Have any of you listened to Ben Bagby's pronunciation of Old Norse on the
Sequentia recordings of the Eddas? I would venture that this may be reasonably
authentic inasmuch as he did a lot of research in Iceland for the project.

larry M

llama_nom wrote:

> --- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Lee" <wildhare13@...> wrote:
>
>>How similar is Icelandic to Norse? Is Norse different from Old Norse?
>>Apologies for being a bit obtuse.. I learned a poem from the edda..
>>recite in old norse.. I'd like to have more CD's to listen to.
>
>
> No need to apologise! The amount of difference between Modern
> Icelandic and the medieval Icelandic variety of Old Norse is maybe
> similar to the amount of difference between Present-day English and
> Early Modern English (Shakespeare, The King James Bible, Samuel Pepys
> Diaries, stuff like that).
>
> The morphology (inflections, word-endings and the way words change
> their form depending on their role in the sentence) is pretty much
> identical with only a few small changes. The syntax is very similar,
> although with lots of minor changes. The vocabulary has expanded
> massively to deal with modern concepts. The pronunciation of
> consonants hasn't changed much. Pronunciation of vowels has changed a
> lot, although this isn't reflected in the spelling. Long vowels have
> mostly changed in quantity and become diphthongs, while short vowels
> have been lengthened in open syllables and a few other contexts. But
> although individual vowel phonemes (meaningfully distinctive sounds)
> have changed, most of the same distinctions are made as in Old Norse.
>
>
>>is there an "old norse on CD" anywhere?
>
>
> There's one available from the Viking Society for Northern Research,
> although I haven't heard it myself, so I don't know what it's like or
> whether it uses Modern Icelandic prounciation (as usual in an academic
> context) or attempts a reconstructed pronunciation:
>
> Selected Readings from A New Introduction to Old Norse. CD. Produced
> by A. Finlay. The Chaucer Studio, 2004. £6.
>
> (British distribution) http://www.le.ac.uk/ee/viking/publications.htm
> (US distribution) http://asu.edu/clas/acmrs/publications/mrts/vsnr.html
>
> Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson's performance of some Eddic poems (modern
> pronunciation), including Völuspá and extracts from Hávamál is
> available on CD [
> http://brainwashed.com/common/htdocs/discog/durtro005.php?site=c93 ].
> There are samples of this recording on YouTube:
>
>>From Hávamál: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLxjBGlyI4I
>>From Völuspá: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG5HADl8J6A
>
>
>>Please don't burn me for asking an elementary question.. I have been
>>lurking on the site for a couple months now.
>>I have a fascination with language.. so although I might not be able to
>>translate fully.. I like learning while commuting, I have one CD of Old
>>Norse...
>
>
> Just out of curiosity, which CD have you got? You might also like to
> listen to Haukur's recordings at the Norse Course homepage [
> http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/ ], if you haven't already found them...
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
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>