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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

Really cool, thanks. I’m actualy pretty surprised how much of the Norwegian language I could imply into English there. It wasn’t that hard to follow along on that map. Context matters a lot, I guess.

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Many of the words are probably old German in origin, the modern German word "Steuerbord" means the same, "steuern" = to steer (see "styrboard", could also have become "steerboard" in English, instead of starboard). The nautic right side was called that way because on those old viking boats, the rudder was a big paddle on the right side.

old Germanic if I may :)

That's actually not correct - Germanic is the name for the group, while actual languages are German. Old High German, Middle High German, etc.

Well you argued (without providing any references) that Norwegian "styrbord" was probably from Old German. Given your example of Viking longboats I find it far more likely that the word is from Old Norse.

Hence Germanic is correct, but German highly unlikely.

Given the history of the British isles, I would also venture that English is more influenced by Old Norse than Old German.

My correction was merely about the usage of "Germanic" vs specific languages with regard to "old" ;) In general classifying it as "Germanic" is correct, yes. My original distinction was more intended to be about the difference between originally Germanic words vs Scandinavian-only ones.

It's probably hard to tell in which of the languages (Norse, German, English) it originated, because there are little sources in that time (talking mid-first millennium here). From what I know German is a little older than Old Norse (700 vs 900).

Regarding "viking boats", I used that as an example for a type of boat, I'm pretty sure it was a common way of building boats at the time - the Romans used similar rudders. The concept would have been known to all people building ships.

Styrbord is not germanic, but old norse and literary means the rudder (i.e. steering board), which, as you said, was located on the right side of the ship. Viking ships could therefore only dock on the left-side, hence port for the port side.

Old Norse is a germanic language.

Exactly, as are Old German and Old English - that's why I was pointing out the Germanic relation there and the meaning behind the word :)

At least in English and German the 'board' (or 'bord' part earlier) means 'side of a ship' (but it is derived from board as piece of wood, but not necessarily the rudder, see 'Backbord' in modern German for the opposite side).

See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/starboard#Etymology for details.

Norwegian is mostly intelligible with Swedish, but the words that differ from Swedish are very often exactly the same word in English. The Danes live on - in England.

Or rather the Angles live on, in Angland and in Denmark.

First time I hear about that theory, any sources?

I’ve been meaning to translate the WebGL version embedded there, but never got that far. The downloadable versions (linked under the video) for Windows and Mac both have subtitles of the audio log, as well as the UI. And both have more correct lighting than the video clip that’s embedded on the page.

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