Talk:Old Norse

To-Do List

1. Phonology
   1. Multiple reconstructions: Benediktsson, Sweet, minimal and maximal inventories
   2. Umlaut: Information on conditioning from Germanic umlaut#I-mutation in Old Norse, The Conundrum of ON Umlaut.
   3. Syllable weight rules (see The Conundrum)
   4. +Contraction: Bisyllables (jǫtni); Strongs in ra; Vgr->ga (vindga, 1st Weak); Nicknames (Sigga); I consider this a phonological process, but it could go in morphology, too.
   5. +Inactive or historical transformations
   6. +Describe ǫ -> u in West Norse (just Icel.?) inflections, especially weak patterns.
   7. +Describe nnr -> ðr: Mentioned í following place(s): [1]
   8. +Dental assimilation (góðt -> gótt; hint -> hitt)
   9. Tones: Briefly mention a few arguments for and against Old Norse tones.
2. Phonotactics
   1. +Sonority hierarchy: See if one can be found. Certain bits in Málfræði. look suspiciously like one, with the division of the consonants into groups, accompanied by comments like, "…at aldri má tvá samhljóðendr ins sama hlutar setja í einni samstǫfun fyr raddarstafinn."
3. Gender
   1. +Note on the great gender shift in the English gender system, leading to its collapse.
4. Dialects
   1. Text example (multiple): change to "text examples" after adding Old Norwegian and Old Danish texts.

I'm starting a to-do list. The main reason is that there are a lot of things I would like to make sure people know are needed, but which I probably don't have time to write myself. I shall start it above, please feel free to edit it. LokiClock (talk) 09:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious about the sources for the phonology. The phonemes listed under the Vowels, Consonants, and Orthography sections differ significantly from the pronunciation guide in Gordon's Introduction to Old Norse and the Cleasby-Vigfusson book referenced in the article. They are also quite numerous and specific (unlike the general guidelines provided in most primers and introductions), and I would very much like to know the justifications for them. I didn't add this to the list in case a reference was already provided that I missed. MichaelGArtin (talk) 16:25, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Phonology's a tricky issue. Right now the article supports just one hypothesized phonology, whereas in the literature you can encounter multiple which are often very different. As for the earlier vowel chart, in "The Nordic Languages" Article 101, two very different phonologies are given, neither of which are the only possibilities. The one at this article is Benediktsson's, but with distinction of e and ę, and of nasal from oral vowels. The former's existence except in very early Norse may be challenged, as it is in the aforementioned article on the basis of Benediktsson's analysis, but the fact of the distinction's coverage in many important sources (Sweet, Cleasby-Vigfússon, etc.) makes its inclusion important for referential considerations. The phonology section and dialectical sections in this way oversimplify the academic reality, which is that there are of course multiple viewpoints, and certain information presented in the article takes one of these ideas for granted. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 02:38, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, on the disparity with Cleasby-Vigfússon, much as an English dictionary today will encompass Early Modern English to present, the book is a coverage of essentially the entire Icelandic up until its point of writing. It has a heavy slant on the older language, and is a very useful resource for information on Old Icelandic, but the pronunciation and spelling is based on the then-modern language, and you must be careful in reading it to notice when Vigfússon switches from discussing the language in general to the language of antiquity or the then-modern language. Note that its official title is not "Old Icelandic Dictionary" but "An Icelandic-English Dictionary." ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 07:02, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Finnish Norse

The map of where old Norse, specifically "old east Norse" was spoken does not include Åland islands and western Finland. Why? It has been widely accepted that Finland partially had a population which was the same as the rest of Scandinavia, this is supported by genetics, archaelogical evidences and linguists have proven that old Norse or a closely related Germanic language must have been spoken in Finland alongside the Balto-Finnish languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.31.11.80 (talk) 11:32, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

If it's widely accepted, then can you not find a reputable source stating this? If you can, feel free to cite this source and update the article yourself. LokiClock (talk) 04:52, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

I found reference to the retention of ai, as in Old Gutnish, in Finnish Swedish, but I couldn't determine for sure whether it was proper to infer from that that the dialects there were Old Swedish dialects established before the diphthong merged to ei. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 15:24, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

"finnish old norse" -"Finnish, Old Norse" returns no Google results. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Gah! The information was in Swedish-speaking Finns the entire time, inexplicably instead of Finland Swedish. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Mutual intelligibility

I removed "a degree of" as I think it's best to simply state that Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are mutually intelligible although it is strongly assymetrical. It is indeed strongly assymetrical, and the mutual intelligibility decreases and increases not only depending on geographic location but also depending on the level of education of the speakers. I have never met a Norwegian or a Dane with university eduction with whom the languages have not been perfectly mutually intelligible, and I am from the Stockholm region. Additionally, if there was only a "degree of" mutual intelligibilty, Scandinavian politicians would not accept Norwegian, Swedish and Danish as a common working language - Scandinavian - in the Nordic council.--Berig (talk) 17:17, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

No objections here, there's no doubt that we can understand eachother well. I read Swedish and Danish books without trouble, and have no problems communicating verbally. –Holt T•C 19:55, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I agree with the correction, as long as we keep my "asymmetry" comment. It's clear that with a high level of education, it is not a problem to read each others' languages in common topics. But, there's little doubt that for a Swede it's easier to read Norwegian or Danish than Icelandic and Faroese. Moreover, most Swedes I know, even University educated, state that they have difficulties in understanding a Dane speaking everyday's Danish, while most Danes say that they understand quite well spoken Swedish.Nordisk varg (talk) 15:32, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

So what your saying is that us danes are more intelligent than the swedes? ;) seriously though i think it has more to do with what you experience/accept in your daily life, people from Skåne and other areas around Denmark has no trouble to understand danish, and the same with danish people, however if you go near the Danish/German border, i think you will find more german understanding danes than you will other places. While i have no problem understanding norwegian or swedish, i find that Stockholm swedes and northern norwegians dont understand danish. or maybe it is because we owned you once ;) Sneaking Viper (talk) 13:52, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it is important to differentiate between spoken and written language. For instance, it is very easy for a Norwegian to read Danish, while it is more complicated to listen to a Danish speaking, as the Danish sound system is quite different from Norwegian. However, when for instance an Icelandic that has learned Danish in school speaks that language, it is actually very easy to understand, as they tend to have a "Norwegian" pronunciation". --Oddeivind (talk) 15:49, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

The same is true of Romance languages in general -- if you've learned two of them (preferably French and either Italian or Spanish) you can pretty much read any of them, although in spoken form they may be harder to comprehend.

Out of curiosity, cabn a Norwegian understand Icelandic? Given that Icelandic remains a fully inflected language I would think comprehension would be difficult. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 16:29, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Having just listenened to some spoken Icelandic, I think I can safely assure you that it is 98% incomprehensible for the average Norwegian. There are similiarities though, some of whom are not represented in written Norwegian: take da (that) and dar (there) from dialects in Hordaland and compare it to Icelandic það (having a common root with da in Old Norse þat) and þar (in modern written Norwegian, it is written det and der, respectively, in both Bokmål and Nynorsk). Connecting, for instance, Icelandic sjá with Nynorsk sjå (to see) is not that much of a stretch (not sure how the pronunciation differs); however, words like the Icelandic lögregla (police) and stærðfræði (mathemathics) and the corresponding Norwegian words politi and matematikk are one of many (more "modern" perhaps?) words where the etymologies apparently differ, and therefore are bound to cause incomprehension.

Some words are spelled in exactly the same manner, though; some examples: og (and; Nynorsk and Bokmål), fyrst (first, Nynorsk), koma (to come, Nynorsk)

Letters like 'ð' and 'þ' are not present in modern Norwegian, and most Norwegians won't know how to pronounce them; thus making it harder to relate to Icelandic texts. --Harald Khan Ճ 12:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Harald Khan is right here. Norwegian (like both Swedish and Danish) has been influenced to a large extent by Low German. A large part of the vocabularly was changed during the period following the Black Death. I remember I heard some Icelandic myself, and it felt SO familiar, but I still wasn`t able to get it (which was in fact a bit frustrating). --Oddeivind (talk) 11:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

As I'm fluent in French and know some Spanish, I can safely say that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are more similar to each other than the main Romance languages are to each other. There are even greater differences among dialects within French and Italian than between standard Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. The reason why they are not considered to be simply dialects is because of the former rivalry between Sweden and Denmark and because of 19th century patriotism. On the other hand, they are in fact also considered one single language in politics, in the Nordic council. It may also be considered rude if a Swede tries to speak English instead of Swedish to a Dane or a Norwegian. I don't think Norwegians can understand much Icelandic. To a Swede it is incomprehensible.--Berig (talk) 16:38, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

For all its relevance, I think there's an Old Icelandic text that says Icelanders can understand all the [Germanic] dialects as far south as Mainz. Someone mentioned this in a lecture I went to not so long ago, but I can't remember the name of the text. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 09:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

So the statement could have been true when the text was written? Probably not anymore. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:04, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

That's kinda obviously, surely! Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 09:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Indefinite article?

What were the indefinite article for the three grammatical genders in Old Norse? --Oddeivind (talk) 15:55, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

According to my grammar (Iversen, 1972): Old Norse at first didn't use the indefinite article. However, during the 13th century, it came to be used in Old Norwegian, but not in Old Icelandic. That indefinite article was the numeral 1 (as in modern Norwegian) which was einn (m), ein (f), eit (n).--Barend (talk) 14:27, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

But isn`t it the indefinite article that decides the grammatical gender? By the way, I have heard that there are some dialects in Norway that actually use different articles for different genders when it comes to the numeral 2 (and 3??). I think this is the Vinje dialect or some other dialect south of Hardangervidda. --Oddeivind (talk) 11:12, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Like many IE languages, Old English didn't really use the definite article and the indefinite article developed, as in Nordic languages, from "one". I don't think the indef art decides the gender: in German it matches the gender, but doesn't decide it. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 16:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Gender is inherited historically for each word, though may switch over time. It has nothing to do with articles. 70.113.64.110 (talk) 09:23, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Oddeivind, your terminology is somewhat confused. The indefinite and definite articles express the grammatical gender of the noun. If you want to put an article in front of a masculine noun, it must be the masculine article, etc. Numerals and articles are two different things. What you mean, when it comes to numbers and dialects, is that in some dialects the numeral 2 is conjugated in gender. This is correct, and it was also the case for Old Norse, up to the number 4 (e.g. fjórir sønir - fjórar døttr - fjögur börn. But that doesn't make the numeral 2 an article.--Barend (talk) 08:53, 27 April 2009 (UTC)

They do have something in common, though- they're both adjectives/pronouns. A section of the morphology I'm overdue in writing. LokiClock (talk) 22:47, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The Concept "Old Norse"

What primary source does the heading concept of this article come from and when did it first come into use? Thorguds (talk) 07:38, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Huh? Do you mean when did it come to be called Old Norse? •Jim62sch•^dissera! 16:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Exactly. When and by whom was the concept "Old Norse" first used? This information is relevant for the article.Thorguds (talk) 11:18, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

According to the article Germanic philology, Germanic/Old Norse studies started around the 16th century, and as per tradition, most of the scholars then wrote in Latin (and according to Latin Wikipedia, the Latin translation is la:Lingua Nordica antiqua). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:12, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Does this mean that the term “Old Norse” was first used after 1600? Thorguds (talk) 11:15, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

(Btw, 1600- is the 17th century.) That's my guess. It wasn't considered "old" when it first was in use. But I'm not a scholar. See also discussion on my talk page. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:17, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

[outdent] True, the concept Old Norse was likely re-actualized in Denmark and Sweden during the 17th and 18th centuries. However, since the medieval Icelanders were aware of their language as the Danish tongue which was spoken also in Denmark, Norway and Sweden (as stated in Grágás), we know that the concept is much older. When did the concept appear? It likely appeared as soon as people in Norway, Denmark and Sweden discovered that their language was noticeably different from that of the Saxons in the south.--Berig (talk) 12:52, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why the date of the concept's arrival on the linguistic scene is important. What is of far greater importance is why the differentiation exists between Old Norse and Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Icelandic. Not sure what the Saxons have to do with this either, as Old Norse was North German and Saxon West German. Perhaps I'm missing something. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 17:17, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The reason is that we cannot talk of any separate North Germanic language unless we assume a linguistic separation from West Germanic and the Saxons were their closest West Germanic neighbours. Still in the 16th century, Scandinavians thought that North Germanic was a single language. Any separation between Old Norse and the modern Norse languages is to be found in the the great differences between modern Icelandic and the continental Scandinavian languages and also in the enmity between Denmark and Sweden from the 16th to the 17th centuries and later nationalism.--Berig (talk) 17:33, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, nationalism played a part, but only a part. It's similar to Italy where Latin developed into a dozen or so languages as there was no unifying power. When the unifying power was removed from Scandanavia (Iceland is a separate issue) the language naturally diversified into Nynorsk, Bokmal, Danish, Swedish, Faroese and a few others.

Linguistically, the delineation of languages into families, group, and individual tongues is relatively recent, with the work of de Saussure and Grimm avancing linguistics to the level of a science. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 17:44, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you can reduce the concepts of language delineations to recent science. People have always had folk theoretical models of "tongues". When the Icelanders wrote that they talked the "Danish tongue", it reflected a folk theoretical notion of a common way of speaking with continental Scandinavians, and they could even describe it theoretically in the First Grammatical Treatise and they could define its geographical spread in Grágás. As for the delineation into language families, they are supposed to reflect a historical evolution of various dialects into the modern languages, so I think it's relevant here. I don't think you can say that the continental Scandinavian languages have diversified into different languages naturally, because they could just as well be considered dialects of a single language, in the same way as Swiss German dialects and low German dialects are dialects of the same language. The reason why they are treated as different languages, or not, is political.--Berig (talk) 18:04, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

I more or less agreee. Delineations are supposed to represent history, but as you correctly noted, the delineation is often political. In Spain, for example, Catalan and Galician are recognised as full blown languages (which they are), but Aragonese is considered a dialect (which it isn't); and in France, Occitan and Walloon and others are considered dialects of French, which they aren't. Same thing happens in the aforementioned Italy. My personal standard for whether we're talking language or dialect is whether there is mutual intelligibility in the spoken tongues (for example the language of Yorkshire and that of London's educated class), but I've not gotten much of anywhere because many other linguists seem to not want to offend anybody in power. Sigh. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 18:43, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The delineations get truly ironic in the case of Catalan and Occitan. The first one is classified as an Ibero-romance language and the other one as a Gallo-romance, but they are very similar.--Berig (talk) 19:07, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Wakuran, I added a comment in the your talk page. Thorguds (talk) 17:23, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

A lot of the problem comes from looking at languages from a [n overly] modernist macroscopic perspective. The idea that languages separate and diversify in big blocks is largely historical nonsense, except with reference to geographic isolates, and ideas like "Catalan", "Occitan", or "Danish", are elite centrist constructs that cloud the reality of dialect continua. Likewise, the idea that medieval Jutish was "Danish" is political make-believe (as would be the idea that it was German or Saxon), and in reality it was a series of dialects that blended into northern Saxon. Likewise, in Scandinavia, separate "Bokmal, Danish, Swedish" languages did not "naturally" develop, they are all constructs imposed on communities by "national"Ly focused power groups in the modern era. It is historical arbitrariness that [continental] Scandiavian is three/four languages, but German is one, when in fact differences between dialects even inside German regions (like Swabia) is far greater than differences throughout [mainland] Scandinavia (which would be more comparable to English or Castilian than German). BTW, "Lingua Nordica" is a neologism as far as I know. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 09:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps from a certain aspect it is elitist, but then most sciences are elitist; that's just the way it goes. Additionally, for linguists, one needs to classify things in a certain way -- it's like biology: no matter how closely related two animals may be (e.g, the Guyana Blackback Coral Snake and the Andean Blackback Coral Snake they are classified as different species. As for there being "one" Gertman, that would be patently untrue in my opinion, but there needs to be a differentiation between what is a language and what is a dialect, as I noted above. •Jim62sch•^dissera! 16:29, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Orthography

I can only see lots of ᚴ ᚴ ᚴ's. Is this specific to wikipedia or my computer? Þjóðólfr (talk) 17:45, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

In the columns labeled "9th-10th c." and "11th-13th c." you should be seeing various runes. If you don't, it's probably because you don't have a font installed that includes runes. —Angr 18:18, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Brilliant - hopefully I can sort it out. Þjóðólfr (talk) 18:28, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia should link to such fonts, how do you know you get the right font? -Brian 83.109.82.96 (talk) 11:13, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

All of the runic letters in the article will be standard Unicode characters. So as long as the typeface properly supports the full Runic Unicode block, you should have no problem. Consult this page for candidates. LokiClock (talk) 03:55, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Misleading transcription

The transcription offered at [[2]] is incomplete and thus misleading, as all the non-alphabetical abbreviation-marks are left out. Without them even people of the time would have had a really hard time to read the text correctly. It also lacks the complete manuscript reference (AM 162 A θ fol, 4v) and/or the source of the transcription. --79.142.224.163 (talk) 19:50, 8 November 2009 (UTC)eluc

Funny you say, because I've been pondering redoing it the past couple days. I couldn't track the source from the name given (θ-fragment), though, so it's good to know it actually exists. I'll probably not use that manuscript, though, because I'll want to find a digital facsimile and normalization produced by experts (MeNoTa) with a section for which all the abbreviations are encoded in Unicode and for which I can find a Modern Icelandic version. LokiClock (talk) 04:11, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Okay, done! LokiClock (talk) 17:22, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Morphology

Maybe we could have an Old Norse morphology article, akin to the one on Old English morphology? It might be prudent not to overly burden the main article with morphological tables. Haukur (talk) 15:42, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Good idea. It's going to end up being the bulk of the article by the time the full morphology is in place. That will also, naturally, require some mirroring or referencing of information from the parent article, though. LokiClock (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Seems like an excellent idea. I fully support it. Cocytus [»talk«] 01:30, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

One issue, though, is that there's a more to the morphological sections than just morphology, and should be more still. Should that information be extracted and rearranged in the main article, or should a more general title for the page be decided upon? Some examples of information that would be grouped with the morphological data would be: Phonological features of inflectional morphemes (the nasal a of the infinitives); Trends towards semantic roles of referents within a conjugation; Trends towards semantic categories within a declension (as with body parts in the weak neuters). LokiClock (talk) 22:27, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You've probably got the right idea. See Wikipedia:Summary style for some hints of a general nature. Haukur (talk) 00:49, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

I read it, but I didn't really gather much regarding what degree to which the new articles should be inclusive of that relevant information, which would be peripheral to the morphology as a classification. Should we just include the information anyway, and not fuss over the classifications of the details? LokiClock (talk) 08:45, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

I would be willing to do the split, or at least start it. Split template added. LokiClock (talk) 10:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Split made. This is my first split, so others should check and make sure I got everything. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 09:09, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Nasals vowels only in Old Icelandic?

The Old Norwegian article states this. If anyone could find a source to the effect, let me know, and I'll move the nasal vowel information to the Old Icelandic section. See also the discussion here. LokiClock (talk) 17:59, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Break: Old East Norse

The Old East Norse summary is very long, and needs organization desperately. Since there's such a wealth of information, it would be good for it to have its own article, especially since Old Norwegian has its own article and Old Icelandic has History of Icelandic. A separate article would allow only certain key information to be kept. I'd like to see the dialects section focus on the splits and mergers that caused the dialects to diverge over the Old Norse period, as well as the differences in spelling conventions. LokiClock (talk) 19:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I retract my suggestion. Much of the information finds a place elsewhere in the article, or in Danish and Swedish subsections, or will in a planned section (such as for the strong nouns). LokiClock (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Note on Ǥǥ, West Norse nk

I assume that the fact that Rúnameistari supplied the letter "eng" for /ŋg/ but no such one for /n/ before /k/ implies that the ns in the remaining of such sequences did not velarize. Of course, this is in no way a reliable inference, which is why I'm writing this here and not in the article, but I haven't read anything that mentions the question. Such a clue is better than nothing.

I'm sure I'm not alone in having wondered this, as other Germanic languages, including Icelandic, German, and English, velarize N before K. If someone has a source for or against this, I would like to know! I could have missed something when reading the first treatise, too, as I don't have the vocabulary to read all of it yet. As for East Norse, I still have nothing. LokiClock (talk) 09:18, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Phonology: an introduction to basic concepts gives [ŋk]->[kː], so that settles it for OEN, though it should be obvious anyway, from the relation to [nt] and [mp]. I'm going to assume [ŋk] for OWN /nk/, because it seems less plausible to me than it did back in December that the post-merger examples of /nk/ would not reinstitute this incredibly common allophone. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 08:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Reflexive error

In section Suffices the forms of kallask are incorrect. My book "Vikingarnas språk" by Rune Palm, ISBN 91-1-301086-7, instead gives the forms:

	present				preterite
	indicative		conjunctive		indicative		conjunctive
	SG	PL	SG	PL	SG	PL	SG	PL
1p	kǫllumk	kǫllumsk	kǫllumk	kallimsk	kǫlluðumk	kǫlluðumsk	kǫlluðumk	kallaðimsk
2p	kallask	kallisk	kallisk	kallisk	kalliðisk	kǫlluðusk	kallaðisk	kallaðisk
3p	kallask	kallask	kallisk	kallisk	kallaðisk	kǫlluðusk	kallaðisk	kallaðisk

Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 20:05, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Sweet's Old Icelandic grammar[3] agrees with you (with the exception of replacing some Modern Icelandic s′s with Old Norse z′s), but Zoega's Old Icelandic dictionary[4] agrees with the article. These must be variant forms of some sort, but not dialectal variants, since both are Old Icelandic. Does anyone know more about this? — Eru·tuon 01:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

I got them from Cleasby-Vigfússon. That might be simply a replacement of the modern -st forms with the -sk forms, though that seems like a strange oversight, given the book's great concern with the older language. Regardless, that's two sources over one, one of which is a grammar (or maybe both, I'm just judging by the title). So I would replace the forms in the tables with those and have as footnote that C-V gives the others. LokiClock (talk) 18:09, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

My mistake! I didn't supply those forms. Those are the modern Icelandic forms. The older forms I would have supplied if I had as I thought would also have been incorrect, though at least more correct. This table has said forms. LokiClock (talk) 17:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Does anyone have the above forms for láta? C-V has láta for a somewhat different sk paradigm, and for kalla. If one has láta's forms matching kalla's above, or another verb and paradigms for it matching both the above and C-V's, please note the source. If the source is not freely viewable online, please also provide the table contents. I'm drawing up a table now for kalla. LokiClock (talk) 05:29, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The forms in question are given (mostly) on page xxvi of C-V.[5] ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 19:40, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed! Still, see my last comment. Past participles need to be checked for differences. LokiClock (talk) 07:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Old Norse translator

Does anyone know of an Old Norwegian or Old Icelandic translator I can download for use in a book I'm writting?--206.78.50.75 (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

No. I would definitely not rely on machine language translation for anything. If you're writing a book on machine translation, sure, but you should either learn the language or use existing translations of texts. I might be of some minor assistance, though, as I speak the language well enough to find out what something means even if I can't read it. LokiClock (talk) 20:33, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Old Norse etymology/declension

Please see Kragerø#Name and Talk:Kragerø.Skookum1 (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Category?

Should Category:Old Norse language be created, for articles on the language and concepts whose names are words in the language? ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 11:32, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Sure, why not? Every other language seems to have its own category, from Category:Icelandic language to Category:Latin language. Hayden120 (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Point. Category:Old Norse language ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 01:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Hebridean fantasy

I have just written "It is possible that the name Hebrides was originally derived from the Old Norse Havbredey, meaning "isles on the edge of the sea"." quoting W. H. Murray, whose linguistic research may not meet the highest modern standards. If anyone has any sources that indicate that "Havbredey" is genuinely Norse I'd be grateful. He also implies that the 2nd century Roman writers "Hebudes" is a corruption of this word, rather than vice versa - which would presumably mean that the origin was Proto-Norse. The English language sources I have all just seem to repeat the general idea without providing any hard evidence. Ben MacDui 14:43, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

A cursory search yields no reference to the term. The Old Norse name for the Hebrides was "Suðreyjar" (south islands), and "Suðreyskr" and "Barreyskr" are terms meaning from the Hebrides and from Barra.᛭ LokiClock (talk) 16:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

OK - many thanks. Ben MacDui 14:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

Sure thing. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 21:46, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Lead

This article's lead is quite long. Could it be condensed into four paragraphs, as recommended by Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section)#Length? Suggestions? Hayden120 (talk) 13:41, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Most of the information belonged to other sections, namely Modern descendants. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 21:18, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Stress patterns

What exactly are the stress patterns for Old Norse, besides first-syllable primary stress? Compound words, regional variation, tonal and non-tonal, poetic evidence, inflections, bisyllabic stems, bisyllabic stems with inflections.... Any sources would be helpful. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 03:58, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Merger of ǫ

The article says, "Sometime around the 13th century, Ǫ merged to Ø in all dialects except Old Danish.", but for instance Old Norse "sǫngr" has turned into modern Nynorsk "song", "bǫrkr" to "bork", "þrǫngr" to "trong" etc. Am I misunderstanding something? --Harald Khan Ճ 11:15, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

There's no misunderstanding. I don't know what the proper explanation is (and there could be many), but there's clearly a gap in our coverage of the merger(s). ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 10:07, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

What was there was obviously wrong, so I changed it. It can probably be phrased better than what I did, but the mistake had to go. In Norwegian of course, the old <Ǫ>-phoneme for instance became <ø:> in "øl", <o> in "song", <u> in "hjort", <u:> in "fjord".--Barend (talk) 16:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

An explanation of my modifications: The sound could be said to have disappeared when it merged, but what is seen is indiscriminate spelling, as if the writer doesn't know which letter goes with which sound. This is what was meant in the original statement, and that's why changing it to say that it disappeared in the later manuscript is misleading. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 16:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

But surely, you are now mixing orthography and phonology, aren't you?--Barend (talk) 17:30, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree that using orthography as evidence for a sound change can be sketchy, but in this case is logical. Take the words there and their. Before they were pronounced the same, no one would have confused them. They might have been spelled poorly, but spelling them poorly would not have caused one to switch ere with eir indiscriminately, or for that matter the entire population to do so from then onwards until the people stopped bothering and just spelled them the same. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 00:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean? Isn't the spelling in these cases historical, from before the words were pronounced identically? 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:24, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about manuscripts from the time of the merger. Simply, between the times of bǫrkr and the times of bork and börkur. An excerpt from Cleasby-Vigfússon, regarding the written distinction of /æː/ from /øː/, which merged in Old Icelandic: The Cod. Reg. [copy] of the Grág. still keeps the distinction, owing probably to its excellent old originals; the Cod. Reg. of the Sæm. Edda uses both signs [ę & ø], but misplaces them, thus, Hm. 92 męla, but f[ǿ]r (pres. form [of] fá), in the same verse. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 20:43, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

I mostly got confused about your comparision to there and their. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 20:53, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

West Saxon

Waes hael (be well) was found in the West Saxon dialect, little influenced by Old Norse, I think it was a common descendant of earlier Germanic languages not a Norse importation.

Snake, however, was a Norse loan, the Old English was naedre (modern cognate - adder).Urselius (talk) 13:10, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think wassail was Old English — the OED records uses of the word as early as 1205 (Layamon) that have the diphthong ai, which is unlikely if the original word did not have a diphthong. Old English wes hāl (or wæs hǣl) has no diphthong, but Old Norse ves heill does. — Eru·tuon 18:12, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Replace orthography tables?

Now that the new orthography tables have been fashioned at Old Norse orthography, should those replace the tables found here? If not, what are the advantages of these tables? I drafted the new tables because I feel these are somewhat unsatisfactory in their classifications of orthographic norms and longer than necessary due to lack of information organization. If good reason is shown for keeping them, the information should be updated to match with the new tables, as I corrected some of it creating them, and proper usage of phonemic brackets vs. phonetic brackets should be maintained. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 05:09, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Invisible dots - what's the point?

To Lokiclock, re the dots in the phonology table: What's the point in having dots in the table which most people can't read? I for one was confused looking for the dots, and concluded that it was probably a mistaken referance to the tildes that were in the table. Having the sentence which I deleted, but you reinstated, there, is confusing for people without the Uxxxx-whatever. --Barend (talk) 13:49, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

You assume that most people do not have a single typeface containing a bullet point character (Unicode codepoint 2022). The bullet point is in fact common enough to be supported as a named HTML entity — &bull; — which means it's in a set of 252 characters outside of the Latin alphabet which are common enough that it's prudent to allow them to be typed by name and not number. These bullet points, and characters with named entities, are found in the "Insert" menu of the character insertion links under the submit button for Wikipedia edits.

For obscure characters, there are templates which inform users that they may not see all characters in the article without an appropriate typeface, but the bullet point is so common that even this is not necessary. Another problem is that you might not be browsing Wikipedia in UTF-8, even if you do have the bullet point in some typeface on your computer. Attempt to find the setting in your browser that determines your default character encoding (also named text encoding and similar) and switch it to Unicode (UTF-8).

As for the point of the dot, separation of text is a standard usage of the bullet point, at least in English. You see it on posters, buttons with circular text, and much more. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 17:07, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mea maxima culpa - I misunderstood the text. The dots are there, clearly visible. Forget my meaningless post.--Barend (talk) 09:50, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Modern West Scandinavian Languages versus East Scandinavian Languages

First: Iceland and the Faroe Islands are not part of Scandinavia, neither is Finland or the Aland Islands. So one should talk about the west and east Nordic or North Germanic languages.

Second: To include Norwegian together with Icelandic and Faroese in a separate western branch is strange. Icelandic and Faroese stand apart, but mainly because they changed less from old Norse. The pronunciation is different but an Icelander and a Faroese will understand each other. A Norwegian, Swede and Dane not having learned either Icelandic or Faroese will not understand a word. The written language changed that little, that I, speaking Icelandic, can read old Swedish, old Norwegian and old German text without a bigger problem, whereas a native speaker of those languages would have problems. Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are that similar today that one should talk about dialects of the same language. I have read about the distinction between this west Nordic language Norwegian (really two versions, Bokmål and Nynorsk) and east Nordic languages Swedish and Danish, but apart from geographical and political correctness, I have seen no language related explanation for this distinction. I realize that it is repeated again and again in the relevant books and publications, but nobody explains on what grounds this distinction is made.Jochum (talk) 00:58, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Both terms are used, regardless of geographical definitions of Scandinavia.

East and West Old Norse exist on a dialect continuum. Old Norwegian acquired both insular and mainland sound changes at various times, but maintained quite a bit of cohesion with the dialects of Norway's colonies. Note that middle and modern Norwegian have had much more time to homogenize with the mainland languages, and Old Gutnish has homogenized with Swedish to become a dialect of said language. Thus the application of the Eastern/Western/Gutnish distinction to the modern languages is anachronistic, and can fail to capture the significance the branching has in discussing the languages' initial stages of divergence.

The distinctions between Eastern and Western dialects are made through the major sound changes that occurred in the Swedish and Danish varieties and not the others. In Dialects, these major sound changes are identified as the heightened activity of vowel breaking, along with the later monophthongization. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 10:49, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

If there are two terms one should use the (here geographical) correct one. (In the UK you do not use England to include Scotland ab Wales, you use Great Britain).

I was only talking about the modern Languages. I accept all the distinctions in the older languages. But coming from Iceland and listening to Norwegians, Danes and Swedes talk, reading the newspapers and books, I do not find the reason for putting modern Norwegian or Nynorsk into a group with Icelandic and Faroese as distinct from Swedish and Danish. The differences between Norwegian and Icelandic/Faroese are today greater than between modern Norwegian and Danish/Swedish. If there are still spoken, Norwegian dialects that are nearer to Icelandic than Danish/Swedish name them and make the distinction for them.Jochum (talk) 12:12, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Both terms are correct. The geographic scope of a term need not correspond to the linguistic one. English is still English, even in America.

Linguistic family separation is hereditary, and does not describe the degree of similarity between languages. If you want to debate the appropriateness of the classification, you should take it up on a linguistics forum. ᛭ LokiClock (talkular) 05:35, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

English is used in England and developt there. Icelandic was never spoken in Scandinavia.

You do not call English spoken in Scotland keltisch because they once spoke keltisch and speak english with a strange accent now. So we should not discuss in wikipedia if a classification is appropriate? And there is the classification putting the modern Scandinavian languages together as continentel and modern Icelandic and Faroese as insular.194.144.89.8 (talk) 19:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Icelandic was originally a dialect of Norwegian, making it a member of the Scandinavian language family. American English was never spoken in England, but it's still English, isn't it? Megleno-Romanian is a Romance language that was never spoken in the Roman Empire, as seen be these maps of the extent of the Megleno-Romanian and the Aromanian linguistic area and of the extent of the Macedonian thema of the Roman Emprire. Icelandic used to be Icelandic Norwegian. It's just been a little longer.

That is not at all analogous. Norwegian has not been replaced by Swedish or Danish just because they share some or even most features. The language still carries the sound changes that originally distinguished the West Norse branch from the East Norse one. It still consists of the collection of dialects sharing those features. It is of different descent. So in a categorization by descent, it will be categorized separately from Swedish and Danish. For that matter, the Celtic language family, nor Scottish Gaelic in particular, are extinct.

No, actually, we shouldn't discuss it in Wikipedia. Wikipedia does not invent or arbitrate standards of classification, merely document them and article subjects' places in those schemes. From Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, "The purpose of a Wikipedia talk page (accessible via the talk or discussion tab) is to provide space for editors to discuss changes to its associated article or project page. Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject." ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 12:12, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Dear Loki you agree that there are two terms used, why use the geographical incorrect one as the name for the page? Icelandic and Faroes developed as there own languages outside of Scandinavia. You compare to this English and American English, it is new for me that they are two distinct languages. The word romance is a term to describe language not geography and Romania is a Balkan country. The classification for the modern languages insular with Icelandic and Faroes and continental with Norwegian, Swedish and Danish you will find in the German Wikipedia under "Nordgermanische Sprachen". There are experts, again mentioned somewhere in the Wikipedia, that consider modern Norwegian, Swedish and Danish as dialects of the same language. Nothing I talk about is my invention. I thought Wikipedia was not one sided. I like to discuss changes before I go and change the text. If I can not find agreement I usually abstain from changing.Jochum (talk) 18:09, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The term "Scandinavian languages" is not using the geographical definition of Scandinavian. This is analogous to using the term Romance for languages not based out of Rome. Romania is a Balkan country, but Romanian is another Romance language. American English is only a separate dialect now, as Icelandic was a dialect of Norwegian in the middle ages. When it does separate, it will not simply dispel its English heritage. If you wish to discuss the documentation an alternate system of classification employed for categorizing these languages, you should discuss them at the appropriate place, not at Talk:Old Norse. Furthermore, your arguments come off as an attack against the tree model, and veil your true aim. Do not open a debate with a baited question. Open with your suggestion and backing, in this case including the names of the proponents of the alternate theory. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 20:33, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

The term "Scandinavian languages" is used in Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark to describe the Scandinavian languages Swedish, Norwegian and Danish only!!!! The model I talk about is used there too. For a little reading: http://old.norden.org/nordenssprak/?lang=is.

I do not care about the tree model or the wave model, but the model must be effective to describe what is happening. And the reality is that today Norwegian has more in common with the other Scandinavian languages than with Icelandic and Faroes.Jochum (talk) 21:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

The Scandinavian language article addresses this usage. However, just because some people use the term for a more restricted sense does not mean that we can't use the term in the more general sense. If you do not believe that either model effectively describes the linguistic situation, consider developing your own model of linguistic typology. However, until it gains traction in the scientific community, we cannot use your model here. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 16:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

History of Old Norse and Old Icelandic vowels

According to the table, Primitive Old Norse aː <á> and ɔː <ǫ́> merged into Later Old Icelandic aː <á>. Elsewhere, I have always seen the product of this merger given as ɔː <á>, which is the way it is still pronounced in the Mainland Scandinavian languages. In Icelandic, Faroese, and some Scandinavian dialects, this sound has subsequently developed into a diphthong. Is the ɔː <ǫ́> > aː <á> > ɔː <á> sequence really correct?--213.236.196.39 (talk) 18:20, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Cleasby-Vigfússon (the source used under Old Icelandic) states that it was developed at this time. I think, given our present knowledge of Proto-Germanic, a concept not referenced by the dictionary, that the appearance of a distinct spelling was likely the final acknowledgement of the sound due to the influence of the First Grammatical Treatise's orthography. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 04:09, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I mean to say that the product of the merger was, in fact, /aː/, but that the sequence is simply /ɔː/ > /aː/, without a re-emergence of /ɔː/. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 07:23, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

The Nordic languages vol. 2 p. 1080 does support the idea of /aː/ > /ɔː/, though, saying "A basis change which affected the vowel systems of Old Norw. and the other West Scandinavian languages was back-rounding of /aː/, hence the merger with umlauted /ɔː/..." ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 17:03, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Old Norse pronunciation and IPA

Hello. Can someone render the pronunciation of a few Old Norse names into IPA? I could use it for a few articles I'm working on. For example, the names: "Haraldr Guðrøðarson", "Óláfr Guðrøðarson", "Haraldr Óláfsson", and a few others. The IPA template is here: Template:IPA.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 07:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It depends on where and when they're from. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 18:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh I see, the list is here. Old West Norse should be appropriate. I have discussed a good source I have on my talk page. Nora lives (talk) 01:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

[6] halfway down the page is useful and scholarly. The pronunciation is not learned instantly, and sometimes you just have to guess, like whether a p should sound like an f or not. (The sound system of) Modern Icelandic has diverged considerably but is a an alternative modern scholars sometimes choose when reading Old Norse aloud. I taught myself the original but am very rusty. Nora lives (talk) 02:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Óláfr Guðrøðarson *IPA: [õːlɑːvɾ ɡuðrøðɑɾsõn], Haraldr Guðrøðarson *IPA: [hɑɾɑldɾ ɡuðrøðɑɾsõn], Haraldr Óláfsson *IPA: [hɑɾɑldɾ õːlɑːvssõn]. I would not mark stress, because we don't have information on the bisyllabic stems here yet. Note that I'm analyzing ‹ss› as /ss/ rather than /sː/ because stress changes between the two /s/s. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 13:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I went with the alveolar tap for a moment, trying to remember Valfells and Cathey and so on, but ended up just chosing /r/. Faarlund, an historical linguist, checks it off for sonorant, continuant, voiced, strident (p. 42), and points out its assimilation to preceding /s/, /n/, or /l/ (p. 43). But I like your call on /ss/ versus /sː/. As far as our vowels my personal preference is making it as simple as possible, and Faarlund says there are no more than three unstressed ones (phonemes) compared to the sixteen for stressed syllables. What that should make our /ø/? /u/? Nora lives (talk) 14:58, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure he's not talking about East Nordic /ʀ/? Here come the etymological troubles. I don't know whether røðr would be regarded as an unstressed suffix, or a secondarily stressed compound. I think the least destructive interpretation is to take "only 3 vowels" to mean that /y/ never occurred as a short, unstressed vowel, and that a vowel can only be unstressed if it's an inflection or particle: *IPA: [ˈɡuðˌrøð.ɐɾˌsõn]. Even ruling out that -røðr is unstressed, Guðrøðr could be a bisyllabic stem as likely as a compound, in which case we've assumed the stress patterns are the same either way. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 18:49, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It's nice working with you, since you have a greater background in word formation, and I am terribly rusty. In philology I never had a course in Norse itself, and when you're broadly covering the Germanic realms, Gothic, Old High German, etc., you don't go in too deeply into any one in particular. Eventually I left it all for other things.

I guess you must be right about Guðrøðr. Faarland doesn't go into detail on stress. But as far as /r/ he has to say "A synchronic rule of Old Scandinavian is the assimilation of /r/ to a preceding /s/, /n/, or /l/." and again gives it in the chart as a sonorant, continuant, strident, and voiced. It is not a velar in his chart, and he does not mention East Norse. But I'm learning and relearning. There are chapters on the individual languages I haven't looked at in years. Nora lives (talk) 00:28, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

With you as well. I'll have to look into Faarlund. What work is his reconstruction in? ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 05:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

He has an article in the Norwegian project. One of his official pages.[7] So syntax it would seem. Sorry to take so long to reply. I went on a little vacation. Nora lives (talk) 18:01, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Haha, ambiguity. I mean, which work of his were you looking at when you said his reconstruction was on page 42? No need to apologize, I'll be here a while yet. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 06:01, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

His contribution "Old and Middle Scandinavian" to The Germanic Languages (Routledge. 1994), eds. König and van der Aurewa. A nice volume imo, and formerly one of my textbooks, also available in paperback since 2002 if you're interested. Nora lives (talk) 12:42, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 04:10, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

A-phonemes of Norse

I am a bit perplexed by the choice of a-phonemes here. In the article it says that Old Norse had the phonemes ã, aː and ãː, but you give the pronunciation *IPA: [õːlɑːvɾ ɡuðrøðɑɾsõn]. What a-phonemes did Old Norse have?--Berig (talk) 09:43, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The a-phonemes' articulations are reconstructed variously. /ɑ/ vs. /a/, /ɔ/ vs. /ɒ/, /ɛ(ː)/ vs. /æ(ː)/ are, for Old Norse, notational choices that highlight a phonology's symmetry and harmony. They're meaningless without each reconstruction's alterations to the sound inventory. The article's reconstruction is normalized from others' reconstructions. The IPA is as unspecific as our reconstruction, allowing different phonologies to fit the same symbolic bill. We could say æ and ǫ/ǫ́ were near-open [ɛ, ɔ(ː)], and ǽ & a/á were open [æː, ɑ(ː)], and the IPA will write æ and ǽ with the same symbol because the minimal pair is preserved without marking the height difference. We could also say æ/ǽ was [ɛ(ː)], a/á was [ɐ, aː] and ignore them by the same token. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 23:22, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

hv

The phonology section is missing the combination 'hv'. It was certainly phonemic in Proto-Germanic, so if it wasn't considered a phoneme in Old Norse, there should be some explanation about what happened. CodeCat (talk) 13:28, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

It is disputed. I hear this from strictly Norse analysis, so some diachronic info would be fantastic. I think the stance is to Occham's razor it to a sequence of /h/ and /w/, along with /hr, hl, hn/, because they're extra phonology. Not just phonemically, but phonetically, so that hnefi/nefi is dropping initial h, not merging of /n̥/ and /n/ (or not spelling the difference). This calls the Icelandic developments late, and makes /hw/ differentiation (into [kv] and [xv]) take less movement. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 17:50, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

The Proto-Germanic situation was that the difference between [xʷ] and [xw] was nonphonemic, so this may have been carried through to Old Norse. However, evidence from Gothic suggests that the original pronunciation was that of a single labiovelar, as it used distinct letters for hw and kw, while it used a sequence of two letters for hl, hr, hn. This more or less reflects the situation as inherited from Proto-Indo-European: PG [xʷ] comes from PIE [kʷ] and [kw], which merged, and [xl], [xr] and [xn] came from [kl], [kr], [kn] (and in each case also any combinations with the palatal [kʲ] instead, which merged with [k] as Germanic is a centum language). PG [xʷ] became Icelandic [kv], so at some point in between the labiovelar must have differentiated into [xw]. But I don't know whether that stage had been reached by Old Norse times. CodeCat (talk) 18:10, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

From Cleasby-Vigfússon on modern Icelandic dialects: "in a small part of eastern Icel. it is sounded like Greek χ (hvalr as χalr, hvað as χað), and this is probably the oldest and truest representation of the hv sound." If the hv/kv minimal pair is preserved in certain dialects of Icelandic, there must have been that pair in the dialects of the migrators. I can see [xʷ] or maybe [ʍ]. The Nordic Languages pg 1855 talks about the /hC/s under Distribution, saying hv merged with other sounds in most of the other dialects between the 9th and 15th centuries. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 14:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Modern Icelandic has (dialectically) both a rounded and an unrounded version of this initial fricative. The change to [kv] began in the 18th century and rapidly gained ground in the 19th and 20th centuries. The change is now almost complete, very few young people had a fricative pronunciation when this was researched in the 1980s and in all likelihood this has declined further since then. More information, including information on distribution and some audio examples here: [8] Note that Jutlandic has (had?) [ʍ], like English. Haukur (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Might PGmc reconstructions with the sound assume a Norse articulation? ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 22:39, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Old Norse isn't the only language to use two letters for the sound, all early Germanic languages did except for Gothic. That's why the Gothic evidence is important... why would they choose a separate letter unless there was some important quality in the sound that couldn't be expressed with two separate letters? This speaks strongly in favour of a labialised velar articulation, a single sound instead of two. CodeCat (talk) 01:19, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm sure Gothic has plenty to say about the sound, and it's true it suggests something special about it, but it's not necessarily phonetic. X writes nothing different from /ks/ in English, but /ks/ is special: It has a distinctive distribution and absorbs similar sounds when the words around them are similar enough to /ks/ words - /.əts/->/.əks/ so et cetera follows example but not bet setter. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 19:47, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

This is true, but Gothic writing was created from the ground up to represent Gothic alone, using Latin and Greek as a base. While it did borrow many spelling conventions from both of them, the fact that it designated a letter specifically for hw is very significant, especially if you consider that the vowels represented by ai and au didn't get the same treatment, even though they're even far more common in Gothic than hw. CodeCat (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

So it's suggestive, but does it explain any of Gothic's own phonetics or sound changes better? ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 03:31, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't know... but in any case there are many sources that mention that hw was indeed a labiovelar in Germanic. Don Ringe's book 'From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic' does, too. He doesn't say much about the precise phonetics of Old Norse or the other daughter languages, but he does mention that it's likely that [xʷ] had become [hʷ] quite early. I'm not sure how that explains the Icelandic development, though. CodeCat (talk) 11:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

If it broke into [xw], early Old Norse had no /x/ otherwise, so either of those ways it will be phonemic. If [hʷ], one could argue that it became [hw], and that all of its descent is from initial-h interactions with /w/. The only reason I see to call /hw/ a sequence is if it was most likely [hw] before ON. ᛭ LokiClock (talk) 07:12, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

How much was it spoken in ireland?

How much was old Norse spoken in Ireland and how long did it survive, because I have read in some websites and books that the Vikings in the Gaelic speaking world were christianized and assimilated into gaelic society and language (They were definetly were in Scotland outside the northern isles) in Ireland even before the Battle of Clontarf while other websites say that the Norse-founded towns were never assimilated and that old Norse was spoken until the Norman invasion. Abrawak (talk) 12:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)