Kom heil, Birgit

> I have noticed a number of Germans in this class (at least ten that

I know),

> and I would like to know if we would come pretty close to the

reconstructed

> Old Norse pronunciation if we read the texts like German. Can you

comment on

> the differences between the Old Norse and German sounds? I would

think the

> vowels are pretty much the same, except I think for

That's a good point. The vowels are quite similar, yes, or at least
it's very easy to represent ON vowels with German equivalents. I
didn't know there were this many Germans here, but of course they
should not be left out, so here's the info:

ON German

a kurz a
á lang a
e kurz e
é lang e
i kurz ie
í lang ie
o kurz oh
ó lang oh (als 'wohnen')
u kurz u
ú lang u
y kurz ü
ý lang ü
ae lang ä
ø kurz ö
oe lang ö
ö kurz o (als 'kosten')
ei äi
ey äu
au au

In Modern Icelandic, oe has merged with ae, both spelled ae, and ø
has merged with ö, both spelled ö; length is no longer inherent, but
rather depends on environment (the consonants surrounding the vowels):

MnIce German
a a
á au
e ä
é jä
i i
í ie
o o
ó oh
u (no equivalent)
ú u
y i
ý ie
ae ei
ö ö
ei äi
au äu
ey äi

As regards consonants, the languages are considerably less similar;
some Germans still pronounce r trilled, and most are familiar with
it, right? Most notably, s is always unvoiced, but not voiced like in
German (as in 'sagen' [zAg@...]). ON and MnIce 'v', BTW, is really just
like German 'w', though I equated it with English 'w', because
English has no equivalent and it's not a big deal; I'm not sure the
exact value of ON 'v' is that well known anyway.

> Do you really feel that the short and long u in Old Norse were both
> pronounced like German "u"? Or was the short u pronounced like

German "ü"?

No, that was y. MnIce u, however, would probably sound a lot like ü
to a German.

> For the combination "hj" in Old Norse, do you say the "j" first and

then the

> "h"? Does one sound start first, and then the other joins in? And

what

> happens, when an "l" follows, as in the first word of

Voeluspa, "hljóðs"?

"hj" is really just one sound; it's like the 'ch' in 'ich', so there
you go :) "hlj" however, is an unvoiced version of "lj", which is
still just one sound - like 'gl' in Italian (if that means anything).
Really not so hard, just l and j pronounced together, like in the
French city name "Lyon" or in French "alliance". But "hlj" as I said,
is the unvoiced version; the SAMPA for both is lj = [L] and hlj =
[L^0].

Ver heil,
Óskar