Many thanks for your explanation of a problem Llama Nom and so succinctly worded

Let us now hope that this will clear up so many misunderstandings

Patricia 

 

 

 

I should probably mention for the sake of people who have just joined
the group, and may be new to the subject, that Blanc Uoden arrived a
few months ago and has been posting messages of this sort on a regular
basis. They often have little to do with the topic at hand. His
beliefs about the history of Icelandic (in so far as he is able to
express them) are at variance with many completely uncontroversial
ideas that scholars have established by painstaking research and
rational argument. Please don't feel daunted by this stuff; it's not
something that you will have to learn in order to understand Old Norse!

> According to Grim's law Latin is Older than the not so Germanic

tongue we name today Icelandic. [...]

Descriptions of Grimm's Law are easily found on the internet and in
textbooks. It will be apparent from looking at them, that Blanc Uoden
doesn't know what it says, or else has read some cryptic significance
into it, undetectable (and incomprehensible) to anyone but himself.

> One can ask if Grim's "law" is this based on the fact that the world

was considered to be about 5000 years old. As I see it Latin came
forward by Greek Slaves around 300 BC. and is therefore one of the
younger dialects.

Needless to say, Grimm's Law makes no referrence to the age of the
world! As for Romans and Greeks, the linguistic information in these
messages is as reliable as the history.

> The claim of my ancestors is that my mother tongue is measurable in

its every unit, and the letter-glyphs belonging to the Icelandic
Alphabet were well defined with rather verbal idea, I must add.

Apparently this is a referrence to Blanc Uoden's personal beliefs.

> The claim explains why Grim's Law and other such alien speculations

to not apply to Icelandic or distinguish it satisfactory.

Since Blanc Uoden has offered no alternative explanation for the mass
of linguistic data explained by Jakob Grimm and later scholars, there
can be no reason to doubt that the otherwise universally held view is
correct and that Icelandic, Faroese, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are
all Germanic languages in the sense that they have evolved from an
ancestral language common to English, Dutch, Frisian, German, Gothic,
etc. In fact, in the early Middle Ages, there was so little
difference between the dialects that were to evolve into the
present-day Nordic languages (Icelandic, Faroese, Danish, Norwegian,
Swedish) that Icelandic writers of the 12th and 13th centuries called
their own speech 'dönsk tunga' "the Danish tongue" and 'norroen tunga'
or 'norroena' (later 'norræna') "Norwegian" (see Stefán Einarsson: The
Icelandic Language, 1.1.3).

> the nordic alphabet: "norrænu".

Do not be misled by Blanc Uoden's use of the latter term to mean a
particular kind of alphabet or spelling; this is, as far as I can work
out, a personal meaning which he has attached to it, and not the
normal meaning of the word in Icelandic, ancient or modern. According
to Blanc Uoden's belief system, manuscript spellings which imply that
Icelandic pronunciation has changed over time (a fact that he prefers
not to believe in) are due to a conspiracy of scribes; he has informed
us that such spellings were used "just to hide the Morphological
structure of Icelandic [from aliens I reckon" [
http://tech. groups.yahoo. com/group/ norse_course/ message/6213 ].
Readers can draw their own conclusions about the likelihood of that.

> "ör" goes in or through "rör" in my tonge as "rör" is arrow-shaped

hollow cane or stik.

Blanc Uoden's "etymologies" depend on chance similarities in sound,
and poetic or dreamlike association of ideas, rather than the
systematic correspondences that real linguistic theory is based on.
For example, when we compare the earlier forms of these words in
related Germanic languages, it becomes clear that the fact that they
rhyme modern-day Icelandic is pure coincidence. The 'r' in 'ör'
"arrow" comes from Proto-Germanic *r, whereas the second 'r' in 'rör'
"pipe, tube" is from Proto-Germanic *z.

According to the regular sound change rules, the PGmc. *rauz- became
Gothic raus (neuter), Old Norse reyrr (masculine = Modern Icelandic
'reyr') "reed" (asterisks indicate hypothetical forms). The same
process can be seen in other words where this combination of sounds
occurs, e.g.: PGmc. *auzôn > Go. auso, ON eyra "ear". The form 'rör'
(neuter) however, seems to have been borrowed into Icelandic at a
later time, perhaps from the Danish form corresponding to ON 'reyrr',
cf. Danish 'øre' "ear", 'rør' "reed, pipe, tube". It would be
interesting to know when it first occurs in Icelandic. I haven't been
able to find it in any of the dictionaries of the medieval language
which I have access to.

On the other hand, ON 'ör' (well attested in medieval texts) is from a
Proto-Germanic root *arhw- (cf. Old English 'earh', 'arh' and 'arwe',
and the Gothic plural form, 'arhwaznos' "arrows"), this may be more
distantly related to Latin 'arquus', 'arcus' "bow". The difference
between Latin 'c', 'qu' and Germanic 'hw' is exactly what we'd expect
from Grimm's Law if the Latin and Germanic roots come from a common
precursor in Proto-Indo-European . The differences in the form of the
root found in the various Germanic language were it occurs are all
accounted for by the regular sound-change rules. These rules are
supported by countless other examples.

However, there is no regular sound change that I am aware of that
would explain why an 'r' would be added or subtracted from the
beginning of a word to change the meaning in this way. As far as I
know this would be unprecidented the history of the language.

Sorry, Blanc Uoden to be so blunt. I'm sure you mean well. You have
a creative and poetic imagination, and a talent for puns and for
thinking the far-from-obvious and a unique sense of humour. This
stuff just isn't on-topic here.