I read an interesting article by Matthew Townend a while back, as part of a History of English module. Townend disputes that
a bilingual society is necessarily made up of multilingual speakers, discusses
the matter from a sociolinguistic viewpoint and explores the nature of the
contact between the two languages. He argues that England’s bilingualism was largely
based on monolingual Old English and Old Norse speakers all speaking their own
language.
Townend delves into Norse and
English co-existing in the Danelaw. He brings up the lack of recognition of Old
Norse in Old English texts, with a few exceptions including mention of Norse
gods and a language called Denisc. He
makes a point of there not being any evidence of the English using Norse
habitually, but that Norse, according to Aethelweard, Aelfric and other
evidence, was most certainly in use at Danish king Cnut’s court in England. He
also emphasises that while both languages were frequently spoken, only Old
English was written in the Roman alphabet, the Vikings favouring runes. The
article does not mention the earlier Anglo-Saxon Futhorc and its relationship
to the Futhark, which could have been useful to a reader with little knowledge
of the historical background.
Further discussion on division
between the languages and their speakers leads to question of prestige –
Townend suggests that if Norse were a status language in England during the
Viking Age, there would be more non-needed Norse loans into English, whereas if
English were more prestigious, Norse speakers would’ve taken it up to a greater
extent. However, there is very little to support either of these patterns. Townend
references J.D. Richards and D.M. Hadley when he suggests that Norse
place-names seem to have entered the English onomasticon, and should not be
regarded as evidence of abundant Norse presence in England. However, he refutes
the idea that these Scandinavian loans as a rule spread to places with no
Viking settlement; Norse place-names were most certainly only found in or near
areas where Old Norse was actually spoken.
A related point is
“Scandinavianised” place-names, where English morphemes were replaced by Norse.
Townend takes this as evidence for speakers of both languages living side by
side; Vikings hear the Anglo-Saxon names and substitute the words with their
Scandinavian counterparts. He quotes and disagrees with Gillian Fellows-Jensen,
who believes that the Norse speakers did not always change the English names –
Townend thinks it “apparent” that the invaders would adjust the names to fit
their own speech. He goes on to say that surviving speakers of English are
responsible for the preservation of original place-names. Scandinavians must
also have coined new ones whenever the English cognates were too different.
Townend finishes by quoting A.
McIntosh concerning language contact – that the notion actually pertains to
contact between speakers of languages. Languages are not separated from their peoples;
the sociolinguistic dimension should not be ignored, and may indeed bring new
perspective and new ways of looking at evidence to the study of historical
linguistics.
