Again on the English language

In response to Christine Haverington's remark on James Longenbach's article.

Certainly! There’s a good number of “Viking” words surviving in contemporary English. Probably, Longenbach regards Norse as just a member of the greater Germanic linguistic family, which is basically true.

The various Germanic tribes of ancient times actually spoke distinct languages, but these had all descended from one Germanic archetype. In fact, for example, during the so-called “Dark Ages”, when the Saxons and the Danes often fought over power and the control of Britain, not only did they share the very same Gods and similar cultural habits, but they could also understand each other without too much difficulty or having to resort to interpreters. More or less the same happened when Vikings from Norway repeatedly attacked and plundered the northeast coasts of Britain.

On the other hand, the Normans were also Vikings (Norsemen) in origin, but when they invaded England they had been speaking a different language, derived from Latin (the Norman French), for several centuries, so that mutual understanding with the then rulers of Britain was a bit more difficult.

Finally, two more often-forgotten, minor contributors to modern English have to be mentioned: Latin itself, straight into the developing proto-English thanks to the four centuries of Roman rule over England and Wales, and above all Celtic (specifically Brythonic), the language spoken by the native inhabitants of the ancient British Isles before all the invasions that shaped modern Great Britain (the proto-German, the Roman, the Anglo-Saxon, the Danish, the Norse and the Norman ones).

There’s no other language as rich and multifaceted as English!