned Dutch can understand a Dutch text to some extent. just as reversed. while it is more difficult with an English text. when I was in the Netherlands. at the North Sea coast. I read a text in Dutch. without having learned the language. I understood some things. not everything, of course, but still. I'm German.
@@wilhelmloof8752 in Danish we have "skørt" for skirt and "kjole" means dress. The word "kjol(e)" is from old Norse "kyrtill" meaning something like a tunic, it became "kjortel" which still means tunic in modern Danish and then was contracted into "kjole" and took on the new meaning of a dress.
@@tokeeriksen2425 Could this be where the word "kilt" comes from?
As someone who speaks, German, English, Swedish and Danish, this will be one of my favorits in your series. I just paused so many times to guess or find the origin before you revealed it. One of my favorite ones is "window", which in Danish is still "vindue". The Swedes and Germans however went latin and adapted "fenestra" making it "Fenster" in German and "fönster" in Swedish. And one of my favorite enlightenments when I came to Scandinavia was to find the origin of the German "vergammelt" (rotten), since "gammel" means "old" in Danish and Swedish. So something that is rotten is simply "too old" (ver-gammelt).
Yes, it's vindu in Norwegian too. The Old English was effectively eye hole (thurl). The Old Norse means wind eye. I guess the Germanic wind is related to the Latin vent.
I wonder if that is related to “gimmer” which I thought to be urban speak for old. “The old gimmer” which I interpreted as the old man.
@@alfresco8442 It’s not vindo in Norwegian, but vindu.
@@biaberg3448 Sorry, typu. ;)
Old fatmhouses in northern Germany had a " Windauge" in the thached roof. Thos word is not far from "window"
You make me remember a dear friend, who was living in Friesland (one of the provinces of the Netherlands). Fries (Frisian) is the second official language of the Netherlands, but Dutch is the first. In school we learned both English and German, so my friend was fluent in three languages, and got by in a fourth. Then he went to Sweden, and discovered he could understand most of what was going on. He found himself on the crossroads of all these Germanic languages, with Fries being an in-between to their main branches.
Languages are really the history of humankind. That's a lovely story about your friend. Thank you.
There's a funny video of Eddie Izzard trying to speak Old English to a Frisian farmer. It's pretty hilarious.
Being English and having studied German that sounds like it was probably a more profound version of my first visit to Sweden. I couldn't understand it written down, but hearing it was just on the other side of complete comprehension so the meaning seemed to filter in through my subconscious or something.
@@Milamberinx Frisian makes the difference: it is located in between the other languages, and originally stretched from our coast region north of Amsterdam, well into Denmark.
Frisian is the closest living language to Modern English.
I’m a Scot who had the great good fortune of living in Copenhagen for a couple of years and I was blown away by the strong similarity that still exists between some Scottish and Danish words 🏴🇩🇰 Kirk/kirke- bairn/barn-hoose/hus-efter/efter and flitting/flytning to name a few 😊
When I was learning Swedish from my Swedish wife, I was constantly wondering why she was using so many words and phrases from Glaswegian 🤔🇸🇪🏴
lmao - I used to wonder the same thing about my grandparents, who's northern accent was so strong they still used thee and thou in conversation. I took a German exchange student to meet them who swore that they were not speaking English at all.
I guess as a Weegie you have a double or triple advantage there since Scots held on to more of the original Germanic vocabulary then the Sootherners' English did. Though sometimes the results of this are funny. You'd probably enjoy it (sometimes) when your friends "visit you at home" but you wouldn't really want them to _hamesucken_ you, I guess.
Keep a close eye on that wife of yours. They a sneaky people them Swedes. 🤣❤️🇩🇰
@@Kazu89 😂 Yes, I mean no! In Swedish "hemsöka" is what ghosts do when they come to haunt you!
@@Gittas-tube "heimsuchen" in German.
Fun fact: in modern Swedish, the words for “they” and “them” are mostly pronounced the same way but spelled differently. Because of this, school kids are having lots of trouble knowing what word to use in a text. One of the tips teachers will tell students is to translate to English. If it would be “they” in English, it’s “de” in Swedish. If it’s “them” in English it’s “dem”. It is becoming more and more accepted to spell both words “dom” instead as that’s how they are pronounced, but it does come across as pretty informal.
I'm heartened to know that English isn't the only language whose speakers and writers suffer from pronoun homonym confusion. Sadly advising English children to translate your/you're/yore, and their/they're/there into another language would only result in blank stares and angry parents in stupid newspapers.
In fact it's really weird or even spooky that we learn how to differenciate homophonus (homophones ?) from our mother tongue by translating them into another one ; which is supposed to be well mastered ? So Swedish kids have got a better understanding of basic grammar of a foreign language than their own ? It should be the opposite situation. Futhermore, the and them are quitte close too, depinding on contractions and first phoneme of the following word. .
The trick I’ve seen taught is replacing it with jag/mig since those are intuitive and sound very different. I’d actually never heard of replacing it with they/them… very interesting!
@@neuroleptik121 it’s not spooky at all. In Swedish, the two words are used in very similar situations, and on top of that are pronounced exactly the same way. Of course it would cause confusion. If you can find an analogue that works the same way but pronounces them completely differently, it’s easier to see the difference
@@neuroleptik121 knowing in a text something is right and knowing the proper terminology to describe it are different things. Take a c1 or c2 english test and you'll get it right, throigh context and intuition. but the questions won't make sense as you dont know what they're asking about. "Which of these if the proper from of the third subjunctive?" No clue mate, but c is the only one that's not nonsense. You dont think about native grammar you feel it. Moi-meme en français, après 12 année en école je souvien rien des conjuration mais je peux parler, écouter, lire et écrire, pas du problème. Les conjuration sonne similaire lorsque c'est juste les mot écrit quan je regarde comme un enfant.
Correction (which I should have written much earlier): It seems the meaning I have been most familiar with, is an in-group usage, a further development of the meaning ‘desire’ > ‘desire for good’ > ‘love, care’. My previous statement thus would not match the common meaning of _hug._ My favourite English Viking word is _hug_ which still means _love_ in Norwegian (we also have _hugleik,_ the _-leik_ part being a suffix which creates abstract nouns). So the English word for a warm embrace, a hug, is the Norse word for love.
I should probably mention: _hug_ in this context is attraction towards something, someone.
Are the Norse word for love, and the English word for a warm embrace related to the Danish word for cosiness? I actually quite like that we have the English counterpart for -leik, if you described something as "huggly" you'd probably be understood although it's not a common word. And we do, of course, say that things are lovely.
@@Milamberinx Do you mean _hygge_ perhaps? It is just as much a word in Norwegian, and the correct pronunciation is with /y/, not too far removed from close to German ü. The etymology of _hygge_ goes back to Norse _hyggja_ which is in fact from _hug_ as you have identified.
@@CannedMan ah yes you're correct, of course, apologies.
@@Milamberinx Mostly Danish and Norwegian words are the same, just with Danish being spelt the way we would 50-100 years ago. Where you really find lots of differences, are in slang. Norwegian ‘Knepper du meg bak’ translates as ‘Will you button me up in the back?’; in Danish, the action is far more … animalistic. Many expressions and words are either completely different between the two countries, but in general, most are the same. And it could very well be that English did get _hygge_ from Danish specifically; I haven’t read the OED entry on it, but given how new it is in English, I am sure they have it down to the date.
I live in East Yorkshire and used to know an older man who often had occasion to work in Scandinavia. HIs family had been farmers for generations, so he was deeply immersed in the East Yorkshire dialect, which wass heavily influenced by the Vikings. He once told me that he and his Scandinavian co-workers could often understand each other without either of them learning the language. I don't know how true this was, but I could see it happening.
Thank you. I left a comment like this before I started reading the comments
There’s a 70s video on here from a US documentary, where a reporter interviews an old farmer in Yorkshire. The interview is interspersed with the farmer talking to locals
I follow your excellent and succinct stories from Ontario, Canada. Thanks to the settlers from the British Isles who came here 200 or so years ago, we have lots of Viking placenames in my area: Whitby, Grimsby, Burnhamthorpe and so on. I guess they did not think they were bringing a bit of Danelaw with them.
There are so many commonalities between Swedish and English even today. I love the signs in Sweden that say Plocka Upp Efter Din Hund - ie Pluck Up After Thine Hound.
🤣
I found that in Finland the Swedish on signs was a ‘friend’ compared to Finnish 😄 Could not understand ‘vedä’ on doors but I knew what ‘drag’ meant. Or even ‘kasta inte skräp’ (don’t throw rubbish).
@@Chris-mf1rm Yes, Finnish is virtually impenetrable for English speakers!
I grew up in Northumberland many years ago and the word for dog in dialect was hoond.
When I was learning Danish, it was a lot of fun finding the words they left in English, and how they changed. There are soo many words.
Ja [yah], vi [ve] kan nær [nair] tal(k)e Engelsk fra(m) dag [day(gh)] en her(e) [heir] i(n) [ee*] Danmark 😉
@@Bjowolf2 Most of the similar words are cognates because the languages are closely related. Yes, we, can, near, talk, from, day, one, here and in are all cognates, not loans.
@@NeophemaBut I never claimed that those words are loans into English - it was just to show an example of the deep similarities between our basic words as well as the similar grammatical structure at the basic level ( which is very different from that of OE ). 😉
I'm a born and bred Geordie and am aware a lot of Geordie slang words are old Norse words. I now reside in Canada and was asked by a lady in a grocery store if my wife and I were vikings. I have not lost my accent in 20 years but a lot of Canadians do struggle with my accent.
I love that about Europe. We are so much closer in terms of culture, and therefore even languages than we usually realise.
The fact that English is filled with words from almost every other country on Earth is one of the things I love about English.
The British may have colonised large swathes of the worlds land area, but we Scandies were more subtle, we colonised the minds of the whole world by sneaking our language into what became arguably the largest lingua franca. 😉
If I'm correct. English is about 80% loan words.
One English teacher once asked me why I like English and I responded with - "because there is no grammar". I got the impression he wasn't that pleased with my answer and I suppose it's because after all his task was to teach English grammar. However people who have learned Finnish and German apart from Swedish must understand what I meant.
@@hurri7720 suomalaisena joka on opiskellut ruotsia toisena kielenä ja englantia kolmantena todellakin ymmärrän mitä tarkoitat lol
“Almost every other country on Earth” is a bit of an exaggeration.
Fun fact: Sutherland all up north in Scotland is in fact the old Norse "Súðrland"; The Southern Land, as looked from Norway and by the earls who governed the region during the Jarldom of Orkney.
Interesting, because earlier the Norse called Germany Suðrvegr - South Way, as oppose to Norway (Norðr vegr) - North Way. There is more confusion, because sometimes it was just the Norwegians who were called Northmen, but then sometimes this was used for all Scandinavians. (And later it was used only for the Norwegians living in the Western part of the country.)
@@CharlesOffdensen Normans were mostly of Danish ancestry, from what I’ve heard.
@@ragnkja Dodo calls Rollo, the first Norman ruler, a Dane. Goffredo Malaterra calls him a Norwegian. Again, it seems that there really wasn't a big difference to the Franks, and perhaps to the Scandinavians themselves. Norway wasn't even a thing when Rollo was born. So now when we read about the Northmen, we don't know what is meant by that. So most often Northmen/Norsemen means Scandinavian in general, if we are talking about the Medieval age. Just like a Viking doesn't tell you if the person is from Norway, Denmark or Sweden. Probably the Danes were not coming only from Denmark either.
@@CharlesOffdensen Denmark _is_ the part of Scandinavia that’s closest to both Normandy and the Dane-law.
@@ragnkja That doesn't mean too much. People assume that England was overran by Danes, because Denmark is the closest to England. But that is just an assumption. Like I mentioned in another post, Rurik, the king who established the ruling dynasty in Russia, probably came from Jutland (part of which is in Germany today) - not the closest thing to Russia. Harald of Norway was in charge of the Varangian guard, and he was Norwegian. He was also active in Russia. So if we have examples of Vikings in Russia from both Denmark and Norway, this means that the assumption about being the closest part of Scandinavia, is not true. Furthermore Vikings attack Spain and Italy, and those are not very close to any Scandinavian country. And speaking of Spain and Italy, in the earlier epoch, Vandals had a kingdom in North Africa, even though they came from the Eastern part of Scandinavia. Lastly, Scandinavians or Germanic people themselves didn't divide in three groups - they were divided according to tribes. (The Anglo-Saxons divided them like that initially - see Widsith.) It couldn't be any other way, as until the later part of the 9. century Norway didn't exist neither as kingdom, nor even just as a name. So how could people be separated as Norwegians and Danish? Sweden, as a modern state, was established even later. Much later in fact, in the 13. century. Before that Swedish were just a part of the Eastern Norse people, one of the many tribes or tribal confederacy. (Same tribe that had a kingdom in Northwest Iberia, duchy in Southwestern Germany and held what is today Brandenburg in different times.)
I’m Scottish and years ago I was in Gran Canaria and a Swedish woman was going home and I was going to say to her “haim nu, nae mer bra(w) semester” which is both Scottish dialect and Swedish apart from semester which is understandable anyway. A friend of mine was at a music festival in Germany and him and his friends were speaking to some Swedes and when they were speaking to each other they would speak in Scottish and the Swedes told them when you speak like that we understand you better.
Some of the isles in Scotland Spoke Norwegian for 500 years it will also leave it's mark even after assimilation.
My late father had learned to read English, but didn't speak, and had married my mother who was fluent in German and had learned English and French in school, so he always let her manage the talking - actually both abroad and at home. But to my great surprise, when needed, for instance if the wife was asleep, Father managed quite well in Scotland and the north of England using a friendly attitude and the rural Scanian dialect of his childhood. A cousin had married there, and her English was truly excellent. While she had problems understanding her father in law, I think dad understood more than she did. It's easy to imagine speakers of West Germanic Anglo Saxon and North Germanic Danish or Norwegian understanding each other. Probably, it was more a matter of attitude and willingness than training. (Scanian, by the way, is the easternmost kind of Danish, since 360 years increasingly influenced by Swedish.)
@@jmolofsson you have to realise we have been spoiled by tv and radio to the point where we here in the U.K. can understand an American perfectly. I think without the constant hearing of peoples far away talking it would be difficult to converse to a person speaking English from far away. Presumably centuries ago we would have conversed in a lingua Franca with common words used to travellers and in a regional dialect to locals.
When the Duke of Northumberland visited Iceland and Greenland some of his staff who spoke with a Northumbrian dialect could converse with the locals. Geordies language includes Gannin in (In Gannin, entrance) Gannin oot (Oot ganin exit) |Yem, (Home) etc.
Never forget, that in 793AD, a group of Norse people selflessly rescued the treasures of Lindisfarne from a great fire, after the monks mysteriously and spontaneously died.
An act of mercy, really.
Did I hear "British Museum"?
@@c4standard Indeed. A selflessly performed act, truly in the British Museum kind of spirit.
It was an extremely bloody spontaneous dying that has folks scratching their heads, even today.
Personally, I blame it on Charlemagne.
It's so fun to see how the old languages have been intertwined and still live on in our modern languages. Many of those viking words are still common words in modern Swedish today. For example viking word "skyrta" is "skjorta" in swedish, and it translates to shirt. "Berserkr" is "Bärsärk", so still very similar. My surname is Johansson, so the "son/sen" surnames are still very common here. The history is still alive in our languages and our cultures.
Fun fact: Here In Sweden, people quite often grammatically struggle with 'they' (swe: 'de') and 'them' (swe: 'dem'). This probably because we've ditched the differences in spoken Swedish (we always say 'dom') but still use 'de' and 'dem' in text. However, when Swedes with this problem are told to silently translate the sentence they're about to write into English first, they tend to nail the differences. Circle of life... Cool fact: *Edit: Saw down the comments this one already was mentioned.* The English word for 'window' derives from 'vindöga' where 'vind' = "wind" and öga = 'eye'; as in an eye (on your wall) where the wind can pass through.
@jakob . . . In Brooklyn, NYC, USA 🇺🇸 accent they'd say "des (long ee) and dems."
Nowadays Americans and British cannot use they/them and related correctly. They even don't know how to choose between them/those. Just see "writers" on social media.
10:02 - Gate (Norse gata) means a road or passage, so a gap in a wall was a gate, i.e. somewhere that you could go through the wall. A bar was a thing that blocked that gap, so if the bar was in place the gate was barred - it was a barred gate
Roughly half-way across the northern edges of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park in London: we have Queen's Gate. I have been there many times, but never saw anything resembling a gate.
Which is a ' false friend' of the Dutch word for hole: gat
In Norwegian today, gate = road. So there is tons of xyzgate in Norway.
@@Mosern1977 I live in Nottingham, England which was under Danelaw and we have lots of 'gates' which are roads/streets eg Fletchergate, Wheelergate, Houndsgate.
@@kateboulton8789 - interesting. So even though "gate" no longer means "road", it is still used as "road" in these names. English language and history is complicated.
Eavesdropping is probably also a viking word. In West Gotaland you have the dialect word öfnadrop, which basically is the same. The meaning of the both words is that you stand as close to the wall of the house as the dripping rain from the roof, i.e. close enough to hear what they speak about inside the house.
Literally, you stand under the eaves, which is the part of the roof which overhangs the walls.
Gutnish?
That's interesting, never thought of that origin for "eavesdropping" before... But that origin could've come from anywhere. Anywhere where buildings have eaves anyway.
It's said that during the second world war people from Cumberland who were billeted to Iceland discovered that they could make themselves understood to the locals by using their broadest Cumbrian dialect. I'd love to know to what extent that was true.
Me too!
The West Jutland dialect (including the Angle-area) posses many similarities to English that standard Danish doesn't. It is said that fishermen from both sides of the North Sea could communicate.
@@hassegreiner9675 Wow! Thank you for that.
Me too
I like your videos so much ! So many things come to mind, just one: shirt - skirt - skyrte - SCHÜRZE or placenames ending in -thorpe , german dorf, northgerman spoken dorp
I'm attempting to learn German, and this channel has been immensely integral to keeping me interested. It's so helpful to examine Old English, Dutch, Old Norse, etc. Love this channel!
So interesting! I'm American, but half British by heritage. I love etymology of these words, and once took a class on the history of English. Our professor discussed the "sk" words, and that the Old English word for sky was "welkin". Years later, I stumbled upon the original name of the Christmas carol "Hark, the Herald Angel's Sing" which was originally "Hark How All the Welkin Rings". I was thrilled to know that meant, "Hark How All the Sky Rings". Fun.
"Hymn for Christmas-Day" (what we now know as "Hark the Herald Angels sing") was written by Charles Wesley in 1739. He didn't write it in Old English, a language that had been dead for over 600 years.
I know it wasn't written in old English, but he used that archaic word.
"sky" [sk'ue', like the word "rue" (street) in French - this is also how it was pronounced in "OE" and early ME ] still means "cloud' in Danish and Norwegian, whereas its meaning has shifted to that of the English word "sky" in Swedish. The orignal OE word "welkin" is however the cognate of the German ( and West Germanic ) word "Wolken" [vol-ken]. Apart from that "sky" also means "shy" or "timid" / "easily scared" in Danish & Norwegian - yet another case of the sh- = sk- rule between English & "Scandinavian" 😉
The German word for cloud is Wolke. Fun video.
Yeah also bc stars are actually angels
When I was in the northern Dutch city Groningen for the 2007 U21 football tournament, in a bar I heard some local old men speaking, maybe in a local dialect. Their pronunciation reminded me of the Middlesbrough accent, so much so that I could understand some parts of their conversation. I got chatting with them and had a great night 🍻
I'm half English and half Swedish and so I've always been fascinated by how much influence on the English language the Scands had when they not only invaded, but settled. In fact, I'm certain that it has had far more impact than scholars who state that it amounts to just 5%. Anyway, one of the many day-to-day occurrences that leaps out to me, is the expression "Room and Board", which we can thank the Vikings for. room (English) = rum (Swedish) and board (English) = bord (Swedish)... which means room and table, which when you pay for Room and Board (preferably with food on it), that is precisely what you get ;)
And just to add another pinch of spice, the Irish for table is bord. I wonder if we got that from the Vikings? Total wild speculation on my part, but it is a hell of a coincidence.
Same in Welsh!
And for unknown reason the english world adopted the whole smörgåsbord to modern daily language.
A cursory search indicates that board dates back to Old English bord, which seems to be from Proto-West Germanic rather than any early Scandinavian influence. Room follows suit. These seem to be more cases of difficult-origin-sorting from shared Germanic roots. Also, Irish seems to have inherited bord from Old English, so if English did get it from Vikings then it spread to Ireland quickly.
@@Yupppi ah yes, there's another one... "smör" Swedish for butter and how do we apply it to bread in English? We smear it on ;) Alternatively, when we present a fully laid out buffet on a table, we say we put on a spread ;) As for the unknown reason, I'd trust Wikipaedia for that one.
Every episode is better than the previous. Love this channel. A big thank you.
I recently listened to Swedish on language tapes. I was amazed. Some entire phrases sound almost identical to English. Examples: "Kan ni hjalpe meg?.." = "Can you help me?", "Vilken weg skal vi gå?" = "Which way shall we go?". Norwegian example "flyet kommer inn for landing..." = "plane coming in for a landing..."...
Thats why scandinavian are so great at speaking english
As a German I must say I'm impressed by your pronunciation. And welcome to Germany 😀 What an interesting video
yeah lmfao im so used to hearing other americans have thick accents but his is not that bad at all, probably looks like its bc of rosetta stone and maybe it is but it's probably just experience w languages tbh
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q Americans?
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q Rob is *not* American! He is English. With a perfect English accent.
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q Rob is clearly not American in anyway, shape or form
you are all right this is my formal apology i was apparently distracted or sth when i was writing that bc i said american but i meant native english speaker. i am very aware that he is english and not american just fumbled it when i tried to actually express the thought edit: also, the reason i would mix that up is not bc i forget other english speaking peoples exist, its just bc i lived in germany for a few years and met fairly many americans and one canadian but literally no other native english speakers, so i got used to equating the terms in that context (this context, since the comment is abt his german speaking ability) still my bad for just writing the whole wrong word tho
In Norway we have 2 languages, bokmål and nynorsk. Nynorsk means new Norwegian, but is actually the older form. Weekdays in nynorsk are pretty similar to English: Mondag Tysdag Onsdag Torsdag Fredag Laurdag Sundag
I live on the Wirral, this was a major settlement, using the River Dee as their landing point. We are very proud of our heritage, we have Thurstaston, Thingwall, Heswall, Meols and numerous by, Greasby, Frankby etc. Oldest known name in West Kirby is Lunt, they can trace right back to the viking settlement. Worked in a bus depot, we a Svensson, who moved to Heswall from Liverpool, a Jaksson both totally oblivious of their heritage, and Bromborough, or as some would suggest Brumenbergh, sorry if that's spelt wrong, possibly the last stand for the vikings in Britain. There's one place on the Wirral the vikings didn't go, and that was Wallasey, which to the north had the River Mersey and it's fearce tides, and Liverpool Bay with it's shifting sand banks, and running between the Mersey and Liverpool Bay, the river Birkett, not a long river, maybe 5-6 miles, but on either side there was marshlands, and when the tides changed, they flooded, so they where left alone, and Wallasey means, Other People, basically, Celts. We have 2 x weinds, one at Tranmere, another viking name, something to do with cranes, the other at Lower Bebington. They mean sharp drop, an extremely steep hill, nowadays, they have been smoothed out, if you look down from the Tranmere weind, it's still steep, but it's more of a gentle slope
So Wallasey and Welsh mean the same thing! A very interesting read, thanks.
Yes, "trana" is the Swedish name for a crane, the bird.
I am reminded of childhood memories of my grandmother refering to playing as "laking". Interesting to learn where it came from. This was in Bradford by the way.
It's said in South Yorkshire too.
in Norwegian we still use the same word, but spell it differently: "Leking" and it means to play.
I love this! I wish I learned this kind of stuff in school. Our history and culture is rich, entangled, and very long. I knew our language is a mixture of several influences, but I never knew just how influential the Scandinavian's language was on our own. Thank you!
Check out the brilliant video from Langfocus called "Viking Influence on the English Language" to see just how profoundly this clash and merger between two closely related languages changed the very complicated and highly inflected Old English language, as it transistioned into the more recogniseable & somewhat intelligible (Early) Middle English - a sort of Germanic creole core language ( of course with a lot of borrowed Normanic, French & Latin etc. words added on top of it over time - layer upon layer ).
I always love how you present information. It’s the perfect balance of sounding casual and being scripted and organized
I just love etymology! It’s so cool to learn the source of our words 😎
12:03 Very interesting because in Old Tagalog, we use to get names the other way around. Instead of naming the son after the father, the father renames himself after the son: Son: Kable Father: Amanikable (Ama ni Kable "father of Kable") Also happens for mothers. Son: Cao/Kaw Mother: Inanicao (Ina ni Cao/ "Mother of Cao")
what! ”rannsaka” is still a swedish word that is commonly used (now with slightly different meaning though i would say), that’s so cool!
Also Norwegian. Ransake. It means search, but with a nuance...I'd say ransake is a more thorough way of searching/investigating.
Back in my childhood, when I began to study English and was learning the clothes topic, I was wondering how come that Englishmen have chosen such similar words for different clothing items. And it proved to have happened for a reason!
Being from Sweden I love these videos and your pronounciation of Swedish, Danish and Norwegian words is spot on!
Hi Rob, I am an Italian/Australian. I read Teach Yourself Swedish book back in the 80s because I met some Swedes during my customary European jaunt. I noticed some of the same similarities you mention in this video. Later when I studied for an Education degree, I found the LInguistics course especially interesting, so I did a MA in Linguistics also. I have taught English in the USA and I especially liked teaching Year 12 as they do British Literature, and I could prefix the whole year with a brief history of the development of the English Language. Your videos would have been very useful if they had been around 15 or so years ago. I like your presentations, keep it up.
As a Brit in Denmark I found this one most entertaining. Always learn something AND have a laugh as well.
No matter how many times I hear this, I'm always fascinated by how much the "vikings" influenced another language. Sweden here, but most of us went east in the old days (and my ancestors - some of them - were smiths and came from Belgium, so "they, the Swedes" in my case). Thank you for another great video!
proud scion of an Ostergotland heritage. Thanks to my Mormon relatives (my great granny from Linkoping came over to be a Mormon plural wife) they did a lot of tracing.. One has to go back at least 2 centuries before my G-G to find someone documented from outside Ostergotland! and even then it was just up in the Nykoping region very near by. Thanks to me poking around that heritage (even takinga train trip over from KBH to Linkopinig one day) and my great love of Melodifestivalen, Ive been very slowly absorbing bits of Swedish here and there.. I actually spent about 2 weeks traveling around from Haparanda/Tornio region all the way down to Malmo in 1988
Yep, that's another cool video waiting to happen! The Viking influence on eastern Europe as they traveled through to trade with Muslims and some settled. Russia is named after the Rus people that were originally Vikings.
@@JackTribe13 And they founded Kiev
Actually most qualified Smiths originally came from Germany, to create reliable weapons for your warmongering King... ☠️
Thats not true! Many ”swedish wikings”went west!!!
I'm grateful for having lived in Iceland (I'm American), where I learned to read & write & speak the language. It was a revelation to read, once again, Beowulf, because it was actually more familiar to me then, what with the alphabet & some words being little changed from modern Icelandic. Reading the Sagas was a delight, then.
How long did it take you to learn icelandic?
@@Thunder-shock912 Oh, about a year. The best way, fastest & most effectively enjoyable as well as culturally, is to find oneself in a loving relationship with an Icelander. They are not superficial in their feelings.
@@nonsibi1087 I actually want to learn icelandic soooo bad, but I have not enough resources to learn it on my own, as I did with english :( and I don't think to find an academy where teaches icelandic, your partner should be happy to share a lovely language with you haha
@@Thunder-shock912 I was living there and taught myself the grammar, reading & writing. A simple readily-available tourist translation phrasebook is a good place to start! For my goal I wanted to read the Sagas in the original text. The local newspaper in Reykavik, Morganbladid, taught me venacular. I spent many evening writing & copying the language, when I wasn't joining my Icelandic friends at the bar or parties in Quonset huts on the beautiful barren landscape. After a while, you get to love the constant fresh wind off the Denmark Straits and the curious wild ponies that would stick their heads in through my window to see what I wrote. My co-workers taught me to speak it. Iceland & its people are and will ever be special to me. Try it! ;)
I once sat next to two guys in a restaurant in London. As our tables were very close I could overhear their conversation...but I could not understand their weird "northern English" dialect. Until I recognized it was Icelandic what they spoke!
We Dutch have the same with modern Norwegian. When not listening closely there seems to be no difference
In North Western Jutland they have adopted some of the English grammar. Danish grammar is mostly suffixing. In Danish "house" is "hus", and the singular definite "the house" is "huset". But in some Jutlandic dialects they use a prefix, and "the house" is then "æ hus", using the Danish vowel "æ". In said part of Jutland they also use the dialectic word "en say" which means "a saying" / "an expression". Cheers from Denmark
My maiden name is Judson, and I was wondering if that means "son of Jute", however Wikipedia says its a form of Jordon. Are there Jutson or Judson surnames in Jutland?
@@KatharineJRose No, I don't know that name, I'm afraid. Couldn't it just be "son of Judd"? Btw; in Denmark the "son of"-surnames ends with "sen". Like, my surname is Larsen. In Sweden, however, it would be Larsson.
Growing up in Yorkshire in the 60s and 70s, I recall my grandma often using 'Bairn' and 'Laiking' about. Also, in reference to Grimsby, I remember reading the ME text of Havelok the Dane. Marvelous story and 'Matter of England' text. Finally, I believe it was Caxton, alone, who was faced with the difficult choice of standardizing the word for our 'Egg'. We could easily have been ordering up a breakfast of 'Eyre and bacon' based upon his whim.
Was just about to comment about Baird and laiking, there’s about a dozen more too.
@@JasonMHirst After emigrating to the US, I've come to accept the word 'alley'. But 'snicket' and 'ginnel' are superb synonyms.
When I were a bairn I used to go laikin in' beck at' bottom o' street so I understood that sentence almost 60 years on. Amt lost owt ah reckon.
I was born in the 90s and if we said playing instead of laiking at school we would get called gay. Different times. But laiking, bairn and the informal pronouns are still used today.
Caxton gave us plough rather than use plow, which the US uses.
‘Canongate’ is a common street name in Scotland for a street in which ecclesiastical duties were performed (not limited just to churches and worship). Also, [compass direction]gate is a common street name, such as Eastgate and Northgate in Peebles. These were Pictish during the Viking raids so it is fascinating to see the manner in which the language spread.
Here in Normandy we are surrounded with Scandinavian words. Especially our places names. And a lot of maritime terms. For example we call a gull a maove, islandics says máv.
Dutch: meeuw
Norvegian: Måse
Danish: Måge
@@asgeirnilsen6752 or Måke
Very interesting indeed :) I'm a native German speaker and love those moments when I see a word and all of a sudden I get this creative thought that tells me about its origin and why two words from two different languages are so much alike. Etymology is one of the most interesting subject matters in my opinion. It's like a journey through time and space right into the thoughts and perceptions of millions of human beings that came before us. So much to learn and be curious about :) Thanks for these videos. What a wonderful passion to share. Speaking of þunresdæg (thunder's day) ... tomorrow is Donnerstag here in Germany, which - surprise surprise - means thunder's day as well. So in the past the day's name was based on Thunor, an old english deity based on Thor, in both Old English and Proto-West Germanic, only for the Vikings to come in and make thing's annoyingly clear with 'thursday'. Those vikings apparently didn't understand the appeal of a good mystery.
I like Wiktionary which gives the supposed original of many words in many languages. Wiktionary in English has over 7 million definitions from 4,300 languages. Wiktionary auf Deutsch has over 1 million from 230 languages. Derived terms are given and translations into about 20 languages.
@@joyhancock2703 Yes absolutely. Already spent a lot of time on Wiktionary :)
The etymology of the word 'husband' is in fact pretty interesting. Hus-band with 'hus' being pretty clear and 'band' meaning 'inhabitant', related to 'bour' in 'neighbour' (someone who lives 'neigh') and to Norwegian 'bo' (to live) 'bonde' (farmer) and dutch 'buur' / 'nabuur' (neighbour) and 'boer' (farmer). Oh well, I find it interesting
With husband being 'man of the house' while wife originally meant just any woman, it was all a bit sexist back in the day, wasn't it?
@@tonyf9984 sexist is kind off a modern notion. Back in those days it was just role pattern, that if i may add had worked for as long as humanity existed. That nordic women had no rights in the viking era is a wrong idea though. With men being away from home often the women's role became more important and they certainly had a legally established voice
@@Ed19601 It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, but we lack punctuation marks to show this! That role pattern, as you put it, was of course widespread because it was derived from the relative physical strength of men and women. But it's interesting how it shows up in language. The lord, for instance was the 'loaf-ward' etymologically, while the lady put in the domestic graft required to make the bread ('loaf-dougher', so to speak).
@@tonyf9984 I must say I wasn't sure. Indeed it sometimes is hard to detect. 😁 That connection to lord I did not know. I must say I find the origin of words quite fascinating
@@Ed19601 Yesn't. Just remember what happened "at home" when the men went viking or during the big wars. Women did just fine managing society. But that's just Europe. Africa and Asia learnt modern "sexism" from us. Many societies there were matriarchal in the past. Archaeology even suggests that early societies weren't patriarchal at all and many women went hunting and gathering while dedicated people took care of the children. Considering this, crèches and kindergartens aren't "modern" at all.
Fascinating! I'm in the US but my forefathers named "Spike" came from northern England. Your video prompted me to find the Old Norse etymology of the family name "Spike".
We still use almost the same word in modern Norwegian, Spiker. In old Norse it was Spik. In some dialects a spik could also mean a very thin person or a small twig, but Spik was the old norse word for nail.
I have learned that one of the most used words in the English language, "fuck" is from the Viking word "fokka" -According to NRK's report, Fjeld suggests the curse word fuck is originally Norwegian. The words origin is the Norsk verb “fokka” and it means “to strike”. According to the professor, the word was used by the Vikings to portray the man's actions during intercourse. Im no professor, just wanted to share this theory:)
Hi Rob - new subscriber here and I love your videos! Here’s a suggestion for a possible topic: How about exploring the origins of our words for musical instruments or musical terminology? Thank you for being a bright spot on KZhead!
Hey Barb, welcome aboard! I like the idea. I'll put it on my big "To Do" list.
Hey! I would like that too, as I play several symphonic instruments! Thank you, Barb, for making the suggestion. Like, why is it called a French horn when it's actually German? And, why is it called an English horn when it's actually German too?
Bois hautbois, what a good idea!
@@notmyworld44 Or why is it even called a HORN? 😃
Great idea! Not long ago I read about the origin of the recorder (the instrument). It was quite interesting.
Nice. I'm Icelander and I have notice in some cases origin in English from our language. And yes, the word "gate" is in our language "gata" which means street or road in town. My old "street" name was Ægisgata. Ægir was old northen god controling the see, so you can imagine where my street was.. yeah, it was a "seaside" street.
Love this. Thanks.
I moved to Appleby in Cumbria in 99 and the older roads are something Wiend or ……gate. Notable is Doomgate. I believe poor serfs lived in that area of town.
@@JenKirby If Doomgate was derived from Old Norse it might have meant judgement street. Where they passed judgements or sentencing. "dom"in Norwegian still means that. After christianity it can also refer to a cathedral or a dome.
It's refreshing to see some real language history on this matter. Here in Sweden we are taught wrong at a very young age that "we swedes don't have our own words for things, so we had to loan our words from the english language" and that is supposedly why we share so many words like "Arm" and "Hand" and "limb" etc etc.
9:53 - "Thwaite" means a clearing, i.e. land that has been cleared, usually of trees, although it occurs in the northern isles as Twatt (don't giggle) where it probably refers to clearing of stones
I'm a Dane that understand both Norwegian and Swedish, I wonder if that word has anything to do with: "Tvätta", which means to clean or to wash in Swedish. The second part, "Twatt" could, in the same context refer to something like: Wipe that smile off your face. Clean/clear that smile, grin, giggle, etc. Interesting.
@@Dannydudelido I think the word comes from tveit/tvedt (in Norwegian) þveit in Old Norse which meant and still means a clearing.
I live in Merseyside and there are many major and minor place names that had their origins in Old Norse. Examples are Crosby, Ainsdale, Carr Houses, Meols, Litherland, Toxteth, Thingwall…I could go on. I was doing an adult education course about ‘Viking’ influences on dialects, language and place names in West Lancashire and Merseyside several years ago. It was being taught by a Danish lady. We were having a session discussing dialects during which I realised that the Liverpool dialect term for the word ‘why’ is remarkably similar to the Danish word ‘hvorfor’…the term is ‘what for’. I don’t know whether they are cognate but when spoken they sound very similar. I understand that many Old Norse words were assimilated into the language of the North West of England when the Hiberno-Norse were driven out of Ireland and settled on the western reaches of England, Wales and Scotland. Please feel free to correct me, I’m an enthusiast not a professional linguist nor a historian.
Wherefore art thou, Romeo?' means 'Why are you, Romeo?' You might find 'wherefore' in the preamble to statutes today, meaning 'for the reason that...'
D "hvorfor" [vor-for] is more like "where-fore" / "why" , whereas "hvad-for" ( ~ what-for ) is more like "which" ( orig. "hwilc" (!) in ME ~ D hvilke(n)) We even used to have "hvi" for "why" and "hvo" for "who" in older Danish ( "hvo" is still used in a proverb btw. ), and in older E the spelling of these wh-words was even "hw-" instead. And you can actually still hear this orginally initial h in some of these wh- words in some English and in some N & W Jutish (Jutland) dialects ).
@@Bjowolf2 Thanks for your comprehensive explanation. I’m fascinated by the extent to which Old Norse and Old Danish entered the languages of the British Isles in the Early Medieval Period. What is interesting is that my home is actually one of the very few settlements in the area with an Old Celtic/British root. It’s a topographic name describing the landscape features it’s associated with. I have read that it is one of the oldest settlements in the area and pre-dates the Romans. Interestingly, though, the minor place names are Old Norse and Old English/Anglo-Saxon. It’s reasonable to conclude that that these minor place names reflect the demographics of the settlement; communities/inhabitants usually use language or names that are meaningful to them, also minor place names are are far more responsive to changes in populations and more significantly leaders of that community. Thanks again for your explanation.
@@mary-kittybonkers2374 Yes, great points - these things go very deep indeed. Du (thou, orig. "thu"!) kan ofte se direkte hvad mening mange (many, OE moneGe) af {v}ore (our / OE ure! ) simple Danske (w)ord(s) haver, for de [dee*] ( they, "dey") er [air] (are) så [sO] nær [nair] de Engelske (w)ord(s). Vi [ve] kan derfor lær(n)e den Engelske tunge uden ( without, OE be-utan ! ) at skulle ( to "should", OE sculan! , i.e. having to) tænke [taink-e] (think) for os [us] selv først [first] - altid ( "altide" , always) en god ting 😂 You may want to try testing your "unexpected" linguistic capabilities in this respect by selecting the Danish subtitles instead of the English ones on streaming services and DVDs ( if available ) - just for the fun of it 😂 - and then become amazed by how many basic words, phrases and even whole basic sentences you are able to understand directly or decipher without very much effort - especially once you start to see past our "weird" spellling traditions and several simple and quite systematic sound shifts ( sh- ~ sk-, th- ~ d- / t-, w- ~ v- / _ ... etc. ). For instance: D Skal vi gå [go] ud igen [ee-gain] nu [noo*] for at finde min [meen] broder [bro(u)ð-er], så [sO] han kan se din [deen] fine [feen-e] lille nye [ne(w)-e] hund / hvalp? E Shall we go out again now (for) to find my brother, so (that) he can see your (thine) fine little new dog (hound) / whelp? D Vi vil komme over til dem efter deres lange tur rund{t} i [ee*] England, så vi endelig kan høre [h'oe"r-e] alle deres gode historier. E We will come over to them after their long tour a-round England, so (that) we can finally ("endly") hear all their(s) good stories. Or you can check out our Danish public service TV DR, which has many programmes with (selectable) subtitles in Danish, where you will / vil probably be able to understand many bits and pieces, if you are just very relaxed about the spelling. Apart from films, some TV-series and sports most programmes on DR are freely available from abroad. www dr.dk App: DRTV
Yes, and the two languages Old English ( Anglo-Saxon) & Old Norse were already similar to begin with with respect to basic vocabulary and to some degree grammatically - just from two sister subbranches of the Germanic family tree. Back when I started learning English I was always puzzled and amazed by the many deep similarities between our languages - wondering how and why on Earth they were so similar in many ways - like two parallel worlds with large overlaps in basic vocabularies ( just slightly distorted / spelled a little differently ) and many similar grammatical features, which makes it fairly easy for Danes and the other Scandinavians with their very similar languages to learn English - as if we already by magic "know" a simplistic core English in advance and then really "just" need to fill in the gaps 😉 D Hvad skal vi [ve] give dem? S Vad [vAd] ska(l) [skA] vi gi(va) [yee'] dom? E What shall we give them? D Lad ham [hAm] komme over til os [us], så (at) vi kan høre [h'oe'r-] hans fine [feen-e] nye [ne(w)-e] sang for os. S Låt [loat] ho{no}m (få) komma över till os, så vi kan höra hans fina nya sång för [furr] os. E Let him come over to us, so that we can hear his fine new song for us. D Der [dair] er [air] en åben [o-ben] dør [dur] i [ee*] det lille hvide hus [hoos] under det [de'] høje [hoygh-e] birke-træ [beer-ke - tray]. S Där [dairr] är [airr] en öppen dör [durr] i det [de'] lilla vita hus-et under det höga [h'oe'-gA] birke-träd-et [beer-ke - tray-det]. E There is ("are") an open door in the little white house under the tall ( "high") birch tree. And so on and on at the basic level. 😉
My parents came from Denmark, and I know a fair bit of Danish. I’ve often noted the similarities between English and Danish. One interesting moment was when I visited the island of Mors in northern Denmark. I was with some extended family and we were waiting for someone to join us. Someone’s cell phone rang and she answered it. I heard her say, “Yeah, we are here.” It took me a moment before I thought, “Why did she speak English?” before I then realized she had said, “Yah, vi er her”. But in her Mors accent it sounded just like English to me.
Yes the basics words are so much alike. And Danish is way more alike than Swedish, because we reformed our whole language back in the 1700's. My son is learning Swedish right now and so many words are just the same with different spelnings and pronunciations. I think it is so interesting to study languages. The funniest thing is when English speaking persons say "stool" and it is a "pall" for us and a chair is a stol for us. It must come from there was no chairs back then, only stools (pallar).
Ja, vi er her. Sjov historie :)
@@Wings_of_foam Var set ikke? Tak for det!
Haha danish is a sht ugly language 🤣 It's the ugliest of the scandinavian languages. Norwegians and Swede can understand eachother, but no one understands the danish pronounciation.. not even the danish themselves. But you know the words he is speaking about is Old Norse. That was the language spoken in Sweden, Denmark and Norway at the time. So it doesn't come from Danish. It comes from Old Norse.
@@GratDuForloradeArgumentet Danish, and in particular as spoken in southern Jutland, is the Ugly Duckling of the Scandinavian languages. Probably because of the strong West Germanic influences thet remained after the Danes arrived from Sweden to conquer modern day Jutland. (Many Jutes and Angles did flee to England at the time, but enough remained to influence the local language). This may also be part of the reason why "Ja, vi er her" is more similar to English when spoken in a Danish dialect than a Norwegian or Swedish one.
In old English, SC was pronounced like modern day SH if there was a vowel used after (E, I, Y). So fish was spelled like Fisc, shirt like scyrte, bishop like biscop, ship like scip. Usually, SC would only be pronounced SK if it was paired with A, O or U.
In Edinburgh there's an old part of town called Sciennes which is pronounced Sheens.
Love your videos! Very useful for me as a foreigner, having no hope to master English to perfection, but still interested in learning as much as possible about it. Thank you!!
Dont worry - most English speakers don't use it correctly!
@@neilritson7445 :)))
In English "Thursday" derived from Thor, the god of thunder, as mentioned in the video. Interestingly, thursday in Dutch is "donderdag", which literally means "thunder day"
Same thing in German with "Donnerstag", which also literally means "thunder's day".
Likewise, "Donnerstag" a little further east in Germany. Or still "torsdag" in today's Denmark.
Whats funnier is that Donar (in Donnerstag) is literally the germanic name of thor
Thunder in Danish is Torden (Thor-den) ... yeah, big hammer Mjølner kaboom. So it probably morphed into "Donder/Donner". And as "plexiv2537" said, Thor is Donar in German.
@@AbWischBar Even in French, Spanish and Italian (and Japanese) this day relates to thunder: Jupiter or Joves is the ancient Roman god of the sky and the thunder.
So glad that you mentioned the enrichment gained by learning languages. Studying other countries, landscapes, cultures, is not just good for society as a whole, but also enriches our own lives.
Excellent description and summary. There is so much to say that 8 minutes only touches the surface. As a fluent speaker of Danish (lived there 6 years) and Swedish (started learning when I was 16) this is well instilled in me. And I was told that up until maybe WWII the fishermen from Esbjerg with their dialect and the fishermen from N. England with their dialect could just about understand each other. Or maybe that was an urban myth
Just found the channel, watched 2 videos, and instantly subscribed, some of the best content I have ever seen on youtube, you are now my go-to channel if I want to watch something quick and educational, Bravo sir and thank you very much
I would like to add the word "Window". It's from the old norse word "Vindauga" or "Vindue" meaning "Wind eye". Their windows didn't have glass, only a hatch of wood. So it was literally an eye for the wind to come in. Vindauga/Vindue was also the name for the opening in the top of the roof that let the smoke from the fire out. A lot of those "old" words mentioned here are still used in scandinavia. So if you speak english and want to learn nor/swe/dan, I don't think it'd be that hard. I learnt english, didn't I? :P Throw in a few new words and some grammar and you can learn a new language with little effort, haha. Btw, we still say gate/gata about street. What you call gate we call port, but you also call that port... maybe stop using "gate"? 😆
And in French, ventre, vent, wind, window.
The best thing about the word window is that while the Vikings are responsible for its existence in the English language, they didn't all keep it. The current word for window in Swedish is fönster, originally a latin word that came to fornsvenska (long after the Vikings) through German!
The opening for the smoke from the fireplace to escape, was not called a "vindauga" In danish but a "lyrehul". Not much eye over a smoke escape unless you soar over the house and look down. Lyrehul goes as far back as the iron age and was in use up to around 1800. Window are however, called vindue in danish.
I'm learning to speak Norwegian and find it fascinating how similar some words and phrases are to English words, even slang terms
Super cool!
My last name comes from a Scottish clan whose name actually just comes from Old Norse. It comes from the Old Norse word for Lawman, which was a person whose job it was to _memorize_ and recite the laws of the local area (since the Norse didn't like using their writing system for anything than writing "deer" on deer bones and the like, it seems). I recently learned that one of my parents has a heavy splash of Nordic ancestry, which really just pulls the whole Scoti-Anglo-Norse quilt together for me. Three people that never really wanted to be together but are forever stuck together on the islands
Many Scottish Clans from the Scottish west coast are descended from the Norse e.g. MacLeod, MacDonald, MacDougal and many more. The Norse ruled these lands for 400 years so they left their mark on the people and on the place names.
hi! My family is said to have originated from the vikings that invaded ireland, i was wondering how you found out the information on clans and such. is there a database that deals with that kind of information?
@@misakit.4110 Thankfully, my own clan had a decent amount of info just on Wikipedia, which led me to the resources that they pulled from. So, I'd start by looking up your last name online and see where that takes you. Another thing you can do is go by region. If you know that you're family stayed around a certain region for a long time (an actual time frame is always better), that can give you a good idea of what happened while they were there. If resources don't have much on your clan, you can infer a decent amount of information just by region. For the most part, people didn't move very far until the New World was discovered and colonized. For clans, you can also do something special. The clan system often had clans that were under the care and/or service of other clans. I found that my own has a _massive_ list of other clans that, at one point or another, spent a decent time directly alongside us. You can try to see if your clan is over or under another (and hopefully roughly when), and you can infer some info by tracing regions and instances from them. Each clan's history is unique, so it's unlikely that the details will be mirrored, but they might mention your clan and what their contributions/unique culture was. To a certain extent, this can work with rival clans, as well. For Vikings that invaded Ireland, I can't guarantee that they made a clan that was part of the clan system. My first choice would be to look up what info is publicly out about my last name and then, to give it some context and to know where exactly we settled, I'd look into the region during and after the settling. Happy hunting, brother! Be sure to check the resources, as many about Vikings are 80% absolute trash. However, the Scottish and Irish histories tend to be a bit better. I'd focus more on the history during/after settlement than the actual Viking aspect if you want anything even vaguely true
@@remen_emperor thank you immensely for taking the time to respond! I absolutely will. I know there was a change in our last names spelling 9 generations ago following our immigration to Australia so knowing that will definitely help me out. Thank you again for the info, youve opened another door for me to explore!
@@misakit.4110 I'm more than happy to help where I can. Ever since I've learned my family's history, I've been interested in the histories of others. If you find anything cool, I'd love to hear it!
Truly Fascinating! all my life as a "historian amateur" ive studied lots about England and Western Europe (mostly Tribal up to late medieval Era) and i'm still learning today
I love it when the Norse and Danes get credit for their influence on British Isles language. I live on the Isle of Man. I met a chap from Denmark who was studying here. He was a bit freaked out that he understood a lot of the place names (eg Jurby, Sulby, Sandygate, Laxey, Ramsey) and that there were norse runes and legends carved in our old stone crosses. And the Tynwald. He hadnt even known the norse were here. Was quite cool he could translate our place names and tell us what they mean. Eg I live in Laxey which means Salmon river.
I am from Edinburgh, I moved to England as six year old and had trouble buying milk and sugar on my first day there. I have lived in north Norway for twelve years and am fluent in Norwegian. On my first day living here before I learned the language my wife said before going to work that I must « gå til kjøp vi har ikke melk i hus.» kjøp is pronounced almost the same as shop and hus is Scottish anyway. I had no trouble understanding this and buying the milk.
thanks to me Swedish study, and a very dear Norwegian freind I worked with for 17 years (Kristiansand), I can 100% interpret that sentence!
@@ZakhadWOW you will then easily interpret the slightly harder way she actually said it. I wanted to convey the ease not qoute her.she said. “ Du må gå og handle på kjøpe. Vi har ikke melk i huset.» 😃
@@joseraulcapablanca8564 You would have probably understood it in my (rather old) Fenno-Swedish dialect as well. Although Swedish stole boutique from French I think and uses it for all types of shops. Du måst ga o handel på butikin. Vi har int mjölk i husi. Though that's just a direct translation, it sounds awkward that way. I would say it a completely different way. Du måst ga ti butikin o handel, vi har int na mjölk jär heim. (You need go to store and shop, we have no any milk here home) word by word.
@@balticwater yes indeed Jimmy we use butikk in Norwegian to and of course we are not so far from Finland up here so the I on the end of English or indeed Norwegian words is quite familiar.
Wow that's cool for me as a learner to find such interesting facts about the language! Thanks a lot. I was really surprised by the Old English "niman".
Your passion and knowledge is breathtaking……after watching my first video I can see immediately how passionate you are about words and languages. Thanks Rob.
Your videos are both pleasant and interesting to watch - thank you for sharing!
7:00 the sk cluster palatization to sh started to happen much earlier than you seem to imply. It was already happening in the anglo-frisian period before old english had differentiated itself. the anglo-saxons wrote the cluster as sc but it was pronounced as sh.
As a native North-Easterner living in London and working for a company with a Norwegian team, I got very confused when one day Marianne stood up at proudly pronounced (in perfect Geordie) that she was "gannin' hyem".
Some one said to me I had to go yam.cos bairn was skring
Eye us Yorkshire farmers often say 'I'm ganning yam'..normal talk here but then again Yorkshire is known for Viking descendants ..
@@wendylinton453 vikings are not a people
In Danish it is spelled "Jeg går hjem" @@wendylinton453 however pronouncing will sound like [ Ja' gå' jem ] as the letters g and r at the end of a word are usually mute or "swallowed" in Danish
I don’t know what any of you are saying… 🙄
Interesting as always Rob... Thanks for your work and uploading.
So so interesting, I am french, I lived in London 50 years ago, your videos open the minds, Thank you so much . Chantal
Just stumbled over this channel. These videos are absolutely awesome! 😃 This stuff should be compulsory in schools. I am raising two kids in Finland and so despite English being their mother tongue for speaking, the spelling and reading has proved quite a challenge, especially as Finnish is 99% phonetic. So having some sense to some of the crazy spellings, and lack of 'rules' is brilliant. And even though Finnish is completely separate from the Scandinavian languages, Swedish is an official language, and is evident in many names, words, and place names. I live in a road called Gesterbyntie... meaning (the village of) Gesterby's road. It was great to learn the meaning of 'by', which in Swedish and Finnish is pronounced 'boo'... so I hadn't even noticed UK places likes Grimsby and Derby were essentially the same root in their meaning. Keep these videos coming! Utterly fascinating stuff 👍😁
Coming from Grimsby (or Krimsboo as a Finn with no English might say 😊) I found it strangely reassuring to see village names ending in ‘by’ in southern Finland.
Hello, Jared! Just a tiny correction: The word "by" is not pronounced "boo" but as the y-sound that you don't have in English and therefore have some difficulty to produce. It's the sound of ü in German, like in über, grün, Frühstück, and in French, sur, user, verdure etc. The y-sound exists in both in Finnish and Swedish. However, in Sweden the Swedish vowels "u" and "y" are often pronounced a little differently than in Finland.
It's unlikely your children will have trouble spelling later. Bilingualism has a protective effect on brain health for older adults so you are giving them a precious gift well in advance + you'll benefit as well.
Interesting note on days of the week: Latin languages do something similar but with Roman gods. In Spanish it’s: Tue-Martes (Mars) Wed-Miércoles (Mercury) Thu-Jueves (Jupiter, or Jove) Fri-Viernes (Venus)
Similar to French! Tuesday - Mardi Wednesday - Mercredi Thursday - Jeudi
Always brilliant for a 'wordsmith'. Thank you for your, obviously, hours of study and your amazing subdued humour! I love your stuff and look forward to your next offering!
In Scotland, there are very many Old Norse words still in everyday use. The Norse Vikings-and some Danes have left a huge impression on our language. Even "bairn" is derived from it. The Scots also still retain the "ch" sound- Loch, never " lock"! A kirk is a church, a building is biggin. Many, many place names are of Nordic origin. The Pentland Firth was "Pictland Fjord".
ROB! Could you do a video on old English words that are only still in use in the colonies? I (American) just asked a friend in the UK 'how is it over yonder?', I looked it up and learned yonder is old English and only in use still in the US. Would be very interested to know what else was kept alive in the colonies, but fell out of fashion in Old Blightey 😃 (have you done that one yet too?) 💛
I agree…although such words are still…vaguely part of whatever dialect words we occasionally use. In Lancashire…many people would still understand…‘It’s o’er yon’….It’s over there.
I'm pretty sure most people in the UK know what yonder means even if they don't really use it.
@@Amy-eo4md Of course they know what it means, I didn't say they didn't. That's not the point, I only used that as an example of a vernacular that fell out of use there, but is still in use elsewhere.
@@stormy3307 yonder is still used in the UK. Or abbreviated in phrases like “it’s at yon end” (it’s over there/at the far end). However, Americans do still use some ‘archaic’ English forms like the ‘en’ ending on verbs that has dropped out of use in British English. We have got(ten) rid of it! Strictly speaking, in that case you speak English more correctly than us Brits 😆
Not only is yonder and yon still in use in the Northeast of England, but "thon" was also in use when I lived there in the 1950s.
Rob, thank you that was a great one. Really enjoyed it. As an American who also speaks Dutch, I am fascinated by all the cognates. Most Americans are surprised when I tell them they already know some Dutch when they say Aardvark or Leopard. Even more surprised when I explain that the Dutch actually gets its guttural sounds from Hebrew. Love your work. Please keep making more videos. - Also, CONGRATULATIONS!!
Quite like how you left out the obvious koekje/cookie. And indeed the guttural in Dutch comes from Amsterdam, most other non-Holland dialects are softer
I always thought the gutturals in Dutch had to have something to do with a Semitic language. Thanks for confirming that.
Hmmm... I know very little about Dutch but this claim did make me prick up my ears - after some googling it appears that (1) the Jury is still out on this (2) most of the stuff I read that did link the Dutch hard G to Jewish immigrants did it via Yiddish (itself a Germanic language) rather than Hebrew - although Hebrew and Arabic were mentioned.... Interesting, but possibly to be understood as a hypothesis not a fact...
@@julesgosnell9791 yiddish is a germanic language that has more than a heavy influence of a semitic one, so it's all the same if the influence came from yiddish instead of hebrew. We have in turkish many arabic loanwords and they came with their pronunciations, but we forsook the pronunciations. It seems that the dutch might have done the opposite. I am just speculating because dutch has something none of her sorority has. It has to have come from somewhere...
Thank you. Loved it. I used to share a house in England with two Norwegians. They were always telling me the words which they had given us.
I always found it fun when I see a word or words from our germanic language siblings and think that it almost makes sense to me.
I'm glad you prefaced this with us not quite knowing about the actual origin of many of these words. Too many people miss the nuances of the languanges being close enough to confuse things. Some words which "come from" Old Norse I suspect were more drifted by it than borrowed from it.
Thank you for making new videos so quickly! I love them.
There is also a 'Wick' in South Wales. Vikings set up a new town near Nottage (close to Porthcawl), and, 800 years later, it's still called Newton 😁
My favourite word, that was not in the video, would be "vindue" (Norwegian) or "vindöga" in Swedish - which literally means an eye in your hut that allows the wind to blow through ... window!
Sometimes English preserves the original where we've moved on. A hole in a buildings wall was called an "eye to the wind", Vind-öga, which of course became window. After the viking era, Sweden imported a ton of words from Germany, including "fenster" for window, which is what we use today - fönster. So the original lives on in English.
Whereas we have "vindue" [vin-doo] in Danish - and in Norwegian 😉
When studying German, I had one of those "A-HA!" moments when I realized that donnerstag means "Thunder Day" and Thor is the god of thunder, and Thursday is Thor's Day! Language is so much fun!
The days of the week are fun to learn because they're very much related to the planets and the equivalent gods to the Roman ones we named them after.
@@doomsdayrabbit4398 That does indeed apply to very many languages, however, the Scandinavians are an exception... instead of using Saturn for Saturday as most do, the Scands use it for "Washing Day", lördag/Swedish, lørdag/Danish & Norwegian, laugardag/Icelandic and lauantai/Finnish
@@grapplehoeker The reason the days are not as interesting in Iceland - sunnudagur (sund day), mánudagur (moon day), þriðjudagur (third day) miðvikudagur ( middle of the week day), fimmtudagur (fifth day), föstudagur (fasting day) and laugadagur ( washing day) was because the church banned the old names and any mention of the gods.
"I'd go to a bar on Micklegate Bar" This Bar on the Bar had several barbarians drinking beer. Specifically, Rhubarb Beer made by Rhubarb Barbara...