The Common Chameleon

Intriguing yet unconvincing. There is no clear break between "old English" and middle English in the historical record. There are Scandinavian influences, yes, but if you look closely to the geolinguistic map of England, most Scandinavian influences are regional and are centered on areas with historically Nordic settlements. Yes, the Norsemen may have influenced the development of English, but to say that modern English is just Norse with some old English is bit of a stretch.

This interests me as I am currently learning Swedish and I have found it to be the easiest language I have ever tried: mainly down to the very similar grammar.

As a northern englishman, (Yorkshire), taking a job in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the early eighties, I was delighted to find that so many northern words, dismissed by my teachers as 'dialect' or 'slang', were in fact old norse, retained, unchanged, for a thousand years, never accepted as 'proper' english by southerners.

I don't agree with the premise that old english simply died out.
And if anybody wants a definitive tome on "Old English Deverbal Substantives, Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme", just let me know.

English my favorite language at school.I enjoy learning English language http://youtu.be/s6Ris80-QdY learning language with videos is interesting.