Heill Konráð!

I was trying to put together some notes a while ago on pronunciation,
aiming to describe the stage of the language that's reflected by the
normalised spelling used in introductory books and texts that
beginners are likely to encounter, that is: appropriate to the early
13th century. A later date, e.g. about 1300 would be another
possibility, but earlier is better for etymology--and it's easier to
ignore distinctions once you've learnt them than to learn new ones.
Any earlier than that though and you need specialised knowledge to
apply that pronunciation to the texts as normally printed, e.g. when á
= /a:/, when /O:/, and when either of these should be nasal. Anyway,
I got bogged down eventually on a certain details, and now your posts
on Norwegian dialects have opened up whole new cans of worms :-) E.g.
it's tricky thinking of a test for the pronunciation of 'll' at any
given stage in the language, since whatever the pronunciation, this
wouldn't necessarily affect rhymes. Is it possible to tell whether
miðli > milli = midli all along? How old are spellings like 'valla'
for 'varla'?

Of course, it would also be good to pin down the details of the
language of the previous century, and see texts where all the
distinctions that were later lost still in place, including nasalised
vowels!

Anyway, early 13th c. (unless I'm mistaken) would mean distinct ø and
hooked o, distinct long ø and æ, but á and long hooked o fallen
together as /O/ (the pronunciation of long hooked o), and e and hooked
e fallen together (but I'm not sure whether the resulting value was
open or close), and probably ø1 and ø2 having fallen together. Again,
I'm not sure what the value of resulting sound would be -- maybe open,
since that would make it closer to hooked o, which eventually merged
with it -- but maybe it's not possible to be so precise?

According to Gordon, a 13th century date would mean [v] instead of
earlier [w]. He suggests that the phoneme went through a transitional
phase of being a voiced bilabial fricative in the 12th century.
Evidence for 'v' becoming a fricative comes from the confusion of
medial 'v' and 'f'. But when exactly do manuscripts first start to
show this confusion. I'm also wondering about the proninciation of
'f' at this stage. Could it still have had a bilabial pronunciation
in the 13th century? I think Adolf Noreen mentions spellings such as
'røfr' for 'refr', which might imply rounding of the vowel caused by a
bilabial 'f'. But I'm not sure when and where these forms are from.

A related dilemma: what about the later changes exemplified by 'kveld'
> 'kvöld' and 'váru' > 'voru'? Could these mean that 'v' was still
either [w] or a voiced bilabial fricative in these positions at the
time of these changes?

Presumably there was no major difference in quality between long and
short vowels at least up to c. 1200 when the lengthenings happened in
words such as 'ulfr'. Similar changes in early Middle English suggest
that the tense/lax distinction in /I/ : /i:/ and /U/ : /u:/ found in
many Germanic languages isn't an inherited feature. According to
Stefán Karlsson /i/ and /u/ were lengthened and other vowels either
lengthened or diphthongised before /ng/ about 1300. If that's right,
I guess, short /i/ and /u/ would have still been tense in all stressed
positions at least up to then. But is this the only possible
interpretation of the evidence? I was curious to read at that link
you posted about similar behaviour of vowels in Sognamálit. But what
might that imply, a tendency the settlers brought with them, or a
later innovation at a time when close contacts were maintained with
the mainland and with these regions in particular?

LLama Nom