When the Romans departed Britain it left the Welsh-speaking Britons of Hadrian's Wall country vulnerable to raids from the Picts. So they brought in mercenaries to fight and protect the Tyne valley in return for land. "The mercenary soldiers were Angles and Saxons originating from Angulus (now Denmark) and Saxony (Germany). The Angles settled in the north, the Saxons settled in the south. The Angles gave England its name ... Angle Land. "The Angles and Saxons brought with them the forerunner of modern English. Today the only part of England were the original Anglo-Saxon language has survived is in Northumberland, Durham and Tyneside. Geordie words are more than 80% Angle in origin, compared to less than 30% for standard English. "Geordies are said to pronounce correct English wrongly, but they speak the ancient language of England. For example: burn (stream), gan (go), dede (dead), hoos (house), etc. Perhaps Geordies can claim to be the true English." So now you know. See what you learn on this site

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Answers

And your source is??

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

A learned paper that I will dig out later. However, I nicked this from Talk of the Tyne :-}}}

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Since moving to Denmark and learning (after a fashion) Danish I have been surprised how often Scandinavian words crop up in English. E.G. the danish word for town is 'by' (pronounced boo) found in many english placenames. One I was particularly struck by is home, 'hjem' pronounced yem. Danish for to go home is 'gC% hjem'.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Ooops C% should be an a with a circle over it (it looked fine in the reply box)

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

There's an excellent site that covers a lot about this:

http://www.thenortheast.fsnet.co.uk/OurRoots.htm

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

I've always said that Wembley should be moved North, or tekken yhem, in my view.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

I was a bit disappointed to learn that my birthplace [and home of the greatest living Geordie] - ashington - was exactly that.

a ton of -ing ash.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Nah, Nah Min, as a fellow Ashingtonian, Ashington is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Aesca's Ingas Dene meaning Valley of Aesca's people. Now who the heck Aesca was, don't ask me. (Its amazing what you can find on the web)!!

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

I read somewhere that one of the Scandinavian words for 'stool' is very nearly 'cracket'.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Yeah. I went for a medical this morning and the Dr asked me about the consistency of me crackits.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Don't know about that PB but one danish word for 'turd' is 'skiderik' :-)

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

.....and the Danish word for fart sounds like Prudhoe

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

I lived in Copenhagen for 3 years, and it really was useful knowing Geordie to decipher Danish. Another good one is that the stream running underneath Grey Street / Dean Street is called the Lort Burn (High Bridge used to be built over it) and Lort means Sh$t in Dansk. Up Lort Burn withoot me paddle. And "bairn" comes from the Danish "boern". Plus things like Derby is Der by, which means The Town. People round Huddersfield say something like "Come head", which means "get a move on", but actually is the Danish "Kom med" (come with us/me). And they keep saying "man" (mand) at the ends of phrases like we do too. Great language Danish, simplest grammar of all, easy to read, just a pity they can't pronounce it. And they haven't got a word for "please".

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2000

Barry,

You obviously get around the European high-spots. Do you work for cec or one of its agencies?

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

So really, skid marks is a colloquialism for skiderik marks ?

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

Yes Toon Expat, I'm at the CEC in Brussels. I can see from your e- mail you're somewhere similar too - is etf the place in Florence? My work e-mail is @cec.eu.int. There are quite few of us exiles in the various institutions, from places like Corbridge (me), Ashington, Jarrow, Willington Quay, Heaton, etc and we try to get together every so often. We organised a trip to see the game against Wimbledon a couple of years ago, plus we went to Metz, Anderlecht (just round the corner!), Rome. It's easy to get around from here.
The reason I know DK is that I worked for a Danish firm for three years, in Naerum just north of Copenhagen before the Commission.
I thought of another good one - the Lambton Worm is called Worm but it really used to be Orm which is Danish for serpent/dragon.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

Pit Bill, yes skid is sh*t in Danish. I suppose the Danish kids must have a good laugh when they learn that English cars can skid on the roads or on a skid "pan", another unfortunate coincidence.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000

Closer to home the similarity of slang words and phrases between the fishing ports of Peterhead/Fraserburgh and North Shields is truly amazing, definations can be found in "The Jungle" book !!!!Rik /Clarky will know what I mean, eventually.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2000