Old Norse in English. (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Old Norse in English.
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16 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Johntm
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Message 9 of 16

01 April 2010 at 5:00am | IP Logged

It's either "royal" or "king," I can't seem to remember which. I want to say royal comes from Old Norse.
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Captain Haddock
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Message 10 of 16

01 April 2010 at 5:29am | IP Logged

Johntm wrote:

It's either "royal" or "king," I can't seem to remember which. I want to say royal comes from Old
Norse.

Well, "royal" comes from Old French roial, which comes from Latin regalis.

"King" is cognate with German könig.
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chucknorrisman
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Message 11 of 16

01 April 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged

Doesn't the word "troll" come from Norse?
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Johntm
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Message 12 of 16

01 April 2010 at 8:52am | IP Logged

Captain Haddock wrote:

Johntm wrote:

It's either "royal" or "king," I can't seem to remember which. queiro to say royal comes from Old
Norse.

Well, "royal" comes from Old French roial, which comes from Latin regalis.

"King" is cognate with German könig.

Hmmm...I saw this in a book about the history of English, it was talking about how English takes words from a ton of different languages, like "regal" from Latin, and "king" came from German, and "royal" came from Norse. It may have been wrong though, but are you sure "roial" came from "regalis?" The book was The Mother Tongue, if you're wondering.

chucknorrisman wrote:

Doesn't the word "troll" come from Norse?

Yes
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tractor
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Message 13 of 16

01 April 2010 at 9:32am | IP Logged

Without any etymological dictionary at hand, I doubt that royal comes from Old Norse. It's probably from Old French. The Scandinavian word for king is konge/konung.
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Captain Haddock
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Message 14 of 16

01 April 2010 at 1:31pm | IP Logged

I don't know if it's the book you read, but there's currently a popular book in Britain about the supposed history of
English that is actually full of complete rubbish and derided all around by linguistics.
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Johntm
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Message 15 of 16

02 April 2010 at 5:24am | IP Logged

Captain Haddock wrote:

It could have been, I just remember seeing a recommendation for it somewhere and I checked it out. Can't remember where I saw the recommendation, though. The Wikipedia page said nothing of any negative criticism, but of course I wouldn't fully trust wikipedia on that. I googled "The Mother Tongue Crebility" and "The Mother Tongue Peer Review" and found nothing.
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sik0fewl
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Message 16 of 16

02 April 2010 at 7:55pm | IP Logged

tractor wrote:

Without any etymological dictionary at hand, I doubt that royal comes from Old Norse. It's probably from Old French. The Scandinavian word for king is konge/konung.

My favourite place to go for English etymologies is etymonline.com

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