Friends
and Relatives in Need of an Explanation: Gr. anagkaîos, L necessarius,
and PGmc *naud-
Sara M. Pons-Sanz, Queens'
College, Cambridge
Scandinavian loans may only account for 2% of the vocabulary of Contemporary
English, but their presence is so important that Jespersen could claim
that "[a]n Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian
words; they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare.
" Although most of the Old Norse loans first occur in Middle English,
those attested in earlier texts constitute the second largest group of
loans in Old English, the first consisting of terms borrowed from Latin.
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