The West Germanic Heritage of Yorkshire English

Many English words, including everyday words, have been labelled as Norse loanwords in scholarly work on English etymology. The number and semantic range of these words is used as a key to reconstruct the sociolinguistic and demographic setting of the language contact situation in the Danelaw at the time. However, it has been pointed out on various occasions that the number of Norse loanwords may be overestimated through sole fixation on a Standard English-Old Norse comparison and contrast. This study considers a series of reasons why claimed Norse loanwords may need a reinterpretation as inherited West Germanic words. This approach is subsequently applied to hundred terms presumed to be Norse loanwords from a Yorkshire dialect dictionary, reflecting older scholarship. Their etymologies are scrutinised and compared with the ones given in the current version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), involving more evidence from West Germanic varieties, in particular from English’s historically closest relative, Frisian. While the OED sees a West Germanic origin for a quarter of the hundred words, this study finds West Germanic evidence of another quarter, reducing the number of positively identified Norse loanwords in traditional scholarship by approximately 50%.