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From Ombudsman to Wittite: A study of Swedish and Early Scandinavian loanwords in English
Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of English.
2024 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

Loanwords are an integral part of English vocabulary and are found in every area of life. It is therefore central for our understanding of the English language that we have a decent understanding of this feature. Swedish loanwords constitute just a small part of English borrowing compared to languages like French and Latin and have therefore been largely untouched in terms of research, that does however not mean that there has not been an impact. This research paper aims to explain the impact of Swedish on the English language in terms of loanwords, but also aims to research the role semantic domains play in the success of borrowing. Which words get borrowed and do some domains have a higher tendency to fall out of fashion? This is done through collecting and categorising loanwords from the OED into domains. To analyse, the words have then been compared to words with Early Scandinavian origin. The results show that while words of Swedish origin are concentrated in a few domains, like science, Early Scandinavian words are more evenly spread among the domains and also more common in the English language in general. The results also show that words with certain cultural connections or words that belong to very specialised fields seem to have a stronger chance of surviving as loanwords in a language, possibly explaining why Early Scandinavian has a much higher exclusion rate than words of Swedish origin. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2024. , p. 54
Keywords [en]
Lexical borrowing, Semantic domains, Swedish, Early Scandinavian, Loanwords, Norse
National Category
Languages and Literature Specific Languages
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-228530OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-228530DiVA, id: diva2:1890947
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Available from: 2024-11-18 Created: 2024-08-21 Last updated: 2024-11-18Bibliographically approved

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