Heill Llama!

> 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).

The change is, indeed, from the late Catholic period. The change
appears first in Norway and spreads therefrom to Iceland.

> 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.

In fact, -r and -ur (fem.pl.ô-stems,etc.) were never mixed upp in
ON, so I would call it more than a suggestion. The language changed,
and one of the changes was -r > -ur.

> 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).

Indeed. In the 10-11 centuries, the change -nnr- > -þr- occurs as a
natural part of the language; however, as you you mention, a kind of
restoration by analogy then began to occur, leaving some words with
the change (often only in some cases), others without - thus, maðr
preserves the change in nom.sg., but not in nom.pl.(meþr > menn),
while fiþr looses it in the nom.pl. and, as it only occured there,
shows it in no cases. The change -þr- > -nn- (meþr > menn; uþr > unn
guþr > gunn) is older than -þr- > -nnr- (restoration), and began to
occur while the language showed -þr- throughout, most often in the
unstressed positions (þórguþr > gunn; but guþr > gunnr, etc.) - here
'menn' is an exception to the rule.

> 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.)

Yes, just like -nr- > -nn- (*steinr > steinn).

> 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.

Right.

> 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.

Normal enough, indeed. However, many prefer the old pronunciation,
and as they have no reason to learn MIce. pronunciation (or any
other Modern pronunciation, for that matter), stick with the old
one. So there are clearly different approaches. Of course, it helps
that ON's vowel-system is well documented and that scholars have
never had much of a problem deducing its sounds. Also, all of ON's
vowel-sounds (except long a - á and long o - ó) are still living in
one location or another, so ON academics (and others) really have no
problem learning them - that is, if they choose to.

> Feel free to ask any further questions, or let me know if I didn't

explain that very well. Good luck with your studies!

The comments weren't intended for me, but I'll add that you explain
things very well :) It's tough to get the full meaning through in a
post of a few words, especially when the topic is academic and loads
of things could be added, cited or drawn in detail. Whatever one's
approach to pronouncing ON, it is important that the pronunciation
of ON be learned as it was in ON (not in any modern language), and
this as a part of learning ON, just like any other historic tongue.
Therefrom, one can choose to pronounce it differently, according to
one's needs or purposes or circumstances, while not being under any
illusion that one's pronunciation is historic ON.

Lastly, some notes about adopting Icelandic pronunciation. Now, Jón
Helgason, one of the great ON scholars, once said that even Snorri
Sturluson would, now doubt, fail an Icelandic-examination if it were
left to Egill Skallagrímsson to do the examining. Snorri was writing
around 1220+, while Egill was dead before 1000, and they came from
different cultural worlds, to boot - so one can see clearly where
the problem lies. Furthermore, while it is often popularly thought
that MIce. is basically the same language, scholars really disagree
on this point. In many ways, Modern Icelandic differs from ON and
there is no point in trying to hide this fact. There are changes in
grammar, syntax, vocabulary (both in the meanings of words, and in
the loss/addition of words), usage, etc. - thus, pronunciation,
which has changed even further after Snorri time than between his
time and Egil's, is not the only thing separating Modern Icelandic
from ON. The fact the knowing Modern Icelandic enables a person to
be able to read a basic ON text without too many difficulties just
reflects that the language has been more conservative than others.
Greatly simplifying a very complex issue, I'll stop here ;)

-K

> Llama Nom
> .
>