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