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Two
linguists argue that modern English isn't really a West Germanic
language, most similar to modern German, Dutch and Frisian, but a North
Germanic language, such as Norwegian, Swedish and Danish:
Their
research and conclusions are brand new and break with those of earlier
linguistic professors who believe English is rooted in “Old English,”
also known as the Anglo-Saxon language believed brought to the British
Isles by settlers from northwestern and central Europe. Faarlund claims
Scandinavians settled in the area long before French-speaking Normans
conquered the British Isles in 1066.
Faarlund and Edmonds also
contend that Old English and modern English are two very different
languages. “We think Old English simply died out,” Faarlund told Apollon. “Instead, the Nordic language survived, strongly influenced by Old English.” [...]
Scandinavian settlers, Faarlund notes, gained control towards the end of the 9th century of an area known as Danelagen, which
forms parts of Scotland and England today. Faarlund stressed that “an
extremely important geographic point in our research” is that the East
Midlands in England, where he says the modern English language
developed, was part of the relatively densely populated southern portion
of Danelagen.
Edmonds and Faarlund also contend that sentence
structure in what developed into modern English is Scandinavian, not
western Germanic as previously believed. Both today’s Scandinavian
languages place the object after the verb, for example, unlike German
and Dutch which place the verb at the end of a sentence. Possessive
forms can also be the same in both the Scandinavian languages and
English, which also can end sentences with a preposition and split
infinitives. While that’s sometimes frowned upon in other variations of
modern English such as American English, Faarlund argues it’s not
possible in German, Dutch or Old English.
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