Re: Icelandic pronunciation and the mainland

Hi,

the pronounciation in western Norway has over time developed a lot of
features shared with Icelandic, as you have written. The "accepted" theory
is that the norwegians who left for Iceland, came from this area (even
though many others would have left for Iceland as well, e.g. from the
British isles).
But the question here is "Did these features develop from a common source,
i.e. a variant of western Norwegian in the viking age, or have they possibly
developed independantly in Iceland and Norway at some point between the
viking age and early modern times?
As you point out, Danish ortography and vocabulary has not been kind the the
norwegian language; research into dialectic forms during the danish period
of norwegian history is a hard task.
We are, however, blessed with a large quantity of letters and documents
written in old norse, latin, middle norse and danish called Diplomatarium
Norvegicum. Here's the link: www.dokpro.uio.no
This collection, which is also available in printed editions, is our main
source of linguistic development from the middle ages until early modern
norwegian, in the 1500's.
And the mere excistence of such a mass of written documents in old norse and
middle norse suggests the black death was not the final blow against the old
norse language in Norway.
Indeed, it seems that the language changes more dramatically somewhere
between 1450 and 1500, judging from these letters.
On the other hand, these are formulaic documents; you can find letters from
the early 1500's starting with something like "Ollum monnum Þeim sem Þetta
bref sjá eða høyra..." (with a different ortography, of course), when it is
not at all expected from a linguistic point of view.
But I think it is also important to stress the difference between the
dialects in Norway in the middle ages. In the east, swedish and danish
influence led to a number of changes that did not occur in the west. We have
different features that make up a bigger picture of the language in Norway:
there's south-eastern, north-eastern; there's Trøndsk (in Nidaros),
north-western, south-western, and Bergensk. Those are the main areas.
And the western ones are more archaic and share more features with
Icelandic, whereas the eastern ones lean more in the direction of Sweden and
Denmark.
I can to a certain degree agree that the Icelandic/western Norwegian/Faroese
etc. dialects were heading in roughly the same direction, yet I believe that
the norwegian language was in a transitional phase in the middle ages, and
even if a separate norwegian written language had continued to live among
the population (and we must remember they were not all literate), the
language would in the end not have been classic old norse. The contact with
Iceland and the Faroes etc. lost some importance; danish became the
internordic lingua franca.
To me, it's wonderful, and also a bit incredible that Icelandic still is as
inflected as it is. But I think it's safe to say that it's been a long time
since an icelander could step off his ship in e.g. Stavanger, Bergen,
Nidaros etc. and start a conversation with the harbour personnell.


Terje

>From: "akoddsson" <konrad_oddsson@...>
>Reply-To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
>To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [norse_course] Icelandic pronunciation and the mainland
>Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:10:56 -0000
>
>Ok, notice first that this language is called sognamålet. According
>to my source (who speaks it), it is pronounced sognamaúle (the t is
>here silent). The aú sound is identical to Icelandic á and occurs
>where the chanracter aa/å is found. Notice also the genitive
>plural 'sogna', over against Dano-Norwegian 'sogne'. Notice that the
>pronunciation is sogna, not songna (but written sogne), as is the
>case everywhere else in Norway (and Denmark), with the exception of
>a few neighboring areas to Sogn. Furthermore, note that long o
>(written ó in Icelandic) is no longer just a long version of short
>o, but a new diphthong (oú - the same sound as in Icelandic). Notice
>that a > á (aú) before nk/ng (as in Icelandic):laong taong baong
>(Ice: löng töng banki). Notice u > ú (written o in Sogn) before
>nk/ng: tong monk (Ice þung(ur) munkur) o here = ú. Notice ll > dl:
>kalla (pronounced kadla - as in Icelandic) - but this rule goes even
>further in Sogn than in Icelandic: 'kenna' is pronounced 'kenna' in
>Icelandic, 'kedna' in Sogn. Lastly, rn > dn is completed in Sogn,
>but not yet in Icelandic (headed that way though): born korn
>(Icelandic börn korn) are pronounced bodn kodn. Icelandic
>pronunciation of börn is something like bördn (but bödn is
>occuring). Notice also the comments in the link I provided about the
>dative, that it is still living in Voss, Sunnfjord, Sognfjøra, and
>in parts of Indre Sogn (all neighboring areas). Notice also nn > dn
>in many environments (se link). So, it is really not that surprising
>that folk thus speaking are often mistaken for being Icelanders who
>are speaking Norwegian. Lastly, notice also that this language just
>has stress on the first syllable (like Icelandic), and lacks the
>quality called 'tonefall' in Norwegian. This quality produces the
>unique sing-song effect in Norwegian dialects and is notoriously
>difficult to learn. There are many local variations and folk tend to
>find them charming, but can't reproduce them. In Soganmålet, there
>is the staccato instead (just like in Icelandic). Hearing Sognamålet
>has given me a whole new ideas about ON pronunciation history. Now,
>as we can see that Sognamålet and Icelandic agree on the consonants,
>and on the vowels so far, lets see where they disagree. Ok, au is au
>(au not aú, like Ice á/Sogn å, but a plus u - an original ON sound
>preserved in Sogn, but not in Icelandic, which says ey here). This
>one is tricky. aa/á and au are very diffent sounds in Sogn, but the
>first is = Ice. á, while au is an archaic survival of the original
>ON sound in this instance, which Ice. once had (after hearing it and
>comparing it to Ice. au (=ey), I can almost hear how the change went
>into effect, as they are quite close in a way, especially after loss
>of original ey in Icelandic (>ei, but written ey). So, essentially,
>there is one more diphthong in Sogn (both Ice. and Sogn have more
>than ON, which had only 3, but both also write only the 3 old ones
>as real diphthongs). ei is ei. _but_ (please note): in Icelandic not
>only is ey ei, but y is i and ý is í. Big changes? Well, some would
>call Icelandic pronunciation totally isolated and unlike ON. Not so
>fast. Many Norwegian dialect pronounce ey as ei, y as i and ý as í,
>including parts of Sogn, parts of Nordmøre, etc.etc., even though it
>is not a majority pronunciation. Thus, there is really _nothing_
>isolated about Icelandic prounuciation with the possible exception
>of au=ey (I am uncertain about this one, but will ask about it). So,
>one should note that the pronunciation preserved by the descendants
>of the last ON speakers in Norway agrees with Icelandic to a degree
>that is shocking, in near total contradiction on a very large number
>of point with the entirety of modern mainland Scandinavia. It should
>be obvious that West Norse was heading a certain way by the time of
>black death, and that the pronunciations that survived the black
>death (when most folk died, causing radical changes in society and
>language) in Iceland, Norway, and Faroes were extremely similar, and
>that not much separates them even today.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>A Norse funny farm, overrun by smart people.
>
>Homepage: http://www.hi.is/~haukurth/norse/
>
>To escape from this funny farm try rattling off an e-mail to:
>
>norse_course-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>