Re: history of Icelandic

Hi

There are many exaggerations in this story.

Icelandic is actually quite different from old norse, but the
difference lies mainly in the pronunciation, the written language is
close to the old one.

The old flexional system, however has not changes very much, even in
the dayly spoken language.

The other scandinavian languages have reduced their flexional
systems, but have not at all carried reductionism to extremes.

Why the other scandinavian languages have shed many of its flexional
forms, for example the dative and accusative case, is difficult to
understand.

One explanation sometimes heard is that fixed word order has made
case distinction unnessesary, do not explain very much, because
scandinavian word order is still fairly free.

I think the explanation is of some other kind. In whole europe there
has been a drift from the word order type s-o-v to s-v-o/v-s-o. In a
v-s-o type case distinctions are avoided, and prepositional
constructions prefered. I think scandinavian simply has taken part in
this common prosess, whereas in icelandic the process has been
interrupted because of its separated geografical position.

--- In cybalist@..., tgpedersen@... wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:
> > > In books about the Icelandic language, it is frequently stated
> that the
> > > language has resisted change over the last millennium enough
> that, without
> > > special training, those literate in Modern Icelandic can read
the
> Elder
> > Edda
> > > in its original language. Is this accurate or an exaggeration?
> >
> > As far as I know, it is exaggerated, although not excessively.
A
> > colleague of mine is Icelandic, and says he can't understand the
> stuff at
> > all. Perhaps you could compare a literate modern English person
> trying to
> > read Chaucer.
> >
> > > If it is accurate, is there a clear explanation of why it has
> changed so
> > > little?
> >
> > The separation of Icelandic from the mainland was important, but
> here's a
> > quote with another idea:
> > "While its Scandinavian congeners have carried reductionism to
> extremes,
> > Icelandic remains close to Old Norse. This is partly due to its
> > geographical position as an outlier. More important, however,
and
> the major
> > factor in its linguistic conservatism, was the presence in
Iceland
> of the
> > saga literature of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries."
> >
> > Peter
>
> I recall from somewhere that Icelandic (or some Icelandic) went bad
> during the time of Danish domination with Low German and Danish
> influence (the Danish administration and court were largely German-
> speaking) and had to be rescued with a determined puristic effort.
>
> Torsten