On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 7:44 PM, bmscotttg <BMScott@...> wrote:

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, asvardhrafn@... wrote:

> Germanic W's tend to be pronounced V or VW does that help its
> like v and w pronounced at the same time without tightening
> enough to say f

The Proto-Germanic consonant that became Old Norse /v/ was
probably pronounced like English /w/, and this pronunciation
probably persisted into Proto-Scandinavian and even into the
language of the early Viking period.

.

One thing that makes me agree with this is the 13th c. use of 'hv' in writing (well, at least in the standardized ON -- haven't seen the manuscripts to see how this is actually spelt).  'h' before a consonant denotes voicelessness ('hl' = voiceless 'l', 'hr' = voiceless 'r').  'hv' in this pattern doesn't make sense -- the voiceless equivalent of 'v' is an 'f', and they had and used that letter.  It does make sense to me when you interpret the 'v' as a 'w' sound (like in German), and thus this is a labalized 'h'.  This interpretation fits in nicely with historical linguistics: 'what' in English originally being /hwat/ < AS [hwæt] (or that same labalized 'h' -- still preserved in some dialects of English, though continuously shrinking in population) which is the cognate to Old Norse hvat "what".  So, I think there is evidence that 'v' can be interpreted (or at minimum the 'v' in the combination 'hv', though I might argue that) as a /w/ sound as late as 13th c. in Iceland.


~Eyja