Re: [conculture] Re: Greetings!

   Date:         Mon, 29 Mar 1999 12:42:52 -0600
   From: dunn patrick w <tb0pwd1@...>

   You'll notice if you glance at the OED that most actual borrowings
   from Danish come *after* the Norman invasion!

Which means that they are first attested after 1066 and all that, not
that noone used them.

I read in a history of English, that there was an almost complete
hiatus in the writing of English around the time of the invasion.
There used to be a standard cultured Old English language in the
southern kingdoms (Essex, Wessex, Sussex), and the scribes there would
never have dreamt of using crass Norse words. However, this language,
or rather its tradition, dissappeared with the arrival of the Normans.

For some time after that, very little English was written, until the
standard that eventually became the modern English literary language
began to emerge from the mixture of dialects then spoken in London;
and the early writers of this literature didn't really care if a word
was southern, northern, Danish or French. And that is why the Danish
words are attested then, and not before.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)