From Old English to Middle English: The effects of language contact

Script and on camera: Thijs Porck
Camera and editing: Thomas J. Vorisek

[Gotland]

I'm currently learning Old English (as a German native speaker). It's fascinating to see how closely related they are. My goal is to become fluent until next summer and then move on to Middle English 🙂

[IchliebeHunde]

I speak English as a first language and German as a second, and I find it fascination and fun that I can understand, about, 40-50% of spoke Old English and, about, 60-70% reading comprehension. I have studied a little bit of Old English grammar and alphabet pronunciation (at least the letters that aren’t found in English or German). I really enjoyed this video and I aim to study old English more in the future.

[ariennedevreugd]

Great video! I also love the fact that the Normandy was named after the Vikings who settled there in the 9th century ("Northmen"). So England was invaded by Viking descendants once again in 1066, bringing in linguistic influences AGAIN!

[milosit]

Fascinating and excellent video Dr. Prock. As a long-time reader of ME, there's much to be said about the temporal regionalization of M.E as there was no set standard of grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. after being displaced by written French and Latin between 1066 and early 12thC . Caxton must have had a heck of a job in 1474 trying to standardize the spelling. Having spent the majority of his working life in the Low Countries, one must suspect that there is a slight Dutch influence on Early Modern English.

[benjiemaglinao]

This is also a challenge for me in creating my poems, but now I am writing in modern English because modern people are reading my works and we don't use old or middle English to converse today, but old and middle English was history and gold.

[GregoryCordeiro]

Really love your work Dr Porck. Your blog is amazing. Thanks for this vid. It's a great introduction for students of English curious about the language's mediaeval heritage.

[andyr]

Well done! I think you make this understandable to those with no or little prior knowledge of the subject. I cover this in a class to students of advanced level English who express an interest in the origins and idiosyncracies of English. I enjoy doing this but you have shown me how I can improve my presentation! Thank you!

[Bjowolf]

When learning English as a Scandinavian (Dane), I was often very surprised by the many deep similarities between the basic vocabularies of English & Danish and between several of the grammatical elements as well, which all in all made English a fairly easy language for us to learn - as if we already by magic "knew" a simplistic older Germanic core English in advance and then "just" needed to fill in the gaps and climb a few hurdles here and there - for instance the peculiar use of the word "do" and how to use "-ing" with verbs in the progressive mood.

So if you haven't tried it yet, Dr. Porck - and others here 😉 -, you should really try giving our three very similar Scandinavian languages a chance - it's very nearly a three for the price of one package. 🤗

The Norwegians and Swedes are just somewhat poor spellers, and they prefer to pronounce our otherwise typically mutual words in strange melodic ways 😂

[joshadams]

I would add that contact with Old Norse may explain, to some extent, English’s loss of inflectional endings. I say “to some extent” because this loss has occurred in other Germanic languages to varying degrees.

[梅天培]

Very informative vid. Thanks very much. But hope there is another one on how Norse and French influenced English syntax (definitely more complex and tedious tho)

[paullhodgkinson]

I’d love to have seen more about the effects on grammar, not just loan words - just for example, the loss of gender, and the hybrid form of the verb “to be” mixing Old English and Old Norse forms. Nice video though, the influence of Old Norse is often ignored because it didn’t noticeably change formal written Old English

[Lebaneselinguist]

Amazing clarification, thank you, and subscribed.

[elleeli]

This video is very informative! Thank you for this, Sir!

[PeterGaunt]

Fascinating. Kind of ties together the bits of the history of English which I already had an idea of.

PS have you done a video of why Dutch people often speak uncannily good English? I'm told there's a connection through Friesian but I don't know how reliable that is.

[alistairmcelwee]

So sad that most schools in the Anglo world have never taught Old English, have looked only cursorily at Middle English, and now are no longer teaching Shakespeare.

[tyonglen]

Very informative and easy to understand, thank you !

[SouthernersSax]

It would certainly be interesting to see an alternate history where the languages that mutated English from Old to Middle were instead themselves mutated by English in such a fashion.

[strawberry.chaeyoung]

This helped me sooo much with my language arts project, thanks!

[valevisa]

Like everything else in the universe, a language evolves.

[milenaicic]

Hello! Could you write when and why the helping verb "do" started to be used in questions? Thank you!