Konrad wrote:

> I hope that this information about the vowel-system in 3 parts has
> been informative and helpful to some of you. Happy Norse-learning.

Yes, that was informative!
(though I can't say I have internalized it yet)
Part of the difficulty lies in our different backgrounds,
and each one of us needs to base his understanding
upon his or her own particular sound system that he has
grown up with.

For example, in my last post I wrote something which
must be wrong. The example I had in mind was "Laxdæla
saga" which is how I believe it is written in Icelandic.
Pronunciation should be (and I hope I get it right this time)
as "Laxdaila saga". (Like in Tom Jones' "Delilah")
So the modern Icelandic "æ" is the diphtong (right?)

I also recall "bát" being pronounced "båt" in Norway,
but in Iceland it is a diphtong like in "baot". Is that
correct?

My mixup, where I knew the error the minute after I had
sent the email, is because in Norway we write "døl"
e.g. "Gudbrandsdøl" and also "Laxdøla".
But of course, in Iceland it is "Laxdæla" which is actually
much more confusing than you can probably imagine ~:-)

I have mostly concentrated on Old Norse, where the
pronounciation is more or less clear to me.
When I read Icelandic, I usually pronounce it as
if it were Old Norse, which works fine as far as I am
concerned, though I wouldn't volunteer reading aloud
to someone who has an inkling of the modern language, since
they would probably find it rather comical.

This means then, I suddenly realize, that I seem to
lack some good examples of Icelandic words with ö
and how they are pronounced. Can you provide some?
höfðing? fjöl? sögur?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

With respect to "systems" I see that for my own
part, I need to take the "five" classical vowels
as point of departure. They are:

A E I O U (5)

(they work in most European languages, but NOT in English)
Then, for Norwegian add the Y:

A E I O U Y (6)

(Y is somewhat like German ü)

Then also add the 3 exceptional Norwegian letters æ ø å
and obtain


A E I O U Y Æ Ø Å (9)

Which means that we have the same number of base
wowels in Norwegian as you had in your table of 9 entries.
Add to these the diphtongs

AI AU EI OI ØY

examples: hai, haug, heim, ohoi, høy,
mai, smau, meir, koie, møy
kai, dau, deig, døy

In order to understand the Icelandic vovels, I'd have
to use the above simple system as basis. But the same wouldn't
work for someone from England or Ameriac, because they'd probably
find the Norwegian system equally or almost equally difficult.

Regards
Xigung