13. Loanwords in British English

Words derived from Old Norse inSir Gawain and the Green Knight: An etymological survey

“…good match for ME whirl‐ (§10.4) . Given this formal (and semantic) proximity, most authorities derive the latter (and PDE whirl ) more or less confidently from ON; thus Skeat (1892a: 473), Knigge (77), OED (followed by Nagano : 65), GDS, TG(D), MED , and notice also Hug (: 68–9, 371–2), Grant (2009a: 383) . There are nonetheless (near‐)cognates in OE which can also be entertained as etyma, and it is convenient to treat these under two heads: (1) No unambiguous OE reflexes of a PGmc * hwerb‐il‐ are attested.…”

“…ME ar , PDE are is sometimes listed by handbooks and general histories of English as if it is a straightforward example of a loan from ON (see e.g. Fennell : 92, Hogg & Denison : 11, and likewise Ó Muirithe : xviii), and this error is perpetuated by Grant (2009a: 375); but ME forms in ar‐ can be explained perfectly adequately as continuing Angl aron (etc. ), and no attempt is made to adduce ON input into their development by Bj., the original OED or MED (or for that matter by TG(D) or GDS).…”

“… As correctly remarked by TGD (141). Nagano (: 54) and Grant (2009a: 375) mistakenly treat ‐r as the nom. sg.…”

“… Though for an exception notice Grant (2009a: 383), who still has kill (without discussion) in his list of ON loans. A different Scand connection is suggested by Stratmann ( : s.v.…”

Networks of lexical borrowing and lateral gene transfer in language and genome evolution

“…Although the use of Swadesh lists may decrease the number of borrowings to a certain degree, it cannot exclude all of them. In a recent survey of 1,504 common words in English, for example, 616 (41%) were judged to be loanwords , yet in the traditional English Swadesh list there are still 32 borrowings out of 200 (16.5%), mostly from Old Norse and Old French ; and in a recent revision of the Albanian Swadesh list, 34 out of 107 words (31.8%) were identified as possible borrowings .…”