eysteinn@... writes:

I'm sure that Haukur and Óskar would never seriously
converse in "reconstructed" Old Norse, unless they were trying
to show off ;-)

The difficulty (for the Icelander) of pronouncing Old Norse in
the "reconstructed" way, is that it is very difficult to do for
more than a few seconds without laughing!

As speakers of modern English might look upon reproducing the actual sounds
of Shakespear's language.  However, this says more about us and our own
attitudes rather than on how earlier people felt about their language, or
about how it actually may have sounded.

In Modern Icelandic the difference between "ei" and "é" is
ROUGHLY the difference between the vowel sounds (in American
English) in "bait" and "beer".


This approximation helps, thanks.

Tim