--- In
norse_course@yahoogroups.com, Lance <lance_mcclure@...> wrote:
>
> So I assume none of you learn how to read or pronounce a form of Old
Norse. You just read it in your head. Oh well...
>
> Lance <lance_mcclure@...> skrev: Heill
>
> I am curious to know how those of you who read or speak a form of
Old Norse go about learning it. What are the guidlines that you
follow? Do you use Modern Icelandic pronunciation, some sort of Old
Icelandic pronunciation, Old Norwegian, etc...? What about the
nasals, prosody, rounded vowels, etc...?
Hi Lance,
In what follows I've used X-SAMPA phonetic notation [
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA ].
I sometimes read Old Norse texts using Modern Icelandic pronunciation
(for the sake of practising that), especially if they use modern
spelling; I also attempt reconstructed Old Norse pronunciation --
ideally not simultaneously :-) With the latter, my default standard
is the language of c. 1200, as best I understand it; no doubt I'm
making plenty of mistakes, some of which might be avoidable if I knew
more about the history of the language. Basically, I follow the
guidelines in Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse, except that I use
[v] for 'v', [O:] for 'á' regardless of etymology, and make no
distinction between the 'e' in 'menn' and that in 'ek', nor between
the 'ø' in 'gøra' and that in 'kømr'. I'm not sure whether these last
two pairs tended towards the open or the closed variant when they
merged; Gordon suggests open in the case of 'e', Faarlund close, but
neither present reasons. Since 'e' seems to have been lengthened in
certain words to 'é' rather than to 'æ', I've gone with [e] -- but I'm
not sure when these lengthenings took place (e.g. ek > ég; herað >
hérað), or even whether they were true lengthenings or just much later
diphthongizations. On the other hand, 'ø' merged with 'ö' (that is,
the hooked o) some time in the course of the 13th c. The latter is
supposed to have represented a open-mid sound [O] -- so for now I'm
using the open-mid front rounded vowel [9] for both (that is, the same
as short 'ö' in Modern Icelandic).
I chose this pronunciation as a default because it matches the way
normalised Old Norse texts are usually printed and doesn't demand any
specialized knowledge, as you would often need to know where to use
nasal vowels, and where 'á' is original or really = long 'ö' (hooked
o). Once you've learnt it, you can read texts as printed, hopefully
more or less as they would have sounded in the early 13th century (of
course, many sagas were written after this time, while some prose and
a lot of poetry is from earlier).
Another alternative would be to aim for the later 13th century: use
[E:] for both 'æ' (ae-ligature) and earlier 'oe' (oe-ligature, long
ø); and [9] for earlier 'ø' and 'ö' (hooked o) + final 'd' in words
like 'fjöld' instead of 'fjölð', 'grim(m)d' for earlier 'grim(m)ð'.
Small differences, but it would save wondering which is right if
you're not sure and you're reading a text that doesn't make those
distinctions.
But I'm also interested in how the language sounded at an earlier
stage, and intermittently try to reacreate this as best I can with my
limited knowledge. We're very lucky to have a detailed description of
Icelandic pronunciation in the 12th century by a native speaker, in
the form of the First Grammatical Treatise [
http://etext.old.no/gramm/ ]. The main differences between the sounds
of this century and the next were nasalized vowels phonemically
disctinct from oral vowels, 'v' = [w], distinction bewteen /a:/ and
/O:/, /e/ and /E/, /2/ and /9/ (open and close variants of short 'ø'),
and short vowels still in words like 'ulfr', 'hjalmr', etc. Since I'm
less familiar with doing it this way, I'm more halting. Also, I'm
liable to come across words whose etymology I don't know, and
therefore sometimes can't tell whether a nasal vowel is required.
There are other questions I have here too, e.g. the vowel in the
strong verb 'renna' "to run" -- is it close /e/ by analogy with other
strong verbs, or is it open /E/, by analogy with the weak causative
verb 'renna' "to make run" (the regular development from
Proto-Germanic would be *rinna)?
According to one view, the phonemic tonal systems of the modern
mainland Scandinavian languages arose during the late Old Norse
period, and may never have spread to Iceland. I don't have
referrences handy, but you can probably find more by searching the
internet. The distinctions preserved in the mainland Scandinavian
tone systems seem to go back to the state of the language post
syncope, that is after the loss of certain unstressed vowels from
Ancient Nordic / Proto-Norse. I'll post a link to the article I read
if I can find it again -- it presented arguments against the view that
the tones went back to much earlier times.
>
> I am eager to learn more about East Norse as it was spoken by the
jómsvíkings, or at least, the common tongue in Denmark at that time -
if that's possible to know. Something else I'm curious is about is
dialects - is it known what sort of dialect variation existed in the
Viking Days? Was it similar to the current linguistic situation today
(excluding Insular Skandinavian & Finnish) in Skandinavia, or was it
even more homogenous? Were there sociolects? -- Did both royalty and
peasants speak with the same vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation, etc or
could you tell a persons' social status by their dialect?
I'm going to have to take the High One's advice here (Ósnotr maðr / er
með aldir kømr, / þat er bezt at hann þegi) and leave these questions
for more knowledgeable people to answer. There's some basic
information on Old East Nordic (Old Danish, Old Swedish + Old Gutnish
= Gotlandic) in Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse. Here are some
links relating to Old East Nordic; although not specifically about
pronunciation, you can see the main differences between these dialects
and Old Icelandic from the spelling. I gather that the old phoneme
often spelt with a capital R in transriptions of runic texts survived
longer in the East, and that Old Swedish and to some extent Old
Norwegian had a subtle system of vowel harmony whereby unstressed
vowels in endings changed in accordance with the vowel in the root --
but I know very little about this subject.
West Gautish & Old Swedish + introduction to Old Norse in general,
guide to Norse name formation, etc.
http://hem2.passagen.se/peter9/index.html
"Altschwedische Grammatik, mit Einschluss des Altgutnischen", by Adolf
Noreen, 1904 (Scanned images of pages)
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/germanic/oswed_noreen_about.html#images
K.F. Söderwall "Ordbok öfver Svenska Medeltids-språket"
http://spraakdata.gu.se/sdw/
Otto Kalkar: Ordbog til det ældre danske sprog (1300-1700)
http://www.hist.uib.no/kalkar/
Fornsvenska Textbanken
http://www.nordlund.lu.se/Fornsvenska/Fsv%20Folder/
Projekt Bergman (Various Old Swedish documents)
http://www.abc.se/~m225/lig/bilagor.html
Östgötalagen med förklaringar
http://runeberg.org/oglfreud/
Västgötalagen (parts also translated into modern Swedish)
http://hem.passagen.se/peter9/lag/vgretl.html
Gutasaga (Saga of the Gotlanders)
http://www.lysator.liu.se/runeberg/gutasaga/
The Rök Stone Inscription (transcription, West Norse & Old Swedish
transliterations, English translation)
http://home.earthlink.net/~norsemyths/wildhunt/rokstone.html