Re: history of Icelandic

One further intersting point is that Icelandic has no regional
dialects despite the geographic isolation of many of the settlements
there.
Faroese, which is also close to Old Norse, is apparently pronounced
quite differently, and I'm told it is fairly unintelligible to
Icelandic speakers. Perhaps Faroese represents something closer to
the pronunciation of Old Norse.
Would anyone care to speculate?

David James

--- In cybalist@..., "Knut" <aquila_grande@...> wrote:
> 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