Stefan Romanski Scandinavian Influence

on English

1. Introduction

The English language developed significantly over the last centuries. One of the
biggest influences on English besides French and Latin was the Scandinavian
language ‘Old Norse’. There are about 1,500 loanwords which derived from
Scandinavian origin, as well as several other linguistic adjustments like syntax,
phonological and morphological changes. Decisive for those developments were
the invasions of Germanic tribes, as well as the Vikings raids during the Old
English period.

This paper focusses on the Scandinavian-derived changes of Old and Middle

English, along with consequences for Modern English. Due to the important
historical changes that took place in early Britain, the paper will start with a brief
overview of the Indo-European language family, followed by a historical
overview of Britain until 1066 which describes the significant changes in society
and territory to understand the upcoming modifications in the English language.

After that, the effects of the Scandinavian invasions and thus the effects of the
resulting settlements of the Norsemen will be focused on. Besides loanwords in
Old and Middle English, many changes occurred in morphology and phonology,
presented with several examples. Due to the significance of geographical
consequences, Scandinavian-derived place names are another important topic and
are mentioned afterwards. Short extractions of the Ormulum and The Canterbury
Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer are given to verify the changes in literature.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of historical events that took
place in England and the linguistic aftermath which shaped the English language.
Especially the time between the Old English and Middle English period is
important for future research on linguistic features of English due to the strong
shift in language.

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2. Historic Background

2.1 English as an Indo-European language

To evaluate Scandinavian loanwords in the English language, we have to take a

look at the historical development of England. There are several key dates and
events that took place that influenced the English language and formed it, the way
it is today.

English belongs, like nearly every other language in the word, to a so-called
language family, which is a group of languages that share a common ancestry and
are therefore related to each other. They share linguistic features that have been
developed over time. Features of lexicon, phonology, syntax and morphology are
similar between those languages. Usually, a language family is located nearby
each other geographically, explaining the similarity between the languages. Back
in the days it was impossible to find a related language at the other side of the
world. Only as traveling, exploration and colonialization happened, did the
language families spread. English belongs to a subgroup of the Indo-European
language family called Germanic, specifically West Germanic. Other Germanic
languages are for example Dutch, German and Swedish.

2.2 Early Britain

The earliest inhabitants of Britain about which anything is known are the Celts.
Their name derives from the Greek keltoi which means “barbarian”; they were
also known as Britons. They had become one of the most widespread branches of
the Indo-Europeans. Parts of today’s Scotland were inhabited from an early time
by the Picts, whose Pictish language was completely separate from Celtic and
probably not an Indu-European language. During the Vikings raids, the Pictish
language and culture was completely wiped out and only small remains of Picts
merged with the Scots. Celtic appears to have had little impact on English; there
are fewer than a dozen words borrowed from Celtic into English.

The Romans entered Britain in 55 AD under Julius Caesar. The Romans ruled the
whole island expect for the area where the Picts lived. The landscape was too

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rough for the large battalions of the Romans and permanent harassments by the
Picts distracted the Romans. Emperor Hadrian tackled this problem by building
Hadrian’s Wall in 122 to protect the Romans Empire. The language of
administration was Latin, used by the Romans; hence, literary remains of these
years are in Latin. Although the Romans stayed in Britain for roughly 350 years,
the linguistic legacy was limited. Nevertheless, the Christianization of the Celts
lead to adopting Roman habits and rites.

2.3 Invasion of the Germanic Tribes

In 409, the Romans withdrew from Britain to strengthen their force near Rome.
Reason for that were severe Germanic tribes’ raids and a huge Hun army facing
Rome. With the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, the Picts press into the
country again. The Romans military used to protect the Celts within the country;
thus they were stranded on their own now and called for help. The Anglo-Saxon
monk Bede mentioned in his Ecclesiastical History of English People, a writing
that was completed in 731, how mercenary forces led by Hengest and Horsa
arrived in 449 at the behest of the British king named Vortigern. The Angles,
Jutes and Saxons defeated the Picts in a number of battles and secured the Celts’
country. But instead of returning to their homeland, they turned on the British and
started settling in the south east of England. More and more settlers came to
England and gradually displaced the native Celts. They were pressed into the
regions of today’s Cornwall and Wales. The Anglo-Saxons referred to the Celts as
weales (slaves/foreigners) which later on changed into the region of Wales.

The Germanic Tribes settled in seven kingdoms: The Saxons in Essex, Wessex
and Sussex, the Angles in East Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria and the Jutes in
Kent. Although the Saxons were the most dominant group, the Angles were
determining for the name of Anglaland (England). Those years around 500 are
estimated as the start of the British Culture. About 100 years later, the Anglo-
Saxon language covers most of modern-day England. Bede talks about the five
languages of Britain during that period:

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‘At the present time, there are five languages in Britain, […]. These are
the English, British, Irish, Pictish as well as the Latin languages; through
the study of the scriptures, Latin is in general use among them all.’1

By British, Bede means what we would call Welsh nowadays. There are,
excluding the Picts in the north of Scotland, four languages spoken in England,
which leads to an interesting development of speech. Although the Romans
covered the island with Latin, the influence after their withdrawal is rather poor.

2.4 The arrival of the Vikings

The Vikings began raiding Britain at the end of the 8 th century. Wessex was raided
in 787, the monastery of Lindisfarne was burnt in 793, and the monastery of
Jarrow in 794. Danish Vikings started the raids, but were supported later on by
Swedes and Norwegians. At first, they raided ferociously and ruthlessly during
summer and stayed home in winter. By the middle of the ninth century, they
formed larger forces and wintered over in England for the first time. They formed
the Great Heathen Army consisting of various groups of Vikings and thousands of
warriors. Each tribe had its own leader whom they followed into battle. Within the
blink of an eye, the Great Heathen Army conquered most parts of England.
Northumbria fell in Vikings’ hands in 867, East Anglia in 869 and Mercia in 874.
Even parts of Wessex got conquered, but the new King Alfred won back control
over Wessex after crucial victories on the battlefield and some skillful diplomacy.
A crucial turning point was the defeat of the Danish warlord Guthrum by Alfred
the Great in 878. Both parties established the Danelaw, a set of legal terms and
definitions, defining the boundaries of the kingdoms with peaceful relations
between the English and the Vikings. The border was running northwest from
London to Chester, along the old Romans road Watling Street. North of it was the
Danelaw. Due to this treaty, more and more Vikings started settling in the north of
England. The extend of Scandinavian settlement there is clearly recognizable
based on the number of place names in that area which contain Norse or Danish

1
Mugglestone, Lynda 2006. The Oxford History of the English Language. New York:
Oxford University Press, p. 62

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elements. Place names and their geographical distribution will be focused on

directly in an upcoming chapter of this essay.

Although the Danelaw lasted less than a century, it had a major influence on the
English language. The early relations between the Viking settlers and the English
was hostile at first, but there was a peaceful co-existence and a lot of
intermarriage later on, leading to a mixture of English and Old Norse.

2.5 End of the Viking Era and Old English

The year 1066 is treated as the beginning of Middle English because of the
significance of several events that took place in that year. In the fall of 1066, the
last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwineson, was forced into two battles. After
defeating a Norwegian army in the North, his troops had to rush into the south of
England to fight against the Normans led by Duke William, who has been known
as William the Conqueror later on. Godwineson was defeated at Hastings and the
end to the Scandinavian ambition the reclaim the English throne was put to an
end. Despite the defeat, a large population of Scandinavians had long settled in
northern England and the Old Norse subsequently seeped into the English
language.

3. Scandinavian Influence on English

The historical sociolinguist James Milroy insists: ‘Linguistic change is initiated by

speakers, not by languages’2. What is traditionally termed as ‘language contact’ is
in reality contact between speakers of different languages. The emphasis on the
activity of the speakers is especially suitable for the situation between the English
and the Norsemen. The nature of the social contact has a large linguistic impact on
both languages. Usually, the dominant one comes out on top, transferring their
language features into the native language or completely replaces it (like the
Romans did earlier). In the case of the Vikings, the sheer masses of Old Norse
speakers settling in northern England supported their language features and
vocabulary. Due to the Vikings raids and later settlements in England, some Old

2
Milroy, James 1997. Internal vs external motivations for linguistic change. Multilingua-Journal of
Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 16.4, p. 311, 312

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Norse words were already beginning to find their way into Old English. However
the full extent of Old Norse on English did not become clear until the Middle
English period about 1150-1500. Reason for that is that before introducing the
Danelaw, people would not communicate with each other on a daily basis. In
addition to that, after the Danelaw, it took some time to merge the two languages.
While the two languages are quite similar to each other (compared e.g. to French),
it was also hindering for borrowing words. The reason behind this is if a word in
Old Norse already had an identical of very similar words in Old English, the
chances of being adopted into English are quite low. During the Old English
period, about 150 Scandinavian loanwords are used, while about 1000 are used in
Middle English. However it depends on the region: While words in the south of
England were not adopted, words in the northern parts of England where more
Scandinavians settled were merged into the language. The evidence of modern
English dialects indicates to the importance of what has been described as a ‘Great
Scandinavian Belt’ stretching across northern England.

It is well known that the size of the English lexicon as a whole has grown
constantly over the course of time. Whereas the Old English lexicon contained
about 50,000-60,000 words, the Middle English one contained 100,000-125,000,
compared to the Modern English lexicon with over 500,000 words. This gives a
clear indication, that on the one hand new terminology has been created; on the
other hand terms have been adopted from other languages.

Not only lexical changes happened, but also grammatical ones. During the
following chapters, I am going to focus on the different changes that occurred.

3.1 Scandinavian Loanwords in Old English

As mentioned before, about 150 loanwords are found in sources of the Old
English period. A loanword is a word adopted from a foreign language with little
or no modification, meaning phonological or morphological adaptations.
Representative loanwords in Old English are munuc (‘monk’, from Latin
monachus) , lið (‘fleet’, from Old Norse lið), or partial loanwords like liðsmann
(‘fleet-man, sailor’, ‘follower’, from Old Norse liðsmaðr). The reasons for

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adapting a loanword can be various. Maybe the term did not exist in the native
language, maybe it is a more general or specific term that has not been used yet or
maybe the word describes its referent better than the native word. Approximately,
about 2,5% of the Modern English vocabulary does consist of Scandinavian
loanwords3. Most of these words belong to semantic fields which refer to
Scandinavian technological or cultural innovations. For example, these fields
include terms seafaring, warfare and raiding. There are plenty of words for
different kinds of boats and ships that the Old Norse could describe way better
than the English language could. For instance cnear, scegð, hamele or hæfen
‘haven, port’ were borrowed into Old English 4. Due to the Danish administration
during the Danelaw, loanwords of other semantic fields like war, law, social
ranks, trade and coins were spread across the country. Words like marc (modern
mark = measure of weight or unit of currency), bryniġe ‘coat of mail’, grið
‘peace’ and hūsbōnda ‘householder’ (modern husband), rōt ‘root’, or scinn
(modern skin) were adopted5. It is important to mention, that Old English and the
Scandinavian languages have some very basic words in common, such as man,
wife, winter and summer. This might have made the communication between the
people easier.

The probably most common loanword, which is attested in late Old English is
tacan (modern take). It replaced the native synonym niman completely starting in
the east midlands and vanished entirely by the sixteenth century 6. This
phenomenon is called a Loss of Words, meaning that a loanword fully replaces the
initial form. Another example would be the Scnadinavian vindauga (window)
which replaced the Old English eagþyrel.

3.2 Scandinavian Loanwords in Middle English

The majority of borrowed words from Scandinavian are first attested in Middle
English. Crucial evidence for loanwords can be found in some Middle English

3
Durkin, Philip 2014. Borrowed Words. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 187
4
Durkin, Borrowed Words, p. 180
5
Durkin, Borrowed Words, p. 181
6
Durkin, Borrowed Words, p. 182

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texts, especially in the Ormulum, which is the work of an Augustinian monk

called Orm, written in the twelfth century. The poem itself contains about 20,000
lines and contains a significant number of words that are from Scandinavian
origin. It is important to mention, that most of these words are common and are
still used in modern English:

awe, to bait, bloom, boon, booth, to die, to egg (on), to flit, ill, law, low,
meek, to raise, root, to scare, skill, skin, to take, though, to thrive, wand, to
want, wing7

Most of the Scandinavian-derived words are monosyllables, but there are also
two-syllable words like

anger, blather, filly, freckle, glitter, rotten, rugged8

and even compounds made up of monosyllabic elements:

awk+ward, happ+y, har+bour, hus+band, mid+den, ran+sack,

rein+deer, was+ail9

In addition to that, the Ormulum mentions some of the earliest evidence for three
of the most important Scandinavian borrowings: the pronoun they, the related
object form them and the possessive form their. The change started in the north of
England and probably spread towards the south through dialects. This borrowing
shows a very close contact between Scandinavian and English and owes a lot to
the similarity of both languages. Initially, the Old English forms were hie, hiera
and him. Scandinavian influences changed the initial forms of pronouns with an
initial h- to an initial th-. The motivation may be that the singular third person
forms of Old English already began with h- in he, heo ‘he, she’. To distinguish
those sounds better, the plural forms might have been changed.

Not every loanword erases the native word like in the example of tacan and niman
or vindauga and eagþyrel. There are adaptations that go through a semantic shift,
7
Durkin, Borrowed Words, p. 183
8
Upward, Christopher and Davidson, George 2011. The History of English Spelling.
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. 28
9
Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, p. 28

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either semantic restriction or semantic narrowing, by which the meaning of a

word becomes less general or inclusive than its earlier meaning. For example the
Old English word hide had the core meaning of the modern word ‘skin’. It got
replaced by the Scandinavian word. The word hide still exists but with a more
distinct meaning of ‘skin of an animal when tanned’. It gets a more specific
meaning than before. Another example is the Scandinavian loanword sky that
replaced the Old English word heaven, both with the core meaning of the modern
word ‘sky’. The word heaven is now used in a religious context. The Old English
word starve got replaced by the Scandinavian word die and is now used to
describe specifically the death of hunger10.

3.3 Phonological Changes

As mentioned before, contact between Norse and English speakers in Viking Age
England had at least pragmatic purposes, thus, speakers of the two languages had
the need for bilingualism on either a major or minor scale. The marriage of
settlers and natives promoted the bilingualism at first. Later on, the speakers of
Old Norse shifted to English completely, though they probably carried
pronunciation and other features of speech with them.

3.4 Modern English Scandinavian-derived Consonants

Words that are Scandinavian-derived are found in Modern English with various
digraphs, which used to be common for Anglo-Saxon English. A digraph is a pair
of characters to write either a single phoneme or a combination of both characters,
that differs from the original value of those two’s combination. For example the
digraphs GH in slaughter, slight, tight; TH in their, they, thrift, thrust, both, birth;
WH in wheeze, whin, whirl; WR in wreck, wrong11.

Probably the most represented spelling feature in words of Scandinavian origin is

the retention of /g/ before a front vowel. This feature sets the Scandinavian origin
apart from the Anglo-Saxon-derived words. For example the words get, give,

10
van Gelderen, Elly 2006. A History of the English Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John
Benjamins Publishing Company, p. 96
11
Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, p. 28

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begin would have been pronounced softer in Modern English, such as *yet, *yive,
*beyin. Although French had a major influence on English language as well, some
words denied the pronunciation of the French origin. For example the
Scandinavian-derived word anger, which is pronounced with a /g/, would be
pronounced /ʤ/ like the French-derived word danger12.

Typical representatives for Scandinavian-derived words are /sk/ sounds at the

beginning of a word, usually spelt SC before back vowels in former Old English
and SK before front vowels of Old English. Whether or not the front or back
vowels are still present in present-day English, the rule of thumb persists.
Examples for these kinds of words are

scab, scale, scar, scare, scout, skate, skill, skin, skirt, sky13

Of course, some words changed in form in Modern English, meaning that they
have been spelled differently in the past. The word skate (Modern English)
changed from scate, as well as scare (Modern English) from skare. Although
most words with the beginning SC- and SK- are from Scandinavian origin, there
are exceptions as well. Some words are borrowed from French (scar, skirmish),
Greek (scorpion, skeleton) and Dutch (skipper, scoop).

Another interesting feature is the Scandinavian spelling of knif, whereas the

Anglo-Saxon English spelled it cnif for the Modern English word knife. Yet it is
not confirmed, the possibility of Scandinavian influence on all Modern English
spellings with the feature of an initial KN- which had CN- prior to this in Old
English.

3.5 Modern English Scandinavian-derived Vowels

There are only a couple of features of Scandinavian-derived vowels in Modern

English but it is important to mention them. First, a silent E at the end of a word
12
Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, p. 29
13
Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, p. 29

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indicates a prior long vowel in Modern English. The reason for that is an earlier
fully pronounced vowel at the end of the word. For example the words raise and
snare end with an E and are pronounced with a long vowel. The spelling in Old
Norse was reisa and snara that had an additional vowel at the end of the word.
Second, the digraphs EE and EA are quite common for words of Scandinavian
origin. The digraph EE appears in words like fleet, keel, meek, seem and teem,
whereas EA in words like steak or weak14.

3.6 Morphological Changes

Scandinavian not only affected Old English vocabulary, like Celtic and Latin, but
also influenced its grammar. As mentioned above, the appearance of the third
person plural they, them and their is due to Scandinavian contact. Yet, there is
often a delay in influence showing up in many sources, meaning that language
changes have to be accepted and spread over the years, until it is used in written
language. Even then, it might only be used in dialects or varieties of the language.
Usually, pronouns and prepositions are pretty stable in language history and do
not change a lot over the years. Therefore it is even more surprising, that this
change happened and the grammatical words got adapted. It shows that the
influence of the Old Norse was very strong. Furthermore, endings on verbs, nouns
and adjectives start to change in the north, most likely because of the contact with
Scandinavian. This table15 shows the leveling of present tense verbal inflections
between Old English (OE) and Northern Middle English (NME):

OE NME Modern English

ic nerie ic nerie I save
Þu neriest Þu neries you save
he/o nereð s/he neries s/he saves
we neriað we neries we save
ge neriað ge neries you save
hie neriað thei neries they save

14
Upward and Davidson, The History of English Spelling, p. 30
15
van Gelderen, A History of the English Language, p. 98

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There are clear indications that the ending of the inflected verbs got simplified in
Northern Middle English. In Old English, every singular form has a different
ending, as well as all the plurals do. In Northern Middle English, there is always
the same ending, except for the first person singular. The Northern Middle
English third person singular has the same form than the others, whereas the
Modern English third person singular ends with an –s. An interesting fact is the
slow spread of the new endings for verbs. While people from Northumbria started
using -s in the 10th century, it is not used in London until the 15th century. Elly van
Gelderen investigated, that Geoffrey Chaucer used different forms of inflexions
for people from the north and the south. In his collection of stories The
Canterbury Tales (~1387) he used the common verbal inflection –þ. This ending
was used in the Middle English Midlands, as well as in the southern areas. But
Chaucer used the inflection –s, as he portrays northern people16:

Alain spake first: “All hail Simond in faith.

How fares thy faire doughter and thy wif?”
(Chaucer, The Reeve’s Tale 102-112)

This gives a clear indication that the –s inflection was already in common use in
the northern parts of England.

3.7 Syntactic Changes

Old English was a major syntactic language, meaning that grammatical

relationships are expressed morphologically through the addition of inflexions 17.
Elements like word endings described the relationship between words within the
sentence. The syntactic change happened at the time when Old English turned into
Middle English and turned into a dominantly analytic one. That means that
grammatical relationships are expressed with the construction of word order
within a sentence. Reason for this severe change was the contact between the
speakers of Norse and the speakers of English. Although both groups have a
rather similar language on account of their close relationship within the family of
Germanic languages, they differ a lot in inflexional endings. For example: Old
16
van Gelderen, A History of the English Language, p. 98
17
Mugglestone, The Oxford History of the English Language, p. 82

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English giest and Old Norse gestr (‘guest’), guma and gumi (‘man’), scipu and
skip (‘ships’)18. Mugglestone creates a scenario in which speakers of the two
languages were permanently in contact with one another 19. It is expecting that
these inflexional differences became ignored during the contacts, because they
played no role in the effective communication between the speakers, who most
likely used simple language to communicate. The inflexions were not needed in
Norse-English communication; as a result, they decayed over time and the word
order was put into the focus of language: Old English changed into a dominantly
analytic language. Thus, the sentence structure shifted from SOV (subject-object-
verb) to SVO (subject-verb-object), which is still used in Modern English.
Although the shift from SOV to SVO is attributed to French influences, there is a
higher percentage of SVO in the north and midlands of England, than in the south.

4. Scandinavian-derived Place Names

It is possible to see the Scandinavian influence by looking at a map and counting

Scandinavian place names. The northwest of England is mainly influenced by
Norwegians and the southeast by Danes. Together there are about 1,400
Scandinavian-derived place names in England. As I mentioned before, King
Alfred introduced the Danelaw which is a clear indicator of the linguistic dividing
line between the two languages and their place names. The most common endings
of place names in the different languages are shown in this table:

Old English -borough, -ham, -ing, Wellingborough,

-stow, -sted, -hall, -wic, Birmingham, Kettering,
-ton Berkhamsted, Brighton
Norwegian -by, -thwaite, -kirk Yockenthwaite,
Ormskirk
Danish -by, -toft, -thorpe Scunthorpe, Lowestoft,

The Old English suffix –borough means ‘fortified place’, whereas the other Old
English suffixes all mean ‘place’ or ‘village’. The Norwegian suffixes mean –
18
Mugglestone, The Oxford History of the English Language, p. 82
19
Mugglestone, The Oxford History of the English Language, p. 82

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thwaite ‘field’ and –kirk ‘church’, wheras the Danish suffixes mean –toft
‘homestead’ and –thorpe ‘village’. The suffix –by ‘village’ is common in both,
Norwegian and Danish, and is the most frequent one in Scandinavian-derived
name placed with up to 650 appearances. The highest number of Scandinavian
place names can be found near Yorkshire, Leicester and Cumbria, where most
settlers lived.

5. Conclusion

The impact of Old Norse upon Old English, Middle English and even Modern
English is highly conspicuous. As a result of the Viking raids in the early years of
Britain, language changed severely during this time. Viking settlements spread
across the northeast of England. King Alfred finally stopped the invasion and
introduced the Danelaw which separated the Norsemen from southern England
territory. Although the Danelaw lasted less than a century, it left an incredible
footprint in England. Up to 1,400 place names can be found today, which were
located in Norsemen territory. But, even more surprisingly, the Scandinavian
language spread rapidly across the country due to intermarriage and adaptation.
Starting from the north of England, most features reached the Midlands and the
south several years later. Daily contact between speakers of Old Norse and Old
English sped up the process even more. Some features of the Scandinavian
element in English point clearly to a context of closer contact between speakers of
the two languages, such as the high proportion of basic vocabulary and words
connected with everyday life like sky, skirt, kirk, husband, harbour and anger.
The Scandinavian-derived loanwords are used in everyday language, and in every
register: from colloquial to formal language. Reason for that is the simplicity of
the words that have been adapted early on and have been pushed into the lexicon
of Old and Middle English people. Another common phenomenon is the
replacement of an inherited Old English word by a Scandinavian-derived. The
biggest adaptations might be the verb tacan which replaced the Old English word
niman, meaning ‘take’, as well as the pronouns they, them and their which
replaced the Old English ones hie, hiera and him. However, a problem in
analyzing Scandinavian loans in English language is the historical tradition. Most

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texts are written in Old English, meaning that it is possible that more features and
developments happened in areas of heavy Scandinavian influence without anyone
noticing. Some developments might have been simply failed to be recorded. Most
features started to develop in the north of England; thus, we can assume that many
features are from Scandinavian-origin but there is no evidence in literature given.

Personally, I am quite astonished on how often Scandinavian loans are used in

Modern English. During my researches, I stumbled over only a small number of
words with Scandinavian origin, whose meaning I did not know. Most
Scandinavian loans are used frequently and do not only refer to specific
terminology like French or Latin loans. It is impressive, that Old English adapted
Old Norse so frequently, although the merging process did not last longer than a
few hundred years. The most notable change in my opinion is the replacement of
pronouns and key verbs of Old English because usually those do not shift
completely during language development.

To conclude this paper, I am going to quote Matthew Townend who summarizes

the fascinating experience of language research:

“[…] language contact is all about people: language contact does not occur
apart from human contact, and contact-induced change is always the result of
human activity. […], consequent on this, is that language contact is part of
cultural contact more generally: If one embarks on a study of language contact in
medieval England, one is carried irresistibly onwards into the broader history
and culture of that inexhaustibly interesting society.”20

6. References

Durkin, Philip 2014. Borrowed Words. New York: Oxford University Press

Hickey, Raymond 2003. English Linguistics in Essen. www.uni-essen.de/ELE.

Essen: Department of English.

20
Mugglestone, The Oxford History of the English Language, p. 84, 85

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Hickey, Raymond 2017. Studying the History of English. www.uni-essen.de/SHE.

Essen: Department of English

Hogg, Richard and Denison, David 2006. A History of the English Language.
New York: Cambridge University Press

Momma, Haruko and Matto, Michael 2008. A Companion to The History Of The
English Language. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell

Mugglestone, Lynda 2006. The Oxford History of the English Language. New
York: Oxford University Press

Upward, Christopher and Davidson, George 2011. The History of English

Spelling. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell

van Gelderen, Elly 2006. A History of the English Language.

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company

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