Early old norse.

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
User avatar
sangi39
moderator
moderator
Posts: 3024
Joined: 12 Aug 2010 01:53
Location: North Yorkshire, UK

Re: Early old norse.

Post by sangi39 »

HinGambleGoth wrote:ON names that appear in OE sources are interesting, for instance Oic Ívarr, shows up as <Inwær>.

Hāstæinn = Hǣstēn

GuðþormR = Godrum

Ōttarr = Ōhtere

Swæinn = Swegen

Āsbiarn = Ōsbearn

Frāni = Frǣna

HaraldR = Hareld

BāgsæggR = Bāchsecg
Are those names actually of Old Norse origin, or are they of Proto-Germanic origin?
You can tell the same lie a thousand times,
But it never gets any more true,
So close your eyes once more and once more believe
That they all still believe in you.
Just one time.
User avatar
HinGambleGoth
sinic
sinic
Posts: 432
Joined: 01 Jul 2014 05:29
Location: gøtalandum

Re: Early old norse.

Post by HinGambleGoth »

sangi39 wrote:
Are those names actually of Old Norse origin, or are they of Proto-Germanic origin?
Both, I think, Asbiarn and Osbearn are cognates, germanic names were pretty formulaic, like "Thor-stone" or "God-spear".
[:D] :se-og: :fi-al2: :swe:
[:)] :nor: :usa: :uk:
:wat: :dan: :se-sk2: :eng:
[B)] Image Image :deu:
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

An interesting question (related to Osborne) is why the North Germanic word for ‘bear’ (OIc bjǫrn, Sw björn) has an n in the root, and appear to go back to a PG u-stem noun *bernuz, while West Germanic has n-less forms that seem to go back to a PG an-stem noun *berô. Šimeček (2012) has an interesting hypothesis, where the original ON word might have actually been *beări, cognate with the West Germanic forms and still preserved in the Runic Swedish name Biari (Bjare, Bjäre). The forms with n an u-breaking would actually have been based on an older accusative plural form *–nų, going back to PN *–anun, from PG *–anunz. We could perhaps reconstruct a hypothetical Early Old Norse weak paradigm:
case: singular — plural
nom: beări — beărą
acc: beărą — beŭrnų
dat: beărą — beŭrum
gen: beărą — beărna

Šimeček actually reconstructs *–num for the older dative ending but based on comparative evidence, I think the ending might have been n-less *–ammaz (assimilated from older *–anmaz) already in PG. In later ON, this noun was reinterpreted as a masculine u-stem, which I think is the only other declension with *–ų in the acc.pl (and in Modern Icelandic, even this declension has replaced the OIc –u with –i). A similar path might have been followed by OIc ari and ǫrn (both meaning ‘eagle’), but these probably had a slightly different declension originally, a zero-grade n-stem: PG nom.sg *arô, acc.pl *arnunz. Other weak nouns simply borrowed the more common nom.pl *–aʀ and acc.pl *–ą from the a-stem. The r-less nom.pl forms in –a may actually be attested in Early OSw manuscripts according to Šimeček, but I think this might also simply have been ʀ-loss, which of course was common in OSw, especially after a.

Anyway, while the PG form *–anunz is relatively unproblematic, the PN disyllabic form *–anun is more questionable. The ending is more commonly reconstructed as monosyllabic *–an. According to Šimeček, the vowel loss is often explained through haplology, but I'm not sure why it couldn't just have been that the second short vowel was lost as often commonly was in disyllabic inflectional endings in (a-stem dat.pl *–amaz > *umʀ > *um, infinitive *–anan > *–aną > *–an > *–ą).

I'm also very uncertain about the relative chronology of the syncope of the medial *a, and the u-breaking or u-umlaut. If the breaking occured before the syncope, *beărnų would perhaps be expected rather than *beŭrnų, at least in dialects where the u-umlaut did not remain productive.
HinGambleGoth wrote:Both, I think, Asbiarn and Osbearn are cognates, germanic names were pretty formulaic, like "Thor-stone" or "God-spear".
They could be. At least OE ōs and OIc ǫ́ss, later áss (Early ON ɔ̨̄ss), are cognate. I think the origin of OE biorn (later beorn) ‘man, warrior’ is a bit unclear, though. It could be related to OIc bjǫrn but it doesn't have the same meaning. I think the OE name Ōsbiorn (Ōsbeorn, Ōsbearn) may have been influenced by the Norse name, though perhaps by form of the formmore than the meaning (or the origin which of course was no more clear than it is today).
Prinsessa
runic
runic
Posts: 2647
Joined: 07 Nov 2011 14:42

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Prinsessa »

I think the bear thing is problematic in more ways that that. There are more things than simply the modern nominative to indicate that it should have come from *bernuz. The entire declension in modern Icelandic is identical to that of *ferþuz.

Not only would the n have had to spread from only two plural forms into the entire declension, but the declension itself would have to turn into an entirely different one, picking up alternations from PG along the way (plural of *ferþuz was *firþiwiz, with *e > *i, giving modern Icelandic firðir, and as björn follows the same declension, the plural is of course birnir).

And sure, it could have happened, but doesn't it seem a bit convoluted? Couldn't both forms have existed and been carried into Norse, one yielding Bjari and one yeilding bjǫrn?

However, wouldn't a far more likely option be influence from *arô, analogising *berô into a similar n-stem declension? The modern Icelandic declension of that is very similar to björn and fjörður, if not identical but slightly different precisely because one had *a (i-umlauted to e) and one had *e (i-umlauted already in PG to i).

Side by side comparison in modern Icelandic:

Code: Select all

      SG.       PL

NOM.   björn    birnir
       örn      ernir

ACC.   björn    birni
       örn      erni

DAT.   birni    björnum
       erni     örnum

GEN.   bjarnar  bjarna
       arnar    arna
Side by side comparison if the endings of *arô are applied to *berô in the corresponding cases in PG:

Code: Select all

       SG.      PL

NOM.   *berô    *birniz
       *arô     *arniz

ACC.   *bernų   *bernunz
       *arnų    *arnunz

DAT.   *birni   *bernumaz
       *arni    *arnumaz

GEN.   *birniz  *bernǫ̂
       *arniz   *arnǫ̂
Singular genitive (and dative, as that would've had to be *-iwi as *-i would just drop to *-Ø, right?) do not perfectly match the modern forms, but those are easily explained by analogy with words like *ferþuz (and in the case of the dative ending, virtually any other masculine or neuter singular dative ending in modern Icelandic), and other than that, it does look pretty good.
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

Prinsessa wrote:There are more things than simply the modern nominative to indicate that it should have come from *bernuz. The entire declension in modern Icelandic is identical to that of *ferþuz.

Not only would the n have had to spread from only two plural forms into the entire declension, but the declension itself would have to turn into an entirely different one
Yes, and the way I understand Šimeček, this is in fact what he is proposing: that bjǫrn has shifted it's declension entirely from that of a masculine an-stem (a weak noun) like bogi (< *bugô) and gumi (< *gumô), to that of a masculine u-stem like fjǫrðr (< *ferþuz) and skjǫldr (< *skelduz), while preserving the n. This includes remodelling the stem vowel alternation after the u-stems (which there must have been a lot of analogical pressure to do, I think they have these alternations without exceptions). Remember that West Germanic has an-stems, pointing to PG *berô so presumably either family (or both) had a shift some point (I'm not sure about East Germanic).

More precisely, bjǫrn would have been remodelled as a u-stem based on an older an-stem accusative plural *beŭrnų which looked like the accusative plural of a u-stem. I think u-stems are the only other masculine nouns in OIc that have -u in the acc.pl: bjǫrnu, ǫrnu, fjǫrðu, skjǫldu, vǫllu. Remaining an-stems that didn't shift to u-stems would have replaced the older acc.pl with an ending borrowed from the a-stem.

But at least the gen.pl would have also remained identical: OIc bjarna. Šimeček also thinks that the an-stem orignially had *–num for the dat.pl (which I'm not so sure about actually, so I didn't include it above). That would make three forms which didn't need to shift: OIc bjǫrnu, bjǫrnum, bjarna

Words shifting completely to another declension is not that strange, this has happened a lot throughout the history of the Nordic languages. But shifting just based on one or two (perhaps three) plural forms makes intuitively less sense. But there are at least some examples of this happening. We've already discussed perhaps the most extreme example: kona > kvenna~kvinna based solely on the genitive plural. There is also Swedish hjon (OIc hjó(n)~hjú(n) can ocassionally be singular as well) based on the nominative and accusative plural. A similar shift happened in OSw sg (stēn)hiupa, nom–acc.pl (stēn)hiupun > modern singular nypon~njupon~hjupon.

The masculine an-stems have some amount of "n-creep" in the plural in OIc. We occasionally find dative plurals like gumnum, which are original according to Šimeček (but compare Gothic gumam, OE gumum, OHG gomom), but which I think are influenced by the gen.pl gumna. There are also occasional nom.pl gumnar and acc.pl gumna which cannot be original.

The thing I find less convincing is actually the idea that the acc.pl would have remained disyllabic *–anun in PN. It seems that it would have been shortened to a monosyllabic ending like the dat.pl, and that the *–ą would be regular.
Prinsessa wrote:picking up alternations from PG along the way (plural of *ferþuz was *firþiwiz, with *e > *i, giving modern Icelandic firðir, and as björn follows the same declension, the plural is of course birnir).
This did actually happen in the history of Modern Icelandic. In Old Icelandic, u-stems had a more original acc.pl in –u with u-umlaut, and not –i with i-umlaut like in Modern Icelandic. OIc had bjǫrnu, ǫrnu, fjǫrðu, skjǫldu, vǫllu, compared to modern birni, erni, firði, skildi, velli. I think the modern form is borrowed from the i-stems such as gestr:gesti, but these of course have i-umlaut throughout the paradigm. But this didn't really mean that the PG i-umlaut remained productive, it's just shows that stem vowel alternations are subject to a lot of analogical pressure even after the sound laws themselves have stopped being productive.
Prinsessa wrote:And sure, it could have happened, but doesn't it seem a bit convoluted? Couldn't both forms have existed and been carried into Norse, one yielding Bjari and one yeilding bjǫrn?

However, wouldn't a far more likely option be influence from *arô, analogising *berô into a similar n-stem declension? [...]

Side by side comparison if the endings of *arô are applied to *berô in the corresponding cases in PG:

Code: Select all

       SG.      PL

NOM.   *berô    *birniz
       *arô     *arniz

ACC.   *bernų   *bernunz
       *arnų    *arnunz

DAT.   *birni   *bernumaz
       *arni    *arnumaz

GEN.   *birniz  *bernǫ̂
       *arniz   *arnǫ̂
I don't know why *arô is reconstructed with this rare declension, while *berô is not (on Wiktionary, at least). I'm not sure if *arô is actually attested with this declension in any language, I think it might have already shifted to either an an-stem or a u-stem (perhaps an a-stem) in the attested languages. Some languages have dual paradigms, OHG has both aro and arn, OIc has both ari and ǫrn. Note how both the accusative and dative plural looks like a u-stem (and it would have remained so, as the nouns are disyllabic), so it makes a lot of sense to shift to this declension.

Reconstruction *berô with the same declension already in PG, like in your example, would actually make some sense, I think. I don't know if there's a reason not to. West Germanic would have then generalized the nom.sg and remodelled it as an an-stem, while North Germanic generalized the acc.pl and dat.pl and remodelled it as a u-stem. OE beorn and bera, as well as North Germanic Bjari and björn, might be examples of a dual paradigm.
Prinsessa wrote:The modern Icelandic declension of that is very similar to björn and fjörður, if not identical but slightly different precisely because one had *a (i-umlauted to e) and one had *e (i-umlauted already in PG to i).
The vowel alternation of MIc örn (OIc ǫrn) is identical to völlur (vollr), from PG *walþuz.
Prinsessa wrote:(and dative, as that would've had to be *-iwi as *-i would just drop to *-Ø, right?)
Yes, even in Early Old Norse *–i would have dropped after a heavy syllable (but there would have been i-umlaut). Compare the i-stems gestr and staðr which have *-0 dat.sg gest and stað. These may have had a long –*ī in PG, but wordfinal high vowels were shortened early on in Northwest Germanic so in PN it would have been a short *-i.

The u-stem dative from PG *–iwi is attested in some early PN inscriptions with a diphthong <iu>, if remember correctly. It later smoothed to long *-ī.
Prinsessa wrote:Singular genitive [...] do not perfectly match the modern forms, but those are easily explained by analogy with words like *ferþuz
The singular genitive in general was shifted for a lot of declension in the history of North Germanic.
User avatar
HinGambleGoth
sinic
sinic
Posts: 432
Joined: 01 Jul 2014 05:29
Location: gøtalandum

Re: Early old norse.

Post by HinGambleGoth »

Ephraim wrote:Yes, even in Early Old Norse *–i would have dropped after a heavy syllable (but there would have been i-umlaut). Compare the i-stems gestr and staðr which have *-0 dat.sg gest and stað. These may have had a long –*ī in PG, but wordfinal high vowels were shortened early on in Northwest Germanic so in PN it would have been a short *-i.
Old Gutnish does have steþ, interestingly, but then again it is Gutnish, with its clear differences regarding umlaut compared to the mainland North Germanic languages, lacking a and u umlaut for instance.

http://www.academia.edu/1670089/Old_Gut ... se_Context
[:D] :se-og: :fi-al2: :swe:
[:)] :nor: :usa: :uk:
:wat: :dan: :se-sk2: :eng:
[B)] Image Image :deu:
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

HinGambleGoth wrote:Old Gutnish does have steþ, interestingly, but then again it is Gutnish, with its clear differences regarding umlaut compared to the mainland North Germanic languages [...]

http://www.academia.edu/1670089/Old_Gut ... se_Context
Yes, i-umlaut generally is somewhat irregular but Gutnish seems to have more cases of i-umlaut after short stems. I-umlaut in some verb forms of short stem verbs (such as in the present sg, i.e. OIc tekr) in other Norse varieties might be explainable as analogy. Perhaps Early Old Norse only had i-umlaut of long stem verbs.
HinGambleGoth wrote:lacking a and u umlaut for instance.
I've been wondering, is there any way we could tell if Old Gutnish really never had a-umlaut, or if it once had it but lost it with a change *o > u?
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

Ephraim wrote:
HinGambleGoth wrote:Do you know why swedish has /a/ in "vara", all other germanic languages seem to have some variant of /e/ otherwise.
Not sure. Perhaps analogy with the past tense vowel? The present stem is something completely different, after all.
So, turns out, there was an oddly specific sound change at play. Apparently in Old Swedish, æ (from Early Old Norse *e or ) often became more a open a when it was preceded by w and followed by r (from EON *r och ). There was some variation in the extent to which the change occured. The change was more common in the eastern dialects than in the western, more common in weakly stressed syllables than in fully strongly stressed syllables, and more common when the /w/ was preceded by a consonant than when it was initial.

OIc verpa, OSw warpa or wærpa, MSw värpa
OIc kvern, OSw kwærn or kwarn, MSw kvarn
OIc verða, OSw wærða or warða, MSw varda
OIc vera, OSw wæra or wara, MSw vara
OIc hverr, OSw hwarr, MSw var, varje
OIc náttverðr, OSw nāttwarðẹr, MSw nattvard
User avatar
HinGambleGoth
sinic
sinic
Posts: 432
Joined: 01 Jul 2014 05:29
Location: gøtalandum

Re: Early old norse.

Post by HinGambleGoth »

One subject in Old Norse pronunciation that is often overlooked is the word accent, all north Germanic languages, except from Icelandic, Faroese, Finland Swedish, and some Danish dialects have a distinction between words that were monosyllabic in ON and those that had more syllables, in Danish, the old monosyllabic words have a "stød", a glottal stop, and Swedish and Norwegian, the old polysyllabic words have a so called "grave accent"

Since this is pretty much universal in North Germanic one has to include in the reconstruction of early old Norse, it is probably the hardest part of ON phonology to reconstruct, due to the huge modern dialectal variation.
--

Is the Danish stød a secondary development? did old danish have a grave accent?

Had compounds like nāttwarðẹr grave accent in ON, as in modern Swedish? or acute accent as in Scanian and Northern Swedish dialects?

Is the word accent a random development, or tied to suffix-stress in Proto-Norse?
[:D] :se-og: :fi-al2: :swe:
[:)] :nor: :usa: :uk:
:wat: :dan: :se-sk2: :eng:
[B)] Image Image :deu:
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

HinGambleGoth wrote:One subject in Old Norse pronunciation that is often overlooked is the word accent, all north Germanic languages, except from Icelandic, Faroese, Finland Swedish, and some Danish dialects have a distinction between words that were monosyllabic in ON and those that had more syllables, in Danish, the old monosyllabic words have a "stød", a glottal stop, and Swedish and Norwegian, the old polysyllabic words have a so called "grave accent"
Right, as I think we've discussed earlier, Old Icelandic should probably be pronounced with two contrasting accent patterns if you want to be as accurate as possible. But the exact nature of the contrast is hard to know anything about.
HinGambleGoth wrote:Since this is pretty much universal in North Germanic one has to include in the reconstruction of early old Norse, it is probably the hardest part of ON phonology to reconstruct, due to the huge modern dialectal variation.
It's not unlikely that the distinction between monosyllables and polysyllables was there in Early Old Norse, but the nature of it is hard to rectonstruct. Also, it may not have been phonemic at that stage, since the modern distinction emerged with the introduction of polysyllabic words with accent I (acute accent) due to:
  • svarabhakti vowels (Ic fiskr > fiskur, OSw fiskr > fiskẹr)
  • fusion of enclitics (*ɔnd in > Sw anden)
The svarabhakti vowels didn't regularly occur in Early Old Norse (although sporadic examples might be found in runic inscriptions already in Proto-Norse) and as has been discussed earlier, the definite marking had probably not yet developed. It's possible that some enclitics like negative –ǥi and pronominal –ðu existed but they might have been felt like very separate still.

But if Early Old Norse had different accent patterns based on the number of syllables, there is the question of whether the "ultrashort" vowels *ŭ and *ĭ (Proto-Norse short vowels that remained after short stems but which were lost in later Old Norse) made words have accent II (like other disyllabic words) or accent I (like the words were in later ON). It's conceivable that the primary distinction between *ŭ and *u was one of word accent. So perhaps sɔ́ku (=sɔkŭ) and sɔ̀ku (=sɔku). This makes some amount of sense due to the very limited distribution of ŭ and ĭ (only in the unstressed syllable of disyllabic words, and only after short stems). But this is just speculation.
HinGambleGoth wrote:Is the Danish stød a secondary development? did old danish have a grave accent?
There seem to be a lot of discussions about the origin of the stød, sometimes tied to discussions about glottalization in other Germanic languages. I haven't really read much about this, have you?
It seem like the most common view is that the stød developed from an earlier pitch accent similar to Swedish or Norwegian, perhaps during the late middle ages. Perhaps because I haven't read a lot about the subject, this view seems the most plausible to me. But it's been argued that the stød is much older.

Here's a Danish article (which I haven't read all the way through yet):
https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/fortido ... 7197/87876

Also, the Wikipedia page has some history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%c3%b8d#History
HinGambleGoth wrote:Had compounds like nāttwarðẹr grave accent in ON, as in modern Swedish? or acute accent as in Scanian and Northern Swedish dialects?
There are apparently two views here. Tomas Riad seems to think that the Central Swedish accent where compounds have accent II (like polysyllabic simplex words) is the original. Harry Perridon think other Scandinavian varieties that allow accent I in compounds are more conservative:
https://books.google.se/books?id=TO687p ... 7&lpg=PA97
(I linked to the same page in the Scandinavian forum)
HinGambleGoth wrote:Is the word accent a random development, or tied to suffix-stress in Proto-Norse?
I'm not sure what you mean here. But the different accents themselves probably go back to Proto-Norse in some way.
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

Ælfwine wrote:(Reposted this here to prevent hijacking an old thread for an unrelated matter)

I'm not sure if this would technically be gravedigging, but this thread is still on the first page and sort of relevant to the topic, so here it goes:
I think it might have fit in the Early Old Norse thread actually. I don't think I have a quick and easy answer to your question, so I'm going to post the answer here to avoid it being buried in the quick questions thread.
Ælfwine wrote:As the conlang that I am creating preserves much of the Old Norse morphology (even with all the progressive umlauts and sound shifts that affect it), I have a bit of a question about early ON in regards to words or loans with more than a couple syllables, and how stress and vowel or consonant length play into all of that. More specifically, do we have any example of loans in Old Norse with more than two syllables in which the morphology in regard to stress and/or length can be definitely recreated? Would they perhaps act like compound words where there is lengthening on the second stem? This question I raise because if Old Norse only has /a i u/ as unstressed vowels, then I need to know how exactly the pronunciation of polysyllabic words would go, particularly with loans.
Many loanwords in Old Norse seem to have adapted to the Norse phonology. It helped that many loans are from (or via) West Germanic languages, so they weren't that phonologically foreign in the first place. Some loans in Old Icelandic, that I think were borrowed during the earlier ON period, are prestr (’priest’), klaustr (’monastery’), stræti (’street’), kerti (’candle’), penni (’pen’). Many of these words have a Latin or Greek origin but they were borrowed via, and shortened in, a West Germanic language. Kirkja or kyrkja was probably borrowed from OE ċiriċe, ċyriċe but seems to have lost a syllable in ON.

While the basic vowel system of ON unstressed syllables was indeed a triangular three-vowel system, things were a little bit more complicated. Early Old Icelandic probably had ǫ for u-umlauted a in unstressed syllables (what I write <ɔ> for general Early Old Norse). Older manuscripts distinguish this vowel from u, although modern normalizations might (incorrectly) use <u> like in Modern Icelandic. Some varieties of Old Norwegian had vowel harmony in unstressed syllables so there was a contrast i:e and u:o. This contrast was almost completely allophonic in native words, but it has been suggested that the merger of *e and *æ made the contrast marginally phonemic due to the older vowels triggering different harmonic sets in unstressed syllables. Later Old Swedish developed vowel balance, as has been discussed earlier in this thread.

In Old Icelandic manuscripts, there is some orthographic variation between <i>:<e> and <u>:<o> in unstressed syllables but they tend not to contrast for native words. The older manuscripts tend to use <e o>. There may have been a contrast in loan words, though. There are some OIc loans that consistently have e or o: akkeri ‘anchor’ (also ankeri), akkorda ‘to accord’, rekendi (’chain’). There might have been secondary or tertiary stress on the second syllable, but I don't know if there is any evidence for or against this. There is also persóna which I would think had some amount of stress on the second syllable. Biskup ‘bishop’ was probably borrowed from a West Germanic language with o in the second syllable (OE. biscop, Ge bischof) but it seems to have been adapted to the OIc three/four-vowel system. Early manuscripts sometimes have biskop or byskop, but early manuscripts also often used <e o> rather than <i u>.

I can't think of any loanwords with more than three syllables. Native non-compound words in ON can at least be trisyllabic, where the last syllable is an inflectional syllable. This is the case for native words such as bakari (but compare hamarr, hamri with syncope in the paradigm). The enclitic definite article actually adds a fourth syllable, but enclitics are a bit of a special case.
User avatar
HinGambleGoth
sinic
sinic
Posts: 432
Joined: 01 Jul 2014 05:29
Location: gøtalandum

Re: Early old norse.

Post by HinGambleGoth »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3S8oNtuIH8

No one actually knows what Vikings actually sounded like since there where no recordings

This makes the whole video moot from now on.

The nearest thing is old icelandic

No, that would be Runic inscrptions from continental scandinavia, and since the characters are danish some older vernacular texts from the 12th Century such as the scanian law (that are Contemporary to the old icelandic sources) but then again they are depicted as living in Norweigan fjords so i reckon the writers dont give a shit.

In general it seems like they just have modern Icelandic with a modern English accent. It's clearly not Viking age norse since we have er instead of es, an analogical sound change that happened during the 13th Century, and post-medieval sound Changes like /xw/ = /kv/.

The most puzzling thing is that Old norse is depicted as completely foreign and unknown to Old English and from what i can tell Old Frankish speakers, even the most basic phrases aren't understandable. To some extent, the modern mainland Scandinavian langauges are more diverged phonologicaly than OE and ON where in 900AD, the sound systems of Standard Swedish and Danish are more different, i would argue.

But then again the show has the Vikings being completely unaware of the existence of England so i guess they didn't give a shit there either.
[:D] :se-og: :fi-al2: :swe:
[:)] :nor: :usa: :uk:
:wat: :dan: :se-sk2: :eng:
[B)] Image Image :deu:
Ælfwine
roman
roman
Posts: 940
Joined: 21 Sep 2015 01:28
Location: New Jersey

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ælfwine »

Ephraim wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:(Reposted this here to prevent hijacking an old thread for an unrelated matter)

I'm not sure if this would technically be gravedigging, but this thread is still on the first page and sort of relevant to the topic, so here it goes:
I think it might have fit in the Early Old Norse thread actually. I don't think I have a quick and easy answer to your question, so I'm going to post the answer here to avoid it being buried in the quick questions thread.
Ælfwine wrote:As the conlang that I am creating preserves much of the Old Norse morphology (even with all the progressive umlauts and sound shifts that affect it), I have a bit of a question about early ON in regards to words or loans with more than a couple syllables, and how stress and vowel or consonant length play into all of that. More specifically, do we have any example of loans in Old Norse with more than two syllables in which the morphology in regard to stress and/or length can be definitely recreated? Would they perhaps act like compound words where there is lengthening on the second stem? This question I raise because if Old Norse only has /a i u/ as unstressed vowels, then I need to know how exactly the pronunciation of polysyllabic words would go, particularly with loans.
Many loanwords in Old Norse seem to have adapted to the Norse phonology. It helped that many loans are from (or via) West Germanic languages, so they weren't that phonologically foreign in the first place. Some loans in Old Icelandic, that I think were borrowed during the earlier ON period, are prestr (’priest’), klaustr (’monastery’), stræti (’street’), kerti (’candle’), penni (’pen’). Many of these words have a Latin or Greek origin but they were borrowed via, and shortened in, a West Germanic language. Kirkja or kyrkja was probably borrowed from OE ċiriċe, ċyriċe but seems to have lost a syllable in ON.

While the basic vowel system of ON unstressed syllables was indeed a triangular three-vowel system, things were a little bit more complicated. Early Old Icelandic probably had ǫ for u-umlauted a in unstressed syllables (what I write <ɔ> for general Early Old Norse). Older manuscripts distinguish this vowel from u, although modern normalizations might (incorrectly) use <u> like in Modern Icelandic. Some varieties of Old Norwegian had vowel harmony in unstressed syllables so there was a contrast i:e and u:o. This contrast was almost completely allophonic in native words, but it has been suggested that the merger of *e and *æ made the contrast marginally phonemic due to the older vowels triggering different harmonic sets in unstressed syllables. Later Old Swedish developed vowel balance, as has been discussed earlier in this thread.

In Old Icelandic manuscripts, there is some orthographic variation between <i>:<e> and <u>:<o> in unstressed syllables but they tend not to contrast for native words. The older manuscripts tend to use <e o>. There may have been a contrast in loan words, though. There are some OIc loans that consistently have e or o: akkeri ‘anchor’ (also ankeri), akkorda ‘to accord’, rekendi (’chain’). There might have been secondary or tertiary stress on the second syllable, but I don't know if there is any evidence for or against this. There is also persóna which I would think had some amount of stress on the second syllable. Biskup ‘bishop’ was probably borrowed from a West Germanic language with o in the second syllable (OE. biscop, Ge bischof) but it seems to have been adapted to the OIc three/four-vowel system. Early manuscripts sometimes have biskop or byskop, but early manuscripts also often used <e o> rather than <i u>.

I can't think of any loanwords with more than three syllables. Native non-compound words in ON can at least be trisyllabic, where the last syllable is an inflectional syllable. This is the case for native words such as bakari (but compare hamarr, hamri with syncope in the paradigm). The enclitic definite article actually adds a fourth syllable, but enclitics are a bit of a special case.
The information is much appreciated of course. I would expect that the words would largely conform to Icelandic phonotactics, although it does raise the question whether vowels on the first syllable of these loans would necessarily be unstressed /a, i, u/ or something else. I'd personally like to try to create what the word "transportation" other 4+ syllable words might have morphed into...would of it adopted penultimate stress like English? Alternate every two syllabes? Perhaps some syllables would be deleted? No idea of course, unfortunately due to Icelandic's linguistic purism, we don't have much modern examples of these type of words. Perhaps Faroese can offer better clues?
My Blog

A-posteriori, alternative history nerd
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

Ælfwine wrote:The information is much appreciated of course. I would expect that the words would largely conform to Icelandic phonotactics, although it does raise the question whether vowels on the first syllable of these loans would necessarily be unstressed /a, i, u/ or something else. I'd personally like to try to create what the word "transportation" other 4+ syllable words might have morphed into...would of it adopted penultimate stress like English? Alternate every two syllabes? Perhaps some syllables would be deleted? No idea of course, unfortunately due to Icelandic's linguistic purism, we don't have much modern examples of these type of words. Perhaps Faroese can offer better clues?
I think it depends on when the word is borrowed, from what source language, and what register it belongs to. If it's borrowed after the introduction of the Latin alphabet and it is a somewhat technical or formal word, it is probably more likely to maintan all syllables and not fully adapt to the phonology of the borrowing language. Also, it may depend a little bit on the culture.

Even after the word has been borrowed, it may even be excempt from some sound changes. Don't underestimate the influence of spelling when it comes to the technical/"international" vocabulary based on Latin and Greek words in European languages. Sound changes may not affect them the same way as other words since speakers may tend to adapt their pronunciation to the spelling according to some rules, which can undo earlier sound changes. You could even have systematic pronunciation changes based on spelling. For example, from what I understand, the <y> in Greek words used to be pronounced /iː/ in German until the 19th century (they were primarily borrowed through French, I believe) when it was replaced by the more classical /yː/.

Icelandic used to have more Latin loans but there are still some. They vary a lot in how well adapted they are to Old Icelandic phonology, but what they do tend to have is initial stress. You can read a bit more here:
http://nome.unak.is/nm-marzo-2012/volum ... -icelandic

Unlike Icelandic, Mainland Scandinavian languages generally don't have initial stress in Latin loans. The position of the primary stress tends to match that of German (perhaps Low German originally), from which many Latin words where borrowed. German in turn often borrowed the words from French I think. The position of the primary stress often follows that of Latin (Greek loans are stressed as if Latin) which leads to final stress in many words since the Latin inflectional endings are often (but not always) lost. There are probably many exceptions to this though, a major one which I can think of is nouns and adjectives in -iv (like -ive in English) which tend to have initial stress in both Scandinavian and German (there might be some exceptions), often matching English.

In Mainland Scandinavian and German, the ending -(t)ion/-sjon receives the primary stress unlike in English. This matches the accusative –tiōnem in Latin (compare Italian -zione). This is also true of words in -ation/-asjon. If there were a word *transportation/*Transportation/*transportasjon in these languages, it would have final stress (in the dictionary form). This word is not found in these languages from what I can tell (perhaps not in French either, but Spanish has a word transportación). Transport is the preferred nominal form.

English stress of Latin and Greek words is often retracted one or two syllables compared to the Latin stress, and it is often different form that of German and Mainland Scandinavian. So unless your language borrowed the classical vocabulary via English, don't use English as an indication of where the stress would be.
Ælfwine
roman
roman
Posts: 940
Joined: 21 Sep 2015 01:28
Location: New Jersey

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ælfwine »

Ephraim wrote:
Ælfwine wrote:The information is much appreciated of course. I would expect that the words would largely conform to Icelandic phonotactics, although it does raise the question whether vowels on the first syllable of these loans would necessarily be unstressed /a, i, u/ or something else. I'd personally like to try to create what the word "transportation" other 4+ syllable words might have morphed into...would of it adopted penultimate stress like English? Alternate every two syllabes? Perhaps some syllables would be deleted? No idea of course, unfortunately due to Icelandic's linguistic purism, we don't have much modern examples of these type of words. Perhaps Faroese can offer better clues?
I think it depends on when the word is borrowed, from what source language, and what register it belongs to. If it's borrowed after the introduction of the Latin alphabet and it is a somewhat technical or formal word, it is probably more likely to maintan all syllables and not fully adapt to the phonology of the borrowing language. Also, it may depend a little bit on the culture.

Even after the word has been borrowed, it may even be excempt from some sound changes. Don't underestimate the influence of spelling when it comes to the technical/"international" vocabulary based on Latin and Greek words in European languages. Sound changes may not affect them the same way as other words since speakers may tend to adapt their pronunciation to the spelling according to some rules, which can undo earlier sound changes. You could even have systematic pronunciation changes based on spelling. For example, from what I understand, the <y> in Greek words used to be pronounced /iː/ in German until the 19th century (they were primarily borrowed through French, I believe) when it was replaced by the more classical /yː/.

Icelandic used to have more Latin loans but there are still some. They vary a lot in how well adapted they are to Old Icelandic phonology, but what they do tend to have is initial stress. You can read a bit more here:
http://nome.unak.is/nm-marzo-2012/volum ... -icelandic

Unlike Icelandic, Mainland Scandinavian languages generally don't have initial stress in Latin loans. The position of the primary stress tends to match that of German (perhaps Low German originally), from which many Latin words where borrowed. German in turn often borrowed the words from French I think. The position of the primary stress often follows that of Latin (Greek loans are stressed as if Latin) which leads to final stress in many words since the Latin inflectional endings are often (but not always) lost. There are probably many exceptions to this though, a major one which I can think of is nouns and adjectives in -iv (like -ive in English) which tend to have initial stress in both Scandinavian and German (there might be some exceptions), often matching English.

In Mainland Scandinavian and German, the ending -(t)ion/-sjon receives the primary stress unlike in English. This matches the accusative –tiōnem in Latin (compare Italian -zione). This is also true of words in -ation/-asjon. If there were a word *transportation/*Transportation/*transportasjon in these languages, it would have final stress (in the dictionary form). This word is not found in these languages from what I can tell (perhaps not in French either, but Spanish has a word transportación). Transport is the preferred nominal form.

English stress of Latin and Greek words is often retracted one or two syllables compared to the Latin stress, and it is often different form that of German and Mainland Scandinavian. So unless your language borrowed the classical vocabulary via English, don't use English as an indication of where the stress would be.
Forgot about this, but still relevant information. Very much appreciated.
My Blog

A-posteriori, alternative history nerd
User avatar
Eyia
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 1
Joined: 03 Dec 2016 00:52

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Eyia »

Ephraim wrote:
HinGambleGoth wrote:Why is it that you often find forms like <dottiR> where there never was any /z/ but /r/ all along?
There was a shift r > ʀ / i_ at some point. I think this, combined with the existence of ʀ-umlaut and iʀ-umlaut is the reason ʀ is sometimes thought to have had a palatal articulation.
Is it known when this r > ʀ / i_# change occurred?

(I just have to say, this thread is wonderful and is helping quite a bit with a project I'm working on for my Viking Age reenactment group. :-) Thank you, everyone.)
User avatar
HinGambleGoth
sinic
sinic
Posts: 432
Joined: 01 Jul 2014 05:29
Location: gøtalandum

Re: Early old norse.

Post by HinGambleGoth »

Eyia wrote: Is it known when this r > ʀ / i_# change occurred?
In the late Viking age, when z* and r* where falling together and the carvers had a harder time separating the sounds.

Another thing I have been thinking about is the actual name of the language, the medieval scandinavian spoke essentialy the same language with a few minor variations (but danish changed faster) English was refered as English already in the Old english period, the. Continental west germanic languages were called "Diutisch" in most sources.

Old west norse was called norrøn, a moniker that refered the shared norweigan-icelandic culture in general. This is continued in Norsk, nordmann, Noors and norse and so on. Some sources refer to north germanic collectively as "danish" some later swedish sources talk about "geatish tongue" or "swedish".
[:D] :se-og: :fi-al2: :swe:
[:)] :nor: :usa: :uk:
:wat: :dan: :se-sk2: :eng:
[B)] Image Image :deu:
Bill
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 4
Joined: 21 Feb 2017 15:28

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Bill »

Hypothetical East Old Norse vocabulary

For a poetry project set in 9th c. Britain, I have made the following modifications of "ON" words derived from common on-line sources based on some of Hingamblegoth's comments here and elsewhere about differences between West Old Norse and East Old Norse. I am very grateful for the rules he has (you have) developed, but fully understand that it is risky to apply them without knowledge of the languages involved. Would anyone like to comment on or correct these? Thanks very much.

"ON," EON
afrendi, afrændi
alfr, alfer
almr, almer
banahǫgg, banahøg
berserkr, bersærker
bjarndyr, biarndiur (perhaps semantic emphasis preserves splitting in second part of compound)
bjǫrn, biørn
bjorr, bior
bokkar, no change (no n found in cognates)
bokki, no change (no n found in cognates)
borðveggr, borþvægger (no n found in cognates)
brokker, no change (no n found in cognates)
bruðr, bruþer
brynjur, bryniur
bukkr, bukker (no n found in cognates)
dauði, døþa
djǫflar, diøflar
draugr, drøgher
eilift, elift
ekkja, ænkia
erkibiskup, ærkibiskup
eyland, eland
fetur, no change
fjandi, fiandi
flein, flen
fǫðurbroðir, føþurbroþir
freyja, freia
freyjur, freiur
fylgja, fylgia
fyrðar, fiurþar
geirar, gerar
gimsteinar, gimstenar
Gormr, Gormer
gremi, no change
grǫf, grøf
gunneld, gunæld
halr, haler
haugr, høgher
Heilög, Heløg
heimar, hemar
hjalmr, hialmber
hjarðir, hiarþir
hǫfðingi, høfþingi
hǫfuð, høfuþ
hǫldr, hølder
hǫll, høl
hross, ros
hvaljarð, hvaliarþ
jarlar, iarlar
joð, iuþ
jǫfurr, iøfur
jǫtnar, iøtnar
jǫtunn, iøtun
keisari, kesari
konungr, konunger
koppr, kopper
ku, ko
kyrjur, kiurur (splitting both stem and suffix seemed awkward to me)
langstaðinn, langstaþin
maðr, maþer
meiðmar, meþmar
mǫgr, møgher
morðingjar, morþingiar
myrar, miurar
naut, nøt
nautr, nøter
nei, no change (semantic emphasis precludes monophthongization?)
ormr, ormer
otr, oter
regin, no change
rœðar, rœþar
sauðir, søþir
Selund, no change
skegg, skæg
skipaherr, skipahær
skratti, no change (no n found in cognates)
snakr, snaker
sǫngr, søngher
sonr, soner
sör, sør
spejari, speiari
stjorar, stiurar
stǫll, støl
styra, stiura
sveinar, svenar
sverð, sværþ
synir, no change
systar, no change
þengill, þengil
tjald, tiøld
tunnr, tunder
udauðligr, udøþligher
utboðabref, utboþabref
vegir, no change
verð, værþ
verǫld, verøld
vinr, viner
Ephraim
sinic
sinic
Posts: 386
Joined: 15 Nov 2013 13:10
Location: Sweden

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Ephraim »

Your East Norse forms are closer to 13th or 14th century Early Old Swedish (which was written in the latin alphabet) than to 9th century Old East Norse (Runic Norse). The latter would display many of the archaic features described in this thread, the 9th century is definitely the early part of the Old Norse period. Your Old West Norse (ON) is maybe representative of 11th to 13th century Old Icelandic or other Old West Norse.

There probably wasn't a huge difference between East and West Norse in the 9th century, at least not that we know of. Runic writing, and reconstructions from later dialects, show little dialectal variation during this period. But the writing system is highly under-specifying and the texts are generally very short. There may have been a lot of spoken variation that has been lost to history.

Still, there are a few isoglosses that we probably can trace back to the 9th century or earlier, and many show a west–east split, although not always in the same geographical location. Notably, there are differences in the application of different umlauts.

Many of your changes are purely orthographical, and seem to roughly follow Early Old Swedish (and Old Danish to a lesser extent) latin alphabet manuscript spelling (although there was a lot of variation in the spelling here, and there's actually a lot of variation in academic normalizations). In the 9th century, Old Norse was almost exclusively written with the Younger Fuþąrk. You probably don't want to use a simple transliteration of the runic spelling, though, since it lacks a lot of phonemic distinctions. It's up to you what transcription scheme you want to use, based on your æsthetic preferences. You can base the transcription on later Old Swedish and Danish manuscript spelling if you want, but it may be a bit anachronistic. There is a description of the orthography I'm using for Early Old Norse earlier in this thread.

Generally, if you want help with specific words, it's helpful if you mark vowel length since it is phonemic in Old Norse and is pretty consistently marked in normalized Old West Norse (not as consistently in modern normalized Old Danish and Old Swedish, and almost never in Old Swedish or Old Danish manuscripts). Also, do provide glosses including what grammatical form you're using (since you sometimes use forms other than the dictionary form) since there is some amount of homophony and variation in form.
Bill wrote: brynjur, bryniur
ekkja, ænkia
freyja, freia
kyrjur, kiurur (splitting both stem and suffix seemed awkward to me)
morðingjar, morþingiar
Medieval manuscripts did not distinguish <i> and <j>. For Old Icelandic, there is a modern convention of using <j> when appropriate (and sometimes when not appropriate) while this may be less common for normalized Old East Norse (although some authors may use it). However, this does not represent a difference in the manuscripts, and for the most part, it does not represent a difference in pronunciation. Unstressed C+<i>+vowel (as in <brynjur>/<bryniur>) was likely [j] in all dialects (going back to Proto-Germanic *j) but there was no <i>:<j> distinction in the latin alphabet at the time (the Younger Fuþąrk also lacked the distinction).
Bill wrote:bjarndyr, biarndiur (perhaps semantic emphasis preserves splitting in second part of compound)
bjǫrn, biørn
bjorr, bior
djǫflar, diøflar
hvaljarð, hvaliarþ
jarlar, iarlar
joð, iuþ
jǫfurr, iøfur
jǫtnar, iøtnar
jǫtunn, iøtun
For stressed syllables, the <i>/<j> difference is a little more complicated. There was a shift from falling to rising diphthongs at some point (heălm > hjalm), which has been discussed in this thread. So it may be appropriate to use <i> rather than <j> here, although this is true of Early West Norse as well. The shift may be older in West Norse than in East norse, and it was stronger there, affecting disyllabic sequences as well (see below).

Also, the East Norse shift in quality to or is a comparatively late change. Early Old Swedish had io (there was both a short and a long version), only in Late Old Swedish did the second part shift quality, and not in all phonological contexts.

For the Early Old Norse diphthongs, see this post:
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4489&start=20#p178813

Note that while East Norse typically merged *ɔ (OIc ǫ) and *a, the short diphthong *eŭ (OIc jǫ, OSw short io) remained distinct.
Bill wrote:hvaljarð, hvaliarþ
Is this OIc. hvaljǫrð < Early Old Norse *hwal-eŭrð?
Bill wrote:bjarndyr, biarndiur
kyrjur, kiurur (splitting both stem and suffix seemed awkward to me)
fyrðar, fiurþar
myrar, miurar
If this is a form of *kyrja (I'm not sure the word is attested on it's own) as in valkyrja, the word would still (I think) be *kyʀja > *kyrja (*PG *kuzjǭ < *kuzjōn) in Old East Norse. The East Norse breaking to *iŭ only affected short *i, not *u, and it is only found in labiovelar contexts, i.e. PN *siŋgwan > OEN *siŭŋgwą ‘to sing’ (Swedish sjunga, Old Icelandic syngva).

Also, note that this diphthong is different from long *iɔu (PG *eu and *iu) like i *diɔuʀ ‘animal’. The difference between OIc dýr and Swedish djur is due to ʀ-umlaut, which is not found in East Norse. Old Swedish distinguished long <iu> in <diur> (OIc dýr) and short <iu> in <liung> (OIc lyng) ‘ling, heather’.

I'm not sure about the etymology of fyrðar, and but I would guess something like PG *furðijaz (*furdijaz in Wiktionary spelling; this is the nom.sg, the word is of course plurale tantum in Icelandic), so presumably the East Norse form would be the same as the West Norse (I don't think this word is attested in East Norse, but I may be wrong).

By myrar, I presume you mean the plural of OIc mýrr ‘moor, swamp, bog’ < PG *miuzijō. There's no East and West Norse difference in this word, Swedish has myr–myrar. The shift PG *iu > *ȳ is due to i-umlaut from the following syllable.
Bill wrote:fjandi, fiandi
The sequence <ia> here was disyllabic in 9th century Old Norse: *fīandi. It was still disyllabic ía (fíandi) in the earliest Old Icelandic manuscripts, before shifting to monosyllabic já, fjándi, in later Old Icelandic. Swedish lacks this change, so fiende is trisyllabic in modern Swedish.
Bill wrote:fǫðurbroðir, føþurbroþir
fyrðar, fiurþar
hǫfuð, høfuþ
maðr, maþer
mǫgr, møgher
morðingjar, morþingiar
sǫngr, søngher
verð, værþ
Your convention of using <þ> rather than <ð> for the sound [ð] (for medial and final <þ>) is appropriate for Early Old Swedish manuscripts, and Old Norse Runic inscriptions (even West Norse) would use the <þ>-rune here. But this does is purely a spelling convention, the pronunciation was [ð] in East Norse as well. Late Old Swedish often used <dh>. The same is true for the choice between <g> and <gh> for [ɣ] (which I write <ǥ> in this thread, although maybe I should switch to <ȝ> for æsthetic reasons). For the medial and final sound [v], Old Swedish manuscripts show a lot of variation (<u/v/w>, <ffu> etc.), I don't think using simple <f> between vowels was the most common choice. For a normalization, <v> may be a better choice.

After nasals, the plosive pronunciation was used, so the spelling <ngh> is not appropriate. The Early Old Norse form corresponding to OIc sǫngr was probably *sɔŋgʀ < PG *saŋgwaz (*sangwaz in Wiktionary spelling) for both East and West Norse. The Old Swedish form is sanger, Modern Swedish sång.
Bill wrote: hross, ros
hǫll, høl
jǫfurr, iøfur
jǫtunn, iøtun
skegg, skæg
stǫll, støl
Old Swedish manuscripts use a single consonant spelling for word-final geminates (for <n>, and to a lesser extent <m>, this convention has carried over to present day Swedish) but they were still pronounced as geminates. While <ros> and <skeg> may have been spelled with a single final consonant, they were pronounced with a final geminate like their Old West Norse cognates. Danish did shorten final geminates, though, at some point. Runic writing generally didn't use double spelling for medial geminates either.
Bill wrote: alfr, alfer
almr, almer
In the 9th century, the sound *ʀ had not yet shifted to *r in either East or West Norse. Also, there was no svarabhakti vowel (at least not regularly), i.e. the epenthetic -e- in Old Swedish or -u- in Icelandic. So you would expect *almʀ ‘elm’ and *alƀʀ ‘elf’ in both East and West Norse (the *ƀ may have been [β], which was probably still distinct from medial [f] and final at this point, although the latter would soon voice in these positions in all dialects).
Bill wrote: eyland, eland
freyja, freia
freyjur, freiur
geirar, gerar
gimsteinar, gimstenar
naut, nøt
nautr, nøter
sauðir, søþir
The monophthongization of the umlauts *æi (OIc <ei>), *œy (OIc <ey>) and *ɔu (OIc <au>) probably began in the mid 10th century in Denmark and spread from there, so it's not appropriate for your setting. Also, the diphthong *œy smoothed to ø̄ like *ɔu, not to ē like *æi. For the goddess Freyja (the Icelandic form), Modern Swedish has Fröja or Fröa (in dialects, and this may be the inherited form), as well as Freja (probably borrowed). The second largest island (ö) of Sweden is called Öland, not Eland.
Bill wrote:ekkja, ænkia
The shift *mp > pp, *nt > tt, *ŋk > kk etc. was probably not yet found in 9th century West Norse. This has been discussed in this thread.
Bill wrote:hross, ros
The h in the hr, hn and hl clusters probably remained in East Norse into the 10th or 11th century.
Bill wrote:banahǫgg, banahøg
fǫðurbroðir, føþurbroþir
grǫf, grøf
hǫfðingi, høfþingi
hǫfuð, høfuþ
hǫldr, hølder
hǫll, høl
mǫgr, møgher
sǫngr, søngher
The u-umlauted a, which I write *ɔ here, and which is written <ǫ> or sometimes <ö> in normalized Old Icelandic, was probably a distinct phoneme in 9th century Old East Norse as in Old West Norse. There was probably also a long counterpart <ɔ̄>, which is still found in early Old Icelandic manuscripts (normalized as <ǫ́>).

For the most part, short *ɔ and long *ɔ̄ became *a and *ā again in East Norse. So Old Swedish had faður-brōðir (<faþurbroþir>), grav (often <graf>), hall (<hal>) , maȝẹr (<magher>), sangẹr (<sanger>).

In some phonological context, the outcome is different, though. When nasalized, long *ɔ̄ (or rather *ɔ̨̄) had a tendency to raise to ō or even ū. This change is found in both West and East Norse, but there is plenty of variation. Compare the personal pronouns from the stem *hān-: Swedish honom, Icelandic honum with older variants hónom, hǫ́num, hǫnum, hánum, Danish ham; also Swedish hon, Icelandic hún with older variants hǫn, hǫ́n, hón, hon. This change raising had probably not occurred in the 9th century.

Before Old Norse remaining unstressed -u and -w, Swedish and Danish shifted to o or u. Hence Swedish (and Old Swedish) hugga, Danish hugge for OIc hǫggva, and hugg for högg. Similarly Swedish has huvud and Danish hoved for OIc hǫfuð. In Old Swedish, we find <hovuþ>, <huwuþ>, <hoffuidh>, <hwffuit> among other forms. Gutnish lacked this shift and had <hafuþ>.

For the dat.sg, Old Swedish had among other forms <höfþe>, <hufdhe>, <hofþe>, and for OIc hǫfðingi, we find forms like <höfþinge>, <höfdhinger>. The Modern Swedish form is hövding. This may be a combined i- and u-umlaut.

Finally, before r and l, *ɔ does become ø/ö in (Old) Danish and Swedish: Early Old Norse *ɔlŭ ‘ale, beer’ > OIc ǫl, Sw. öl, Da. øl; OIc ǫrn ‘eagle’, Sw. örn.

As mentioned above, the short diphthong which is written <jǫ> in normalized Old Icelandic is a different story.
Bill wrote:udauðligr, udøþligher
For Early Old Norse, we would probably expect *ǭdɔuðlīkʀ or *ų̄dɔuðlīkʀ, or perhaps *–likʀ with a short vowel. Note the nasal vowel in *ų̄- and *ǭ– (< PG *un-), with the ogonek representing nasalization here, not vowel quality. Apparently, Old Icelandic had a variation between ú- or ó- in this word. The distribution of the forms are a bit obscure. For the second component *-līkʀ or *-likr (OIc -ligr, Modern Icelandic -legur), note that at least Early Old Swedish preserves voiceles <-liker>.
Bill wrote:vinr, viner
This word may still have been *winŭʀ in the 9th century.
Bill wrote:skegg, skæg
sverð, sværþ
I think *e and *æ were probably still distinct phonemes in the 9th century (in both East and West Norse), so *swerð may have had a different vowel from *skægg.
Bill
rupestrian
rupestrian
Posts: 4
Joined: 21 Feb 2017 15:28

Re: Early old norse.

Post by Bill »

Ephraim,
Many thanks for your very generous attention to my efforts. There are a few changes I will be able to make immediately. For the rest I will scratch my head for a while and come back with revised proposals.

To add context, the poem is in modern English, with occasional, largely fictitious loan words in OE and
OEN. Fictitious in the sense that we haven't actually preserved these as loan words. In the case of OEN the fiction goes further. The intent is that there be an element of humor in pretending that these are loan words, along with a hopefully not too pedantic continuous reminder of the historical sources of ModE. The result needs to be unpretentious and undemanding of the reader to be effective, so I need to steer clear of IPA and unfamiliar normalizing conventions. We conventionally use only the nominative (s. and pl.) for loan words, so I have rarely used other cases (at least on purpose).

My EON speakers are all Danes, primarily Jutlanders with one Zealander and one Scanian. The main Dane is the famous Godrum (in OE), Gormer/Guttorm to his friends. The story is the familiar contest between Alfred of Wessex and Godrum/Guthrum/Gormer/Guttorm in 878 in Wiltshire and Somerset.

Unfortunately the effort seems to have missed, if the main impression given is of 13th-14th c. Old Swedish. Perhaps the best approach at this point is to retreat to OWN as the conventional representation of EON, making only the modifications that are fairly well established. I'll be back. Thanks again!
Post Reply