HISTORY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 209 



able treatment of the whole of the subject, in which both lexical and 

 phonological points of view are done full justice to. 1 



The Scandinavians had scarcely had time to establish themselves, 

 still less to complete their social and linguistic fusion with the native 

 race, when the Norman Conquest brought in another element, which 

 was to play a still greater part in the development of English life 

 and English language at any rate as far as outward appearance 

 is concerned, for if we were able to look beneath the surface and to 

 take everything into consideration, it is not improbable that the 

 Scandinavian influence would turn out to be the more important one 

 of the two. As it is, French loan-words are more conspicuous than 

 Scandinavian ones, just as the political revolution brought about 

 by the Conquest is more in view than the subtler modifications of 

 the social structure that may be due to the Danes and Norwegians. 

 Among the historians who have written of the Conquest and its 

 consequences and who have incidentally paid attention to linguistic 

 facts and unearthed documents illustrative of the conflict of languages, 

 Freeman deserves of course the foremost place, although he is per- 

 haps a little apt to underrate the role played by French. Some of his 

 assertions have been put right in Johan Vising 's excellent survey 

 of the history of the French language in England. 2 



As for the French loan-words themselves, more attention has been 

 paid by English scholars to their place in the economy of the lan- 

 guage, their intellectual power or emotional value as compared with 

 the native synonyms, than to the relation to their French originals, 

 although that side too offers no small interest. Their phonology is 

 rather complicated on account of their coming from various dialects 

 and being taken over at various dates, so that sometimes the same 

 French word appears in English in two widely different forms, for 

 instance catch and chase. The first scholar who treated French loans 

 in English from this point of view with perfect knowledge of French 

 as well as of English sound-history was Henry Nichol, whose article 

 on the French language in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica gives much attention to English and is still well worth read- 

 ing. Since then, 'the question has been treated in various places by 

 that indefatigable veteran worker in all branches of English etymology, 

 Walter William Skeat, 3 and in Germany by Dietrich Behrens. 4 



With regard to the other languages, from which English has 

 borrowed freely at various times, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, etc., it is 



1 Erik Bjorkman, Scandinavian Loan-Wards in Middle English, i-n. Halle, 

 1900-1902. 



2 Johan Vising, Franska sprdket i England, i-ni. Goteborg, 1900-1902. 



3 W. W. Skeat, Principles of English Etymology. Second series. Oxford, 1891. 

 Notes on English Etymology. Oxford, 1901. 



* Dietrich Behrens, Beitrage zur geschichte der franzosischen sprache in England. 

 (Franzosische Studien, v, Band 2. heft.) Heilbronn, 1886. Franzosische ele- 

 mente im Englischen, in Paul's Grundriss, as above. 



