Scandinavian loan-words in ME.

In ME the main donors of borrowings to English were French and Scandinavian Ls:

Scandinavian borrowings came to English from Northern and North-Eastern Dialects.

Ways of Borrowings: Scandinavian borrowings penetrated only through oral speech as far as the Scandinavians had never been too eager to come to the power wherever they went. They were just raiders.

Assimilation of Borrowings: Scandinavian borrowings were easier to assimilate as far as the Scandinavian Dialects as well as OE Dialects were Germanic dialects (they all belonged to one and the same L group). So the Ls were very similar and the assimilation was easy.

Semantic Fields: everyday life (cake, raft, skirt, birth, dirt, fellow, root, window, to die, etc.); military (knife, fleet, etc.); legal matters (law, husband, etc.); some pronouns and conjunctions (they, their, them, both, though, etc.); essential notion (N scar, anger; V to call, to take, to want to kill, to cast, to scare; Adj happy, ill, weak, wrong; Pron same, both; Prep till, fro, etc.).

Recognition in ModE: Scandinavian borrowings are hard to distinguish from the native words as far as Scandinavian Dialects belonged to the same L group (Germanic). The only distinctive Scandinavian feature in English: Scandinavian cluster [sk] (sky, skill, skin, skirt, etc.);

Contributions: A lot of Scandinavian borrowings disappeared, some were left only in dialects; Some Scandinavian borrowings replaced the native words (they, take, call, etc.); Scandinavian borrowings enlarged the number of synonyms in English: native to blossom – Scan. borr. to bloom, native wish – Scan. borr. want, native heaven – Scan. borr. sky, etc.

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