> >In pronounciation or printed convention?
>
> Pronounciation. I was under the impression that we were discussing
the "classical" Old Norse (Old Icelandic) language, as spoken (for
example) in Iceland, say, in the 12th century.
Language is fluid and ever-changing. Even between the 12th and 13th
centuries, there are changes. As far as I am aware, our discussions
about Old Norse are not limited to one time and place.
This is obviously not the case, and
> you seem to be talking about the pronounciation of 'ö' (o,) at a
much earlier stage of the language
'Seem' - how different do you think this 'earlier stage' was? Rather
than any particular stage, I had certain whole range of things in
mind while thinking about Ö - 12th century spellings, old dróttkvæði
and inscriptional spellings.
(a stage which has left
> us no written remains apart from meagre runic inscriptions).
This 'stage' is critical to our understanding of Old Norse, as I am
sure that you are aware. We both know that Old Norse was once spoken
rather widely and that the language was easily intelligible from one
place to another - thus I see no reason why we should not discuss it.
>
> According to Barnes (the recommended source in the present course),
the ON ´a´ is best pronounced as a short version of the 'a' in
"father". The 'ö', however, according to him (and many other
sources), would have been similar to the 'o' in "hot".
Fairly close to what I had in mind, I might add - depending on the
English-speaker and region.
> I never said, in my letter, that the 'ö' (o,) was derived from 'o'.
I am perfectly aware that it is derived from 'a'.
I assumed that you did know this - I never thought otherwise. Given
that there are those who do not know it, I felt I should state it.
However, according
> to my reference books, and what I have been hitherto taught, the
sound of 'ö' (o,) was much closer to modern 'o' than modern 'a' in
the "classical" period.
I mostly agree - nevertheless, the sound must still have shown some
sign of A as well, as the spelling AO is quite common. Simply put,
the sound disappeared in later Icelandic.
If you believe otherwise, you are of course
> welcome to do so, but I don't think it is quite fair to state this
> as established fact in the presence of beginners, who have no way
of knowing the "whole truth".
See above. Also, I suspect that most 'beginners' are well aware that
the pronounciation of Old Norse was different from that of today. A
beginner wanting to learn old pronounciation has a lot of studying
to do. They are also likely to encounter a wide range of views about
many pronounciation-related issues. Are you advocating any (or none)
of the following: 1) that pronounciation not be discussed 2) that we
use Modern Icelandic pronounciation 3) that we use 'old' pronounciat-
ion 4) that we use combination of 'old' and 'new'?
Thus my letter - I was simply pointing out
> that your theory is only that - a theory - and it is strictly in
> opposition to established practice,
See above. My 'theory' is not new. Regarding 'established practice' -
there are differing views, as I suspect that you are aware.
as taught in all textbooks I
> have seen, and as taught by all academics I have ever listened to.
The 'ö' may well have been pronounced as 'a' at some proto-stage of
the language we refer to as Old Norse, but I seriously doubt it
could have been pronounced thus by Icelanders of the 11th - 13th
century.
Since you are obviously no beginner, one might expect that you would
take an active interest in how pronounciation evolved in Old Norse.
As you are likely aware, the language of 11th - 13th century is not
unique in being referred to as 'Old Norse' - the 9th - 10th century
is also included. Your phrase 'at some proto-stage of the language
we refer to as Old Norse' suggests to me either that 1) the language
of the 9th - 10th centuries is not 'Old Norse' or 2) it is somehow
not relevant to how old Icelanders spoke. Please clarify.
> They didn't speak runic inscriptions.
True, but they did make them - many volumes of them still survive.
Rhyming practice in 10th century
> poetry suggests that 'ö' may still have retained some vestigial
echoes of the original 'a' sound,
Now we may be coming closer - however, I would not say 'vestigial
echoes', but 'clearly related'. There are too many examples of this
type of assonance to conclude that the poets were unaware of the
connection between these sounds. If 11th - 12th century clerics had
no problem writing AO, then 10th century poets must have heard it.
but the practice of rhyming a-ö had more or less
> totally disappeared by the 12th century, unless I'm very, very
wrong about this.
Hmmm....12th or 13th? Let us 'hold the thought' for the time.
Some scholars actually think that the pronounciation
> of 'ö' mutated all the way to the modern version of the sound in
the early 13th century, which means that Snorri may have
pronounced 'ö' much like I do, today (somewhat similar to the vowel
in French "peur").
Hmmm....I think Snorri was more 'on the tail-end' of what is usually
refered to as 'Old Norse'. Try to imagine what happened during the
Black Death.....from written evidence, there can be know doubt that
there was a pronounciation-shift in the language in the century or
two immeadiately following Snorri Sturluson - a shift big enough to
cause scholars to talk about the 'end of the Old Norse period', yet
still refering to Snorri as 'Old Norse'. These are big questions.
>
> Therefore, I am not about to go through my copy of Snorri's Edda,
> changing all the hooked O's to hooked A's : "Gylfi konungr réð þar
> la,ndum er nú heitir Svíþjóð"!!
Relax. No one is asking you to change anything in your copy of
Snorri´s Edda. We are just having fun discussing the language.
> As for the long 'a' in áss - I was under the impression that this
> vowel was originally a long 'ö' (long hooked o),
Yes, it was sometimes written (and later printed) as long hooked O -
this is undoubtedly correct. It was also written AO (one letter) in
many old manuscripts, sometimes accented and sometimes not.
which is assumed
> by most to have been alive and well in Iceland in the 10th and 11th
> centuries, although it later merged with 'á'.
Yes, this is true.
I have always thought that
> this would explain the reason why the ÁSS rune was also (in
> certain times and places) an ÓSS rune (confusedly and confusingly).
When Norwegian finally began to diverge from Icelandic, this is one
of the developments which scholars point to. I do not believe that
the word was ever pronounced 'óss' (no hook) in Old Icelandic - but
there may be isolated instances of it in later Icelandic. You are
right - the sound clearly merged with Á at some point. However, this
should also tell us something about its shorter version, the sound
which later became pronounced like the Ö in 'lönd'
> But I am probably wrong about this as well, although it would
indicate a kinship between the pronounciation of 'ö' and 'o' at a
stage when "áss" was still "ó,ss".
See above. Regarding 'áss', I think it is generally agreed that the
sound was pronounced as a long nasal A prior to merging into regular
long A in Icelandic (compare the mainland version of today). Besides
the long nasal variety, this sound could occur both unnasalized and
short. Furthermore, O (a different sound) could also occur long and
short, as well as nasalized. See the First Grammatical Treatise for
more information. Clearly, the vowel-system was greatly simplified.
> >Lastly, given that many modern scholars use the glyph hooked
A as against the older printed tradition employing hooked O, how do
you feel about resurrecting the old AO glyph instead?
> Personally, I would be more interested to know who these "many
modern scolars" are. Are they scholars of Old Norse? Scholars of
proto-Norse?
1) Regarding A with a tail:
The practice most common in transcribing Viking Age inscriptions,
where the short of the sound is usually written A. To start with,
pick up Moltke´s classic on inscriptions from Denmark - then look at
the Latin-letter transcriptions of scolars from Gordon to Grönvík.
2) Reagrding the AO glyph:
Have a look at the oldest preserved Latin-letter manuscripts - begin
with the 2 preserved books of homilies. Look at the originals.
> At what stage of the language are they employing this hooked-a
(which I confess I have never seen in any context)? Excuse my
ignorance, but I am not much of a linguist, being more interested in
the meaning of words and the cadence of poetry, than the sounds of
letters.
A fine thing to be interested in, I might add. My interest in the
sounds of the letters is fairly recent - it stems from my music. I
remember being baffled by the many diverse and wild spellings I saw
in various editions of old poetry - so I decided to investigate. I
also remember being even more baffled by the even more diverse and
wilder spellings found in old manuscripts - so I decided to go to
the linguists for help. After my musician´s brain suffered headache
after headache trying to learn these things, it finally 'clicked'.
Personally
> (like you, I gather) I never use the so-called "reconstructed"
pronounciation of OI - it is impossible to employ fluently. I prefer
Modern Icelandic pronounciation - at least we don't need to make
educated guesses about this, and the old poetry sounds much better
when uttered by people who are speaking the language they were born
into (rather than people twisting their tongues into extremely
unfamiliar shapes, trying desparately not to make any mistakes,
while making them anyway).
I agree. Strangely enough, after spending so much time figuring out
how Old Norse was actually pronounced for musical purposes, I have
gotten to the point where my own 'old' pronounciation has greatly
improved. Icelanders, Norwegians, Faroe Islanders and others who
have heard my 'old' renditions have made numerous remarks about the
'accuracy' of my 'old' pronounciation - strange. The end result has
been that I no longer have any objections to using 'old' pronouciat-
ion for certain defined purposes, like song and chant - where the
obstacles of 'old' pronounciation in conversation are completely
avoided, just as with other 'classical' languages.
Thank you for your thoughts on these and other subjects.
Regards,
Konrad.
> Best regards,
> Pelle
>
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