Swedish å & ö, examples of phonetic reduction.

The Swedish words for "stream" and "island" are monosyllabic vowels.
The second word is also found as the first part of English "island", with an un-etymological s added in spelling.
These words are good examples of the extensive phonetic erosion found in Germanic languages, but also french, where the cognate "eau" also became /o/ over time.

[@staffanlinnaeus1460]

Fun fact: French "eau" is pronounced just like Swedish "å" and comes from the same indo-european root. (I'm no expert, but this is quite obvious.)

[@EVO6-]

Not really pronounced the same

[@gts1300]

Not exactly the same but nice coincidence nonetheless

[@spashia7028]

I remember when learning french I thought it was a funny coincidence that å and eau was similar, since both words indicate something with water, but now it's even more impressive to know both words actually comes from the exact same word and and has changed to (almost) the exact same sound.

[@weepingscorpion8739]

Modern Icelandic ey merges with ei, so ey is pronounced /ei/ (the e might be more open). Interestingly in Faroese, ON ey becomes modern Faroese oy so it is pronounced /ɔi:/ but this word also underwent "skerping" or a second Holtzmann's Law, so the word is oyggj /ɔtʃ:/. The form oy is still found in island names and is often reduced to a simple [i~ɪ~e].

[@LFSDK]

in the north, they also merge ON ei and ey, but probably at a later date, hehe

[@weepingscorpion8739]

@@LFSDK Yup, I speak a northern dialect as my native one. But when discussing Faroese in general, I go for a more neutral Svabo-esque mixture.

[@LFSDK]

@@weepingscorpion8739 tó ikki við hansara rættstaving

[@griffinbeaumont7049]

I believe the outcome in Dutch is "aa," but this word has almost completely fallen out of use as far as I know. Of course, like in other countries, it does surface in place names and the names of streams. There is a place relatively nearby where I live called "Ter Aar" with related "Aardam." When I first heard it, I thought it might indeed be the genitive of Aa, especially in "Aardam," that would be 'dam of Aa.' However, the name of the stream does seem to be "Aar" wherever it appears. Frustratingly, I can't find a good source on the history of the name, so it's just been lingering unresolved in the back of my mind :(

[@ShoutsWillEcho1]

Dayums thats deep

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

It is strange that the prononciation in early old norse is the same as the word eau in French today. But where is the connection to wasser in Germany and water in English?

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

German not Germany.

[@tidsdjupet-mr5ud]

That is another word, "vatn"

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

@@tidsdjupet-mr5ud Another word for water? So there were two words for it??

[@jean-claudewallard9309]

Excuse my confusion. Aqua in latin is water. I thought we were on words meaning water. But it was all about islands, right?

[@grimmcreole44]

Ö means Island, å means river; both share an etymological root with aqua in proto indo-european "hekweh". Vatten, wasser & water also share an etymological root in PIE "wodr".

[@LFSDK]

a æ u' å æ ø u' i æ å

[@evatzug]

this is probably a valid sentence in some norwegian dialect

[@themarxologist]

@@evatzug It's a sentence in the danish dialect of southern jutland. It means something like "I am out on the island in the river"

[@lhpl]

​​@@themarxologistbeing a speaker of south jutic (although not so often in recent years) I believe there may even be a slight difference in pronounciation of the two 'å's. The first, meaning 'on', is more straight 'å', whereas the second tends a bit towards 'o' (and is also longer.) Now if I was also on that island, I could say "æ æ å u å æ ø i æ å." The new 'å', meaning "also" (Danish - jutic? - old usage of "og" = "and") here is pronounced in a third way, more... open?

[@lhpl]

​@@themarxologistoh, also, the sentence as it was in the original, beginning with 'a', is either from another part of Jutland, or, if south jutic, from the area around Haderslev. The personal pronoun (English "I") is 'a' in most of Jutland, but 'æ' in most south jutic and west jutic. (There is probably a map somewhere showing more precisely how this varies.)

[@HenrikBergpianorganist]

E ä e å, å i åa ä e ö.

[@aquenwisey]

GODLIKE VIDEO AGELESS TONGUES

[@gustafduell4948]

Det känns som att något är diskutabelt i ljudteorierna när alla rekonstruerade orden uttalas som med tandläkarkuddar i kinderna men alla besläktade språk inte uttalar det så. Ämne för en film? 🙂

[@tidsdjupet-mr5ud]

Vad menar du egentligen? Är det -w- du syftar på?

[@gustafduell4948]

@tidsdjupet-mr5ud vet inte. (jag har knappt studerat ljudändringar alls utan tycker din kanal är intressant). Men de rekonstruerade orden låter så ovanliga jämfört med orden i andra europeiska språk, inbillar jag mig. Som om du håller ut kinderna när du uttalar de orden, eller har tandläkarkuddar där. Hur säker är man på uttalet av rekonstruktionerna? Måste kolla en gång till.

[@tidsdjupet-mr5ud]

@@gustafduell4948 I det första exemplet är det precis samma ord som "acqua" i dagens italenska, bara med lång ändelsevokal.

[@gustafduell4948]

Nu har jag kollat på den många gånger... det är nog uttalshastigheten jag funderar över. Spelar du filmen 1.25 eller 1.5 gånger snabbare låter de gamla orden mer som vardagsanvända ord. I alla fall i mina öron. Spännande. (Ibland känns det som man pratar fortare och fortare. Inspelningar på oss barn och pappa på 70 talet låter nästan som ett annat språk jämfört med hur det pratas nu.)

[@rudde7918]

​@@gustafduell4948jag ger svar på engelska: we can be pretty certain of the sounds of the reconstructions. One piece of evidence are loanwords in different languages, that were borrowed when the vowels still hadn't changed. For Germanic languages, there exist many Germanic loanwords in Finnish, that have fossilized the state of the Germanic words as they were historically.