Hailir góðir gutar.

--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Haukur Thorgeirsson
<haukurth@...> wrote:

> Actually that's a very natural phonetic development and one
> that did indeed take place in at least some dialects of ON.
> For example what we have in standardized Old Icelandic as 'draumr'
> occurs in Old Swedish as 'draumbr'.

> > No, Swedish had lost the au-diphtong before Old Swedish time,
> > so 'draumbr' can't be Old Swedish.

Us of western Skadinaujô thinketh Gutnish to be Swedish, while the
Swede knoweth better. Like our own tongue, Gutnish was olden after
some manner not found on the mainland. Us seemeth Gutnish both the
nearest and furthest from our own olden tongue. She is at once the
most and least alike the tongue of our own forebearers. Thus it is
that many who wend east from the western strands find in Gutnish a
stone one which to sit. Were northern tongues set in row on a yard
by which to measure, then would Gutnish be the one end and our own
western tongue the other. We of the west look to the other end for
understanding. Unthinkingly, we blend all eastern speech without a
mark taken of unlikeness, as easterners do western speech. Yet, as
western speech of both the main and islands is of but one birth in
western Northway and its mother well known, that of the east is of
many and its common foremother less known. Of what mother were the
eastern sisters Gutnish, Swedish, Gautish, and Danish born? In the
east the web was wider and its threads longer when the wiking time
began, thus we of the west seem to see but one stone in the garden
of many, as we choose but one by which to measure our own. This is
oneminded after that which our eastern friends are wont. As all of
the western tongues are more newly cut of one stone, we say little
or no thing when our eastern friends look on them as one. Truely,
one must be learned to see more than one olden tongue in the west.
Thus it is that in Skadinaujô western eyes seem the weaker when on
matters of the tongue men talk.

> *sigh* Very well, I meant to say Old Gutnish. It is interesting,
> though, that the 'b' should survive even after a svarabhakti sound
> has been introduced between the 'm' and the 'r'.

I wish that we could read and learn the Gutnish of such a time as
stavegarths were held holy, and then bare this tongue in the same
light as our own olden tongue from the same such time. Ah, what a
sight to behold! Lovely sisters are the lovelier together.

What a sorrow that all of what we have of Gutnish should be both so
little and so late. Truely, it is worth a mans while to build again
the olden house of Gutnish speech. The tenth christian age would be
a fine time a new texts in Gutnish, turned from the western or new.

In the wiking tide, Gutnish would have *draumR.
Yes, folk, *draumR....now, let us hear that R again.
One more time...RRRRRRR

Glad farings,
Konrad.

> Kveðja,
> Haukur