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Worksheets

ROUND 1: HISTORY

Total questions: 20

Worksheet time: 10mins

Name
Class
Date
1.

The Old Norse word ‘slod’ (track, trail) eventually led to the creation of which current English word?

a)

Sleuth

b)

Slope

c)

Sled

d)

Scale

2.

What is the English borrowing for the Old Norse word "þrift"?

a)

Thrift

b)

Drift

c)

Shift

d)

Gift

3.

The Swedish word poäng, meaning ‘point’, was borrowed from which language?

a)

German

b)

French

c)

Turkish

d)

Danish

4.

The change of meaning of ‘dog’ from a specific breed to any sort of breed is an example of:

a)

Semantic narrowing

b)

Analogical change

c)

Semantic widening

d)

Melioration

5.

 ‘Tuesday’ is named after which old Norse god?

a)

Tyr

b)

Thor

c)

Njordr

d)

Odin

6.

What is NOT a part of Grimm's Law?

a)

voiceless stops become voiced stops

b)

voiced aspirated stops become fricatives or voiced stops

c)

voiceless stops become voiceless fricatives

d)

voiced stops become voiceless stops

7.

Which language does the work ‘kayak’ originate from?

a)

Norwegian

b)

Halkomelem

c)

Ojibwe

d)

Greenlandic

8.

Danish, Swedish, and English all share the same word origin for ‘window’. However, Swedish uses a very different word: ‘fönster’. Which language does this originate from?

a)

Gothic

b)

Classical Greek

c)

Breton

d)

Latin

9.

Where was Norn once spoken?

a)

Germany

b)

Orkney and Shetland

c)

Faroe Islands

d)

Buchanan Tower

10.

Which English city/town once had the Norse name Jórvík?

a)

Ipswich

b)

York

c)

Wells

d)

Yeovil

11.

Dyr is the Danish/Norwegian word for “animal”. To which modern English word is it related?

a)

Dry

b)

Dog

c)

There

d)

Deer

12.

Grimm’s law applied to which language family?

a)

Germanic

b)

Uralic

c)

Austronesian

d)

Hellenic

13.

A lot of place names in England end with -by (Derby, Kirkby, Whitby), borrowed from Viking settlers. What did -by originally mean in Old Norse?

a)

Pool

b)

Hill

c)

Land

d)

Town

14.

‘Window’ comes from the early Norse combination of which two words?

a)
  1. ‘Glass’ and ‘look’

b)
  1. ‘Wind’ and ‘eye’

c)
  1. ‘Through’ and ‘see’

d)
  1. ‘Pulp’ and ‘straw’

15.

True or false: Grimm’s law was first discovered by one of the brothers Grimm in 1822:

a)

True

b)

False

16.

"Proto-language" means...

a)

Before writing system was developed

b)

The descendant of a language

c)

The historical prototype of a dead language

d)

The ancestral/parent language

17.

The family tree model of language assumes a genetic relationship between languages:

a)

that derived from the same ancestral language

b)

that look similar

c)

that are not related through cognates

d)

that developed in the same area

18.

Saying, ‘Skål!’ is a way of saying ‘Cheers!’ in Scandinavian languages. This expression comes from the Old Norse word for which object?

a)

Mead

b)

Cup

c)

Bowl

d)

Feast

19.

The epic poem Beowulf was originally written in which language?

a)

Old Norse

b)

Old English

c)

Spanish

d)

Icelandic

20.

Which of these English/Scandinavian word pairings do NOT have a related origin?

a)

hound, hund

b)

fowl, fågel

c)

star, stjerne

d)

penguin, pengar