Talk:Old Norse/Archive 2

donsk tunga / Danish tongue

Alphabo changed "donsk tunga" to "Danish tongue" with the following reasoning given in the edit summary: "this is not the native name but an Icelandic translation, then why not "dansk tunge"?. "Danish tongue" is used by many historians, and is the most correct in an English article". I reverted, because alphabo was wrong, in the following ways:

• "donsk tunga" is the native name, not an icelandic translation.
• In this place in the infobox, it is the rule to write the name of the language in the original, not an English version. See the infobox in, e.g., the articles on German language or French language.--Barend 16:21, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

"donsk tunga" is NOT the native name. Dansk tunga or dansk tunga (in spelling) is equally correct - if not more. The OWN pronunciation was a minority pronunciation and no more authoritative than the OEN (or true Danish Tongue) pronunciation. The never ending attempts to get a Icelandic patent on Nordic culture is mildly speaking offensive, and a little bit racist.Dylansmrjones (talk) 05:51, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Quick comment (added later): This is wrong usage of the word 'racist'. In my opinion, to be racist the matter in question at least has to have something to do with race, don't you think? All the peoples that are in question here are North-germanic! How on earth can there be racism here? Nationalism maybe?--Alexlykke (talk) 00:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Good grief, racist? Sure, the u-mutation wasn't universal but the -e ending, suggested by the writer above, is not accurate. Anyway, if dansk tunga is attested then we can certainly add it. Haukur (talk) 08:11, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually, it's already there, reducing the whole complaint to non-sense. Haukur (talk) 08:19, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Only because it was added extremely recently. Dansk tunge would be just as inaccurate as "dǫnsk tunga" which never occurs in writing. It's a semi-IPA spelling and not a correct transliteration. And yes... the Icelandic national-extremism qualifies as "racism" in it's wide usage. "dǫnsk tunga" ought to be deleted as no such word ever existed in writing.Dylansmrjones (talk) 15:01, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Transliteration? What alphabet would you want to transliterate from? Do you object to normalized Old Norse spelling? Would you prefer dönsk tunga? Or dönsk túnga? Or what? What do you mean it never existed in writing? How has this anything to do with the International Phonetic Alphabet? How has any of it to do with "racism"? What races are involved? Haukur (talk) 21:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Why is it called "Old" Norse?

Why is the language called "Old" Norse, when theres no such thing as "New" Norse, or "Modern" Norse. Why isnt the lanaguage just called "Norse". If there is a linguist who knows how this convention came into existence, please answer. Please also notify me at my Talk site. I appreciate it. :) --Haldrik 19:46, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The word Norse means "Scandinavian" (or even specifically "Norwegian"). Old Norse, i.e. Old Scandinavian/Norwegian, is simply a conventional name for the Viking Age Scandinavian language.--Berig 19:51, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Im surprised by your speedy response. It seems like it should be correct to simply refer to the "Norse language", similar to the way linguists refer to the "Gothic language"?--Haldrik 21:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

It depends. In a clear Viking Age context it would work, but otherwise the Norse language would just mean the "Scandinavian language".--Berig 21:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

"Old NOrse" rather refers to the language spoken after Viking age. At least the normalized version typically corresponds to Late Old Icelandic spoken no earlier than late 13th century.

Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 (talk) 22:08, 17 February 2008 (UTC))

That's an exaggeration. Although of course language always changes, the language from about 700/800 to about 1350 exhibits only small differences, and the language of this whole period is referred to as Old Norse. --Barend (talk) 08:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

What is the basis for "old norse" at all? Protoscandinavian is the ancestor language, after that there is little reason to posit intermediate forms before the "old" languages (old danish, old swedish, old norwegian/icelandic), especially since historical sources suggest the languages to be then only recently differentiated, as per "dansk tungə". At best a division into old west scandinavian and old east scandinavian can be justified before the individual "old" languages.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:48, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

I see your point, but I guess we're are partly dealing with convention here and partly with the fact that Proto-Norse underwent such drastic changes during the syncopation period that it is useful to separate between Old Norse and Proto-Norse.--Berig (talk) 22:17, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

The usual way to deal with vast language change across a unified period is to refer to Early and Late versions of the language, in this case Early Old Norse would be proto-norse or proto north germanic, Late Old Norse would be the form closest to the indiviualized old scandinavian languages.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I have always thought the article on Old Norse should only cover what is called in the article "old west Norse" (old Norwegian and old Icelandic), and Old east Norse should have a separate article. Aksel Gerner is right that there is no intermediate form between protoscandinavian and old danish, old swedish, old norwegian/icelandic, but the problem is that this article tries to cover all these four "old-" languages and lump them together in one article. That is not in keeping with the convention in the Norwegian litterature at least, where Old Norse is only used for old Norwegian/Icelandic.

Proto-Norse and Old Norse obviously have to be kept separate, as they are two completely different languages.--Barend (talk) 11:29, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

What would you say if I wrote the following?

I have always thought the article on Old Norse should only cover what is called in the article "old east Norse", and Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian should have separate articles

In my experience Old Norse usually refers to the language of the Danish Vikings in England and the Old Norse loanwords in English and the toponyms that these Danes left. If Norwegians consider the Viking Age languages of Swedes and Danes to have been distinct from that of the Norwegians and Icelanders, and use "norrønt" only for Old Icelandic/Norwegian, it cannot be considered to be an equivalent word to "Old Norse". Moreover, the Norwegian terminology looks quite peculiar when you consider the fact that Snorri Sturluson thought he spoke and wrote in the Danish tongue.--Berig (talk) 13:46, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

If you wrote that, Berig, then I'd think I may have phrased myself badly, and suggest we should probably call the two separate articles "old east Norse" and "old west Norse" so we don't step on anyone's toes. As for the rest of what you write, I can't argue with your experience, of course, but I think it's pretty atypical - the vast majority of the text corpus of Old Norse is from Iceland and Norway (most of it from Iceland). The vast majority of the text corpus is also written after c. 1180, and at this point there was a clear and noticeable difference between east and west, which leads to large parts of the article being about these differences, which makes it somewhat messy and confusing, in my opinion. And Snorri, of course, called his language both "dansk" and "norrønt".--Barend (talk) 07:11, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

My point is that I do find the Norwegian definition to be a tad too Syttende Mai for my taste. There is a difference between the English term "Old Norse" and the Norwegian term "norrønt". According to the American Heritage Dictionary (third edition) Old Norse means:

1) The North Germanic languages until the middle of the 14th century.

2 a) Old Icelandic

2 b) Old Norwegian

It is apparent that AHD recognizes that there are two and even three ways of defining Old Norse, but it apparently considers Old Norse to be primarily a blanket term for Old East Norse and Old West Norse. .--Berig (talk) 07:24, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I stand corrected. The important point, as far as I'm concerned, is that there is an important distinction between the two. But that wasn't the original discussion here, of course. But when you talk about being too Syttende Mai, it was even worse before - until quite recently, it was common in Norway to refer to the language Snorri wrote simply as "Old Norwegian".--Barend (talk) 09:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, Old Norse usually refers to the language of the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda, the skaldic poetry, the sagas, etc., i.e. predominantly Old West Norse/Old Icelandic/Old Norwegian. I don't feel any tremendous need to split the article into two, at least not yet, but if the split were to be done, I'd say the two forks should be named Old West Norse and Old East Norse, while Old Norse should remain independent as a quasi-disambiguation page. I don't think an article called Old Norse should restrict itself to either the western or the eastern dialect. As to the OP's question why it's customarily called Old Norse when there are no languages called "Middle Norse" and "(Modern) Norse", maybe it just originated as a parallel to Old English, Old High German, etc.; the "Old" served to remind people what approximate time period was under discussion. There really isn't any good reason the language couldn't be called simply "Norse", but the fact remains it usually isn't called simply "Norse" in the scholarly literature, and it's not Wikipedia's job to change academic conventions. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 22:02, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

The term New Norse is sometimes used, usually referring to nynorsk. Haukur (talk) 23:03, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

That is based only upon the phonetic likenesses of the names, many probably think that norse is related to norway, not the other way around. Analogy on the lines of Dane:Danish, Swede:Swedish = Norwegian:norwegish↔Norse is also likely for some of the occurrences.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:56, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The citation bias is not of encyclopedic interest. The speaker population was centered very far from iceland, and while people in general are more interested in poetry, heroic fiction (compare Beowulf) and stories about gods and the end of the world than in law texts like Skånske and Jyske law (from 1200-1250, usually referred to as old danish, but falling within the time period given in this article), this does not mean that the covering of the historical language should be encyclopedicly skewed in favor of what cannot be described as other than an extreme of the area of use. --AkselGerner (talk) 22:40, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I don't think that a division between OWN and OEN is necessary on WP. The difference between the two dialects was small, and I would say that it was comparable to the difference between General American and Standard British English. Moreover, most of what we know about OEN is based on comparing Old Icelandic with runic inscriptions and the later versions of Danish and Swedish. In addition, the most salient difference between the two dialects, which was a monophthongization in OEN, did not appear until the 11th c.--Berig (talk) 06:30, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

For a recent overview on these issues I recommend the article Language by Michael Barnes in A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture. A couple of money quotes: "'Common Scandinavian' is something of a misnomer, and the (largely) variation-free language of many handbooks a myth." (p. 181) "It may be time to reconsider the idea that the east-west dichotomy represents the primary dialectal split in the history of Scandinavian." (p. 186) Haukur (talk) 10:35, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Every person has his/her own idiolect, so it stands to reason that there were regional variations in the vast and geographically varied North Germanic area ever since Proto-Germanic times. However, what seems to be at issue here is the very definition of dialect vs. language. What could very well be considered the same modern Scandinavian language is divided into four languages in Norway, Denmark and Sweden. I would not be surprised if some people wanted to push back the Scandinavian language divisions even further back into Proto-Norse times. It's probably feasible if a difference can be discovered between a Norwegian runestone and a Swedish one. Even the minutest dialect differences can be raised to language dividing status (e.g. Majorcan vs. Catalan).--Berig (talk) 12:32, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

The point of a dialectal split is that it splits a language into two dialectal groups, not into two different languages. A dialectal split may result in the split of a language or it may not, the reasons for that are mainly geopolitical. Jutlandish and Falsterian are both considered to be Danish, while Skånemål is not. Ultimately the difference involved are comparable in size, I am not saying that Skånemål is also Danish, rather that Jutlandish could be split out on the same grounds, but is not because Jutland is not, say, a province of Germany, which it could have easily become had Bismarck had his way.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:03, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

History?

The article mentions what became of Old Norse, but not at all where it came from. The language distribution also almost exclusively sticks to the later distribution. Shinobu (talk) 15:35, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, it evolved out of old Germanic dialects. It's mentioned that it was a Germanic language in the lead, and I don't think there is that more info about it, see Proto-Norse. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * (talk) 01:45, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Cite?

I think the section on the differences between East and West Norse should be much more heavily cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.149.99.2 (talk • contribs) 00:41, 1 December 2007

Mergefrom Old Norse

This is not the time for national pride, all the old scandinavian languages should be handled together and in the same way. The matter is too confusing to anglophones as it is:p Under Old Norse the parts of Old Norwegian article that tries to delimit the meaning of the term can be skipped, it's misleading anyway. Also, this may give the impetus for fleshing out the coverage of the other old languages as well. If sometime in the future a sizeable amount of information has accumulated in this article it can always be split out again, hopefully alongside it's sister languages. As it is, the Old Norwegian article is shamefully short, hardly qualifying it's unique existence.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:07, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion we need more articles, not fewer articles. There's plenty to say about Old Norwegian specifically, Old Icelandic specifically etc. I even wrote a short article on Old Greenlandic. Haukur (talk) 22:20, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Why then isn't there plenty being said? As I said, the articles can be resplit when there is enough material. As it is the subject is confusing, even to some editors, like f.ex. the difference between norse and norrønt. Having all the material in one place is a good way to start. If Old Norwegian is to be kept then it has to be edited so that it is very clear that it is a daughter language of Old Norse, not as it stands, "Old norse as spoken in Norway". The Old Norwegian article shows how the writer(s) have been forced to re-state what is already stated here... there's not enough info in it for it to stand on its own. A further possibility of course would be to split out Old East Norse (in which is handled then Old Swedish and Old Danish) and Old West Norse (Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian), since both of these groupings cover developments later than Old Norse, and are in fact a dialectal split relevant to this day, unlike Old Norse.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't see anything particularly confusing with the current arrangement and in my experience Wikipedia tends to work better and grow more naturally with more articles rather than fewer articles. Haukur (talk) 22:57, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

The problem here is that Old Norwegian can't be described on it's own. There has to be contrasting to Old Icelandic, at the very least, as there is already. Without that the article becomes just an incomplete list of changes, many of which are not unique to Old Norwegian and does not enlighten the reader in any way. There's then going to be at least four articles with a lot of overlapping information, and no place where the needed cross-referencing is done. I would accept moving Old Norwegian to West Norse and adding Old Icelandic and the necessary background comparisons.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Haukurth. A cursory skimming of the seminary "Introduction to Old Norse" by Gordon reveals many intricacies that can be covered in an article. Vincent Valentine||talk to me! 22:39, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Again, by all means write that. But start it here so that the spawned articles don't end up having each a different spin. They can be cut and pasted at any time, say, when they are longer than one screenview. --AkselGerner (talk) 21:59, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

And BTW are you perhaps confusing old norse and old norwegian? That's exactly the problem I see with the present Old Norwegian article: It can be read as OLDNORSE=OLDNORWEGIAN which is already a painfully common misconception.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:10, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I was actually just skimming through my copy of Gordon's An Introduction to Old Norse, and there's quite a decent amount of information on differences between the dialects. I'll do my best over the course of a few days to add some information and flesh out the article(s), assuming no one has any problems with it. Vincent Valentine||talk to me! 23:34, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Great, sorry for doubting you, I don't have that book. BTW See my post on talk:Old_Norwegian to see the problems with describing the changes of a single dialect without the backdrop of it's source and sibling dialects. The big problem is that there is no common name (to my knowledge) for the group Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish and Old Swedish. So they can't be kept together in any single article (except for Old Norse), because there's no reasonably name for that common article. Old East and West Norse would be possible, but still the changes don't make a lot of sense without the backdrop of the other group, and there's no point in having to articles saying the same thing only from opposite perspectives.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:49, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'd say "Old Norse" is the common name for the group Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:17, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but not very useful. Old Norse is most precisely used for the common tongue of the early viking age, highlighting the continuity with proto-norse/proto north-germanic. The old [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic] terms consequently are used for the divergence into seperate languages in the late viking age, each being the starting point for the progression through medieval (middle) [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic] to modern [danish, swedish, norwegian, icelandic].--AkselGerner (talk) 22:13, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a work of reference and not a work of scholarly analysis. Consequently, we name articles according to what is the most common English term/definition and what people are most likely to search for. In a work of scholarly analysis, such as a dissertation, your considerations may be more relevant depending on what is the scholar's thesis.--Berig (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I am actually talking about how the words are being used. They are being used in two completely different ways depending on the area of relevance of the text: when the cohesion of the nordic region is to be stressed then the term Old Norse is used, but when the linguistic divergence is to be stressed then the individualized forms are used. At the same time there is some kind of temporal cut-off point, for example Skånske Lov and Jyske Lov from 1202-1218 and 1241 are regarded as among the very first works written in danish (=old danish). In other words, the older runic inscriptions in younger futhark are regarded as written in so called common nordic (=Old Norse) rather than Old Danish.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:00, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I probably have made my case in the wrong way or been abrasive or something. I usually don't know myself until I see the response, I am deeply sorry for that. Here's the deal: Old Norwegian, like Old Danish, Old Swedish and Old Icelandic are terms used for the end-state of Old Norse, which is the begin-state of the language history of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Icelandic, respectively. As such they can be handled elegantly under Old Norse as well as under the specific articles about the relevant languages. In fact they should be described in relevant detail in both places (that is, they should be dealt with in Old Norse, and they should also be dealt with in history of norwegian language, history of danish language, history of swedish language and history of icelandic language. This I believe to be something we can all agree on. What follows from that is that they have been dealt with in both of the contexts that make any sense. It doesn't make sense to deal with an intermediate by itself, it's very very hard to write such an article without restating way too much of what comes before and what comes after. And like I have pointed out on talk:Old_Norwegian that article shows exactly those weaknesses, it doesn't contain almost any information that is exclusive to Old Norwegian, and the bulk of it's text is actually concerned with later developments, i.e. middle norwegian. --AkselGerner (talk) 21:32, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I did not read what's written before so this ma be said already but "old Norse" is not only old norwegian, it is also ols Icelandic, old Swedish, old Dannis... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.89.55.200 (talk) 08:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

That just goes to show that you shouldn't comment on a discussion you haven't read.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:02, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding that answer: don't be impolite! Don't scare away mayhap future editors. He/she just tried to pinpoint something, it's a good thing to read the text before commenting, yes - but you could simply and shortly have repeated the conclusion from before in one sentence, starting with "as said before". Said: Rursus ☻ 08:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I thought of something that might make more people happy than the proposed merge would. Why not cut Old Norse down a bit (it's extremely long, 40kb is long in wikipedia, this is 50% more than that) by making an article "Old Norse Languages" in which Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, Old Swedish and Old Gnutish can be treated together, separate from the "common norse" but still handled together, so that the developments can be related to each other. That article should then heavily refer to the known documents of these languages, and should draw up the ways that differences and similarities line up, because they do not always follow that East Norse/West Norse split. A large amount of prose can be lifted straight from Old Norse and Old Norwegian can then be merged to the new article. This also allows for the handling of the "middle norwegian" and the other medieval norse languages because the term "Old Norse Languages" can arguably apply also to medieval forms whether they are called "Old" or "Middle" or whatever. Please let me know what you think. I personally feel that this would be a good compromise. I also think my proposed article will be a lot easier to write than the Old Norwegian article has shown itself to be (see that article's talk page for my critique) because the changes can be related to those of the other languages, everything can be put into it's true context.--AkselGerner (talk) 23:19, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Regarding that: it's a good idea (probably), since I wished the same before reading your proposal. I think it's the natural thing to do, but I believe the hierarchy of the splitup should be more like the one in North Germanic languages#Family tree. Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe the material is not yet enough in WP regarding Old Swedish compared to Old Danish, who are very nearly related dialects within the then dialect-level North-West/South-East split. It might be preferrable to start the splitup between "Old South East Norse" and "Old North West Norse" ... just a suggestion ... if the material on WP already contains enough material justifying a more detailed split, then I'm wrong. Otherwise agreed. Said: Rursus ☻ 08:14, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Grave accent and glottal stop

At the moment, the article states:

"Moreover, Danish lost the tonal word accent present in modern Swedish and Norwegian, replacing the grave accent with a glottal stop."

Wasn't it the acute accent that turned into a glottal stop? // Jens Persson (213.67.64.22 (talk) 21:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC))

That's not uncontroversial. There's little evidence of tonal word accent being present in Old Norse before the sound changes that made certain words homonyminous. There is no way to exclude these prosodies being parallel developments to make up for the same problem of undesired homonyms. The dialects of Danish that lack stød (translatable into "thrust") do not have tone in stead, they simply have homonymic words where otherwise stød is distinctive. Also stød is rarely a full glottal stop, and is marked in IPA not with the glottal stop marker ʔ but rather with a raised and diminished version of it.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:26, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Haukur should probably be able to confirm or reject the following: I believe that there is no evidence of distinctive tonal word accent opposition in Icelandic. I am going to reword the sentence in question because it's otherwise flawed, it refers to danish losing something that's present in present-day Norwegian and Swedish and that's not very good. I'll try to keep it NPOV and low-specific as to theories.--AkselGerner (talk) 20:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, it's there now. Feel free to suggest changes. I checked out the research and there's some area of Denmark that has tones. There's also a lot of disagreeing theories out there so be careful with the sources. The 15th century source is by non-danish researchers regarded as merely a comment on the ugliness of danish language, but I consider that to be the result of ethnic animosity :P, clearly the description is too similar to later scientific descriptions as to be coincidental.--AkselGerner (talk) 22:42, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

There is some evidence from Icelandic for distinctive tonal accent opposition. See Stefán Karlsson (1964). "Gömul hljóðdvöl í ungum rímum", in Íslenzk tunga 5, ISSN 0459-455X That article argues for it being present in 17th century Icelandic based on evidence from poetry. Haukur (talk) 09:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

That's interesting. I was only able to find a theory that there were different tone patterns but non-distinctive. Unfortunately I've lost that source. Ok, in this one, on page 93-94 it is suggested that the toneless dialects in scandinavia should be assumed never to have had tone distinction, until hard evidence is produced. And on p. 94 there's a quote from Eli Fischer Jørgensen, an internationally highly renowned phonologist, saying that it is unlikely for tone and stød to have developed in the order tone from nothing and then stød from tone, because the reductions making stød distinctive in monosyllabics were in place already in the earliest jutlandish texts. So the feature would have had to have developed already by the early 1200s. Her answer to that is to propose that a dynamic tonal feature (= not tone and not stød, and not distinctive in the meaning that it lacked minimal pairs, being in place before the reductions) must be assumed to have existed already across the area that now have tones. These two standpoints do not contradict each other, the first about not assuming loss of tone in regions that now lack tone only talks about the tone opposition, so it does not go against a non-distinctive intonational feature of earlier forms: no distinction = no minimal pairs = no opposition.--AkselGerner (talk) 21:00, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Why not just blur the statement, to reflect the blurry state of research. Something like:

"Danish have a glottal stop in the place where modern Swedish and Norwegian have tonal word accent present."

Or yet more blurry:

"Danish have a glottal stop in words indicating a pattern similar to where modern Swedish and Norwegian have tonal word accent present."

Or yet more:

"Several authors have theorised a connection between Danish glottal stops with the modern Swedish and Norwegian tonal word accent."

Said: Rursus ☻ 08:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Old Norse

I know I am re-starting an old discussion, but I simply have to.

Strictly speaking, old norse is the term used for the language spoken in Norway and its colonies in the Viking and Medieval Ages. The contemporary languages of Denmark and Sweden are known as old Danish and old Swedish respectively. The reason why Old Norse is not called 'Old Norwegian', as it indeed often is in Norway, is because so much of the written material in said language originates from Iceland not from Norway. Therefore it is important to underline that at the time, the same language was spoken both in Norway and on Iceland. Therefore, the introduction of the article should be changed, because Old Norse was in fact NOT the language spoken in the entirety of Scandinavia, but, as aforementioned, the language of Norway and Iceland. --Alexlykke (talk) 17:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

This is really an old discussion that Norwegians bring up every once in a while since they appear to misunderstand the meaning of the English word "Old Norse". The Norwegian word Norrønt corresponds to Old West Norse in English. I really don't understand why it is so important in Norway to declare Old Norwegian to have been a language that was independent from Old Swedish and Old Danish. Moreover, it's completely a-historical since Snorri thought he wrote in Danish.--Berig (talk) 18:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Berig is wrong, Alexlykke is right. Encyclopedia Britannica defines Old Norse as the language used in Norway and Iceland, and as the parent language of modern Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic. The definition of old Norse as the language used in all of Scandinavia is a wikipedia peculiarity, and not in keeping with common English usage. As Berig says, this is brought up from time to time, and unceremoniously shot down, unfortunately. The difference between Old Norse, Old Swedish and Old Danish were small, but it is still common, in English as well as in Norwegian, to refer to them as distinct languages. Berig's sentence that "Snorri thought he wrote in Danish" is absurd. Snorri wrote in his vernacular, a language which he called, alternately, "dansk tunga" (Danish) and "norrønt mál" (Norse). He didn't "think" there was anything particularly Danish about it, but his use of that name indicates that the Nordic languages were, as they indeed still are, mutually intelligible. --Barend (talk) 11:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

You're both right. Sometimes "Old Norse" is used to refer to the language of Norway and the islands and sometimes it's used in a more general way. The Danish settlers (and raiders) of England are often referred to in English sources as speaking Old Norse. Haukur (talk) 13:19, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and on English Wikipedia we stick to English usage. In English usage, even the Swedish Vikings in Russia spoke Old Norse.--Berig (talk) 14:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think there is more than one English usage, but this is certainly one. Haukur (talk) 14:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

It's the only usage I am familiar with from books like Omeljan Pritsak's The origin of Rus'. However, if it's more common to say that the Swedish Varangians spoke "Old Swedish" instead of "Old Norse", then Barend's and Alexlykke's view should prevail. Maybe they could provide me with sources to show me I am wrong.--Berig (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

E.V. Gordon's book focuses chiefly on Old Icelandic, but does also include Old Danish and Old Swedish, so for him the term is broader than just Old West Norse. —Angr 17:30, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and judging from EB's definition (see below), AHD's definition and Merriam-Webster's definition[1], it appears that Old Norse generally includes Old East Norse in English-language scholarship. I consequently don't think there are any valid arguments for trying to restrict Old Norse to Old West Norse on WP.--Berig (talk) 18:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Isn't "Norse" an older term refering to "Nordic". Old Nordic, as compared to the modern nordic languages Modern South East Nordic with three armies (Swedish, Danish and Bokmål) and the three or so Modern North West Nordic languages (Icelandic, Faerian and Nynorsk). I just assumed so: Norse = Norrön/Norrøn = "from Norden" = Nordic. ??? Said: Rursus ☻ 07:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Britannica's definition

Barend wrote above:

"Encyclopedia Britannica defines Old Norse as the language used in Norway and Iceland, and as the parent language of modern Norwegian, Faroese and Icelandic.The definition of old Norse as the language used in all of Scandinavia is a wikipedia peculiarity, and not in keeping with common English usage."[2]

However, when I check out Britannica, I find this:

Classical Germanic language used c. 1150–1350, the literary language of the Icelandic sagas, skaldic poetry, and Eddas. [...] The terms Old Norse and Old Icelandic are sometimes used interchangeably because Icelandic records of this period are more plentiful and of greater literary value than those in the other Scandinavian languages, but Old Norse also embraces the ancestors of modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Faroese.[3]

Are you using an older version of Britannica?--Berig (talk) 15:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

All right, I bow down to the Encyclopedia Britannica. After all, I can't tell the English how to use their own language, can I? So, then, end of discussion. BUT 'Norrønt' the norwegian translation of 'old norse' will thus always be slightly 'off', as 'norrønt' refers to norwegian, icelandic etc.

All things considered, us Norwegians had a good run, eh? See you around the next time I find something to rouse a rabble about. Heh, heh...--Alexlykke (talk) 23:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

See you around :).--Berig (talk) 08:14, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, I'm obviously using a different version of Britannica. I checked the paper version, and it was explicit in excluding Old Swedish and Old Danish from the definition. It would appear that Haukur i the one who got it right here - English usage is not consistent in this question. However, I still think that this article's insistence on describing both OEN and OWN in the same article, and in the same grammatical tables, makes the article messy.--Barend (talk) 11:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I think English usage is quite consistent since not only the scholarly works I have read, but also Britannica Online, the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster have the same definition. Britannica probably corrected/updated the information in the on-line edition. You may personally disagree with the standard definition, but in WP articles we stick to the definitions that are most common.--Berig (talk) 12:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Right, the Britannica mystery is solved. I have checked Britannica online, the actual encyclopedia, not the free summary. It contains the text I quoted earlier. So Berig's quotes are not from a new, updated version, but from an imprecise summary. My first assertion holds true, Britannica defines Old Norse as the parent language of Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, not of Swedish and Danish.--Barend (talk) 22:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Then Britannica must contradict itself since its online summary says:

[...] Old Norse also embraces the ancestors of modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Faroese.[4]

It does not matter much if Britannica contradicts itself, however, since there are other reliable sources such as the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster that we can rely on to establish what is the mainstream view. Moreover, Barber's The English Language: A Historical introduction[5] and every single discussion on the English language that I have seen, such as Harper's etymology dictionary, say that English borrowed words from Old Norse, in spite of your claim that Old/runic Danish is not considered to have been part of Old Norse.--Berig (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the relevance of your last sentence. Apart from that, my point is that there is no consistent definition in the English language. Some, like the sources you listed, use your definition. Others, like Encyclopedia Britannica, which is about as mainstream as it gets, don't.--Barend (talk) 16:45, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The bulk of the "Old Norse" loanwords in English were borrowed from the Danish settlers in the Danelaw, i.e. from runic/old Danish (OEN), and that was the relevance in my last sentence. Secondly, you started this discussion by claiming that it is a "wikipedia peculiarity and not in keeping with English usage" to include OEN in Old Norse[6]. Thirdly, Britannica online contradicts itself so it cannot be used to support your claim that Britannica excludes OEN from ON.--Berig (talk) 17:42, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Skye

Hi Folks - further to last June's discussion about Uist, a discussion has just broken out at Talk:Skye as to the Norse name of the island. The Scottish writers on the subject are a little contradictory. We have Skuy = "misty isle" (Haswell-Smith); Skuyö meaning "isle of cloud" (W.H. Murray); or maybe Ský-øy. Any directions to something definitive would be appreciated. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 20:51, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks to Haukurth for replying - its *Skýey apparently. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 07:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Meaning of "hærlænskan man"

In the translation of the excerpt from the Westrogothic law it states that "hærlænskan man" means "foreigner". Though admittedly my knowledge of Old Swedish is extremely limited, I'm inclined to think that a cognate in Contemporary Swedish would be "härländsk man", a (probably) nonexistent expression I would interpret as "fellow countryman". Everywhere else in the text "foreigner" is "vtlænskan man". Al-gabr (talk) 16:32, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm answering my own post here but after doing some research I found a web page[7] in Norwegian stating that the Norwegian equivalent cognate "herlendsk" means "the opposite of foreign". So I'm changing "foreigner" to "fellow countryman". Al-gabr (talk) 17:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Forvik

A flurry of excitement in the Shetland islands as Forewick Holm declares independence. The owner and sole resident of the isle has "re-named" it Forvik, apparently meaning "island of the bay of the sheep". This may or may not be the resurrection of an old Norse name. Knowledgeable input much appreciated. Ben MacDui^Talk/Walk 11:36, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't know much about the Norn language, but Forvik Holm is definitely recognizable as meaning "island of the bay of the sheep" in some heavily English-influenced Scandinavian dialect. It does not look authentic, however, IMHO.--Berig (talk) 11:49, 22 June 2008 (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. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^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)

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)

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. &#0149;Jim62sch&#0149;^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)

Misleading transcription

The transcription offered at [[8]] 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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[9] agrees with you (with the exception of replacing some Modern Icelandic s′s with Old Norse z′s), but Zoega's Old Icelandic dictionary[10] 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.[11] ᛭ 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 etymology/declension

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

[12] 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 *Old Norse pronunciation: [õːlɑːvɾ ɡuðrøðɑɾsõn], Haraldr Guðrøðarson *Old Norse pronunciation: [hɑɾɑldɾ ɡuðrøðɑɾsõn], Haraldr Óláfsson *Old Norse pronunciation: [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: *Old Norse pronunciation: [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.[13] 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 *Old Norse pronunciation: [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)

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)

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: [14] Note that Jutlandic has (had?) [ʍ], like English. Haukur (talk) 17:12, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Not only Jutlandic has [w] (or [ʍ] as you write it), it's pretty common among peripheral Swedish dialects such as, e.g., Elfdalian (spoken in Dalarna) and Bondska (i.e., the dialects spoken in Västerbotten and Norrbotten) etc. // JiPe (81.235.129.93 (talk) 15:02, 9 April 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)