Are we humans, or are we Vikings?

April 17, 2017

• Topical

No it’s not another song by The Killers but a newly released study on genetics which reveals we may not be so closely linked to the Vikings as we like to think. What this study revealed was that though the Romans, Vikings, and Normans made their presence felt in Britain for hundreds of years they left hardly any impression on the DNA of white British people alive today. Whilst about 30% of this DNA is due to their Anglo-Saxon ancestors the other invading forces left hardly a trace.

This study of genetic differences and similarities across Britain is the culmination of 20 years of work and more than 2,000 participants. The authors argue that such DNA analysis can be used as a powerful historical tool to tell us about ordinary people, ‘the masses’. Other historical records, such as archaeology and linguistics, can often only tell us about the elite of society. One of the interesting things the article does note however, is the massive impact these invading forces often had on our language, if not our DNA. As a language English has been remarkably absorbent. Stephen Fry wrote this about the English tongue,

“The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn.”

― Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within

Inspired by Stephen Fry’s words and unfortunately unable to conduct a DNA study we have instead researched the ‘genetics’ of five every day words in our ‘mongrel’ language. You might be surprised at some of the results!

1. Alcohol: This word comes from the Arabic الكحل al-kohl, meaning very finely powdered. Like many Arabic loanwords the word alcohol came into English through the Romance languages. It entered Latin in the 13th century spelled alcohol. In Latin in the 14^th century, and English in the 15th century, the sole meaning was a very fine-grained powder. It eventually came to mean a power obtained by distillation and thus we arrive at the modern sense of the word.
2. Beef: After the Norman invasion the higher classes of society in England spoke French for hundreds of years. In fact, it’s remarkable that we don’t speak French today. Instead what happened was that English absorbed many French terms. As a result we have lots of combinations of terms in which one word comes from French. Often the ‘posher’ word, in this case the term for the food rather than the farm animal, is French. For example, pig/pork, deer/venison, and calf/veal.
3. God: God is one of the words in the English language that is of Anglo-Saxon origin, it has remain unchanged for many centuries. The Old English ‘God’ is similar to the Old High German got, Old Frisian god, Old Dutch god, Old Saxon god, Old Icelandic guð, Old Swedish guþ, Danish gud, Gothic guþ. As we can see, there I snot much variation in the northern European languages indicating how closely these languages are related.
4. Tea: This word is from the Chinese language, from the Amoy dialect for tea 茶, pronounced “dey”. Our modern form of the word comes indirectly from the Chinese through the Dutch ‘thee’. This shows the importance of Dutch merchants in the importation of tea leaves in the early 1600s. The Dutch took the word, and the tea leaves, from the Chinese traders in Bantam.
5. Karaoke: This popular entertainment finds is name from the Japanese for ‘empty orchestra’. The entertainment itself actually originates from Japan and the word didn’t appear in English until 1979.

Did you learn something new? Though some people protest against the influx of new words into the English language – think about those who dislike ‘Americanisms’ – this has been happening since the language was born. Do you want to get a better grip on these loan words? Have a look at this fun video about the English language! The History of English in 10 minutes

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