--- In norse_course@egroups.com, keth@... wrote:

> Hail Oskar!
>
> (btw "hail" in English can't be all that bad. At lest I grew up
> singing "hail, hail rock 'n roll", and that was Chuck Berry, and
> no one thought any "German" thoughts)

No, English isn't all bad at all. In fact it's no worse than any other
language. I know I've often felt it to be a bad language, but just for
the psychological reason that I've sometimes wished I'd need to speak
less English and more of the other languages I learn.

> I'd like to add that in my opinion German has a much better vowel

system than

> English, because the English vowels are really distorted, and hardly
> correspond to the signs used to describe them. In German, the vowel

signs

> a, e, i, o, and u (+ umlauts) do however give an adequate

description

> of the actual sounds used. That does however not mean that the

Germans are

> "perfect".

I'm sure you know that, scientifically, there's no such thing as a
"better" vowel system. Some systems are more stable than others, but
that's all. I don't even think that the English vowel system is
unstable; stability has all to do with symmetry and nothing to do with
traditional European vowel values.

> When Germans come to Norway, for example, it is always possible,
> even after many years, to hear they are Germans, because they never
> learn to pronounce the vowels the Norwegian way.

Why, that would apply to any speaker of any speech form learning any
other speech form. They always try to replace difficult new sound with
familiar old sounds. Everybody does that, not just Anglophones.

> And yet, I'd say the differences are very small, at least when you

compare with

> such languages as English. (why is I a _diphtong_ in English?
> that is simply ridiculous! excuse me for saying so)

'Diphthong' is admittedly a difficult word to write and pronounce.
It's composed of 'di' (2x) + 'phthong' (Ancient Greek: 'sound').
I've often said, not taking myself very seriously, that this or that
is "just ridiculous, man". That's ok, no need to be all stiff and
holy. But I know that what regards linguistics, there's no such thing
as a "ridiculous" language. Linguistics state that: "All languages
enable their speakers to communicate any and all concepts that they
have need or want to communicate" (my words); a language is fixed to
the environment and society behind it. An African tribal language may
not have a word for 'transistor', but it will have a single short word
for a social concept too complex for the high and mighty European
languages to explain except in a paragraph. Norwegian is the optimal
language for Norwegians, Vietnamese is better for Vietnamese than
"superior" French, Americans are best off speaking English
(even if no other people spoke English).

> What I particularly liked about your above scheme is that you wrote:
>
> >ö kurz o (als 'kosten')
>
> What you designate here by "ö", is of course the reputed "hooked-o".
> In older texts it is often represented by an "o" with a small
> "hook" underneath it. That "hook" is really an "u".

We use this character because the hooked o is not available on our
keyboards or any charset that we may easily obtain.

> It indicated to the old Icelanders that the sound had a little
> bit of an "u" in it. Another way you see it depicted in old Ms.
> is as a "ligature" (=a tying together of two letters) of an "a"
> closely followed by a "v". The "v" (or "u" = same thing)
> then indicates that it is a sound somewhere "in between"
> an "a" and a "u". (not a diphtong, but it indicates the "place"
> of the sound in the mouth)

"In between", yes; diphthong, indeed not. It's just a simple sound,
[O].

> My feeling, however, is that it is a mistake to represent the

"hooked-o"

> by an "ö". That is because internationally, the "ö" is already
> so "eingebürgert" that it is extremely difficult to sudenly begin
> to pronounce it like an "a-v-ligature" (=hooked-o).

We have no choice, for the reasons given above. And "internationally"?
I believe the majority of this list was not already familiar with the
sound of "ö", and that's what matters. And Keth, on a personal note,
let us please not be arrogant Europeans dissing the Americans here
with words like "eingebürgert". I (and I believe Haukur too) do not
want any cross-Atlantic bias in this group (especially when we're
in-between, hehe :)

> Note that German "ö" and Danish-Norwegian "ø" is exactly
> the same sound for all practical purposes.
> In Germany the dots are called an "i-umlaut" if I am not mistaken.
> Memory rule: "the two dots on top of the letter are _really_
> the dots that the letter "i" normally carries."
> The dots are simply the i-dot that have been _borrowed_ from the

"i"!

> It indicates the nature of this Umlaut: "ö" represents a sound that
> kind of "averages" an "o" and an "i". (in German that is! - BUT
> internationally too)

German "ö" is usually [9], as far as I know. Danish "ø" is [2], and I
believe Norwegian has the same value for it (but "Norwegian" is such a
tangled mass of dialects anyway, so who knows?). For practical
purposes, we also decided to ignore this difference and present ON "ø"
and "oe" as [9] and [9:] respectively.

> Please check (in whatever reference books at your disposal)
> the name "Håkon" (=the name of our present crown-prince)
> Note that it is written with the Danish-Norwegian "å"
> (= a-ring). In an old book, I found the name of the king
> Håkon Adalsteinsfostre (the one who was fostered in England)
> as " H a-v k o n ". ( "a-v" here represents the ligature of
> "a" and "v" which is equivalent to the hooked-o)
>
> Excercise: Now go to English. Replace the above "v" by "w"
> --------- and read the name as " H a-w k o n "
> Then change things about a little bit and read it as
> " H a w k o n ", and now pronounce it like you pronounce
> the name of the bird "hawk" in English. Then my claim is
> that you are then _very_close_ to the true old pronounciation
> of the "hooked-o".

Not _very_close_, but right on spot. It says in the pronunciation
guide: English 'au'/'aw' = ON "ö" = SAMPA [O].

And Keth, hate to sound offensive, but please let me and Haukur
present the exercises here. As I said above, this is not meant to be a
"Europeans Teach Americans What "Real" Languages Are" kind of group. I
think we both, and in fact we all, want this group to be an un-biased,
productive language-studying group with no flaming or dissing or what
have you.

> Do you know if there are any runic inscriptions that
> give an example of the initial "hl"?
> I am asking because it might be interesting to go
> backward in time to the time before they began to write Norse
> with Latin letters. (in the 12th century)

I think they ignored pre-consonant "h" in Runic inscriptions. Haukur
would know for sure.

> Norway seems to have lost the initial "h" earlier than Iceland
> I think. At least we say "ljod" now, (without the initial h)
> [a word that means "sound" - German "Laut"]
> But presumably, if you went back to runic, you would find
> the initial "h" in "hljód" also in Norway.
> I am however a bit uncertain about this.
> Examples from my dictionary are:
> "hljóð-bjalla" = a resounding bell.
> "hljóð-stafr" = a vowel.
> But: "ljódabók" = a song-book.

Because "ljóð" is not the same word. Icelandic has "hljóð": 'sound',
"ljóð": 'poem'. Be careful.

> That sounds difficult!
> Difficult to imagine an unvoiced "l"!

Come to the voice chat, we'll demonstrate :)

> One more thing that I notice, is however that many of the Old

Manuscripts

> (e.g. the ones edited by Jón Helgason) do not use the "j".
> Everywhere you see the "i" where you'd expect the "j".
> Thus "hljóð" is written "hlióð". (perhaps better?)

Before modern times, "i" and "j" were considered the same letters. So
where "u" and "v". Initially they were, in Latin. "j" is just a
modification of "i", while "u" is just the minuscule version of "V"
(Latin had capital "QVIS", small-cap "quis", never "QUIS" or "qvis").
So in orthography, "j" or "i" were in free variation, "i" (I think)
being used more often.

Better? Depends on the language. Icelandic probably doesn't need "j".
But it still aids recognizability, so I think using "j" is better. Not
like we're going to change it anyway.

Ver heill Keth,
Óskar