mutual intelligibility of OE with ON, &c

[Gordon Selway]

A couple of thoughts to do with OE/ON/OLG/OHG/Frisian &c mutual
intelligibility (which I may have mentioned long ago on a different but
related thread):

there are reports that LG/Flemish and some versions of OE or MiddE had a
degree of mutual intelligibility, or at least of recognition of consistent
differences (a 'shibboleth' case for example to do with 12th century
settlements by traders from the Low Countries - 'he says 'keyse' for
'cheyse' and 'brode' for 'brede' - which led to murder);

there are also reports of internal non-intelligibility in insular Germanic
- 'eggys' -v- 'eyer' - but what the level of direct contact between SW and
NE was then, and the dates, and whether this is by inference rather than
written contemporary evidence I do not know;

of course, mutual lack of comprehension (demotic Glaswegian, of which I
have a passive understanding and a limited ability to deploy, against
standard British English; or Northumbrian, or East Anglian, or the more
rustic forms of south-western/western English [or Black Country] with an RP
speaker) may not yet be dead.  Though how far it is a class thing against a
local thing I am not sure: my knowledge of Glasgow comes from childhood and
hearing respectable Glaswegian speech from people born 120 years ago, so
that I noticed a certain difference, down to parental speech first acquired
80-90 years ago, and I have a similar knowledge of rustic SW English.
Oddly in Glasgow, it can be thought that I have a tinge of Edinburgh,
though I am understood readily enough.  But I digress;

experience suggests that, with a little attention and understanding of how
languages work on both sides (which is almost proverbially not to be found
in the native English speaker), there could still be some degree of mutual
intelligibility between spoken Scandinavian and spoken English, but the
context would have to be right.  it could be similar to the proposition
made to us when I was a schoolboy that we did not need to learn Italian in
order to read and understand Dante, because we all had a thorough grounding
in Latin.

Gordon Selway
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>