What if William the Conqueror had been defeated in Hastings?

[dhok]

I suspect modern English would look and sound like a West Germanic version of the Scandinavian languages.

Perhaps another question would be what would have happened if the Danes had conquered beyond the Danelaw...would Danish be the equivalent of French in vocabulary overlay?

Or if the Norwegians had won Stamford Bridge.

Was Norwegian much of a literary language, though? For most of its history it just kept getting passed between Sweden and Denmark...

[communistplot]

But imagine the consequences of Harald Hardråda conquering England, I doubt a Norway with a strong England at it's back would be much of a pushover. And thus we might also find the flowering of a another distinct West Norse literary tradition (other than Icelandic) and a, possibly, more divergent Norwegian.

[Herr Dunkel]

I suspect modern English would look and sound like a West Germanic version of the Scandinavian languages.

Perhaps another question would be what would have happened if the Danes had conquered beyond the Danelaw...would Danish be the equivalent of French in vocabulary overlay?

Or if the Norwegians had won Stamford Bridge.

No need.
Sveinn Ástríðarsson (Svend II of Denmark as he is commonly known) had attempted an invasion of England somewhen before 1080 but after 1066 - William had a hard time repelling him, but he did it.
If we imagine that Harold won both Hastings and Stamford (unlike what actually happened), Sveinn would give him quite a hard time.
The Norwegian hope of conquest of England died with Harðráði I have to say, but his death could've been avoided.

[Drydic]

To metamorphosize exists. I've probably even heard it much more often than to metamorphose.

Google gives 3.91 million hits for metamorphose, 59k for metamorphosize, and 23k for metamorphosise. I think your anecdote is anomalous.

edit: just realized there's nonrelevant hits in the metamorphose number; the numbers for it metamorphoses and it metamorphosizes are 43k and 3.3k respectively.

[Ser]

To metamorphosize exists. I've probably even heard it much more often than to metamorphose.

Google gives 3.91 million hits for metamorphose, 59k for metamorphosize, and 23k for metamorphosise. I think your anecdote is anomalous.

edit: just realized there's nonrelevant hits in the metamorphose number; the numbers for it metamorphoses and it metamorphosizes are 43k and 3.3k respectively.

Drydic, you know well you cannot use Google as a corpus to know which of two words or expressions is more frequent. If you get more than 100 results that are not just a single news article getting quoted again and again, then it's probably common and that's all you can tell.

[Salmoneus]

To metamorphosize exists. I've probably even heard it much more often than to metamorphose.

Google gives 3.91 million hits for metamorphose, 59k for metamorphosize, and 23k for metamorphosise. I think your anecdote is anomalous.

edit: just realized there's nonrelevant hits in the metamorphose number; the numbers for it metamorphoses and it metamorphosizes are 43k and 3.3k respectively.

Drydic, you know well you cannot use Google as a corpus to know which of two words or expressions is more frequent. If you get more than 100 results that are not just a single news article getting quoted again and again, then it's probably common and that's all you can tell.

When one is used ten times more than the other? I think you're clutching at straws. Google shows that your form is massively less used. Dictionaries mark your form as dialect only. Native speakers of that dialect have told you it's not as common even for them as the standard form. What evidence DO you want?

EDIT: corpus search of the british library gives 3 "it metamorphoses" and 5 "to metamorphose", agains 0 instances of either form with either 'metamorphosize(s)' or 'metamorphosise(s)'. On glowbe, 7 hits for 'it metamorphoses' and 36 for 'to metamorphose', none at all for your words. On coca, 4 for 'it metamorphoses' and 39 for 'to metamorphose', no hits for 'it metamorphosizes' and only one hit for 'to metamorphosize' (somebody once said it on an ABC discussion programme about the future of television, back in 2010).

Now what?

[KathTheDragon]

Bringing this back on topic, would we still have had the letter 'x'? I only ask because my dictionary tells me that Old English seems to not have had the letter, but Middle English did.

[communistplot]

I suspect modern English would look and sound like a West Germanic version of the Scandinavian languages.

Perhaps another question would be what would have happened if the Danes had conquered beyond the Danelaw...would Danish be the equivalent of French in vocabulary overlay?

Or if the Norwegians had won Stamford Bridge.

No need.
Sveinn Ástríðarsson (Svend II of Denmark as he is commonly known) had attempted an invasion of England somewhen before 1080 but after 1066 - William had a hard time repelling him, but he did it.
If we imagine that Harold won both Hastings and Stamford (unlike what actually happened), Sveinn would give him quite a hard time.
The Norwegian hope of conquest of England died with Harðráði I have to say, but his death could've been avoided.

Yeah, Sveinn might've given Harold some trouble but I think after Stamford and Hastings Harold might've been ready for it.

[Kereb]

All it means is we never got the core vocab that we did get, plus whatever orthographical nightmares came with.

This is the most important part.

Would we really have skipped the orthographical nightmares? Once you have the great vowel shift happen, you're left in the position of having to reconcile things like <a> /eI/ and <i> /aI/ with the less quirky "continental" values for those characters in more recent loan words. The only way around that is if the vowel shift didn't happen, or happened differently, which MIGHT be the case in this hypothetical scenario for no reason other than butterfly effect.
But still, there's stuff going on in our orthography that can't totally be blamed on the Normans ... <ough> for example, would that have turned out the same?

[KathTheDragon]

Actually, I'm thinking 'qu', 'x' and the s/k thing that c's got going.

The vowels are mostly predictable despite the vowel shift, though it may well have happened differently, and with fewer 'exceptions'.

[Salmoneus]

Actually, I'm thinking 'qu', 'x' and the s/k thing that c's got going.

The vowels are mostly predictable despite the vowel shift, though it may well have happened differently, and with fewer 'exceptions'.

Don't see why the orthography would be that different. We'd still have had massive French and Latin influence.

For instance, Danish - further away from French influence than England - has still ended up with q, x, and a 'c' that is sometimes /s/.

[Herr Dunkel]

Or if the Norwegians had won Stamford Bridge.

No need.
Sveinn Ástríðarsson (Svend II of Denmark as he is commonly known) had attempted an invasion of England somewhen before 1080 but after 1066 - William had a hard time repelling him, but he did it.
If we imagine that Harold won both Hastings and Stamford (unlike what actually happened), Sveinn would give him quite a hard time.
The Norwegian hope of conquest of England died with Harðráði I have to say, but his death could've been avoided.

Yeah, Sveinn might've given Harold some trouble but I think after Stamford and Hastings Harold might've been ready for it.

Why and how?
Harold wouldn't have been able to gather the fyrd as its term had already passed, not to mention that what army he raised would have been further exhausted and depleted whereas Sveinn's men wouldn't have marched across England thrice, unlike Harold's (first, from the south to Stamford Bridge, then from Stamford Bridge back south to Hastings, and then from Hastings to wherever Sveinn might disembark, most likely somewhere near Stamford Bridge again).
That's assuming that Sveinn attacks within two years from Haralðr and William, though. If it were more, Harold would indeed have been ready for him I think.

[KathTheDragon]

Actually, I'm thinking 'qu', 'x' and the s/k thing that c's got going.

The vowels are mostly predictable despite the vowel shift, though it may well have happened differently, and with fewer 'exceptions'.

Don't see why the orthography would be that different. We'd still have had massive French and Latin influence.

For instance, Danish - further away from French influence than England - has still ended up with q, x, and a 'c' that is sometimes /s/.

And how many words older than a few hundred years contain them? And what is the etymology of said words?

[Kereb]

i could swear i've seen <x> in old english

[Kereb]

ah yeah here we go a couple of examples
betwēox (later "betwixt")
axian was the subject of a thread about "ask" and "ax" some months back
seax, which is cognate with "Saxon" (OE Seaxa)

[KathTheDragon]

Somewhat annoyingly, I can't find anything which gives the first usage of 'x' in English, and the sources I use for Old English do include 'x', but how am I to tell if this is vastly pre-Norman or not?

[Hallow XIII]

Somewhat annoyingly, I can't find anything which gives the first usage of 'x' in English, and the sources I use for Old English do include 'x', but how am I to tell if this is vastly pre-Norman or not?

It's as old as the English usage of the Latin alphabet. /ks/ is written x in Latin, so that's what the English spelt their /ks/ with.

[Nortaneous]

didn't they sometimes use <z> instead of <ts> too? although obviously that wasn't too widespread

[communistplot]

Or if the Norwegians had won Stamford Bridge.

No need.
Sveinn Ástríðarsson (Svend II of Denmark as he is commonly known) had attempted an invasion of England somewhen before 1080 but after 1066 - William had a hard time repelling him, but he did it.
If we imagine that Harold won both Hastings and Stamford (unlike what actually happened), Sveinn would give him quite a hard time.
The Norwegian hope of conquest of England died with Harðráði I have to say, but his death could've been avoided.

Yeah, Sveinn might've given Harold some trouble but I think after Stamford and Hastings Harold might've been ready for it.

Why and how?
Harold wouldn't have been able to gather the fyrd as its term had already passed, not to mention that what army he raised would have been further exhausted and depleted whereas Sveinn's men wouldn't have marched across England thrice, unlike Harold's (first, from the south to Stamford Bridge, then from Stamford Bridge back south to Hastings, and then from Hastings to wherever Sveinn might disembark, most likely somewhere near Stamford Bridge again).
That's assuming that Sveinn attacks within two years from Haralðr and William, though. If it were more, Harold would indeed have been ready for him I think.

My assumption was indeed based on the passing of a great many years (5-15) after Harold would've won the fight for England. If it were any less than 5 years Harold is likely to have lost, and we might've had a new Danelaw.

[Curlyjimsam]

The effects on <c> and <cw> seem to be the only significant orthographic effects of the Norman Conquest that I can think of. I'm not sure how frequent /kw/ was in Old English but it was definitely respelled <qu> in cwene/queen and maybe some other words as well. I'm also not sure to what extent the Normans can be blamed on the adoption of <k>/<ch> instead of <c>, given that Anglo-Norman made no significant use of <k> and its use as the normal letter for /k/ seems to be more of a continental Germanic phenomenon.

[Ser]

given that Anglo-Norman made no significant use of <k> and its use as the normal letter for /k/ seems to be more of a continental Germanic phenomenon.

I remember once seeing an edition of Marie de France's Lanval, a lay in Anglo-Norman, and it used <k> now and then as well as <qu>: unkes, ki, ke... So I just looked for any free online facsimiles of stuff in Anglo-Norman, and yeah, <k> was definitely used now and then. Both of these images come from the Holkham Bible:

http://libraries.slu.edu/a/digital_coll ... /c2-08.jpg
Here you can find a <k> at the end of the second line (don't know what that word says), another at the beginning of the third line (ke), another later on in that same line (Meke), another towards the end (Gai ke tu ne), another by the beginning of the last line of the left paragraph (lee ke le)... Though you can tell que (abbreviated as <q>) appears as well, for example as the third word of that paragraph.

http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/medieval/images/004296.jpg
In this other image, now with a better zoom (though no more readable to me), there's a <k> by the beginning as well (lauiek or something).

[Exez]

I don't know if it contributes to the discussion, but recently I discovered this altlang: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/NiwEnglisc

Its premise is the evolution of Old English towards modern German.

[Nortaneous]

why do these altlangs always preserve the characters that probably wouldn't have been preserved

i mean. maybe thorn. maybe. but fucking ***yogh***? the letter that was used in a bunch of other alphabets and was dropped in every single one of them once the printing press hit?

edit: hwair. HWAIR. a letter invented for SCHOLARLY TRANSCRIPTION OF FUCKING GOTHIC

[Duaseron]

So, would it be possible that English would still have cases and a more elaborate verb declension? If there is a possible sentence in Modern Old English, please post it...

[hwhatting]

So, would it be possible that English would still have cases and a more elaborate verb declension?

If we assume less influence from the North, NNE (No-Norman-English) might look more similar to the Dutch endings system. I don't think anything as elaborate as the OE system would have been kept; most Germanic languages not spoken on isolated fringes reduced their endings systems. Modern High German with its 4-case sysetm is an outlier even in comparison to most German dialects, which mostly only have two- or three-case systems, and distinguish these cases mostly only on pronouns.
I'd say the thing to get rid of if you want an alternate English with more cases and morphology is the Danelaw, not the Normans.