Earlier and Later Old Norse

[@rolligeswiesel]

Thank you very much for your videos from a ph.D. student from Germany! The videos are really informative and a real help to master also the details of Old Norse language.

[@LukeRanieri]

I just finished your whole Old Norse series! Thank you so much. It has been a wonderful learning experience. I look forward to more. Þǫkk!

[@Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaartin]

Elfdalian has retained old norse nasal vowels

[@weepingscorpion8739]

Yes and no. It has retained some, lost some, and innovated some.

[@Saint_nobody]

As ever, I thank you for your work and presentation. Have a great day.

[@lubossekk]

for older sjá see also Faroese síggja that shows a rather archaic feature in Faroese (there are some more examples of Faroese change (*)éa > *ía > íggja)...

[@NayrbRellimer]

Have you considered making a video explaining what distinctive gramatical and morphological features of viking age Old Norse differ from classical Old Icelandic that can be recovered from runic inscriptions?

[@danielgustafsson9780]

the nasal vowels are still retained in elfdalian spoken in sweden, as the proto-norse [w]-sound which had disappeared in the icelandic sources.

[@vatterholm]

/w/ is actually quite common in Swedish and Danish dialects. It seems more western dialects lost it early.

[@tren7544]

Did you climb up to that cliff in suit and tie?

[@TheLittleRussian2]

phtif Not a problem for Dr Handsome Crawford.

[@DarkrarLetsPlay]

One of your best videos.

[@vatterholm]

Speaking about the S/R in "þu ert": I often see even today the S preserved in east Norse. In 18th century Copenhagen, on Gotland, Skåne and in Småland of Sweden. Why would the S be preserved there, when it has turned to R in all other forms of the word? "du est i Kirkens Band!" "Du est mit Vidne, at jeg er uskyldig." "Est du gal?" "Deu jest"

[@WillerRemyMa]

I've seen this too. I've also heard the queen use it. "Du est", "Estu..?", "Du varst", "Varstu..?". I've also seen "Han/hun/det es" in 19th century Danish texts.. :)

[@vatterholm]

Really? The queen still used it? What I've read made it sound like a lower class phenomenon. Interesting!

[@sirseigan]

Interesting. In my northern swedish dialect we use "vars" and "varst" but for "where" instead of "were" or "was". Ex: "vars ä du?" = "vars äru?" = "where are you?" or "varst nå?" = "vars nårst?" = "where [is it]?" Perhaps totally unrelated but still interesting that it is so similar.

[@laamonftiboren4236]

​@@sirseiganThat seems like a similar phenomenon to the way that English has “among” vs “amongst”, “while” vs “whilst”, and “again” vs “against” (from Old English “onmang(es)”, “hwíl(es)” and “agéan(es)”). I think I read that it was originally a genitive ending, then later confused with other inflectional endings, for example the superlative.

[@NayrbRellimer]

I've notice that many viking age runic inscriptions have the form þansi (*þænsi) for the masculine accusative form of the demonstrative þessi/sjá (this/these). In classical Old Icelandic, the normal form would be þenna. Is their any evidence that the viking age forms of the demonstrative þessi/sjá simply affixed the ending *-si to the forms of the demonstrative sá (that)? If this were the case, then I would expect to find the forms *sasi, *þaimsi, *þasi, and *susi to also be preserved.

[@johanpeturdam]

/ø:/ merging with /æ/ seems to be uniquely Icelandic. Faroese instead merges /ø:/ with /ø/ and /ö:/ (can't do o-ogonek right now, sadly), so bøkur and æsir, øx, børn (older versions of the orthography used ö for u-umlauted a, so börn but this has been dropped). Faroese also dropped the old plural and replaced it with the dual: vit, tit.

[@elle-iza]

I just ordered your books, Dr. Crawford, and I'm so excited to read them. I've read the poetic Edda in the translation of Simrock, Gering and Paul (translation by the Grimm brothers), I'm curious about your modern touch on this phantastic material. Thank you so much for your work and your generosity to share your knowledge with us. I am trying to learn some Protogermanic, but since it is really difficult to find good learning material, that a complete layperson as me is able to understand, it goes painfully slow. I was wondering if there is any source you can recommend?

[@ForrestMystic]

I'm curious, how accurate are the Old Norse speaking spots in the TV show Vikings on the History channel?

[@ACruelPicture]

Based on what I've learnt from dr. Crawford, all over the place.

[@monnaak]

There is a norse decended language called Elfdalian which still retains the nasal vowels. Althought they are disappearing

[@raphael2407]

Saarländisch (dialekt spoken in Saarland, Southwest of germany) still has many old norse nasal vowels. Like, we still say "Hár" (speak: "Hoa") instead of "Haar" (rest of germany). We also use "mir" (from eastern form "mér") instead of "wir" (from western form "vér"). the word "Faer" or "Feer" for sheep is still very much known in our spoken Dialekt, while it is widely unknown in the rest of germany. There are many more examples but the nasal pronounciation of many similar words is still very strong and most common examples in our dialekt. Sadly, we don't write it, we only speak it. Maybe that's why I find it not very hard to understand or even read old norse language. But I learn fast anyway, especialy since I found this channel. Thank you very much :)

[@BalanceOfJudgment]

Could you discuss Mimir and his brother? I seem to find a detailed discussion on this tale.

[@davidcufc]

Fascinating how some of the early Old Norse sounds and letters are retained in modern English, which derived from West Germanic.

[@patrickjensen8655]

Do you know about how common weird words like ''viltu'' (fx in Bósa saga ok Herrauds, 11). Is it an invention or is it found in ur-norse, old danish or other places?

[@erlinggaratun6726]

The dialectal variations in fx norway are still quite significant, even more so before mass media and motorized travel connected the regions. In my dialect we say sjao . not sjå etc. How varied were the dialects a thousand yrs ago? And Icelandic norse was probably an amalgamate of dialects from up and down the western coast of norway after a while, wouldn't you think?

[@ACruelPicture]

At vesa ella ekki vesa, is that right?

[@samuelterry6354]

So the plural of book was an umlaut in ON? Why don't we say "beek" in English?

[@vatterholm]

Actually the plural of Old English "bōc" was "bēċ". But somewhere along the lines it was simplified.

[@maybenaught]

vatterholm Furthermore, if the original form of "books" were retained into the Modern English era, the plural would be pronounced as "beech" or "beek".

[@idsebayutromp5758]

You do see it with gosse/geese and foot/feet (I think).

[@AsDeadAsDillinger]

Interesting to see that much like many regional speech variations (both historical and modern) a significant proportion of the main differences appear to lay in the vowel sounds. Also, it's fascinating to note the many similarities in vowel pronunciation, between the Norse and the traditional North Eastern English accents.( the long, flattened 'a' vowel sound being one, a convention which is still (more or less) uniformly employed throughout Northern and North Eastern English regional accents even today.) _Those Viking settlers certainly left their mark !_

[@kadabrium]

so singular sjá is distinct from sá and sú?

[@deathwiddle3826]

Kadabrium sjá means „this“. Sá and sú mean „that“.

[@nephuraito]

North germanic has underwent massive changes in their vowels, it's amazing taking into account that proto germanic had only 4 short and 4 long vowels.

[@DarkrarLetsPlay]

PG had 6 different vowels... a, e, i, o, u and e2.

[@nephuraito]

You're mixing short and long vowels, e2 is PG *ēi, o is long and in fact *ā, PG had short a, e, i, u and long a, e, i, u and diphthongs ei, eu, ai, au. Every development is traceable to those vowels, even the alleged trimoraic ō could have been easily final *ān

[@ashtarbalynestjar8000]

Honestly we don’t know almost anything about ē₂, as it only appeared in the word *hē₂r. Any other occurrence of it is best explained in some other way, either by borrowing (*krē₂kaz ‘Greek’, *brēfaz ‘letter’ from Latin Graecus, brevis), by analogy (the preterite of class-7 strong verbs in NWGmc), or by further sound changes (*mē₂dō ‘reward’ from earlier *mizdā, still preserved in Gothic). Guus Kroonen explains *hē₂r as *hiar, from the PIE deictic stem *ḱi- plus the ending in the other demonstratives *þar, *hwar, and honestly that seems like the best solution to me, because it was actually somewhat retained in OHG, and because it explains how the reduplicating strong verbs got where they are: *hiar, *hehait > *hear, *heait > *hē₂r, *hē₂t

[@CarinaBarata22]

you look like g eazy