--- In norse_course@..., Haukur Thorgeirsson <haukurth@...> wrote:
> Old Norse had nasal vowels (as French does) but they were not marked
> in writing so we don't know where they were. No descendant of ON has
> preserved those nasals. This is one of the things that make it
impossible
> for us to obtain a precise reconstructed pronunciation of the
language.
>
> It is, for example, quite possible that the ó in Þórr was a nasal
vowel.
Yes... this deserves more explanation than you give it :)
The old nasal vowels are not quite as hard to guess as you say.
"Þórr", for example, almost certainly had a nasal vowel at some point;
cf German version "Donner", and English "thunder" (a cognate to the
name); the "n" there disappeared and left a nasal quality to the
vowel.
The best examples are the prepositions "í" and "á"; their English
cognates are "in" and "on". Since the English cognates have "n", it is
very likely that "í" and "á" were originally nasalized, transcribed
[i~:] and [a~:].
The Runic alphabet did, NB, have a special rune for the nasalized "a".
I should warn students that nasalized vowels is not anything they
should worry about; it requires a great amount of etymological
knowledge to be able to pronounce ON with nasalization in the right
places, which is not anything we intend for you to learn here. Don't
worry about it :)
Óskar