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When the Vikings invaded GreatBritain, they did more than slaughter the population, ransack the cities and scorch the earth. They also left substantial influence on theEnglish language words like slaughter, ransack and scorch.
(46){{U}}Now, a single word in an ancient manuscript has led a U. S. linguist to conclude that the influence of the Norse on theEnglish language may have come as much as a century earlier than most scholars had thought.{{/U}} The find came whenEnglish professor JonathanEvans of the University of Georgia was reading a passage to his OldEnglish class from theAnglo-SaxonChronicle and a Norse word, theora, jumped out at him.
The 1122 text, according to generations of scholars, was supposed to be too early to contain evidence ofDanish influence on OldEnglish. (47){{U}}But the fact that the text used the Nordic form of "their" rather than the OldEnglish hiera or heora, suggested that Norsemen and theirEnglish hosts were not only living side-by-side inEngland’sEast Midlands but also were in "frequent, peaceful communication",Evans contends.{{/U}}
"I thought I had made a mistake," when he first saw the word, he saiD、"There it was, sitting there in plain sight. Nobody saw thisDanish word sitting there. I kept it quiet because I thought I made a mistake."
But he was urged to investigate by a visitingDanish scholar, Hans Nielsen. (48){{U}}SoEvans spent several years pursuing a hunch that a RomanCatholic monk slipped into the local dialect while copying out the ancient historical work for his monastery.{{/U}} If so, that suggests toEvans that Norse and West-Saxon dialects of OldEnglish had mingled significantly by the 12th century if not earlier.
The result ofEvans’ research is a paper, recently published in the journal North-WesternEuropean LanguageEvolution. (49){{U}}His paper puts forth the theory that the monk’s use of the Norse word is the first datable example inEnglish of Scandinavian-derived plural pronouns, antecedents of the modernEnglish words they, them, and their.{{/U}}
(50){{U}}" This is a footnote in a much more well-known story—the story of Scandinavian borrowings in theEnglish language." saidEvans, who can read texts inDanish, French, OldEnglish and Old IcelandiC、{{/U}} "It’s going to be interesting to see how other scholars view this discovery but I think I’ve made my case for it."