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
.