Vinlandic Language

So I've been playing a scenario in my head for the past week about a more successful Vinland colony lead by Lief Eriksson on Prince Edward Island. It's basically a colony of a more successful North Sea Empire for 70 years before going it's own way. So I see some strong Anglo-Saxon intermingling with a lot of loan words from Iroquoian and Algonquian languages.

What your guy's take on this?
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
Anglo-Saxon? The Norse people who ventured into the Vinland and Iceland spoke North Germanic languages. Anglo-Saxon languages are West Germanic.
 
So I've been playing a scenario in my head for the past week about a more successful Vinland colony lead by Lief Eriksson on Prince Edward Island. It's basically a colony of a more successful North Sea Empire for 70 years before going it's own way. So I see some strong Anglo-Saxon intermingling with a lot of loan words from Iroquoian and Algonquian languages.

What your guy's take on this?

Hmmm. I think you'd be going in the wrong direction to look at Anglo-Saxon (unless the colony sees a large immigration from England). I think a good place to start would be looking at Medieval Icelandic and then look at the type of words which they would likely inherit from Algonquin. Usually, languages most easily pick up words from neighbors for things they don't have in their own language - so Algonquin words for flora and fauna would be easy ones to pick up. Of course this rule isn't 100 percent and sometimes a people will adopt a foreign word for a familiar concept but this is much rarer.
 
Anglo-Saxon? The Norse people who ventured into the Vinland and Iceland spoke North Germanic languages. Anglo-Saxon languages are West Germanic.

Hmmm. I think you'd be going in the wrong direction to look at Anglo-Saxon (unless the colony sees a large immigration from England).

So I've been playing a scenario in my head for the past week about a more successful Vinland colony lead by Lief Eriksson on Prince Edward Island. It's basically a colony of a more successful North Sea Empire for 70 years before going it's own way.
I may not have been clear on this but what I meant was an Anglo-Norse England centric state like what Cnut ruled over. So I am suggesting a lot of immigration from England, particularly specialists like blacksmiths and architectures for the colony.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
So that leaves England,Wales, Scandinavia except Finland,Iceland, Greenland and Vinland with some borders of it in North America under Norse rule.
 
I may not have been clear on this but what I meant was an Anglo-Norse England centric state like what Cnut ruled over. So I am suggesting a lot of immigration from England, particularly specialists like blacksmiths and architectures for the colony.

So in this TL,England will be ruled by Vikings/Norse or what?
It's worth pointing out that Cnut's England wasn't a Danish dominated country akin to later Norman rule. Cnut just happened to be the guy one English faction preferred over the other. Albeit being king meant more Danes and Norwegians would come settle.
 
I imagine they would have a dialect/language that has borrowed over native words for things like new world plants and animals along with naturally developed differences that happen because of their distance from the other Norsemen. the Greenlanders traded with the Vinlanders for timber and other goods so they would be the most similar to them linguistically, Akin to the level of similarity between Danish and Norwegian.
 
So that leaves England,Wales, Scandinavia except Finland,Iceland, Greenland and Vinland with some borders of it in North America under Norse rule.

In this kind of scenario, I think that some English will make their way to Vinland, but I think the majority of English emigration would actually be towards Norway and Denmark. You see, England has had towns and even cities for some time by this point and had developed city laws, etc. These did not exist in Norway and one could suspect that a Great Northern Empure might use the English to help settle cities throughout their lands - so ewhat similar to the role which Germans had to Central and Eastern Europe.

I'm not sure there would be much of a draw for large scale Anglo-Saxon settlers in Vinland (though there would certainly be fishermen and traders who would make the move). The most likely thing would be for Vinland initially to be seen as an extension of Iceland and Greenland and draw settlers from those regions.


It's worth pointing out that Cnut's England wasn't a Danish dominated country akin to later Norman rule. Cnut just happened to be the guy one English faction preferred over the other. Albeit being king meant more Danes and Norwegians would come settle.

True, but from my understanding, he had a strong base of support among the Anglo-Norse of the Danelaw. So, in this case, Anglo-Norse may just ve referring to a separate faction of the English.
 
Anglo-Saxon? The Norse people who ventured into the Vinland and Iceland spoke North Germanic languages. Anglo-Saxon languages are West Germanic.
As far as ive heard old english isn't too far from old Danish (depending on which english dialect were talking about).

They're close enough that even at that time people realized they had sister tongues, and it wouldn't take a ton of effort to learn the differences between them.
 

Albert.Nik

Banned
As far as ive heard old english isn't too far from old Danish (depending on which english dialect were talking about).

They're close enough that even at that time people realized they had sister tongues, and it wouldn't take a ton of effort to learn the differences between them.
I know Germanic languages are very close to each other. But still,Anglo-Saxon is classified under West Germanic since long is what I wanted to say.
 
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