Sæl Patricia,
http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ X-SAMPA
In
the 12th century, there are believed to have been two phonemically
distinct
sounds, which in the normalised "Old Norse" spelling used by
Norse Course
are written 'oe' and 'æ'. The first of these, as you
know, is written as a
ligature by Gordon and Zoega and other printed
books, but as two separate
letters in the Norse course lessons to make
them easier to tell apart (the
two letters can look almost identical
in italics on a computer screen).
Various other spellings were used
in the manuscripts besides
these.
'oe' (the result of i-mutation of 'ó') was probably
pronounced
something like the 'ö' in German 'schön'. In the X-SAMPA
phonetic
alphebet [2:].
'æ' (which resulted from i-mutation of 'á')
was probably pronounced
something like the long mid-open front vowel in
English 'fair'. In
teh X-SAMPA phonetic alphabet [E:].
Some time in
the middle ages (during the later part of the 13th c.
according to Gordon)
the distinction was lost in pronunciation between
the two sounds. 'oe' was
lowered lost its lip rounding and came to be
pronounced exactly like 'æ'. A
lot of printed and online texts use
'æ' regardless of whether it is
original, or would previously have
been 'oe'. In fact, the authors of many
of these works would have
made no distinction between them in spelling or
pronunciation. Of
course, texts in modern Icelandic spelling use only
'æ'.
Later still, the long vowel 'æ' became a diphthong. In
Modern
Icelandic it's pronounced a bit like the English word 'eye',
although
the exact pronunciation varies depending on context.
This
is more Blanc Uoden's area of expertise, the modern
pronunciation, but I'll
have a go at explaining it as best I can.
The second element of the
diphthong is long and tense [i:], as in
English 'we' (1) when less than two
consonants follow; (2) when
followed by p, t, k, s + j, v, r. The second
element is short and
tense [i], like 'i' in French 'lit', before 'ng',
'nk'. Otherwise the
second element is short and lax [I], like 'i' in
Emglish 'pit'.
sæl [sai:l]
sæll [saItl_0]
sæng
[saink]
These could also be represented in Modern Icelandic spelling
as
'saíl', 'saidl', 'saíng'. According to Gordon's guide to
medieval
pronunciation, the author of Njáls saga may have pronounced
these
something like: [sE:5], [sE:l:], [sE:Ng].
The colon in
phonetic transcriptions means that the preceding sound is
long. [E:] is the
vowel in English 'fair'. Added complication, the
'l' in 'sæl' according to
Gordon and other books I've read, would
probably have had a "back" sound
[5], like the English 'l' in 'hill',
whereas the Old Norse double 'll'
would have had the "front" sound of
English 'like', as well as taking
slightly longer to say than a single
[l].
Llama Nom
--- In norse_course@ yahoogroups. com,
"Patricia" <originalpatricia@ ...>
wrote:
>
> Saellir
Peter ok Alan
> I find it useful but I have just realised why - if I am
stuck on a
word beginning with æ I try o almost automatically because I
wonder
often if it could be that the two pairs of ligatured letters could
be
mistaken one for the other.
> Say if a scribe mistook o and wrote
æ instead this might happen
more often than we think
> Með bestum
Kveðjum
> Patricia
>
>