At 11:54 25.1.2001 EST, you wrote:

>I realize that prounciation of a long-dead language is largely conjectural;
>also that the exact quality of vowels in "small" words such as pronouns and
> But regarding these
>three words, is there reason to suppose that an ON listener could easily
>distinguish between them, apart from the grammatical context?

Tim,

I would certainly think so! These three words
are still alive and well in Modern Icelandic,
and clearly distinguishable. I can see no reason
why they wouldn't have been so in 13th century
Iceland.

Do you have any problems distinguishing between the
four L-words in the following English sentence?

Let the Light be Lit Late!

Similarly there should be no trouble with:

"Þeir vega þær með þér".

And I think you've missed a certain important
point. Old Norse isn't really a long-dead language!
It is basically the same as Modern Icelandic. The
difference is mostly in spelling.

It's not easy to explain this in few words, but I'd
suggest you take a look at the following page:

http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/ugm/kormlast.html

Here you can see a stanza of ON poetry, both in Old
Norse and Modern Icelandic, side by side. Not much
difference, is there?

Hope this has helped,
Eysteinn