Old Norse doublets in English

• Here are some Old Norse borrowings of items from the Swadesh list. The Old English form survives in modern English, sometimes with semantic change, and sometimes only in certain limited contexts. Can you find the forms? Try translating into German using Google Translate to see if the translations ring any bells.
  • bark (of a tree)
  • die
  • root
  • skin

  Note: Because we don't expect these items to be borrowed, the fact that they were borrowed into Old English is evidence for the very close contact between (the speakers of) the two languages. In their chapter on Old English, Algeo and Butcher suggest that the Anglo-Saxons thought of themselves as ethically related to the Vikings. This, along with the already existing regional variation among the dialects of Old English, might have led the Anglo-Saxons (and perhaps the Vkings as well) to regard Old English and Old Norse as dialects of a single language rather than as separate languages. The dividing line between dialects and languages is notoriously murky. A well-known aphorism is "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy" (attributed to Max Weinreich, and by him to an audience member at one of his lectures). But this criterion was coined in the 20th century, too late for the the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.

• Here are some more borrowings from Old Norse. Can you find the descendant of the Anglo-Saxon doublet?

  Hint: Replacing "k" by "ch" or "sc/sk" by "sh" can be helpful.

  • dike
  • hale (adj.) (also spelled hail)
  • scrub, n.
  • skirt
  • sky

• What form would the following words have taken without influence from Old Norse?
  • cast (= throw)
  • drag
  • give
  • raise
  • sister (cf. the German cognates)
    • Schwalbe 'swallow'
    • schwarz 'black' (cf. swarthy)
    • Schwein 'swine'
    • schwimmen 'swim'
    • Schwester 'sister'
  • take

• A tangle of confusion!
  • wreck

• Finally, here's a betting question. If a word begins with sc/sk, what are the chances that it was borrowed from Scandinavian? Does the number of syllables affects the odds? How about whether the word was borrowed early (in Old or Middle English, up to 1499) or later (after 1500)?

  Betting on the Scandinavian origin of words in sc-/sk-

Sources of information

• etymonline
• OED (access via Franklin)
• Wiktionary