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Viking linguistic legacy
Christopher Catling, Contributing Editor for CA, delves into the eccentricities of the heritage world.
In September, Sherds attended a lecture given by Richard Dance, Professor of Early English in the Cambridge University Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, on the theme of ‘Vikings in your Vocabulary: Adventures in the History of English’, based on his Gersum Project (www.gersum.org) looking at the Scandinavian influence on our language.
Richard persuaded his audience to imagine they were out shopping for fish and eggs in a market in 10th-century England. Half the audience were given phrases in Old English and the other half in Old Norse, and the strong similarities between the two languages enabled each group to understand the other – more to the point, we speakers of moder
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