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date: 05 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Britain is not and never has been monolingual. The 2011 census counted inhabitants of Britain speaking nearly ninety languages, including Slovenian, Farsi, Tagalog, and Swahili; a visitor to mid-twelfth-century London might have heard as many as fourteen languages: English, French, German, Flemish, Danish, Genoese, Spanish, Breton, Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek. Britain has therefore of necessity always been a site of language contact. This chapter focuses on what influence this language contact has had on British English, a topic of increasing interest to historical linguists. Following a brief account of some of the methodological challenges attendant on studying historical language contact, the chapter sketches the influence of the four main contact influences on English: Celtic, Latin, Norse, and French.

Keywords: language, borrowing, calque, English, French, Latin, Norse, Celtic

Joan C. Beal

Joan C. Beal is Professor Emerita at the University of Sheffield and was formerly Director of the National Centre for English Cultural Tradition at the University of Sheffield. Her books include An Introduction to Regional Englishes (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and English in Modern Times 1700–1945 (Hooder Arnold, 2004).

Mark Faulkner

Mark Faulkner is Ussher Assistant Professor of Mediaeval Studies at Trinity College Dublin, whither he came in 2016 after previous appointments at University College Cork and the University of Sheffield. He has published extensively on Old and Middle English.

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