>>212874780 (OP)Researchers now believe they can prove that English is in reality a Scandinavian language, which means that it belongs to the Northern Germanic language group, just like Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese.
This breaks with what other language researchers and the rest of the world believe: that English descends directly from Old English or Anglo-Saxon, that it is a West Germanic language, which the Angles and Saxons brought with them from Northern Germany and Southern Jylland when they settled in the British Isles in the fifth century.
"Have you considered how easy it is for Norwegians to learn English?" asks Jan Terje Faarlund, professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo.
"Obviously there are many English words that resemble ours. But there is something more: its fundamental structure is strikingly similar to Norwegian. We avoid many of the usual mistakes because the grammar is more or less the same."
"Modern English is a direct descendant of the language of Scandinavians who settled in the British Isles in the course of many centuries, before the French-speaking Normans conquered the country in 1066," says Faarlund. He points out that Old English and Modern English are two very different languages. Why?
"We believe it is because Old English quite simply died out while Scandinavian survived, albeit strongly influenced of course by Old English," he says.
The 'cohabitation' between the British and the Scandinavians was largely hostile. Both fought for political hegemony. The descendants of the Vikings gained control of the eastern and northern parts of the country. The Danelaw was under the control of Scandinavian chiefs for half a century.
"We can show that wherever English differs syntactically from the other Western Germanic languages - German, Dutch, Frisian – it has the same structure as the Scandinavian languages."
>https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskningno-history-language/english-is-a-scandinavian-language/1379829