Greetings, Gabriel,

Not a silly question at all. "The inserted vowel can first be
observed about 1300 and seems to have been universally established by
the middle of the fifteenth century" (Stefán Karlsson: The Icelandic
Language, p. 15). As well as spellings like 'maður' for earlier
'maðr', from about 1300 onwards, manuscripts would sometimes have
erroneous spellings such as 'flugr' for 'flugur', the nominatve and
accusative plural of the noun 'fluga' "fly" (Stefán Karlsson: The
Icelandic Language, p. 47).

But in early Old Norse, words such as 'maðr' are generally thought to
have been monosyllables (EV Gordon: Introduction to Old Norse, p. 268,
section 11). In early manuscripts, the endings -r and -ur don't tend
to get mixed up, which suggests that they were originally pronounced
differently. More evidence for a monosyllabic pronunciation in early
Old Norse comes from certain sound changes, assimilations and
dissimilations of consonants next to 'r'. For example, there was a
tendency for 'n' to become 'ð' before 'r', thus *mannr > 'maðr' "man";
*annrir > 'aðrir' "others"; *unnr > 'uðr' or 'unnr' "wave" (sometimes
the 'n' was restored by analogy with other forms of the word). But
this change doesn't happen where there was a vowel between 'n' and
'r'. Similarly *vísr became 'víss' "wise; certain", but 'vísur'
"verses, stanzas" was never changed to 'víss'. (The asterisk before
these words is just to indicate hypothetical ancestral forms, deduced
by comparing different stages in the language, and related Germanic
languages.)

More evidence in favour of a monosyllabic proninciation in the early
Middle Ages comes from the way words were positioned in poetry,
especially those metres which were strict about the number and type of
syllables per line.

On the other hand, it's quite normal to read Old Norse texts using
Modern Icelandic pronunciation, as opposed to reconstructed versions
of what we think the medieval language could have sounded like.

Feel free to ask any further questions, or let me know if I didn't
explain that very well. Good luck with your studies!

Llama Nom





--- In norse_course@yahoogroups.com, "Gabriel Oliva Brum" <tilion@...>
wrote:

>
> Greetings,
>
> It may seem a silly question, but I've just started to study Old

Norse and this is the main thing annoying me right now:

>
> In words with final consonant clusters that end in "-r", such as

"maðr", what is the pronunciation? Is a medial "-u-" inserted in
speech? Since Modern Icelandic features such insertion in the written
language itself, it seems very plausible, as far as morphological
changes are concerned, assuming the modern pronunciation reflects the
old one.

>
> Could someone confirm this?
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> Gabriel
>