Is Danish really that close to English?

[Steken]

@hibernicus

That scene was an exception. Throughout the series, the conceit was that Danish characters and Swedish characters understood each other perfectly while each speaking in their own languages. That one scene you refer to in the first episode, where Martin speaks very rapidly in Danish to the Swedish police before noticing their looks of blank incomprehension and slowing down, is played for comic effect.

In The Bridge, that scene was indeed an exception, played for comic effect - but in real life, it’s extremely common.

Swedes and Danes very often switch to English to understand one another - something that, IIRC, never happened even once in The Bridge.

I’ve lived in Denmark for more than ten years, and I still get Danes switching to English the moment they detect a bit of a Swedish accent in my Danish.

@hibernicus

It goes back further than that - Skåne was part of Denmark until 300 years ago, and the local dialect is close to Danish.

And yet practically every single Dane I’ve ever said this to - “surely skånska is close to Danish, right?” - has insisted that they actually find it harder to understand than “regular Swedish.”

[Don_t_Panic]

@Steken

And yet practically every single Dane I’ve ever said this to - “surely skånska is close to Danish, right?” - has insisted that they actually find it harder to understand than “regular Swedish.”

Speaking from over here, as a Norwegian, *skånska *doesn’t particularly sound anything like Danish to me. So, yeah, maybe they were close back in the day, but it sounds to me like they’ve been living in separate houses for a good long time since then.

Actually, to be honest, and please don’t shoot me for saying this, *skånska *mostly just sounds to me like regular Swedish that has eaten a large helping of diphthongs. And yes, I know, I know. I understand that it has lots of very interesting and unique features. Being a Norwegian and all, I know better than most that everyone wants their dialect to be a Special Snowflake. “No, really, we have ten different dialects just in this here village of Bumfuck alone, and don’t get me started on the next village over! They’re all super unique, and let me tell you all about them!” But honestly, many of them aren’t actually *that *weird. At least not anymore.

[Nava]

@Martian Bigfoot

Well, it comes from the Latin merces, meaning pay or reward. (As, BTW, do a lot of words, such as the English “mercy” and “merchandise”, and probably the name of the god Mercury. But I digress.)

It’s also where the Spanish cognate mercedes comes from.

But seriously, it’s the vowels: I don’t have any decent quotes handy* but it appears that French, like English, underwent a Great Vowel Shift at some point, mainly after the spellings had gotten sort’a fixed. That would help explain why reading French is a lot easier than listening to it for many speakers of other Romance languages.

• I don’t consider wikipedia particularly trustworthy, but it’s my bedtime.

[septimus]

On the matter of ON’s relationship to ME, my continued reading has led to some interesting points. It would be good to hear from the Board’s linguists on these matters.

Chronology. According to Thomason-Kaufman, Norse speakers’ immigration to England’s East ceased about 920 A.D. and their language “probably lasted no more than two generations after 955.” Without clear evidence, they show 10th- and 11th-century dates for the end of the Norse language in various parts of England; it appears to be almost defunct by 1066. It was Norsified English, not Norse itself, that later influenced Middle English. The unusually strong Norsification is attributed to the strong typological similarities between Old Norse and Old English.

This is in stark contrast to the Emonds-Faarlund model, where the amalgamation of Norse and English languages was in response to the Norman invasion beginning 1066.

There is a pertinent quotation mentioned in Emonds-Faarlund and elsewhere

[QUOTE=11th century Icelandic saga]
“Ein var ϸá tunga á Englandi sem í Nóregi ok í Danmǫrku. En ϸá skiptusk tungur í Englandi, er Vilhjálmr bastarðr vann England; gekk ϸaðan af í Englandi valska, er hann var ϸaðan ættaðr”
(Nordal & Jónsson, 1938, p. 70).

[there was at that time the same tongue in England as in Norway and Denmark, but the language changed in England when William the bastard conquered it]

[/QUOTE]

Assuming the saga isn’t mistaken or confused, there seem to be two possibilities: (1) Scandinavian was still spoken in the 11th-century Danelaw, (2) Old Norse/Danish and Old English were then mutually intelligible (or nearly so), and thus “the same language.”

Thomason-Kaufman do not comment on this saga, but other sources use this as evidence that Old English and Old Norse were mutually intelligible then. That strikes me as very unlikely: the common Germanic ancestor was almost a thousand years earlier; even Old Norse and Old Danish were different languages. The view of Emonds-Faarlund makes more sense to me: Scandinavian languages were still spoken in England.

But the huge amount of borrowing or inheritance from Norse or Danish does not change the fact that Middle English has even more borrowing or inheritance from Old English than it has from North Germanic. I think Middle English was a hybrid of North and West Germanic. One usual argument against “hybrid” languages — that one of the two languages will be spoken by the elite and that prestige language will dominate — does not apply! Neither Old Wessex English nor the Anglicized Norse of Eastern and Northern England was the language of the prestige elites! Both groups were subservient to the Norman conquerors; the need for cooperation would have naturally led to formation of a koiné language.

Comments?