Nynorn: Is the Viking Language of Orkney and Shetland Coming Back to Life?

[@historywithhilbert]

For a limited time, grab the 1-year NordPass Premium plan with 50% off at nordpass.com/historyhilbert or use code historyhilbert!

[@frederickpurcell7478]

Regional people need which just focuses on the upper class and people of the city ! And neglects people and in The city in the poor party and the ruralites in the rough country !

[@frederickpurcell7478]

I hope it does spread ! Because I A left wing libertarian who believe in liberty regional powers and socialist and traditional and alternative culture I like what USA did with Statehood it good for the local people as the Central government sucks at knowin what it's regional people need

[@srnodol5489]

I would like to add that there is another language in Europe which went through revival. It's Finnic language of Latvia - Livonian, but the catchy thing there is that there are only about 200 people there who declare themselves as ethnic Livonians. Talking about Latvia there is yet another minority language there but it is in much better position than Livonian, it is a cousin of Latvian, Latgalian. Thanks for the great video and a great news. I thought that Nynorn is lost forever!

[@michaelgreen1515]

I want this to be made one of the offical languages of the UK and Scotland. Though not essentially spoken. There is a suggestion that there was a woman who was the last speaker after him. Modern Hebrew is not really a revival as it includes much Yiddish which is a Germanic language rather than a Semitic language.

[@frederickpurcell7478]

@@michaelgreen1515 Yeah sure English Welsh Scots Scottish Gaelic Cornish and Nynorn all deserve the same status In the Great Britain !

[@TheHarashi]

As a Faroese person, my dad always referred to the orcadians and shetlanders as our cousins

[@fremlander]

I (a Shetlander) met an Icelander at a scientific conference and when I introduced myself and my origins, he greeted me with "hello, cousin".

[@haltdieklappe7972]

Shetlanders are 25% Norwegian according to genetic studies. So yes, they’re your cousins in a way since you’re related to Norwegians

[@fremlander]

@@haltdieklappe7972 I think most of us know that (my DNA test is well over 30% Norwegian (and 12% Swedish) as well as my Shetland-version Scottish, which Ancestry classifies differently.

[@scifispaceman1557]

@@fremlander i might start a discord for the norn revival

[@robmcrob2091]

@@haltdieklappe7972 Icelanders and Faroese also have lots of Scottish and Irish ancestry.

[@MrTeniguafez]

I doubt Norn will be revived as an actual everyday spoken language, but we might see a revival of interest in Norn poetry, songs, stories, folklore etc which is a worthy goal regardless.

[@ecurewitz]

it worked with hebrew, and seems to be working with Manx and Cornish. And though never technically extinct, Gaelic is making quite the comeback

[@oscarosullivan4513]

Could be worse they could be demanding for a phone service like certain Northern Irish party demanded

[@oscarosullivan4513]

@Rusty Shackleford Wish the Dup would piss off, have you seen the article on Waterford Whispers on the rare Fostersoreous found

[@jorgeh.r9879]

I think it might be posible to revive it if they work hard enough.

[@theyhave268]

If a revival and spread of interest in Norn poetry and songs will happen, then full revival might become closer to reach.

[@ivylearog]

I'm Orcadian and even in the 1980s if you heard the old folk on the most northerly islands of Orkney speak, (especially North Ronaldsay!) it was pretty much incomprehensible, I'm sure there was still massive elements of Norn present... or maybe I was speaking to them outside the only pub on the island.. who knows.

[@carlaalexander8787]

Agree I live on North Ron and when the elderly islanders get together I only understand a fraction of what their saying. John O' Westness is a legend for his speaking. I Can't blame it on the pub as its closed now lol

[@ivylearog]

@@carlaalexander8787 hehe amazing, I know John O' Westness, is he not living in old folks accommodation in Kirkwall now? we bumped into him recently and helped him with his shopping, my girlfriend who's mum's from Shetland had absolutely no idea what he was going on about, I think he was talking about my dad who he knew in the '80s/'90s... that's the gist I got anyways :-)

[@barnabascsiszar5636]

Even your name (if that is your real name) sounds norse, or at least norse-influenced. Orkney and the Shetland Islands seem like a really interesting place, would love to visit haha

[@ivylearog]

@@barnabascsiszar5636 Ye that's my real name, there are many very common old Norse names that are still used up here, like Magnus, Erlend, Thorfinn, Sigurd and many more, and lots of second manes such as Eunson, Garson, Polson, etc, too :-) x

[@haltdieklappe7972]

Reviving languages simply comes down to having kids which people (specifically white people) refuse to have kids. You wanna revive languages? Have babies

[@ThatIcelandicDude]

Icelanders and Faroe Islanders: "You could not live with your own failure. Where did that bring you? Back to us"

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

Now all we need to do is revive Gaulish and I’ll be complete at heart

[@ecurewitz]

do we have enough Old Gaulish words in order to do so?

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

@@ecurewitz It would take a lot of back reconstructing, it would sort of be like a reconstructed proto Brythonic but with some tweaked grammar and words if the Romans saying the British and the Gaulish had almost the same language is to be believed, which I do because many romans would've known Gaulish either as a trading language, or because by the time they made it to Britain they had Gaulish soldiers who would've been able to converse with the Brittons

[@fordhouse8b]

@@celtofcanaanesurix2245 Should we revive both Cisalpine Gaulish as well as Transalpine Gaulish?

[@celtofcanaanesurix2245]

@@fordhouse8b transalpine, the modern French have way more Gaulish dna then the Italians do, so it would only make sense to do transalpine first

[@fordhouse8b]

@@celtofcanaanesurix2245 When you say that the average Frenchman has more Gaulish DNA than than Italians do, do you mean the average Italian, or the average Italian in the region that was Cisalpine Gaul?

[@alfredthegreatkingofwessex6838]

Viking age ended with an arrow to the throat. Saxon age ended with an arrow to the eye History is made by archers.

[@HoundofOdin]

Genghis Khan approves of this statement.

[@MalachiCo0]

Skyrim Guard age ended with an arrow to the knee

[@andwhat]

@@MalachiCo0 goddamnit

[@richardjbarlow]

And cakes Alfred

[@deplatformedcrowprinceluna6339]

Ah yes, reminded me of CK2.

[@Depipro]

A friend of mine, a Dutchman who studied Japanese, ended up on Okinawa leading an effort to preserve the Okinawan language. Not exactly the same, as it is still spoken, but only by people of the older generations amongst themselves. These people switch to speaking Japanese when addressing someone younger, without even realizing they're doing it. My friend's efforts entail such work as the recording of as much of the language as possible, compiling dictionaries and grammar books, and teaching the languages to said younger people. Last time I spoke with him about it, he still wasn't sure if his efforts would catch on to the extent that the language can be kept from going extinct.

[@jorgeh.r9879]

I support him and wish him luck

[@billbirkett7166]

A language revival movement has to be perceived as 'cool' from the younger generation in order to be successful. Things like language cafes and a very active language club with many activities is vital to success. I don't see that happening with most minority language communities, unfortunately. If there are no communities left on Okinawa that still speak Okinawan with the whole family, then that's a really bad sign. You need to reach out to villages where the children are still learning it, and build your efforts out from there. If no children are interested, the language is a 'dead man walking', essentially.

[@Depipro]

@@billbirkett7166 True, which is why my friend at the same time expressed hope and gratitude about all the young Okinawans showing enthusiasm for the language, and at the same time some pessimism over the laissez-passer attitude of the older generation. When I asked him if he wanted to grow old on the island, he said he couldn't tell yet: he really likes it, but he can't exclude the possibility the Okinawan language will die out after all, and he doesn't feel a particular urge to stick around and witness that happening.

[@billbirkett7166]

@@Depipro From what I've heard about Okinawan, it doesn't seem like there is much hope. I've heard basically that in Japan, any other Japonic languages were seen essentially as 'dialects', even though Okinawan and Japanese are probably farther apart from each other than French and Italian. China has a similar attitude about its 'dialects', and plans to try to systematically phase out Cantonese, which has been previously a very healthy language with 100 million+ speakers. Whereas in the west people tend to have an enthusiasm for minority languages, in Asia they regard them as annoyances, and have a much, much broader definition of what counts as a dialect. It's just a completely different attitude--but, for instance, something like Catalan would not be treated like a language independent from Spanish.

[@Depipro]

@@billbirkett7166 The Japanese government have changed their attitude, which is proven by the fact that they actually invited and appointed my friend to do the work he is doing (and, as far as I know, are still paying for all of it). The main question is whether or not this reversal in policy came in time. As for Cantonese, even if repressive government policies prove effective, there is still a huge diaspora. I suspect other minority languages in China are in more immediate danger, though those in Yunnan, for example, are partly shielded by their relative isolation.

[@Kamihana]

As a Norwegian, the Nynorn was easier for me to understand than Faroese. Some of the words seem to be distinctly western Norwegian and found in Nynorsk. More so than Faroese and Icelandic.

[@Spino2Earth]

Interessant.

[@benjaminpujol711]

Yeah same for me

[@bjornviktor9592]

Icelandic is true viking language fuck you

[@Spino2Earth]

@@bjornviktor9592 That was not nice of you to say.

[@dorteweber3682]

I agree. Faroese is difficult for speakers of other Scandinavian languages.

[@dschledermann]

Extremely impressive pronunciation of "Etymologisk ordbog over det norrøne sprog på Shetland".

[@JoiskiMe]

I know right? Is he Danish?

[@dschledermann]

@@JoiskiMe doubtful. It's a little insecure, some minor slips and the vowels seem a little of, but very impressive none the less.

[@servantofaeie1569]

@@JoiskiMe He is Frisian.

[@seid3366]

That’d make more sense to why he’s good if he speaks North Frisian, since that has been more influenced by Danish

[@historywithhilbert]

Thank you!

[@Daniel-cd5bw]

The last speaker of Norn actually lived in the isle of Foula in the 1940s. My partner's Granddad knew her.

[@Stumpybear7640]

Yes, I heard o her. I'm up fir learning Nynorn xxx

[@trondranorquoy5154]

More detail! You can't just keep us hanging like that!

[@Daniel-cd5bw]

The man to ask is Andy Gear who lives in Yell!

[@jorgeh.r9879]

More info Daniel. Not saying it's not true (many theories say the Norn language lasted longer than what is thought), but I really want to know more about this person.

[@Daniel-cd5bw]

@@jorgeh.r9879 ​ @Trondra Norquoy I spoke wi Andy - Janet Manson spoke Norn ("da auld tongue") and lived at Da Banks (near Ristie, North end o Foula) circa 1925.

[@creakychair9387]

Its been like 3 years and i am still waiting for that Sweden during the viking age video. Great video due.

[@quiquemarquez3211]

Oh man I rember that promise too,we have become quite old on all this time at least our memories still stand strong.

[@comeintotheforest]

Jag håller med! Saknar det avsnittet

[@ironwolf2244]

In particular I think Sweden is important in that context due to the fact that it was one of the Norse Pagan holdouts in the 12th century.

[@thoreau283]

Ha! ...sweeden, wussiest country in Europe. My, how the mighty have fallen! Love, 'Murica

[@creakychair9387]

@@thoreau283 ?

[@aaronblygh4719]

I'm not from Orkney, but I have family up there, and I visited last summer. I'd really love to see Nynorn being spoken up there, it would make the history of Orkney seem so much closer than it really is I wanted to learn some Norn, but I didn't ever think there would be a rival project.

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

Did you ever start learning Nynorn?

[@johantrewe7268]

Interesting, many years ago, when I lived on my home island on the Swedish westcoast. I heard a story from an old fisherman. How he and his fellow crewmen just spoke "Tjörbu" when ashore on Shetland during långa, (lingcod i think), fishing. And they could easily speak with the Shetlandians, even til some extent on Orkney and Scotland. Tjörbu is a local dialect which to some extent has similarity with Norwegian.

[@frostermos]

I remember learning parts of Old Norse when I was in school, and because of that awesome Danish teacher, I gained an interest in Old Norse and kind of wish we learned it more in school.

[@sandyleask92]

I'm from Shetland and having Norn revived to Nynorn would be an excellent idea. Seems to be more interest in ancient history these days so it probably has as good chance as any now.

[@robindahlberg8847]

👍🏻

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

3 years later, did you start learning Norn, have there been any developments?

[@sandyleask92]

@AndreaMastacht-lj4in Truthfully, I have not. I only know words that are spoken in day to day conversations. Since that time, I have acquired a Shetland dialect book that has many words from Norn. If you are interested in more I could scan it for you. I am aware that some are trying to revive and preserve the language. I can find out more for you if interested.

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

@@sandyleask92 That seems very interesting, I'd love to see! Also, I though that the movement for the revival of Norn was dead already, so if you could let me know if it is still active, I'd really appreaciate it.

[@BjorkBrex]

My father always tells me the story when the Shetland fishers came to Suðuroy (South Island in the Faroe Islands) to get water for their trip, the Shetlanders spoke Norn, and the Faroese spoke Faroese, and they understood each others languages.. It's so fascinating. And it's the same with the Lord's prayer: (Norn) Fy vor or er i Chimeri (Faroese) Faðir vár tú sum ert í himni (Norn) halagt vara nam dit (Faroese) heilagt verið navni títt (Norn) Lá Konungdum din cumma (Faroese) komið ríkið títt.. (Norn) Gav vus dagh u dagloght brau. Forgive sindorwara, sin vi forgiva gem ao sinda gainst wus (Faroese) Gev okkum í dag okkara dagliga breyð. Fyrigev okkum sindur vára, so vit fyrigeva teim móti okkum synda...

[@baldurivar]

Björk that’s so cool! 😃 You probably already know but in case you don’t here is the prayer in Icelandic: Faðir vor, þú sem ert á himnum. Helgist þitt nafn, Til komi þitt ríki, verði þinn vilji, svo á jörðu sem á himni. Gef oss í dag vort daglegt brauð. Fyrirgef oss vorar skuldir, svo sem vér og fyrirgefum vorum skuldunautum. Eigi leið þú oss í freistni, heldur frelsa oss frá illu. Því að þitt er ríkið, mátturinn og dýrðin að eilífu, amen. ❤

[@gameon2000]

I know german and english and my granddad was swedish, I could understand almost everything.

[@ole7146]

As a Dane the Shetlandic text sample was not hard to read and understand, the Ocadian sample looked quite diffrent. With your interest in history and languages, you should try and look into “Anglo-Danish” , spoken in the region of Angel (North Germany) up until somewhere in the mid 1800. Anglo Danish had kept many features from old east Norse.

[@sofiaormbustad7467]

Yeah, absolutely! And Fjolde-danish too

[@elsakristina2689]

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Anglo-Danish?

[@ole7146]

@@elsakristina2689 “Angel Dansk”, a dialect of Danish spoken in the region of Angel.

[@toade1583]

@@ole7146 It's actually interesting since some of the Anglo-Saxons come from region of Angel, specifically the Angles(who form the Anglo- part of Anglo-Saxon).

[@arcsta_rr]

Danish are raw. I like them. But I heard they "got rid" of all their accents(?) They are more "norwegian to me than østlendinger. (for us who have a accent

[@PaulEcosse]

There is so much old norse in Scots you'd be here all day.

[@PaulEcosse]

14:10 Well I was going to say yeah, there's even more Danish left over in Scots. That could be down to the Danelaw crowd being pushed north. I'm guessing.

[@NUFC975]

I'm around 30% Scottish and my surnames old Norse originating in Orkney I think my English dialect (geordie) is actually influenced by Norwegian aswel

[@PaulEcosse]

@@NUFC975 Yeah Geordie has that and many other influences if you watch Hilberts specific videos on the north east.

[@user-j4dywwh456]

@@-_pi_- The Geordie and Scots 'bairn' is the actually a holdover from Old English I think while the Yorkshire 'barn' is a Danish loanword from the Danelaw days. However you are right Old English and Old Norse were actually pretty mutually intelligible and Scots could get mistaken for Norwegian when listened to from a distance. Pretty amazing stuff

[@rodjones117]

@@-_pi_- The dialects of Wessex were Saxon and would have had very little specifically Norse/Scandinavian influence. How mutually accessible they might have been is unknowable.

[@AnnaFuschiaScott]

I'm from Orkney, learning Gàidhlig and it always interested me when people asked about my accent in class. Orcadian spoke ‘norn’ ... I would be really interested in getting involved, I'm about to start linguistics.... Do you have a link to the work??? “If thu pit a peedie bit o’ crream oan a cat wid lit’ it auff buey!’ - my uncle referencing a badly grown moustache.

[@Mark_Master1]

I can draw some similarities to Ulster-Scots in that

[@robindahlberg8847]

I would love to go to orkney some day!!!

[@scifispaceman1557]

I might make a discord for the norn language revival

[@robindahlberg8847]

@@scifispaceman1557 cool!

[@scifispaceman1557]

@Chris TheChosenOne orkney is scottish

[@johannesl6978]

Yes! The more living nordic languages, the better! Greetings from Sweden!

[@arcsta_rr]

Word. It's needed these days!

[@HoundofOdin]

Now if we could only revive Pictish.

[@akl2k7]

Too bad there's too little left of that, so that up until a few years ago some linguists claimed it was a non-Celtic, pre-Indo-European language (which, admittedly, would have been super interesting).

[@HoundofOdin]

@@akl2k7 It is a shame. Other than a few place names and personal names, we don't know much about Pictish at all. We know more about the Picts themselves than their language, which is ironic.

[@PoirierG]

@@HoundofOdin If you're interested perhaps you could try learning Welsh? They were closely related and might have still been mutually intelligible when it merged with Gaelic.

[@Skott-c2w]

Duolingo to open new Pictish course soon! 😂 that would be brilliant. I’ve seen the pictures of their original ogram script alphabet but obviously no one knows how it sounds. It adds to their mystery I think

[@HoundofOdin]

@@Skott-c2w We know how Ogham sounds, and someone who can read Ogham can likely read the inscriptions. We just don't know what the words we would be reading mean.

[@ulriknyman9539]

[8:54] Really impressive pronunciation of a complicated danish title.

[@ejensen]

Pronunciation was frankly amazing for a non-native, but the stresses were confusing af.

[@tompao7832]

@@ejensen Since it was comprehensable for a swedish speaker it was not real danish - at least not in its present day copenhagen dialect...

[@rampantmutt9119]

I had no idea that Manx's revival was that successful. Really cool stuff.

[@embryomystic]

They've got a Manx-medium primary school. Funnily enough, it's across the road from Tynwald Hill! I've been there. Very interesting. I'm not sure how many native speakers there are, but Adrian Cain, who is the Manx Language Officer or something, is definitely raising his son speaking it, and I'm fairly certain Brian Stowell (who I met when he spoke at the Celtic language teachers conference I attended) raised his kids speaking it, though they may not be active in the community. Anyway, there are people who've spoken it at primary school, and it's on a lot of signage, on top of all the adult enthusiasts. Incidentally, it's not well-known, but the language never fully died in terms of having no fluent speakers. Brian Stowell learned it as a boy when he was hired to assist the gent from the Irish Folklore Commission in recording some of the last native speakers, and he said the other boy who was likewise hired did too. And if I'm correct that he raised his daughters in it, that's not a very long time without native speakers at all.

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

​@@embryomystic How is the Manx language doing?

[@embryomystic]

​@@AndreaMastacht-lj4in Still chugging away, as far as I know.

[@typhoon2099]

I'm a Shetlander and this is the first time I've ever heard of Nynorn, so I don't see it coming back any time soon. Pretty interesting though! Sidenote: I did some Norwegian lessons locally and an older English couple were there who said they thought they should learn some now that they'd moved here. We do to speak Norwegian, what were they on about?!?!

[@Hrossey]

Aye mate. Tourists come to Orkney thinking we are cutting aboot in long boats and telling Sagas of old times. So I send them tae Glesga, for tales of old Maryhill 😂 2 stabb wounds in the liver and a "giez yer wallet"!

[@wulfric58]

Thanks. Good video. I was in the Shetland Isles 40 years ago, and in the wake of the North Sea oil finds, a political movement arose for independence from the UK, the Shetland Movement. Clearly some Shetlanders felt that a share of the revenue would form a sound economic basis for this. Norn would support demands for autonomy. However, the demographic has been altered over the past 250 years, with Suthmuthers moving to Shetland, so maybe the feeling of Shetlandness has been diluted somewhat. I think Jakobsen suggested that a deliberate policy of population replacement by mainlanders had occurred destroying the use of the language and securing the loyalty of the islands.

[@trondranorquoy5154]

Yes, someone needs to persuade the Danish Government to offer Shetlanders voluntary citizenship (but on the basis of lower taxes than in Denmark) which would guarantee EU citizenship. Then gradually Denmark can take back Shetland in a modern civilised way, and then Norway can step in. Then I woke up...

[@Euroscot9155]

Or maybe there was no great conspiracy from the mainlanders at all and it was just all a great beeg example O' population movements, also in part of the oil boom you mentioned. I'm Caithnessian with Orcadian ancestry and islanders also moved around as the young still do for many reasons I.e. chasing tail and education. My county as does the islands still undergo changes to the folk, its just something that happens, you should quite rightly be proud of your islands and your heritage and remember it, by all means show it off to the tourists but you have to draw a line in the past somewhere with regards to the nationality dilema.

[@cosmicallyconscious5980]

Hi, I am Iván from Lima, Peru and I am absolutely interested in the history and culture of Shetland and Orkney islands. I have just found this video and I am absolutely happy ! What a great new year start 😊

[@heathmahaffey2342]

I’m excited to hear about this. I have learned and now speak Icelandic and Faroese as well. My ancestors lived in the western aisles of Scotland and were part of the Norse-Gael’s just like Icelanders and Faroese. I feel having learned these languages make me feel closer to my ancestors.

[@nigheananndradubh]

The Norse-Gaels in the western isles spoke Gaelic too! I hope you have looked into that as well

[@heathmahaffey2342]

@@nigheananndradubh absolutely! I would love to learn Gaelic as well.

[@nigheananndradubh]

@@heathmahaffey2342 having learned Icelandic you will find the Lewis dialect of Gaelic easy, I've heard some people say they speak with pretty much an Icelandic accent 😁

[@heathmahaffey2342]

@@nigheananndradubh oh wow, I didn’t know that! My Icelandic accent is pretty decent as well so maybe I’d do well!

[@sjaetlan]

I was given this link by a friend. Although I’m not interested in Nynorn as such, I am a Shetlander with a long term interest in my native tongue. Having failed repeatedly to post to this thread, I’ve now discovered that I can’t post links! So the only thing for it is to post raw text, and since I’ve written a long spiel - or rant - I’ll probably have to try to post it in several posts, as replies to myself to try to keep them together. It’s obviously well overkill for a comment, but I’ll also be able to use the result as supporting material for my planned KZbin channel, or channels. My handles ‘Shetlandic’ and ‘Sjætlan' are the names of these channels. Since the word ‘Shetlandic’ is not used in Shetland - I’ll get onto that later - and has been used in this video with a different meaning, and also to avoid convoluted expressions and ambiguity, I’ll use the word ‘Sjætlan’ to describe the language currently spoken in Shetland. That is, what is described in this video as the Shetland dialect of Scots - I describe it as a form of Scots on a Norse substratum. That language is my native language, and Sjætlan(d), which simply means ‘Shetland,’ is the traditional term. The spelling is from an experimental orthography of my own, based on that of Old Norse. (This, by the way, has no more chance of being accepted in Shetland - which is not in any case its purpose - than Nynorn does.) (BTW - the Nynorn project link doesn’t seem to be working.)

[@sjaetlan]

1. On Nynorn Firstly, this whole video manages to give the false impression that there is some sort of movement to revive Norn in Shetland. Nynorn is a conlang - an a posteriori (as opposed to a priori, or invented from scratch) constructed language. I don’t know if any of the people - or the person - involved in it have anything to do with Shetland. At any rate, as several people have commented, hardly anyone in Shetland has heard of it, and there is no chance whatsoever that it is going to be adopted there as a revival project. Shetlanders don’t even want a recognised spelling for their living language, let alone learning a dead one. This makes a lot of the comments made in the video - such as ‘how are they going to revive a language’ and ‘if it goes ahead and it’s successful’ completely irrelevant to begin with. As Griceylipper has indicated below, Shetland already has a distinctive language of its own - although his description of it as a ‘rich dialect of Scots’ is part of the problem. This is why I’m referring to it here as ‘Sjætlan,’ which is my spelling of the native term. The main point, though, is that until recently this language was the spoken language of almost all Shetlanders, and that it is now dying out - going off a cliff-edge - in much the same way that Norn did. However, the fact that it is not recognised as a language, but described increasingly by the mass word ‘dialect,’ means that the Shetland intelligentsia can divert attention from this into other narratives. So a more pertinent question than the revival of Norn is - why, when Shetland already has one of the most distinctive Anglic languages (languages descended mainly from Anglo Saxon) in the world - apart perhaps from pidgins and creoles - has it fallen under the radar to such an extent that people imagine that there might be an attempt to revive a dead one? Why is this regarded as more interesting than the living language that actually exists, which it is assumed can simply be swept aside? (It’s already being swept aside by standard English, but that’s another matter.) And why has that language been sidelined by the Shetland authorities, media, and intelligentsia into a Scottish linguistic and cultural ideology dominated by the literary exploitation of the speech of urban deprivation in the Central Belt of Scotland, as exemplified in Trainspotting and the poems of Tom Leonard? On specific features of Nynorn, I’m bemused by the idea that Nynorn wouldn’t want to retain the rolled Rs of Icelandic. Of all the Nordic languages - I speak some Swedish, and am reasonably familiar with what the others sound like - my R sound is more like the Icelandic than any of them. It’s certainly nothing like the uvular R of Danish, Skånska (southern Swedish) or some Norwegian dialects, or the standard Swedish one that survives in coloration of an adjacent consonant. (I think Finnish Swedish accents may have something more like mine, but I haven’t come across them. Swedes sometimes say I speak like a Finn, but I think that’s mostly the intonation - or rather, lack of it.) It’s certainly nothing like the Faroese R that you usually hear, which seems to me to be retroflex or such, and sounds more like the R of a Caithness than a Shetland accent. Older Faroese recordings have an R more like mine, though, and I notice that Pól Arni Holm of the band Hamradun, who comes from Suðuroy, sings, at least, with one like that. Also, unless I’m missing something, Nynorn seems to misrepresent the Shetland phonology almost as badly as dialect spellings do. It appears to have no way of representing long vowels, and since these are an essential aspect of both Old Norse and Sjætlan phonology - with Sjætlan often preserving Old Norse vowel length - it must obviously have been an essential part of Norn phonology too. But the first page of the Memrise course gives ‘rug’ as the spelling for rúg (my experimental spelling) /ru:g/ (heap) which is an everyday Sjætlan word to me, and certainly has a phonologically long /u:/ sound. As this preserves the long vowel from ON hrúga, and is recorded as having a long vowel by Jakobsen - which is presumably where they got it from - I don’t see how they can simply dispense with any way of indicating this. Similarly nýr (my spelling) /ni:r/ (kidney) ON nýra, another everyday word to me, which they spell ‘nyr.’ Again, Jakobsen records the long vowel. I wondered at first if they were following the Scandinavian method of indicating short vowels by doubling the following consonant - as Jakobsen does - but if that had been the case, they should have had double final consonants on jøl, rum, and hus. I can’t access the project page to investigate this further.

[@sjaetlan]

2. Nomenclature. Secondly, nomenclature. Griceylipper comments that nobody in Shetland uses the word ‘Shetlandic.’ Nobody says it, because it’s an English word, and the native term is ‘Sjætlan(d)’ which simply means ‘Shetland.’ But in the mid to late 1900s the term was often used in writing, as a natural translation of this. What else would you call, in English, the language of a place called ‘Shetland’? But various members of the Shetland media and intelligentsia denigrated it, describing it as ‘jarringly jargonistic,’ ‘obviously political,’ and complaining that it was an attempt to make ‘dialect’ look ‘Nordic’ or ‘like Icelandic,’ and like a language rather than like dialect. And, since the word was not used in speech, this narrative was largely accepted by the Shetland population, and by dialect enthusiasts in particular. So the reason nobody in Shetland uses this term in writing is owing to a campaign of suppression, not unlike that used by political populists to get people to vote against their own interests, intended to keep the native tongue at a level where it can be sidelined. Also, far from the idea that Norn might be revived, the use of ‘Nordic’ and ‘like Icelandic’ as insults shows how anti-Nordic tropes can be used by the intelligentsia and media as a means of populist suppression narratives in Shetland, by restricting the vocabulary which is popularly perceived as being acceptable. This has also been largely effective at altering the nomenclature used in speech. So instead of the native term ‘Sjætlan’ (or ‘Shaetlan’ - see below) being used in writing instead of ‘Shetlandic,’ that term has largely been replaced, in speech as well as writing, not by the term Shetland Dialect - although that is used as well - but by the unqualified mass noun ‘dialect.’ Communications by ShetlandForWirds often use that term in this way, contrasting ‘English’ with ‘dialect.’ This has become so accepted that I have heard people say ‘Sh-dialect,’ switching from ‘Sjætlan’ to what is now perceived as the more acceptable term, and a Shetland poet taking part in a Nordic convention commented that she was the only one writing ‘in dialect.’ This may be partly owing to there being no recognised way to spell the word ‘Sjætlan.’ My pre-experimental spelling of ‘Shaetlan,’ which was designed to represent Shetland phonology accurately using English-like spellings, was once described by dialect enthusiasts as looking like a spelling mistake, presumably because it altered the inaccurate E in the English spelling ‘Shetland.’ When all the other options have been suppressed, the only one left is ‘dialect.’ The effect of this is to rob the language of any perceived status or definition. So people on the Shetland forum Shetlink can complain about ‘crap written in dialect’ and have the offending posts quarantined to a forum created for the purpose. It also enables the local independent radio station - so I am told - to have a non-dialect policy. This, it would appear, is not ‘political.’ As ‘dialect,’ Sjætlan has no written form, and although orthography was mooted in the past, the emphasis now is on showing variations in dialect by differences in spelling. This creates a vicious circle, because those who don’t want to read ‘crap written in dialect,’ or the Shetlink mods who say that ‘dialect’ is difficult to read, and that people who write in it look ‘thick,’ are also opposed to an orthography which would give it a recognised written form.

[@sjaetlan]

3. Remnants of Norn. As regards the remnants of Norn in Sjætlan, again Griceylipper has commented on the pronunciation; but since this is a linguistic video, I’ll make it more specific by using my experimental orthography and phonetic script. The lack of clarity here is again a result of the dialect emphasis, according to which words are spelt as alterations to English with little - and decreasing, as the language itself is replaced by standard English - perception of the underlying phonemes. Sjætlan as a whole has an underlying phonological system, just like any other language, and my orthography is designed with that as a starting point. guster - /gustər/ - (squall.) As Griceylipper states, the first vowel is /u/. (In traditional Scots spelling, the OU grapheme represents /u/, but as this is not normally seen in Shetland, I don’t know the reason for it here. It may possibly be a localised variant - I had some relatives who pronounced nust, normally /nust/ as /noust/. But that isn’t the usual pronunciation.) hægri - /hegri/ (heron.) Again, the dialect spellings cause the problem. The vowel in my pronunciation is /e/ - that is, a closer vowel than the /ɛ/ implied by the ‘hegri’ spelling, if interpreted as reflecting Engish norms, and as it was pronounced in the video. In my pronunciation it’s not a long vowel, as Griceylipper describes it (although Jakobsen does record a long variant) but closer than the one in given in the video. I use the grapheme Æ for this vowel. (Note that this doesn’t conform to Nordic conventions, where Æ would normally be more open than E - as also in the phonetic script below - but it echoes the AE spelling which has become common in the dialect spellings of certain words with that phoneme, and so has a degree of familiarity.) (There is a more complicated problem here, relating to why this phoneme is not normally spelt as AE in this word. Briefly, it’s because, before voiced consonants, this phoneme merges with /ɛ/ in Mainland (of Shetland) type dialects, and with /i/ in North Isles (e.g. Unst and Yell) type ones, so the underlying identity with the phoneme before voiceless consonants - e.g. pæt = peat - is not recognised. In my dialect, it remains distinct and does not merge.) skóri - /sko:ri/ (immature gull.) As Griceylipper states, this has a phonologically long /o:/ vowel. sjalder - /ʃældər/ (oyster-catcher) - OK. kávi - /kæ:vi/ (blizzard) - OK. It can be seen, by comparison with the phonetic script, how my orthography better represents Shetlandic phonology, and how dialect spellings can obscure it. The front open /æ/ sound in the last two words are owing to a mutation that several Shetland vowels undergo before voiced consonants. This does not seem to be either a Scots or Norn characteristic - although the general effect is similar to that of i-mutation in Old Norse, the conditions are different - and may not occur in all dialects of Sjætlan. In the case of the Æ phoneme, it is this pre-voiced allophone which merges with other phonemes in most dialects. The pronunciation would have been better - or more like mine, anyway - if they had been pronounced with the vowel in RP ‘hat’ and ‘badge’ respectively. It should be emphasised that the above words are not ancient relics. Along with many other Norn words, they are part of everyday speech among Shetlanders of my generation (I was born in 1955.) Of course, I may be regarded as an ancient relic...

[@sjaetlan]

4. Historical Linguistiscs and Norn. As regards historical linguistics and the role of Jakobsen, this was once a major focus, not of any attempt to revive Norn, but of recognition of the Norn components of Sjætlan. Since the late 1900s, however, this emphasis has largely been overturned in favour of an emphasis on variety of dialect, which is conceived as ‘just what you speak,’ and an adoption of the anti-orthographic, anti-purist ideology of the most influential figures in Scots language promotion. Particularly influential in this regard has been Brian Smith, Shetland Archivist, who ironically takes a ‘non interventionist’ stance towards ‘dialect.’ As editor of the New Shetlander and general go-to pundit on Shetland matters - who doubtless informs most outside inquirers - he has railed for decades against ‘Nornomaniacs’ and ‘Jeremiahs’ who think that ‘dialect’ is dying out, and that something ought to be done about it. As the key speaker in a 2004 conference on dialect - the booklet printed afterwards had DIALECT in capital letters on the cover - he mentioned Norn only ‘with a view to getting it out of the way,’ comparing Shetland dialect rather to dialects of Dorset as described in novels by Thomas Hardy, and declaring that by comparison we worry too much about it. To describe this natural concern about the demise of one’s mother tongue, he used evocative words like ‘mourn,’ ‘panic,’ ‘agitate,’ ‘agonise,’ ‘moan,’ ‘groan,’ and ‘hyperventilate.’ He also used something I had written, which used Sjætlan in an expository context, as an example of the sort of ‘horrible abortion’ that occurs when ‘dialect’ which has ‘practically no power of abstract expression’ is used where it is ‘not fitted.’ Although he had always maintained that Shetland dialect was not dying out, in a later forum exchange he said that there was no use ‘seiching’ (presumably an attempted dialect translation of ‘hyperventilating’) about it if the only alternative was ‘brainwashing the children.’ This is the narrative which has gained purchase in Shetland, which informs outside inquirers, and under which all efforts are constrained to operate if they are not to be described in public speeches as horrible abortions. It can be seen that in a place where the population has now mostly accepted this anti-Nordic, anti-developmental attitude towards their living native tongue, and where the key speaker at a dialect conference considers that teaching it seriously would be ‘brainwashing the children,’ the idea of reviving Norn per se is beyond phantasmagorical. The obsession with Nordic things described in the video is confined largely to pageantry such as Up Helly Aa, dismissed by those of Smith’s ideology as the relics of 19th Century nationalist romanticism. Similarly, Smith describes interest in Norn as yearning for a mythical golden age. If this video had been on Shetland Dialect rather than Nynorn, it would have had little alternative but to reflect this narrative, because it is the only one left standing. On the other hand, it is clearly this situation which has given rise to the idea that Shetland is like Cornwall or the Isle of Man in speaking only a slightly different form of English - or of Scots, which suffers from the same ideological denigration - and a place where they might be willing to revive a dead and scarcely documented language. Note that, when the video states that Jakobsen was documenting Norn ‘As it was disappearing in the late 19th Century’ this is not strictly correct. What he collected were not so much remembered words from Norn per se - this was mostly in the sayings - as Norn words used in the Sjætlan language at the time, or shortly before that, although many of those were probably already obsolescent. However, as I have said above, many Norn words remain in the everyday speech of my generation, at least. It should be emphasised, however, that Sjætlan as spoken by my generation is a coherent language, not a Frankensteinian assemblage of dismembered parts. There has been a tendency in the past to see it in terms of its antecedents - whether Scots, English, or Norn. But native Shetland speakers do not worry or even know about the origins of the words they use, any more than English speakers worry about which words are from Old English, Norman French, Greek, Latin, or Hindi. The fact that it has always been regarded - by those who write about it, not necessarily by its speakers - as a dialect of something or the remnants of something else are part of the reason why it is in such steep decline.

[@sjaetlan]

5. As a Dialect of Scots. As regards being regarded as a dialect of Scots, this is a relatively recent emphasis. Sjætlan was traditionally regarded as a dialect - as many marginalised languages are - but probably more a dialect of English, although with consciousness of its Scots and Nordic connections. When I was young, fisherman from the North East of Scotland were ‘Skǫtis’ who spoke ‘Skǫti’ as opposed to ‘Sjætlan,’ and incomers from there who settled in Lerwick were known as ‘Lerwík (’Lerrick’) Skǫtis.’ The traditional Shetland cultural and linguistic identity was certainly non-Scottish, and there was a traditional awareness of the deprivation caused by the introduction of Scottish feudalism, including the proverb, ‘Nothing good ever came from Scotland except for dear meal and bad clergymen.’ (Næthing gød ivir kam fæ Skǫtland ales dýr mæl an bad ministers.) However, this perception of Shetland cultural identity has been suppressed - ‘cancelled’ - as effectively as the linguistic one. When a discussion about it started on a forum, and several Shetlanders of my generation agreed that this was the traditional Shetland identity, another member of the Shetland media - Malachy Talack - wrote to ‘quash this talk,’ saying that Shetland identity and language were no more unique than different styles of brickwork in English counties, and mentioning Oswald Mosley. There is no doubt that Sjætlan is most accurately described as a form of Scots. I describe it as a form of Scots on a Norse substratum. It might be said to be a form of Scots roughly in the same way that Norwegian, Swedish and Danish are all forms of Scandinavian. However, the designation as a ‘dialect’ of Scots has the effect, not only of denigrating the Norn element - which is an indispensible part of traditional speech - but of falling under the influence of Mainland Scots ideology. When the Faroese emancipated their language, they had the example of Icelandic to learn from. Since the Norse connection has been cancelled out of the narrative, Shetland dialect enthusiasts only have the example of Scots, which is dominated by an anti-purist, anti-orthographic ideology, and where the literary celebration of urban deprivation - as in Trainspotting - is emphasised over the traditional dialects. One of the most lauded Scots promoters - James Robertson - has written that Scots must not have a standard orthography as that would ruin its valuable ‘less than respectable’ connotations as compared to standard Engish. When I criticised this on one of my websites, I was asked by Shetland dialect enthusiasts to remove my criticisms, as I had been identified by one of Robertson’s cronies as ‘the man who disagrees with James.’ This echoes the Scottish situation, where proponents of orthographic norms are described by writers and academics as ‘language dictators,’ ‘language extremists’ and ‘linguistic fascists,’ and demonstrates how far this Scottish ideology has a grip on Shetland dialect enthusiasm. I have a website on Scots, including a Shetland section. I can’t put in a link, but google ‘Scotsthreip.’ I am planning a KZbin channel or channels, with associated PDFs, which deal with my native tongue - Sjætlan - as a language, using my experimental orthography. So Nynorn does highlight some important questions. Some people put immense dedication into trying to revive languages - whether Cornish, Manx or Wampanoag - which have been dead for a long time, and giving them a written form is always an important part of such efforts. So how has enthusiasm for the living Shetland language been suppressed to the extent that it can only be referred to as ‘dialect?’ Why is it accepted almost without question that it cannot have a written form other than alterations to standard English spellings? And why do ‘dialect’ enthusiasts have as a key speaker at a conference someone who regards it as being a ‘horrible abortion’ if it appears where it is ‘not fitted,’ and considers that the only alternative to letting it die out would be to ‘brainwash’ children?

[@rubeusignis1293]

I can’t help but imagine a fire engine whenever I hear ‘Nynorn’.

[@Fenditokesdialect]

Would you like to do a video on the Germanic influences in French, particularly seeing as it's mainly Frankish and Middle Dutch I'd think it'd be right up your alley

[@rodjones117]

Something on the Alsace language and its relationship to Swiss German (as Alemanic languages) would be very interesting, if you felt like it.

[@jamesabernethy7896]

Shetlander here. I apologise if i don't use the correct terms here, someone much smarter than me will correct me. When speaking giving the example of a Norwegian listening to the cadences of Orcadian, even if they cannot hear the words, it sounds familiar. Please don't quote me on this because there may have been a counter study to disprove it. I'm not even sure who did the study. There was a study done a few years ago that examined how Shetland and Orkney use their inflections in multisyllabic words, especially when beginning a sentence. If a Shetlander said 'Shetland' we would rise with the first syllable with the peak being the T, then dropping with the second syllable. This was said to be a Scandinavian trait. An Orcadian would drop with the first syllable so that the T sound almost disappears, then rise back with the second syllable. Which was said to be like the rest of the UK and much of Europe. Hope someone can set this right and sorry if it's wrong. Great vid and loved the original.

[@a.v.j5664]

Can you make a video about old gutnish (and maybe modern gutnish) the oanguage close to old norse that was spoken in Gotland, and is still spoken in it modern form but today it is a dialect of swedish?

[@samuelscott1113]

I would love something like that

[@a.v.j5664]

@@samuelscott1113 yeah me too! I am a sucker for rare known language and especially ones native to islands!

[@matusmotlo3854]

@@a.v.j5664 Sardinian is pretty interesting too. Phonetically the closest living language to Classical Latin, and a very similar Romance language/dialect used to be spoken across much of North Africa, Corsica and Sicily, dying out sometime after the 12th century due to being replaced with Arabic and Italian.

[@fordhouse8b]

As a child visiting Gotland I had to have my aunt ‘translate’ what her husband was saying to regular Swedish.

[@a.v.j5664]

@@matusmotlo3854 yes! I fricking love ocscure island languages/nations, and sardinian is no different

[@marijntaal1531]

I found this video interesting and would love more videos on the Orkney and Shetland islands. Was going to visit them last year but couldn't because of covid. Hopefully next year!

[@johnboyce8279]

I'd say a good early step would be promoting bilingual signage on the islands. It might be an interesting tourist attraction as well as rebuilding the distinct identity of the islanders. See where it goes from there.

[@perhansson4796]

As a Swede I could understand maybe half the text on the lord’s prayers. The first part in Swedish “ Fader vår i himmelen, helgat vare ditt namn, komme ditt rike, ske din vilja på jorden som den sker i himmelen” Lycka till med nynorn!

[@leornendeealdenglisc]

Fantastic video, Hilbert. I enjoyed this. Thanks for the shoutout at the end. :)

[@BoltBarkingatthemoon]

Oh hey, you finally released this video at long last, been waiting since you mentioning it in the Norn one! (Which I'd like to quickly note, the link you have in the description to said video is linked to start at a time instead of just from the start, which I assume is unintentional.) Coincidentally, lately myself and a couple of others on the Scots discord server have been toying with organising what was made of Nynorn into an easier to reference wiki imitating wiktionary (as the original creator seems to have gone silent for some time and the reconstruction is not 100% complete or always easy to follow on the site), along with doing a little reconstruction of other words often based around Faroese cognates. Norn has always intrigued me, it being revived is something I'd love to see but I agree with you it seems unlikely to happen anytime soon. An idea I had to potentially help with that end was perhaps one day after getting what exists of Nynorn all straightened out and a plan for further vocab reconstruction is to create a teach yourself-style book written in the Shetland Scots dialect for learning Nynorn, to make it more attractive for Shetlanders, but if I ever get around to it is a long way off, my looking at Norn being between other things I already look at.

[@bomba1905]

Reject the UK, embrace tradition, return to Norway

[@DAVEYNESS]

Super interesting! More like this please 👍 from the North of Scotland, looking to try learning Nynorn

[@DaGizmoGuy]

Native Shetlander here. Some points: 1. The word "Shetlandic" is used by basically nobody here except for linguists unaware of the local name. It's just "Shaetlan". 2. In a similar vein, "in Shetland" and "in Orkney" are the correct phrases, rather than "on Shetland / Orkney". You wouldn't say "on Japan". 3. That was a valiant attempt at the pronunciation of "gouster", but in fact it's said in Shetland dialect nearly exactly the same as it is in Old Norse with the /u/ vowel. For some reason this word is used in the intro to John Graham's dictionary, but isn't actually in the wordlist so I can't blame you here! 4. Both "hegri" and "skori" have long vowels. Why Mary Blance pronounces "hegri" with a short vowel on the ForWirds website I have no idea! 5. Jakob Jakobsen's Danish version of the dictionary was published in four volumes between 1908 and 1921, Jakobsen died in 1918. The first volume of the two-volume English translation was published in 1928, and a second was published in 1932. 6. Hugh Marwick, while technically "a Scotsman", was Orcadian himself. The big question - "Will the Northern Isles start speaking Norn again?" What is perhaps most absent from this video is the fact that basically nobody in Shetland is even aware of the Nynorn project. All interest in Nynorn I have seen comes from outside Orkney and Shetland, and in small insular communities such as our islands that is not a recipe for success to obtain any sort of wide adoption. All too often, folk discover what Norn was and wax lyrical about the tragedy of its loss and completely forget that we *chose* to drop Norn. There is a very good paper by archivist Brian Smith on this subject. Shetland especially already has it's own rich dialect of Scots which we speak and we love. And when Shetland dialect is under serious threat of disappearance from English influence, there is no godly way we're going to adopt a under-developed revival of a dead language until the security of our own native tongue is ensured - and, as a native, I can tell you that will take a lot of doing as it is.

[@xeviphract5894]

Thanks for contributing with a local perspective. It's always a key question with revival attempts as to what benefits there will be in becoming fluent. I think Welsh must be the most supported (and legal) language attempting a resurgence in the British Isles and even there, uptake isn't seen as critical to national identity (unlike Hebrew's reintroduction in Israel).

[@sejfzlrrhman]

"Disappearance from English influence". Ahh yes, the historic enemy of the Scots; the English are at it again.

[@rodjones117]

@@xeviphract5894 The essential point here is that Welsh never actually died - there were always pockets of Welsh speakers. The English tried to supress it but (unlike the French with their minority languages) never succeded. Hebrew never really died - it continued to be used as a liturgical language and for religious and ritual purposes, and observant Jewish people would have heard at least some Hebrew pretty much weekly. Personally, I doubt that an actually dead language can, in fact, be resurrected, especially where there are no recordings of the spoken tongue.

[@xeviphract5894]

@@rodjones117 I don't imagine that any revived language would be an exact match to its previous state. As we've seen, the meaning of old words can be lost to time and new ones must be created to describe the modern world.

[@rodjones117]

@@xeviphract5894 Yes, absolutely. Languages are about communication, and therefore evolve. My point is that there is a huge difference between a language that never actually died (eg Welsh) and a completely "back from the dead" language (especially where no recordings of the spoken form exist). As you correctly say, where words lose their function they either a) take on a different meaning (eg "gay"), or b) pass out of use altogether. And living languages create (or borrow) words for new technology and concepts. Both of these processes enable the language to evolve, adapt to changing societal developments, and stay relevant to the speakers' actual lived experience.

[@youtubersofthefuture7638]

I was born and raised in Shetland so I hope that language will come back

[@TayaRamadan-wy1fz]

Are there projects to revive it?

[@quentintin1]

while i may never learn to understand or speak most of these languages (i'm having enough trouble with , coming from a country that actively tried to stifle it's regional languages (France) i find awesome how many of these are seeing a revival by the local populations and them being adopted back into the landscape of their respective areas.

[@rodjones117]

We need a revival of the Alsace dialect. It's terrible the way France, since the First World War, has supressed regional languages. Alsace isn't yet a dead language, but it soon will be.

[@VerbaleMondo]

✓ Revive Norn ✓ Revive Frankish ✓ Revive Gothic ✓ Revive Gaulish ✓ Revive Canadian Irish ✓ Revive Latin ✓ Revive old English

[@jarekdupa687]

Frankish, Latin and Old English literally have living descendants

[@aidanmorgan4630]

Interesting sociopolitical goals

[@Findintype]

Canadian Gailc/irish has native speakers alive!

[@fukpoeslaw3613]

Revive *ProtoIndoEuropean (As far as possible)

[@Findintype]

@@fukpoeslaw3613 no there no cultural point at all

[@johnmacdonald9861]

Til is also a preposition in modren Scots that means same as Norse 'til' "Am Gaan til the shops' would mean 'I'm going to the shops' atleast in my Dundee dialect of Scots.

[@elsakristina2689]

Interesting!

[@Kallikukurinn]

When it comes to reading Snorri, you got to be aware why and how he was writing his works. When he wrote about the gods, he wrote about them in a way that would be appealing to Christians, in a way to draw similarities between Christianity and Ásatrú. It was obviously meant to lessen any condemnations from Christians about the Nordic people's past so that people would think about them as only having been misguided but still having been on the right track. So take Snorri with a bit of grain of salt as he will have to justify the Nordic past in the eyes of Christians. Also "Norn" means "witch" in Icelandic though looking into it, it had a different meaning before Christianity, but there is a little bit of tidbit for you from an Icelander~

[@johnagefrost]

For people interested in such things: My band Hamradun have recorded a version of the Orcadian ballad "Hildinakvæði", where the first half is in Faroese, and we attempt to sing in Orkney Norn in the second half. Out in a couple of weeks 🤘🤘

[@Neophema]

7:07 This happened to me recently when I was in a museum in Glasgow... I would hear people talking at a distance, and I kept thinking it was Norwegian. When I got closer, I could hear that they were Scottish. I don't think they were from Orkney, though, because it happened with several different people.

[@angersay]

The Orkney dialect you mentioned in the cadence section , is unfortunately disappearing gradually here in Orkney . This has certainly kindled an interest for me, and I intend to make this a new project. Very informative and inspiring. Many thanks

[@Artur_M.]

Finally, some good news!

[@IAmGlutton4Life]

I swear to God that I see you at every history KZbin channel, comment section

[@Artur_M.]

@@IAmGlutton4Life Maybe not every single one, but I'm trying. ;D

[@fredriks5090]

Some of the names/placenames written with a "wall" or "voe" is actually their version of Vágur/Våg.

[@trondranorquoy5154]

"Kirkwa" (in Orkney) would make so much more sense than the Anglified "Kirkwall"!

[@fredrikkirderf2907]

This is very interesting I hope more old languages in the British I'm from Sussex and it was depressingly recently I found out that there was a Sussex dialect that existed until recently. Perhaps one day my kids will be able to learn Sussex English not just the standard London English

[@rodjones117]

I'm from Dorset, and I'm 64. My great-grandfather spoke only Dorset dialect, my grandfather spoke both dialect and pretty standard English with a strong Dorset accent. My mother spoke only standard English with a Dorset accent, as do I. Here where I live, in Sherborne, a lot of the older people have strong accents, but none of the young people do - they all sound as if they came from London suburbs (ie not "cockney, but estuary).

[@willrichardson519]

The southern central accent is dying out, apparently.

[@Uradale]

Captivating video! I am a linguist (of Swedish origin) living in Shetland and working on documenting and describing the Shetland dialect (both pre-oil and contemporary). Linguistically speaking Shetland is extremely rich and deeply fascinating. More in the email that I just sent to you. /Prof.Dr. Viveka Velupillai

[@dumskroler]

Have you seen the Shetland section of my Scotsthreip website? I see that I can't post comments with links, but google 'Scotsthreip' and then from the left panel or the Site Guide, choose 'Shetland.' Depending on your area of interest, you may be interested in my article on Shetland phonology: 'Some Characteristics of the Shetlandic Vowel System.' Also the section 'Magnus's Opium,' derived from communications with another linguist, and 'The Study of Shetlandic' about linguistics in Shetland. There is an e-mail address in the contact section.

[@Uradale]

@@dumskroler Very many thanks!

[@sjaetlan]

(Formerly posting as 'Dumskróler') - I've now posted a comment (! -you'll see what I mean by the exclamation mark) under my 'Sjaetlan' handle. Look for the logo on the left.

[@JoiskiMe]

As a Norwegian I'm very interested I listening to Shetlandic now! 🇳🇴 I wonder what dialect the tone will be based on 🤔

[@revinhatol]

Caithness, in mainland Scotland, had its own dialect of Norn.

[@stevencharlton7693]

I live on The Orkney Mainland, and have said for quite some time now that it would be good to see all the place names up here being replaced with their original Norn names. Straumnes instead of Stromness, Kirkjuvagr instrad of Kirkwall, Tannskaraness instead of Tankerness and Meginland instead of Mainland just for a couple of examples. I do think It would be cool to see Norn make a come back in some form up here. It's part of our Islands Herritage and if it can be revived in some shape or form then we should take the opportunity and try!!!

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

2 years later, is there anything being done to revive Norn there?

[@ben.patrick]

History with Hilbert has the best comment section on youtube

[@scoutgamer9448]

Hello there! Do you know any adjectives in the English Language (talking about words like alcoholic and Cimarron) that have weird etymological origins??? Like adjectives derived from the Nyorn and Old Norse for example. Or Aborigen languages from the world, etc

[@johnkilmartin5101]

Off the top of my head: skookum meaning swift or strong comes from Chinook jargon. A chinook wind is a warm wind coming from the Rocky Mountains that causes a rapid rise in temperature. The chinook part meaning from the west in this instance. This meaning comes from a misunderstanding during the Lewis and Clark expedition. The original meaning as a noun refers to a Salishan village and its inhabitants literally sparkling water as in reflecting sunlight.

[@foxoclock-snooze8176]

Peady means small in Orcadian; Towrie (pronounced Toory) means hat, bonnet like Scots Tammy; Cloot means cloth.

[@foxoclock-snooze8176]

Fall the American for autumn comes from the Irish Fómhair; Car as in motor car comes from Irish.

[@laurencemaccarthaigh1130]

With the cornish revival etc. The question is posed is a revival of Cumbric?

[@Kazu89]

There's a project for that as well. If you haven't seen it yet, I can send you some links.

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

​@@Kazu89It is a conlang though... not sure if many people are inrerested

[@AdventureThroughLife]

What's so great about having all these Nordic langauges, is that we all have a degree of mutual understanding of each other and are able to converse without having to resort to English most of the time. We can speak together in something referred to as "blandinavisk" which is a type of common tongue or slang where we all use a mixture of words from the Nordic languages to speak with each other. Adding Nynorsk to the list of spoken languages would make it possible for them to speak to Faroese people and Norwegians without resorting to speaking English.

[@benjaminpujol711]

Oh i am Just learning to read norse at school now

[@sharadchandakacherla8268]

1:49 no, never like in its hay day

[@skyr4]

Palatalisation in that way is common in scandinavia though? Almost all dialects in the mainland weaken initial dj, tj, and g & k before (historical) front vowels to affricates or fricatives, and the dialects in western Norway, Trøndelag and all the northern 2/3s of sweden also do it word medially. In some dialects even word finally in analogy with the definite form, like fisk - fisk'inn > fisk - fiʂ'en > fiʂ - fiʂ'en

[@anulfadventures]

I maybe should have thought of this and posted on one of your Friesian videos but it came to mind while watching this one. In the Early '90s I was in Schleswig doing some family research. My family might be considered Dano-saxon from the Angeln area south of Flensburg. My "guide" was taking me around to all the local cemeteries to visit the ancestors but also around to family members still living. We visited one family and were greeted at the door in a language that had my guide stumped. I asked if they were speaking Plattdeutsch and he waved his hand dismissively saying that it was only a dialect. The family did switch to standard German for the visit but always reverted to their "native" tongue to speak to each other. Here I think is a case of people hanging on to their language in the face of all else. Would Angeln be considered part of the North Friesland language area? Was this just a hold out or has there been a revival of Plattdeutsch in recent years?

[@kato119]

Well if your family were from Angeln then you could describe them as 'Dano Engle' but not 'Dano saxon' The Engles not the Saxons came from Angeln hence the name; the Saxons lived further south. By the way my Ph.D was in Anglo-Saxon and Viking history and people in England did not call themselves 'Saxons'. They referred to themselves as 'Englisc' (sc ceing pronounced sh) or Engelcynn pronounced 'Engel kin'.

[@anulfadventures]

@@kato119 I have this theory all of my own making. As the Engles left Angeln according to Bede, virtually empty, I came up with the idea that Saxon refugees(followers of Windukind) fleeing the depredations of Charlemagne, were settled by the Danish king just behind the Danwerk as a buffer between the Danes and the Franks. Hence the population of modern Angeln might possibly be Dano Saxon.

[@satyr1349]

Yes more! Empathy to the Orkney & Shetlanders from Cymru!

[@archeofutura_4606]

Yeah the British Isles could really use some more native linguistic diversity. I’m honestly jealous of the Welsh for being able to revive their language so well (even though it’s probably the hardest language in western europe)

[@drychaf]

@@archeofutura_4606 Being Celtic, ie; a different branch of Indo-European to the Latin and Germanic branches that typify most of the Western European languages, Welsh is obviously going to be a challenge to learners from those two other branches. The statement "probably the hardest language in western europe" leaves out Basque - as a non Indo-European language, surely the most challenging for all of us in the west? The statement also implies that Welsh is particularly difficult as a language for some reason. It's only as difficult as any other non Latin/Germanic languages within the Indo-European family, as far as I can tell. Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaeliic, Breton, etc, would all offer similar levels of challenge, coming from an English only speaking background. Welsh has the advantage of being quite 'present' - on KZbin, on tv, on radio, in communities, in music, in books, in schools, in classes, etc. That would make learning it easier than less practised languages.

[@archeofutura_4606]

@@drychaf ah yeah you’re right about Basque. I was just recalling my MANY attempts to learn Irish, and finding out later that Welsh is even more grammatically complex. And yes, Welsh and the other Celtic languages are particularly difficult for English or Romance speakers, mainly because they’re so differen. I said Western Europe bc as someone who is currently learning Russian, I know that Slavic languages are demonically difficult for English speakers (and that isn’t even mentioning Hungarian). Welsh is definitely the most “present” of the Celtic languages, which does make it easier to get practice as compared to something like Irish

[@rodjones117]

@@archeofutura_4606 Welsh never died - important difference. There were always native speakers to refer to.

[@claudianowakowski]

Great video. Now I have a new topic to pursue.

[@katsomeday1]

If it can help people reclaim a part of their history or culture, I'm all for it. Very cool and interesting!

[@Armadeus]

if the ibero-celtic language once spoken in galicia got revived as a first language, i will literally move and live there for the rest of my life

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

There are conlang projects, but none are very popular yet

[@richardjbarlow]

You should checkout the Nynorsk romantic language movement, since this can be quite different between regions. This was gathered in the 1800s and because of their geographical remoteness in the fjords, they were not as affected by Danish and Swedish unification. Norwegians can struggle to understand each other since the language dialects can be quite different between the fjords. Bokmål (book language) is a bit influenced by Danish. Perhaps there is some crossover between Nynorn and Nynorsk? I did show Norn to some Norwegians and they said they could recognise some of it.

[@napoleonibonaparte7198]

Norn sounds like the dwarf that had to be left behind because he was more of a liability than Bilbo among Thorin’s Company in their quest to retake the Misty Mountains.

[@bluemountain4181]

Norn built his own ship and sailed west to raid the Undying Lands

[@Zastrava]

Eg er frå Kanada. Min hus eru frå Orknøjon (and that's enough Nynorn for today). As a linguist and a Canadian whose family immigrated from Orkney (generations ago), Nynorn has been something of a pet interest of mine for a while and I'd love to see it get larger and have a sizable Nynorn speaking community. I'm learning it as a way to connect with my family's history and in the off chance I have children, to teach it as their first language if I can get that level of mastery without a local community to learn with. Norn is also one of the lexifiers for a creole local to the province I grew up in called Bungi, spoken by Métis of Orkney/Scottish and Cree or Ojibwe descent. Unfortunately, it's likely extinct.

[@aleksanderbrygmann279]

The first sentence is easily understandable to me, being Norwegian. In case you where interested:)

[@yodorob]

Thank you, Hilbert, for bringing up the example of Hebrew as a very successful effort (in fact, the most successful anywhere in the world) at reviving languages!

[@michaelbevan1081]

I wish I could learn old English, or maybe even Romani (the variant spoken in England), I do remember on the 'Community channel' aired in the UK; that they delved into the Rommi gypsy communities in England, and remembering an elderly woman speaking pure Rommani. I have learnt a few words , though not enough to have a conversation with another speaker, also I assume it's no longer spoken now.

[@chimay3]

Dear Hilbert Being a norwegian myself I was impressed by your norwegian pronunciation. And even more by your danish pronunciation which I struggle with myself. Perhaps you are norwegian?

[@maxopaladinos]

Humanity is something surprising, it's way possible that Norn can be revived as a language and I don't doubt about that.

[@SpiritTemple]

It only takes one future generation to decide "yes, this language revival makes sense, let's do this" and then the entire community switches over. It's very possible Nynorn will become the community language again. Language revitalization is an exciting part of Applied Linguistics today. I live in North America and I've seen a lot of recent success stories surrounding young people learning indigenous languages and using them amongst each other.

[@gandolfthorstefn1780]

In Scottish Gaelic you have words like Bùð spelt Bùth meaning "shop". This is an Old Norse word that gave the English "Booth" with virtually the same phonology but pronounced 'boo' with the dental fricative ð being almost silent or completely silent in most cases.

[@brucemacallan6831]

Norn was also spoken in the Buchan area of NÉ Scotland. My dialect of the Scots language is full of Scandinavian words.

[@Finduszip12]

Impressed by your pronounciations of all languages in your videoes, but was shocked by your Danish pronounciation! Well done! (Wondering if you speak Danish?)

[@11324atafrbrgrdbted]

I did about 10 minutes on the Memrise app and Nynorn is a really interesting language!

[@SamAronow]

The revival of Hebrew began in the late 19th century and there were native speakers again by the outbreak of World War I. Also more Jews who came to Israel came from Arabic-speaking countries than from anywhere else. Also also, Hebrew has 5 million native speakers but 9 million fluent speakers overall.

[@skarpheinnorsson518]

Ðe fact ðat ðe british havent reintroduced þorn and eð is crazy. I always þought ðat ðouse two letters would make a comback.

[@skarpheinnorsson518]

Ps. Im all for Iceland annexing ðe isles in order to give ðem all ðe support ðat ðey need.

[@marinaaaa2735]

English has never used eth. If anything gets revived it would be just þorn

[@zayan6284]

@@marinaaaa2735 i love þorn

[@oyland2954]

@@marinaaaa2735 Eth ð comes from the Irish alphabet, sometimes just a d with a dot over it, now spelled dh or th in modern Irish.

[@ganjafi59]

Don’t forget Æ

[@ArchieT7]

As a Swede, I found the Nynorn sentence in the example much easier to understand than the Faroese. Might have to do with the spelling, Nynorn seemed closer to Norwegian spelling, but I just thought that was interesting

[@ulfurkarlsson5885]

I'm Icelandic, I talk with faroese people in english usually, sometimes faroese people can speak Icelandic, but it's impossible for both when they speak in faroese and I speak in Icelandic. It would have been cool though, because the languages are very similar in many ways, with a bit diffrent pronunciation though

[@Paul020253]

Interesting video very enjoyable, but one question: if Norn was spoken in Caithness as well, are there any remnants of Norn in the Caithness dialect of Scots that can be rescued?

[@trondranorquoy5154]

Look at the placenames!

[@Paul020253]

@@trondranorquoy5154 But what about he Caithness dialect as well?

[@motorcop505]

I was surprised when I heard Kevin MacCleod's "Skye Cuillin." It is used in the incredible podcast Targa Trilogy series of "Origin Scroll," "Ancient Prophecy," and "Dark Quest." I highly recommend it!

[@Alex-ne1fe]

Im currently teaching Shetland Nynorn in Endangered Langauges Society at UCL, If anyone knows a place to practice with other Nynorn learners online pls let me know!

[@AndreaMastacht-lj4in]

You can speak Nynorn? Is there an online community?

[@87g4g3]

I read Shetlandic(Hjaltands eyjar) poetry with an interlinear icelandic translation but the shetlandic accent is to my knowledge almost it's own language. I recommend the book if you can also speak icelandic ,,Hjaltlandsljóð"

[@Dai_Abdurrahman]

Ohh man I cant tell you how much I like your channel^^ I am watching for long time when I think about it actually lol

[@Matt_The_Hugenot]

I wish it were possible to reconstruct the Norse languages spoke in Scotland, Ireland, and England, and to know how long they survived.

[@melissacorbett4180]

So interesting and exciting hearing about how extinct languages can be revived. Thanks!

[@valhalla9688]

You’re welcome Melissa. Have a nice weekend

[@adamender9092]

I was literally wondering about this a few days ago

[@userthomash]

Apparently my family from shetland told me that some parents spoke norn to confuse their kids sometimes

[@ekmalsukarno2302]

Hilbert, can you please make a video on the South Thailand insurgency. Here is a link to help you with your research. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Thailand_insurgency

[@Lord.Kiltridge]

It breaks my heart to hear someone use my old friend Wilhelm's dying words as comedy. I'm kidding. Those weren't his dying words at all. They were: "FOR THE MEMES!!!

[@leonardgibney2997]

I speak a Germanic language call ed English. It's a mixture of German French and some others like Latin and Scandinavian. Some Greek too in the scientific area. How many Orcadians speak Norwegian?

[@farmrgalga]

That was some great kongelig dansk, Hilbert! Sounded like a proper posh old man there. I like it! (Meits der in grapke fan, mar wol tige goed dien. Deens is net makkelik)

[@m_eudk]

08:53 Great pronounciation, but I died :D

[@casperudemark7496]

It should be mentioned that Norn is the same word as Norrøn, just with the last vowel faded out. Norrøn is another word for Old Norse, but also simply meant Norse or Norwegian. The Shetlanders and Orkneyers clearly saw themselves as part of a greater Norwegian (or Norse) culture/nation. Norn was also spoken on Caithness but got extinct much earlier there. Possibly, the population of the Scottish mainland was always somewhat mixed. On the Western Isles, the present population may be a result of a mix between original Gaels and Norwegian settlers, but the settlers appear to have adapted to the language of the original islanders, like in Normandy, possibly because male Vikings married local women. The melody of Scottish Gaelic, of the Outer Hebrides, sounds in my ears completely like the dialect of Vendsyssel, the northern tip of Jutland. When I hear Orcadian, it reminds me of English with a Swedish accent. The samples im the video show Norn adding a v/w in front of the vowel in words like vus (1. person plural pronoun "us", which in Old Norse is oss, and similarly in modern DK/N/S). This feature also exists in Danish dialects, for example in Jutlandic wos (indeed, Jutlandic has an initial w also in words where it exists in West Germanic, but was lost in Norse: worm, wonsdag (Wednesday), wust (ost, cheese), Wojn- (in placenames for Odin/Woden). But also in 19th century Copenhagenish, the pronoun "os" was frequently pronouced vos. I have seen examples of this feature also in some Swedish dialects. So It is not quite clear whether the initial v is an unbroken remnant from an older stage or a later diphtongation of an inital o sound. If it is an ancient relict, then Norn may share this with Jutlandic.

[@gwynethvdoherty9584]

Deffo into this 😎❤️..Nearest Nordic Language to my home country of Ireland ☘️