Óskar Guðlaugsson wrote:

>
> Heill Keth, ok þér öll,
>
> > > [P] is a so-called "bilabial fricative"; it is very close to the
> [f]
> > > that we know, but pronounced without the tongue touching the
> teeth
> > (as
> > > it does in [f], which is therefore called a "labio-dental
> > fricative").
> >
> > When I pronounce "F" in Norwegian, the tongue tip does not touch
> > the teeth. But the lower lip touches the upper front teeth.
> > I think it is the same way in English. (?)
>
> That was an unfortunate slip of mine; I meant to say "the upper lip
> touching the teeth..."; not the tongue.
>
> In English, MI, and Norwegian (and most other Western languages), we
> have a labio-dental [f], instead of a bilabial [P]. You may possibly
> not ever have heard [P], actually; it's very rare in modern Western
> languages, that I know of.
>
> In our pronunciation guide, we did not address the [P] sound; there
> is no need. It's much easier for all of us to just pronounce it as
> [f], and not much less "realistic". So don't worry about it.

It may not be that uncommon, just that most of us can't notice the
difference! (I remember my french class trying to figure out the
difference between poison and poisson :) ) A consonant cluster like 'mf'
is probably said with [P] (or maybe the m changed to an n) in normal
speech.

> Regarding the development þ > h, it is common in human languages for
> unvoiced fricatives to change to [h], which is an unvoiced glottal
> fricative. To name some examples, Latin initial [f] became Spanish
> [h],

And then it went away :) 'h' (the letter) is no longer pronounced in
Spanish, I guess you were referring to a stage between Old Spanish (or
whatever it's called) and Modern Spanish (whatever that is ;) ). I think
I remember the word 'facer' (modern Spanish 'hacer', pronounced [aser]
or something similar) from the Mio Cid.

> syllable-final [s] changed to [h] in Andalucian Spanish, and [x]
> changed to [h] in Proto-Germanic. And some ON [T] became [h] in
> Faroese, as mentioned; actually, there are signs of the same
> development (þ > h) in Icelandic too, though it is by no means
> complete, and not even sure to carry through. Anyway, those are just
> examples for the various fricatives, from the top of my head.

I'd be interested in learning the relationships between OI and
Norwegian Bokmål (which I more or less speak), both to learn OI and to
improve my Norwegian (like knowing for sure what does the 'o' stand for,
argh!)
Angasule