English language Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Influence of Old Norse === From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Old English gradually [[Middle English#Transition from Old English|transformed]] through [[language contact]] with [[Old Norse]] in some regions. The waves of Norse (Viking) colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with [[Old Norse]], a [[North Germanic]] language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the [[Danelaw]] area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in [[Scots language|Scots]] and [[English language in Northern England|Northern English]]. The centre of Norsified English was in the [[Midlands]] around [[Kingdom of Lindsey|Lindsey]]. After 920 CE, when Lindsey was reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, English spread extensively throughout the region. An element of Norse influence that continues in all English varieties today is the third person pronoun group beginning with ''th-'' (''they, them, their'') which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with {{lang|ang|h-}} ({{lang|ang|hie, him, hera}}).{{sfn|Thomason|Kaufman|1988|pp=284β290}} Other core [[List of English words of Old Norse origin|Norse loanwords]] include "give", "get", "sky", "skirt", "egg", and "cake", typically displacing a native Anglo-Saxon equivalent. Old Norse in this era retained considerable mutual intelligibility with some dialects of Old English, particularly northern ones. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page