Dear Folks--

An embarrassingly simple question: just how DO you pronounce ON ae and ei?

I understand there are two systems around--one that pronounces things much
as modern Icelandic does (long a, for instance, coming out like 'ow' in Eng
'how') and another, 'reconstructed' that sounds more like German (and has a
long a that's more like 'a' in Eng 'father'). It's the 'reconstructed'
pronunciation I'm after.

I read somewhere that ae was like 'ai' in Eng 'air'--but I've heard people
pronounce 'air' with a long (IPA) e, like Eng 'ay' in 'say', a short e (as
in 'said') and an ash (as in--what else?--'ash'). Besides, the r in 'air'
is sure to affect the vowel. Bah.

Someone recently told me the ae should be like English 'ash' (OE 'asc') and
ei should be like the sound in Eng 'hail'; is this true?

Grateful for any help in this--

David James

(Long ago I missed out on a great chance to learn ON; signed up for a course
from Konstantin Reichardt at Yale, but a scheduling change forced me to drop
it; had to take something more in my supposed 'field'. I hope to make up
for that now, but feel like an absolute idiot if I don't even know how to
pronounce all this nifty stuff.)

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