Linguistic and cultural situation after the Norse conquest of England

[Otto Kretschmer]

Let's say that king Alfred loses the battle of Edington in 878 AD and dies in the battle, without his leadership the Anglo Saxons have no chances to stop the Danes and all of England falls under Danish control.

How do you imagine the linguistic and cultural landscape of England to look like in such a scenario?

[WeepingElf]

Short answer: Nobody knows, as usual with such alternative histories.

Longer answer: This may result in Old English gradually being replaced by a North Germanic language with a strong Old English substratum influence, which manifests in a large number of loanwords from Old English, perhaps including some pronouns or other morphology. At any rate, this constitutes a possible scenario for a conlang. As I said, nobody knows what would have happened, but it seems at least plausible.

[Otto Kretschmer]

We do actually have a North Germanic conlang with Old English influence - check out the Conlang Fluency Thread.

Has anyone done something the other way around i.e. Old English with substantial Old Norse influence? Would be nice to see such a conlang!

[WeepingElf]

We do actually have a North Germanic conlang with Old English influence - check out the Conlang Fluency Thread.

Yes - Yorkish.

Has anyone done something the other way around i.e. Old English with substantial Old Norse influence? Would be nice to see such a conlang!

English as we know it already has quite some Old Norse influence, but there could be a variety of English with even more Norse influence. Maybe the English dialects of the former Danelaw have more Norse influence than Standard English, but I don't know about that - I know virtually nothing about English dialects. Well, I have no plans for such conlangs, I have enough to do with Proto-Hesperic and Old Albic already.

[Richard W]

English as we know it already has quite some Old Norse influence, but there could be a variety of English with even more Norse influence. Maybe the English dialects of the former Danelaw have more Norse influence than Standard English, but I don't know about that - I know virtually nothing about English dialects. Well, I have no plans for such conlangs, I have enough to do with Proto-Hesperic and Old Albic already.

It's generally claimed that the dialects of the Danelaw had more Norse influence - which is odd when you recall that the East Midlands dialect is the base of (standard) Modern English. Perhaps the West Midlands contribution to Modern English has diluted the Norse component.

[Richard W]

Now, I have encountered a claim that Danish in England was simply Anglicised so much that it wound up being simply regarded as English. It is then claimed that the opposite has happened in Jutland - an Ingvaeonic language was so Danicised that it wound up simply being considered bad Danish. Unfortunately, it seems that straight language shifting explains the facts better.

[Znex]

It's generally claimed that the dialects of the Danelaw had more Norse influence - which is odd when you recall that the East Midlands dialect is the base of (standard) Modern English. Perhaps the West Midlands contribution to Modern English has diluted the Norse component.

It's easier to notice the difference if you look back at Middle English; in many cases there was still a marked difference between lexica used in the midlands compared to further south, even in minimal sets (eg. ei vs. egg as noted in one account).

But you can also see in more recent centuries that traditional northern dialects such as Cumbrian, and then Scots do retain a lot more Norse-derived words than further south. There's much to suggest these northern dialects used to extend further south but were only later pushed up north by the standard dialect (eg. traditional Yorkshire dialect is more similar to Geordie and Cumbrian in phonology than to its modern offspring).

[zompist]

As ever, I recommend Thomason & Kaufman's Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic Linguistics. They have an extended study of Norse influence on Old English. It's way too long to go over, but their main points are:

* The Norse influence was strong but not overwhelming. Norse-influenced dialects remained English and did not somehow become Norse.
* The languages were close enough that it was easy for people to learn both, which made for deeper changes than French did. (French greatly influenced lexicon, but not so much grammar.)
* Modern English is based on East Midlands dialect, which is moderately Norse-influenced.
* Southern and western dialects were much less Norse-influenced. But the old southern dialects (Kentish) have disappeared.
* Some dialects were more Norse-influenced, particularly that of Deira and Northumberland.