Re: Japanese learning, is anybody as frustrated as me?

jim_breen_at_hotmail.com
Date: 12/11/04 

Date: 11 Dec 2004 06:29:46 GMT

Travers Naran <tnaran@no-more-virii-please.direct.ca> dixit:
>jim_breen@hotmail.com wrote:
>> The French spoken by the Normans never really took hold in England.
>> After all, they made up an aristocratic elite while the the townspeople
>> and farmers went on speaking their northern/southern English. The
>> northen English of the Danelaw was pretty much Danish anyway. Eventually
>> the French usage just faded away. I am not aware of any "Viking" words
>> that came to English via the Normans.

>http://www.krysstal.com/borrow_normanfrench.html

A nice list of words with mostly impeccable Romance roots.
Nothing Viking about "eagle" or "bacon".

>http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/lj/conquestlj/legacy_04.shtml

Some quotes:

"It is clear, then, that the kind of words that came into English
from Scandinavian are generally words to do with common-and-garden
relations:..."

"This type of word borrowing is quite unlike that seen after the
Norman Conquest, when the Conquerors imposed their own language at
the top levels of society. The native English continued to speak
their own language, but gradually French words were used for new
ideas, concepts and activities. French was regarded as the language
of the elite...."

>http://odin.bio.miami.edu/norse/words.html

A list of words from Norse. No indication that they arrived with the
Normans. 

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Computer Science & Software Engineering,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
$B%8%`!&%V%j!<%s(B@$B%b%J%7%eBg3X(B

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