Linguist Forum
Specializations => Historical Linguistics => Topic started by: JuanPablo84 on April 01, 2015, 12:22:56 PM
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The Norman dialect of French was heavily influenced by Old Norse due to the settlement of northern France by Rollo and his vikings. Eventually, many of these Old Norse terms reached Standard French and through French, reached Spanish.
Does anybody know of Old Norse nautical terms that have entered Spanish directly, i.e., without French acting as an intermediary language?
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And without English or Latin as intermediate languages? That seems very unlikely. I don't know of any although I'd guess possibly the names of some of the boats or weapons might be so specific it's possible, if anything.
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Directly to Spanish is kind of a stretch, since there was not really much direct contact between Norse and Spanish speakers — and that's how language spreads, through contact.
Granted, in the age of internet the contact is much more indirect, but the same rule still applies.
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That's what I was thinking. But it's entirely possible there are some technical borrowings through research, even Old Norse books, that have been borrowed, at least within those fields, for things like boat types. I can't think of any other way you'd have direct contact.
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I´m researching this subject and I found over 130 spanish nautical terms which have germanic origin, and they all entered the Spanish language through French or catalan. Except a few English loans that entered directly, like yate (< Yacht), francobordo (<freeboard), bote (<boat). I thought maybe I was missing out on something, because it´s not easy to find literature on this subject in my home country and I´m kind of working in the dark.
Many thanks!