Thank the Vikings

“English is such a complicated language!” 

No it is not! Or at least, present-day English (PDE) isn’t, when compared to its Old English (OE) ancestor. And we have the Vikings to thank for that. It is believed that extensive language contact between Old Norse (ON) – the language of the Vikings – and OE led to the simplification of many features of OE to better accommodate the similarities and differences in both languages. These simplified variants have largely been retained, and many of these features can still be observed in the English we use today, as I will (attempt to) illustrate through snippets of Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge. 

(Why this choice of text? Because I bought the book for Literature class many years ago, and I thought I should find some use for it other than leaving it out as a decorative item collecting dust on my shelf.)

Decay of Suffixes

Both OE and ON were highly synthetic languages, relying heavily on the use of inflections to indicate the relationship between verbs and their subjects. As the languages came into contact with each other, however, the use of such inflections gradually declined, resulting in PDE having only remnants of the verb marking system that was present in OE. This change was likely brought about by the speakers of both OE and ON being able to understand each other even without the use of inflections, which made them obsolete over time as they were no longer necessary for communication between the Scandinavians and the English (McWhorter, 2008).

As illustrated in these excerpts, in the present tense, PDE only has the -s suffix to indicate the third person singular “he/she loves/gives”, and uses the unmarked form of the verb to indicate the first person “I/we love”. The bare verb stem is also used for the third person plural “they give”. In contrast, OE distinguished between “I” and “we” by marking their respective verbs with different suffixes, using -e for the first person singular, and -aþ for the first person plural. The third person singular, however, did not differentiate between male or female in OE, with both being marked by -eþ. This lack of distinction is still present in PDE, although the -eþ has since been reduced to -s. In addition to a reduction in the variety of verb markings available, nouns were also once morphologically marked for dative or accusative case (Allen, 2005).

Addressing the dative nouns “towel” and “hand” in the above examples, OE would have had the addition of an -e suffix to mark the dative case, but that requirement has been dropped entirely in PDE, leaving only the root nouns behind. Similarly, the accusative plural “hands” is no longer marked with any form of the -as suffix that was present in OE. These examples illustrate the shift in English from a largely synthetic to a more analytic language, as the decay of suffixes reduced the possible variants of verbs and nouns, aiding in the simplification of the language. This change, however, also resulted in PDE being more reliant on word order to indicate the relationships between different elements of an utterance, as these relationships can no longer be observed through individual words.

Second-Person Pronouns

Another feature of Germanic languages that was present in OE was the use of separate second-person pronouns for singular and plural subjects. In PDE, this number distinction was lost in favour of the pronoun “you” used to cover all second-person subjects regardless of number (McWhorter, 2008).

These excerpts clearly illustrate “you” being used to refer to a single interlocutor in the conversation, as indicated by the stage directions and explicit naming of the targeted individual.

Playing the role of the narrator, Alfieri serves as the bridge between the characters and the audience. This opening to the play is addressed to the audience, with “you” being used as a second-person plural pronoun.

Some varieties of English, however, do still contain the number distinction that was present in OE, such as the slang term “yiz” to refer to multiple addressees. This particular term is more commonly used among working-class individuals in America, which is a persona that Eddie identifies with.

Reduction of Locative Adverbs

In OE, “hider”, “þider”, and “hwider” were used with verbs that indicate movement of the subject from one location to another, while “here”, “there”, and “where” were reserved for subjects that were stationary. In PDE, however, the former set of adverbs have fallen out of use, and the latter set of adverbs have taken over both functions.

These excerpts show that the words “here” and “there” are used with both the movement verbs “go” and “come”, and the stationary verb “stay”, illustrating the expansion in function of those adverbs. In line with the idea of simplification of English, the use of the same words for similar functions would be a more practical approach in the development of the language, making it easier for new learners. 

So...

The impact that ON had on English can still be clearly observed in multiple aspects of PDE, reducing the distinctions between various grammatical structures and largely simplifying the language system. So the next time you hear someone complaining about how complicated English is, just give them a friendly reminder that it could have been a lot worse if not for the Vikings.