Well, first of all, I disagree that Norwegian å
is necessarily nasal. It *can* of course be pronounced
nasally, but so can other letters too, that aren't
inherently nasal.


Good examples of nasal vowels are found for example
in French. I recall them as nasal especially if
they are followed by an n. ("London" = Londres)

Another point is that nasalised vowels seem to
be something that is increasing in Norway.
I don't recall them from before, but now you
hear a lot of peple pronouncing å and og nasally.
But it isn't necessary to pronounce them nasally.
To me nasal seems to mean a constriction in the
opening between the back part of the tongue and the
palate, so that the sound is forced upward into
the nose. However, å may be pronounced simply
by dropping the jaw and rounding the lips.
Guttural constrictions are quite unnecessary
(and wrong in my opinion).

Hooked o was variously written as a/, as av or as au.
But it wasn't a diphtong, but rather an umlaut.
Therefore, one should be able to determine its
pronounciation if one knows the position of
tongue, lips and jaw when one pronounces a and u.
The hooked o is then simply found in an intermediate
position.

(at least, that is how I have understood it hitherto)

Xigung

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "hveenegaard" <hveenegaard@...>
wrote:

> --- "Jens Persson" <arnljotr@...> wrote:
>
> > "The Old Norse Ö in 'dögum' was pronounced just like the regular
> > A in the other cases of the same word - only it was nasalized
> > ( = short nasal A). The pronounciation Ö (and spelling) are

later."

> >
> > This is actually new to me.
> ------------------------------
>
>
> Perhaps it should be stated, for the benefit of the beginners
> and in the interests of accuracy, that this particular theory
> is also new to most of the rest of us, and all Old Norse
> linguists I have the luck to know. None of the experts
> I've asked agree that the "hooked o" was identical to the "a",
> nasalised or otherwise. The "hooked o" was, of course, not
> pronounced like the modern Icelandic "ö", but it was not the
> same sound as "a". At least not according to my teachers at the
> University of Iceland. My grammars indicate that it would have
> been more like the "o".
>
> Regards
> Pelle