The Immigrants’ Language Lives On

Our unorthodox but, we think, inescapable conclusion, that in the eleventh to twelfth centuries, Norse supplanted Old English as the first language of England, seems to call for some sociolinguistic comment. Is it plausible that an “Anglicized” Norse, the language of a presumably demographic minority, could become the common tongue of the whole conquered populace of the East Midlands, finally replacing Old English in this region entirely, by, say, 1250?