Konrad, what about those Norse dialects that were not in any way
written down on paper? What did Norse spoken in Northern Sweden sound
like, for example? Of course, we don't know. My point here is that a
statement like "Fortunately, West Norse was the most conservative
branch, often markedly so." is based only on the written records.
POerhaps Northern SCandinavians still spoke Viking age Norse in
Medieval times. We don't know, and therefore one should restrict
oneself to a statement like "Fortunately, West Norse was the most
conservative branch amongst the known Norse dialects, often markedly
so."

BTW, since Icelandic did preserve vocabulary, grammar etc in an
almost uncanny way, but did not preserve stuff like pitch accent,
short and over-long syllable lengths and nasal vowels, it may be
interesting to listen to a dialect that did. Here are some sound
samples:

http://www.unilang2.org/wiki2/wiki.phtml?
title=Dalecarlian_sound_samples

Konrad, any comments on it?

/Sjuler




--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "akoddsson"
<konrad_oddsson@...> wrote:

> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Berglaug Ásmundardóttir
> <berglauga@...> wrote:
> > Sjuler wrote: "As far as I know, the only sound which Icelandic

has

> preserved better than all other Scandinavian dialects is the þ-

sound

> (like 'th' in English 'thing')."
>
> > Don't forget our lovely unvoiced resonants, which all you
> scandinavians seem to have lost in some freak accident! ;)
> >
> > unvoiced r, l, m, n are fun to say!
>
> Lovely, I might add ;)
>
> > and wouldn't ð also be a 'preserved sound'?
>
> Yes, no doubt.
>
> > i'm well aware that icelandic isn't anything like old norse was,
> but really, it's mostly in the vowels and their surroundings (that
> would be lenght of syllables), the consonant changes are minimal.
>
> I agree. ll, nn, g between vowels(segir), maybe final d/b

(land/lamb)

> and a few others. Not much of a change at all. However, as you

point

> out, the vowel-system is changed. I would say quite radically so.

If

> we had a living speaker, however, I think we could learn it without
> having to learn the whole language over again.
>
> (hmm.. same as with english,
> > really, their vowels are all messy nowadays.. compared to a
> thousand years ago, at least)
>
> English is nowhere near the same tongue it was a thousand years

ago.

> The price of an empire, I suppose.
>
> I think what students need to understand about old pronunciation is
> this: there were many 'old norse' languages and just as many ways

of

> pronouncing them. In Sweden, for instance, we had the Gautlandic of
> east and west, Swedish proper, Gutnish and others. In my opinion,

it

> was the Old Gutnish that was the 'jewel of the east' -

conservative

> like the oldest West Norse, but with a radically differing

phonology

> and even usage. Danish was also markedly different in

pronunciation,

> and to some extent in usage and vocabulary, from West Norse. The

way

> I see it, one of the main advantages of old West Norse is that it

is

> considered to have been very uniform (einsleit). Because Faroese

and

> Icelandic were once the same language as West Norwegian, matching

on

> vocabulary and usage as well, we can get a fairly good idea of how
> it was pronounced by comparing the how these tongues are pronounced
> today and doing the math. Although it had the most complicated

vowel-

> system (through more mutations) and the least speakers of any

nordic

> tongue from the 9-10 centuries, West Norse is now by far the

easiest

> tongue to reconstruct, as there is a firm basis for comparison.

This

> is ironic, perhaps, given the numerical inferiority ;) Fortunately,
> West Norse was the most conservative branch, often markedly so.

Only

> Gutnish equals its antiquity. Shamefully, Gutnish was neglected,

set

> out to die and never used as a literary tongue. Our only book in

the

> tongue was written in the early 14th century. Fortunately, it is

old

> enough to give us some idea of the tongue in its golden age. I

think

> we are very lucky, on the other hand, that Old Icelandic was used

as

> a literary tongue in the west as early as 1100-1130, when the

tongue

> was only slightly changed from its golden age.
>
> Vesið ér heil (pronun.: uesið êr hæil (short æ+i - between ei &

ai ;)

>
> Konrad
>
> Regards,
> Konrad
>
>
> > Berglaug