Jan Faarlund, a professor of linguistics at the University of Oslo, Norway, makes a very interesting claim: that Old English didn't evolve into Modern English (as is the general consensus of linguists today). Instead, he says, Old English simply died out after the Vikings invaded England, and Modern English evolved from the Vikings' language – much influenced by the Old English of the people they conquered.
The history of languages is an area that's long interested me, though I haven't had the opportunity to immerse myself in it very much. One reason why it fascinates me is that it's one of those areas of science that is extremely volatile: linguists' understanding and current models change very rapidly. Just within my adult lifetime there have been something like five or six “revolutions” in our understanding of the history of the world's languages. If Faarlund's claim ends up being verifiable, it's yet another example of this volatility...
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