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

>
> Hi there,
>
> MÁL'FRÆÐ'INN'AR'GRUND'VÖLL'UR (P.78)
> Is the morphological composition of Ólaf Hvítaskáld [ca. 1250).
>
> "Diptongus er saman'límíng tveggja raddar'stafa í einni sam'stöfu,
> þeirra er báðir halda afli sínu. þessir eru límíngar'stafir í rúnum:
> ??? fyrir ae, ....
> oe er hinn fjórði diptongus í latínu, ok er hann eigi í rúnum."
>

The sense of the Latin word 'diphtongus' in this passage from the
Third Grammatical Treatise also occurs sometimes in English. The
Oxford English dictionary has a definition: "In popular use, applied
to the ligatures æ, oe-ligature of the Roman alphabet." But when
modern linguists use the term diphthong, they are referring to a
combination of two vowel sounds (or a vowel and a semi-vowel glide) in
one syllable.

> [vowel is raddarStafur: samstafa is syllable]

Yes.

> ae e sounds as in [be]. aí or aj also.

In Modern Icelandic pronunciation. We can see that this wasn't always
the case by the fact that the anonymous author of the First
Grammatical Treatise uses 'vænisk' "boasts of" and 'venisk' "become
used to" as an example of vowels which differ only according to
whether the vowel is long or short "hvárt stafr er langr eða skammr".