--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Blanc Voden" <uoden@...> wrote:

>
>> "The pronoun 'þit'
>> acquired its 'þ' from this verb ending due to confusion over

where

>> one
>> word ended and the next began."

> Hi LLama Non,
> By my ancestors one word contained only one vowel.
> So by natives this has even
> never been problem of understanding each other.

Sæll Uoden,

Ég meinti alls ekki að Íslendingar á miðöldum vissu ekki hvernig
þeir áttu að tala málið sitt! Að sjálfsögðu gátu þeir skilið hvern
annan. Ég ætlaði bara að segja að þessi breyting gerðist þannig að
endurskoðaður var staðurinn þar sem annað orð endar en hið byrjar
(sem sjá má ef samanborin eru þessi hin sömu orð í öðrum
forngermönskum málum, slíkum sem fornensku og gotnesku), enda er það
algengt fyrirbæri í tungumálum.

I certainly didn't mean that Icelanders in the Middle Ages didn't
know how to speak their own language! Of course they could
understand each other. I just meant to say that this change
happened in such a way that the place where one word ends and the
next begins was reinterpreted (as can be seen if these same words
are compared in other Old Germanic tongues, such as Old English and
Gothic), a common occurance in languages.

LN

(P.S. Lát vita ef þú sérð villur í tilraun minni að skrifa á
íslensku!)

>> >> "Komið!", "Farið!", Come!, Go!. Here -ið refers to "þið" you
>plural.
>
>
>>> Hi Uoden,
>>>
>>> I guess you know all this, but just to elabourate: Modern
>>> Icelandic 'þið' "you" pl. was earlier 'þit' "you (two)", earlier
>>> still 'it' (cf. Old English 'git'). The 2nd person plural verb
>>> ending -ið goes back to Proto-Germanic -iþ or -id. The >>>

pronoun 'þit'

>>> acquired its 'þ' from this verb ending due to confusion over

where one

>>> word ended and the next began.
>>>
>>> komiþ it > komiþit > komi þit / komiþ þit (=komið þit).
>>>
>>> Likewise the old 2nd person plural:
>>>
>>> komiþ ér > komiþér > komi þér / komiþ þér (=komið þér).
>>>
>>> Some English examples of this sort of thing: an eke-name ('eke' =
>>> Icelandic 'auk') > a nickname; a norange > an orange (cf.
>>> Arabic 'naaranj', Persian 'naarang').
>>>
>>> I don't know how old the change of unstressed final 't' to 'ð'

is, but

>>> I think it must go back at least to the 13th century, even

though the

>>> standardized/normalized Old Norse spelling used in modern

textbooks

>>> uses forms like 'þit', 'kallat' for MnIc. 'þið', 'kallað'.
>>>
>>> Lama Nom