In modern German the word for "we" is "wir", while in some german dialects the word for "we" is "mir" or "mer" and i now finally got why that is! (assuming the same mechanic is going on in german)
@@mricegerman9296 In Old Norwegian, _mér_ could mean _we_ . In modern Norwegian, you still hear people say _me_ (pronounced kinda like _meh_ ) when they say _we_ instead of the more common _vi_ .
@@flensdude Indeed. l am a 'me' user myself. 'Me' seems to be the most common form in Western and Central Norway. The Nynorsk language traditionally preferred Me over Vi as it was the most uniquely Norwegian form. Today both seem to have equal status in Nynorsk.
Hard to say if the same process occured. For all I know, 1st person pl. forms never ended in -m in German. It's either -emēs or -ēn in Old High German, and Middle High German already exclusively exhibits -en.
Probably because it's attested much later, Faroese isn't mentioned but it's follows Old Norwegian quite closely: ø and ǫ have merged as ø, while ǿ and æ are separate: ǿ has merged with ø/ǫ while a, é and æ have all merged: a is still written as a while æ and é are both written as æ: so vér > vær. The form with m for the 1st person plural is attested in what we call Mediæval Faroese (but I have seen it called Old Faroese, too) in the early 15th century but it's not in use today (probably because we relexified the dual form to become the new plural form). Hr- > r- and hv > kv are also old changes in Faroese and already in the 15th century we see spelling mistakes indicating this. Þ is also lost early. In the 15th century Húsavíkarbrøvini you see evidence of this by having two Latin-derived words misspelled: "hrentadi" and "þranskrifta bref"
First I fell in love with Scandinavian languages because I started to study Swedish at the university and after 3 years I still do and I still love it! I really hope that someday soon Duolingo ads Icelandic, that would seriously be my dream come true. Thank you for this channel!
In my native dialect of Swedish (in SW Finland) we still use some of the diphthongs, especially ei (e.g. sten -> stein, en/ett -> ein/eitt, ben -> bein). Also, Å is often pronounced as a long O (e.g. två -> tvoo, båt -> boot, grå -> groo, "tvoo groomoola plootbootar"). We also have unique feature where K and G remain hard where modern standard Swedish softens them into CH/SH/J in words like kyrka, torg, kärring (käring), kärra (kärrå), älg, arg, geting (geiting), varg etc. Suffixes like -er (esp. for adjectives, e.g. arger, glader, röder, ståorer), -in (instead of -en) are also common. We also sometimes use personal prouns like han/hon for inanimate objects instead of den/det.
The "Old" diphtongs exist in most of Norway except some of the border area to Sweden, then in Jämtland and a small part of Dalarne in Sweden, as well as Norrbotten and Västerbotten. Also common in Finland and Estonian Swedish. "New" diphthongs like á>ao and ú>ou are scattered all over. Southern Sweden, Northern Sweden, Finland, places in Norway, Denmark, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Some have "reinvented" the old diphthongs that way, for example Elfdalian: bein>ben>bien her>her>hier
Finland Swedish dialects are, along with Swiss German and Dalecarlian dialects. The only living Germanic languages that don't lengthen open syllables and retain the old medieval quantity system.
Finnish Swedish and Swedish spoken along the coastline of Swedish Norrland (Northland) are ctually surprisingly similar if you look below the surface. For example I have a friend that is born outside Vasa and tuned down her typical Finnish Swedish pronunciation when she moved to Stockholm but kept her choice of words, the way of building sentences, some melody, diphthongs etc . She later moved to northern Hälsingland and if you did not know it you would not believe she wasn't local from the way she speaks. She can switch over between the two accents but you can still hear the similarities in the core. Interesting in the context is that the Finnish Swedish area where she was born is just right across the water from northern Hälsingland...
Could it be ( historical viewed ) because of a kind of forgotten legend about the gutnish people and what they achieved that appears? . Apparently most people knows the word or at least the style/art gothic but of what I can see it seems like Gotland and its people had a greater story than nobody really knows today :)
@@JacksonCrawford The modern "dialect" gutnish is almost unintelligible to me as a swede, even though they basically speak the same language. I understand Norweigian much better than Gutnish. You should make a video about it :)
Now I understand why some people say Afrikaans sounds sort-of Scandinavian. When you said "ek skýt", I had to replay that bit, because it sounds exactly like Afrikaans "ek skiet". Weird how the pronunciation went that way... It also means the same thing btw, just so you know ;)
In most of the written east Norse text the diphthongs have disappeared. But it is not true in all of the area. In Northern Sweden and the Swedish dialects in Finland and Estonia still have the diphthongs. þreyttr - Old Norse troyt - Pitemål trøyt - Norwegian trött - Swedish
I totally agree that it is defiantly a feature if "standard Swedish" but when i comes to dialects I do not agree. Sure the dialects with more political power in Sweden and have been counted as a bit more sophisticated during history (the dialects around lake Mälaren) do not use it but many of the northern dialects still use diphthongs. The same is true in the south in Scania, Blekinge and Småland (all was, or bordering, to east Danish) they use diphthongs (and triphthongs). Many dialects in Värmland, Dalarna, Härjedalen also use diphthongs. And as said Finnish Swedish and Estonian Swedish use diphthongs too. That leaves the dialects in the political heartland of around lake Mälaren and West- and East Götaland (Götamål and Sveamål) on which Standard Swedish was built.
I might add that the Estonian Swedish dialects use forms like "Stein", "Bein" etc and the settlement there as been tracked down to originate from Öland during the 1200s so well after the split between west- and east Norse (if I got the time of the division right).
@@JacksonCrawford in 2020 dialicets are pretty much extinct in Denmark and Sweden - except from Skånsk on the island of Bornholm which has been reduced to danish with skånsk pronouncation applied. Skånsk as a dialect is also pretty much replaced by standard swedish in Skåne, Halland and Blekinge. On the coast north of Copenhagen Skånsk was widely spoken until only 100y ago.
Your channel is so informative, thank you so much! I'm also dreaming of a video of the correct pronunciation of the FULL version of the song Þat mælti mín móðir. Noticed that every performer pronounces the words differently, and also, absolutely NO ONE out there does the full song, only the first two verses instead of the four. Would be so awesome if a real expert could shed the light on what would be the most likely way this ancient text would have sounded in Old Norse
Bothnian(Westrobothnian and Norrbothnian) is considered be some to be its own language. Old Norse hw- became w- in Bothnian dialects, but w- became v-. There are also a few dialects in the south that have preserved diphthongs, like the Lima and Transtrand dialects.
There are similar differences in German dialects compared to standard German concerning umlauts. The example "draumr"/"dröm" translates to "Traum" ([ˈtraʊ̯m] standard German) and "Dröm" ([ˈdrøːm] lower Rhine area dialect). I find it fascinating how dialects retained different features.
Very informative. Im a dane with a teacher background (Majored in danish, german and math and fluent in both german and english) Im working in a nordic cross border IT company for 15y. I have no issues reading, understanding modern norwegian, swedish and finno-swedish or speaking Danish in a way that swedes, norwegians or finns understands - but understanding and reading even simple Icelandic requires so much concentration. I want to learn to understand both spoken and written modern Icelandic and Faroese. These videos in english about both old english and old norse are surprisingly helpfull.
It always surprises me that both Norwegian and Icelandic are descended from Old West Norse. If anything, certain Norwegian dialects in the East sound similar to Swedish to me, with the sing-song accent. Danish seems like the odd language out, with its guttural sounds and weird d sound.
I've started seeing the y -> ju difference everywhere when comparing Norwegian and Swedish. Examples: Lys -> Ljus Dyr -> Djur Syk -> Sjuk But these words are the same in Norwegian and Danish, so did this difference occur later, when Swedish and Danish had split off from the common Old East Norse?
It is "östnordisk w-brytning", it happened around 8-900, and happened in most of Swedish and the Danish isles, but not in Norwegian, Jutland or Standard Danish, probably by Jutlandic influence. For words like "sjuta". "Sjuk" comes from sjúkr and has the "sju" in both Norwegian and Icelandic as well though.
Vatterholm had a good answer. I'd add that this gets confusing in Norwegian since there's often one form in Nynorsk (sjuk, ljos) and another Danish-derived form in Bokmål (syk, lys)--and sometimes you can mix and match. Sometimes this is a case of Danish (and some Norwegian) experiencing progressive J-umlaut (Old Norse /sjúk/ becomes /sjýk/ because the /j/ fronts the following back vowel, and then the /j/ disappears because it now precedes a front vowel).
There are also manuscripts in Old Faroese, fx "Seyðabrævið" from 1298: www.history.fo/index.php?id=12&imgid=43531&cHash=7ba9d965016a80e78ab4feed7732e1f0
What would be interesting if Scanian and Gutnish were looked into, after all they are how to say, outliers compared to the rest of the Old Scandinavian languages.
In southern German dialects like Bavarian and Swabian-Allemannic (in Germany and Switzerland) the pronomes MER/MIR are still used until the present time in the sense of WIR, for example: "mir/mer han" - wir haben (Swabian-Allemanic); mir ham - wir haben (Bavarian). How do you think the Goths and the Vikings (and other Germanic tribes of the time) understood each other without a translator?
Jackson Crawford in 2017: I'll probably eventually make a separate video on Old Gutnish. Random French accented guy: 4 years later... Subscribers: Any day now ... :)
The northern dialects of Swedish (specifically the ones in the "middle north") are a bit of a mix between the East Norse (specifically the Svea dialects from Uppland) and West Norse (specifically the dialects from Trondelag) mixed with a local flavor developed over the (thousands of) years. In those dialects the diphthongs are still in use. And in Jamtskan (the dialect/language spoken in the Swedish province of Jämtland) they have both several grammatical details as well as sounds that are specific to West Norse, some preserved in Icelandic other not. However this is still part of how modern Swedish people talk in those regions. The northern provinces are often forgotten in these contexts and the fact that they only became a integrated part of Sweden in the 14th century and could just as well have become part of the Kingdom of Norway instead (like Jämtland was for many years). So how do we categorize if peopled talk west Norse or east nose in these provinces, or a mix? If a mix what would that be called? If they are mainly east Norse in features then is correct to say that the diphthongs was not part of east Norse? :)
English Old West Norse Old East Norse Proto-Norse mushroom s(v)ǫppr svamper *swampuz steep brattr branter *brantaz widow ekkja ænkia *ain(a)kjōn to shrink kreppa krimpa *krimpan to sprint spretta sprinta *sprintan to sink søkkva sænkva *sankwian
tibs2403 my guess is yes because they don't have the cognates that english has to springboard off, but thats just vocabulary. i imagine they have about a comparable time learning the archaic grammar
My mother's family were Icelandic immigrants (to the Winnipeg area) and almost immediately lost the language altogether. I don't think it would be worthwhile for me to learn it not (outside of an academic interest) at this point as I understand that all Icelanders speak fairly fluent English.
Wonder when the lj-, dj- hj-, gj- in swedish all became pronounced as j, and in the case of gj almost always spelled as g or j... in norwegian they say lys, but is swedes ljus (jus) (meaning "light"), dyr in norwegian and danish but djur (jur) in swedish for animal (cognate of dear in english), "helt" in norwegian (not sure about danish) and "hjälte" (jälte) in swedish for hero, although I think some finland swedish speakers still pronounce the l, and h in ljus and hjärta and such and some old recordings like from the 40s and even later of acting and singing people pronounced the h in hjärta even in modern swedish from sweden, but i don't know if they actually pronounced it in daily speech or just for this more formal and theatrical speech and singing.
Unremarkable Also note that in Norwegian we can choose whether we want to say “djup” (jup) instead of “dyp”. Also, in some nynorsk dialects one can say “ljos” (jos) instead of “lys”. Just as a little heads up. 🙂
Why doesn't OEN use a J in "skiuta"? In Sweden today, we write it "skjuta". Are they just different spelling conventions or is there another explanation?
Skiuta was the spelling in (at least) Old Swedish (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skiuta, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swedish#Orthography ). Consistently using 'j' is fairly modern: sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngre_nysvenska#Ortografi You might've heard of Lars Johan Hierta (hjärta in modern spelling).
why doesnt this apply to gutnish? I can't even find that many spoken samples of the language, it makes it ever more interesting. I love the video btw :)
If you search it as a Swedish dialect you can get quite a few examples of it. It is "Gotländska" in Swedish, or "Gutiska", "Gutemål" or "Gutamål". There are videos on youtube :)
I think I finally get why your Danish sounds a a little strange (yes, I realise you speak Norwegian, not Danish, this is in no way meant to be overly critical!). You don't mumble enough! No, really, try mumbling a little bit, it'll sound much closer to native speech :p
Why modern norwegian and swedish sound more similar than modern swedish and danish if swedish and danish come from old east norse and norwegian from old west norse? Or is it a perspective thing? I'm finnish, yet i hear lots of local swedish daily here.
@@Alex.af.Nordheim yes, Danish is influenced by german/french. Me as a Norwegian understands swedish better than Danish, Even tho Norwegian come from old West Norse while swedish come from old east norse
Norwegian dialects (rural ones) derive from Old West Norse, while the most common official language (Bokmål) is more Danish (so East Norse). Norwegian has a split identity due to is complex history (being part of Danmark for a long time)
Erik bokmål (when it started to be developed after independence) closely followed the speach of the Bergen elite. In that sense in was a spoken standard.
@@Alex.af.Nordheim no french in danish. Lot of Low German, Frisian & Old English sounds in Danish. Fun fact: Danish was the administrative language in Norway for +400 years. In the same period Low German was the administrative language in Denmark. Danno-Norwegian state consisted of Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Schleswig & Holstein (+ Gothland & the Scanian lands Halland, Blekinge and Skåne - Scanian was widely spoke on the Danish side of Øresund until 100y ago). Denmark was much more multilingual with east norse, west norse and low german dialects evenly represented in Copenhagen. High German has influenced Swedish quite a bit which is why High German speakers finds its easier to learn Swedish than Norwegian or Danish. Until about 100-200y ago Danish and Swedish where much closer than today and the mutual intelligibleness between dialects spoken in Stockholm and Copenhagen only disappeared 50y ago along with the decline of danish and swedish regional dialects.
Wrong. When the Norwegians settled in Iceland they spoke Old West Norse. It was only after that when the Old West Norse started to split into Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian.
Zerx True, but it is still a different language from Old Norwegian and Norwegian. Saying that Icelandic came from Norwegian is like saying that my brother is my father.
Question: Is it possible that the speakers of old norse just drop the personal pronouns just like in Modern Spanish since the verb is conjugated according to each personal pronoun?
When talking about shooting. You say S K I * * * *. U pronounce the letters individually. But in modern (Swedish at least) we use the very common sje-sound [ɧ]. Wasn't that used back then?
How do you think is it a coinfidence that the pronouns han/he and hon/she match with the German names of the animals Hahn/rooster and Huhn/hen? Something different: I never heard you talking about when and why all the north Germanic languages lost the N in the end of the infinitive, while west Germanic languages preserved it: germ. geb-en, dtch. gev-en, oldengl. geofan.
In modern German the word for "we" is "wir", while in some german dialects the word for "we" is "mir" or "mer" and i now finally got why that is! (assuming the same mechanic is going on in german)
I was thinking the same thing. I'm a swiss and I say "Mir" instead of "Wir" interesting
And in Yiddish.. ‘we’ is מיר (mir)
@@mricegerman9296
In Old Norwegian, _mér_ could mean _we_ . In modern Norwegian, you still hear people say _me_ (pronounced kinda like _meh_ ) when they say _we_ instead of the more common _vi_ .
@@flensdude Indeed. l am a 'me' user myself. 'Me' seems to be the most common form in Western and Central Norway. The Nynorsk language traditionally preferred Me over Vi as it was the most uniquely Norwegian form. Today both seem to have equal status in Nynorsk.
Hard to say if the same process occured. For all I know, 1st person pl. forms never ended in -m in German. It's either -emēs or -ēn in Old High German, and Middle High German already exclusively exhibits -en.
Probably because it's attested much later, Faroese isn't mentioned but it's follows Old Norwegian quite closely: ø and ǫ have merged as ø, while ǿ and æ are separate: ǿ has merged with ø/ǫ while a, é and æ have all merged: a is still written as a while æ and é are both written as æ: so vér > vær. The form with m for the 1st person plural is attested in what we call Mediæval Faroese (but I have seen it called Old Faroese, too) in the early 15th century but it's not in use today (probably because we relexified the dual form to become the new plural form). Hr- > r- and hv > kv are also old changes in Faroese and already in the 15th century we see spelling mistakes indicating this. Þ is also lost early. In the 15th century Húsavíkarbrøvini you see evidence of this by having two Latin-derived words misspelled: "hrentadi" and "þranskrifta bref"
First I fell in love with Scandinavian languages because I started to study Swedish at the university and after 3 years I still do and I still love it! I really hope that someday soon Duolingo ads Icelandic, that would seriously be my dream come true. Thank you for this channel!
Zane L They should add Icelandic and Faroese.
In my native dialect of Swedish (in SW Finland) we still use some of the diphthongs, especially ei (e.g. sten -> stein, en/ett -> ein/eitt, ben -> bein). Also, Å is often pronounced as a long O (e.g. två -> tvoo, båt -> boot, grå -> groo, "tvoo groomoola plootbootar"). We also have unique feature where K and G remain hard where modern standard Swedish softens them into CH/SH/J in words like kyrka, torg, kärring (käring), kärra (kärrå), älg, arg, geting (geiting), varg etc. Suffixes like -er (esp. for adjectives, e.g. arger, glader, röder, ståorer), -in (instead of -en) are also common. We also sometimes use personal prouns like han/hon for inanimate objects instead of den/det.
The "Old" diphtongs exist in most of Norway except some of the border area to Sweden, then in Jämtland and a small part of Dalarne in Sweden, as well as Norrbotten and Västerbotten. Also common in Finland and Estonian Swedish.
"New" diphthongs like á>ao and ú>ou are scattered all over. Southern Sweden, Northern Sweden, Finland, places in Norway, Denmark, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
Some have "reinvented" the old diphthongs that way, for example Elfdalian:
bein>ben>bien
her>her>hier
Finnish Swedish is definitely highly conservative and a fascinating subject all its own.
Finland Swedish dialects are, along with Swiss German and Dalecarlian dialects. The only living Germanic languages that don't lengthen open syllables and retain the old medieval quantity system.
That is also the case in at least one Norwegian dialect.
Finnish Swedish and Swedish spoken along the coastline of Swedish Norrland (Northland) are ctually surprisingly similar if you look below the surface. For example I have a friend that is born outside Vasa and tuned down her typical Finnish Swedish pronunciation when she moved to Stockholm but kept her choice of words, the way of building sentences, some melody, diphthongs etc . She later moved to northern Hälsingland and if you did not know it you would not believe she wasn't local from the way she speaks. She can switch over between the two accents but you can still hear the similarities in the core. Interesting in the context is that the Finnish Swedish area where she was born is just right across the water from northern Hälsingland...
I just watched your sober video, and I struggle with that , but it shows, you look healthier now, keep it up!!!
Yeah, Dr. C! Do a Gutnish vid. That would be sick!
I still have no idea where this recent popularity for Old Gutnish is coming from.
Could it be ( historical viewed ) because of a kind of forgotten legend about the gutnish people and what they achieved that appears? . Apparently most people knows the word or at least the style/art gothic but of what I can see it seems like Gotland and its people had a greater story than nobody really knows today :)
@@JacksonCrawford The modern "dialect" gutnish is almost unintelligible to me as a swede, even though they basically speak the same language. I understand Norweigian much better than Gutnish. You should make a video about it :)
Maybe since the Goths came for Götaland and Gutnish kinda resembles Gothic a little.
I like this one. I hope you go into more detail on different norse dialects in the future
Now I understand why some people say Afrikaans sounds sort-of Scandinavian. When you said "ek skýt", I had to replay that bit, because it sounds exactly like Afrikaans "ek skiet". Weird how the pronunciation went that way... It also means the same thing btw, just so you know ;)
In most of the written east Norse text the diphthongs have disappeared. But it is not true in all of the area. In Northern Sweden and the Swedish dialects in Finland and Estonia still have the diphthongs.
þreyttr - Old Norse
troyt - Pitemål
trøyt - Norwegian
trött - Swedish
That's true, but the monophthongs are a very diagnostic feature of "standard" Swedish and Danish and the most-spoken dialects in those countries.
I totally agree that it is defiantly a feature if "standard Swedish" but when i comes to dialects I do not agree. Sure the dialects with more political power in Sweden and have been counted as a bit more sophisticated during history (the dialects around lake Mälaren) do not use it but many of the northern dialects still use diphthongs. The same is true in the south in Scania, Blekinge and Småland (all was, or bordering, to east Danish) they use diphthongs (and triphthongs). Many dialects in Värmland, Dalarna, Härjedalen also use diphthongs. And as said Finnish Swedish and Estonian Swedish use diphthongs too. That leaves the dialects in the political heartland of around lake Mälaren and West- and East Götaland (Götamål and Sveamål) on which Standard Swedish was built.
I might add that the Estonian Swedish dialects use forms like "Stein", "Bein" etc and the settlement there as been tracked down to originate from Öland during the 1200s so well after the split between west- and east Norse (if I got the time of the division right).
@@JacksonCrawford in 2020 dialicets are pretty much extinct in Denmark and Sweden - except from Skånsk on the island of Bornholm which has been reduced to danish with skånsk pronouncation applied. Skånsk as a dialect is also pretty much replaced by standard swedish in Skåne, Halland and Blekinge. On the coast north of Copenhagen Skånsk was widely spoken until only 100y ago.
Amazing video! Very glad I discovered this channel.
Bøker (modern norwegian) isn't normally pronounced how you said it at 8:45 though
“The fad for Old Gutnish that’s out there in the world”
I love historical linguistics
Your channel is so informative, thank you so much!
I'm also dreaming of a video of the correct pronunciation of the FULL version of the song Þat mælti mín móðir. Noticed that every performer pronounces the words differently, and also, absolutely NO ONE out there does the full song, only the first two verses instead of the four. Would be so awesome if a real expert could shed the light on what would be the most likely way this ancient text would have sounded in Old Norse
10:19 but some swedish dialects of older people here in the north has the "ei/äi/ai". f.ex. "hwo hait du?" (vad heter du? / what is your name?)
Bothnian(Westrobothnian and Norrbothnian) is considered be some to be its own language. Old Norse hw- became w- in Bothnian dialects, but w- became v-.
There are also a few dialects in the south that have preserved diphthongs, like the Lima and Transtrand dialects.
Interesting that Danish changed to 'vand' (water) where the sort of represents 'stød' so it's [van'].
Nice vid! Greetings from Norway🇳🇴
There are similar differences in German dialects compared to standard German concerning umlauts. The example "draumr"/"dröm" translates to "Traum" ([ˈtraʊ̯m] standard German) and "Dröm" ([ˈdrøːm] lower Rhine area dialect). I find it fascinating how dialects retained different features.
does anyone know where I could learn old east Norse
or Viking norse
Thank you very much, Dr. Crawford!! :D
That was really informative!
Very informative. Im a dane with a teacher background (Majored in danish, german and math and fluent in both german and english) Im working in a nordic cross border IT company for 15y. I have no issues reading, understanding modern norwegian, swedish and finno-swedish or speaking Danish in a way that swedes, norwegians or finns understands - but understanding and reading even simple Icelandic requires so much concentration.
I want to learn to understand both spoken and written modern Icelandic and Faroese. These videos in english about both old english and old norse are surprisingly helpfull.
It always surprises me that both Norwegian and Icelandic are descended from Old West Norse. If anything, certain Norwegian dialects in the East sound similar to Swedish to me, with the sing-song accent. Danish seems like the odd language out, with its guttural sounds and weird d sound.
I've started seeing the y -> ju difference everywhere when comparing Norwegian and Swedish. Examples:
Lys -> Ljus
Dyr -> Djur
Syk -> Sjuk
But these words are the same in Norwegian and Danish, so did this difference occur later, when Swedish and Danish had split off from the common Old East Norse?
It is "östnordisk w-brytning", it happened around 8-900, and happened in most of Swedish and the Danish isles, but not in Norwegian, Jutland or Standard Danish, probably by Jutlandic influence. For words like "sjuta".
"Sjuk" comes from sjúkr and has the "sju" in both Norwegian and Icelandic as well though.
Vatterholm had a good answer. I'd add that this gets confusing in Norwegian since there's often one form in Nynorsk (sjuk, ljos) and another Danish-derived form in Bokmål (syk, lys)--and sometimes you can mix and match. Sometimes this is a case of Danish (and some Norwegian) experiencing progressive J-umlaut (Old Norse /sjúk/ becomes /sjýk/ because the /j/ fronts the following back vowel, and then the /j/ disappears because it now precedes a front vowel).
There are also manuscripts in Old Faroese, fx "Seyðabrævið" from 1298:
www.history.fo/index.php?id=12&imgid=43531&cHash=7ba9d965016a80e78ab4feed7732e1f0
Awesome as usual!
Do any publications exist specifically for Old Norwegian, or are they a part of the general Old Norse secondary literature?
I wish I could do research with you, you study exactly what I'm interested in!
My family came from Central & Eastern Norway. Which side would Central Norway’s language be picked up or is both being used by Central ? Thank you !
What would be interesting if Scanian and Gutnish were looked into, after all they are how to say, outliers compared to the rest of the Old Scandinavian languages.
Some mean that Old Gutnish is not a "branch" of Old East Norse but is something besides Old West Norse and Old East Norse.
In southern German dialects like Bavarian and Swabian-Allemannic (in Germany and Switzerland) the pronomes MER/MIR are still used until the present time in the sense of WIR, for example: "mir/mer han" - wir haben (Swabian-Allemanic); mir ham - wir haben (Bavarian).
How do you think the Goths and the Vikings (and other Germanic tribes of the time) understood each other without a translator?
Jackson Crawford in 2017: I'll probably eventually make a separate video on Old Gutnish.
Random French accented guy: 4 years later...
Subscribers: Any day now ...
:)
Do you have videos of just Old East Norse/Old Danish??
The northern dialects of Swedish (specifically the ones in the "middle north") are a bit of a mix between the East Norse (specifically the Svea dialects from Uppland) and West Norse (specifically the dialects from Trondelag) mixed with a local flavor developed over the (thousands of) years. In those dialects the diphthongs are still in use. And in Jamtskan (the dialect/language spoken in the Swedish province of Jämtland) they have both several grammatical details as well as sounds that are specific to West Norse, some preserved in Icelandic other not. However this is still part of how modern Swedish people talk in those regions. The northern provinces are often forgotten in these contexts and the fact that they only became a integrated part of Sweden in the 14th century and could just as well have become part of the Kingdom of Norway instead (like Jämtland was for many years). So how do we categorize if peopled talk west Norse or east nose in these provinces, or a mix? If a mix what would that be called? If they are mainly east Norse in features then is correct to say that the diphthongs was not part of east Norse? :)
Trondelag is east norse.
...and Skånsk is very much forgotten and oppressed from Stockholm for 400y.
Are there any books that only teach old East norse? Jag kan svenska if that helps. Thanks.
Adolf Noreen wrote a book called "Altschwedische Grammatik" which has long been the standard reference grammar for Old Swedish.
Thank you!
Jackson Crawford Would it work for Old Danish, is there a book that teaches it?
English Old West Norse Old East Norse Proto-Norse
mushroom s(v)ǫppr svamper *swampuz
steep brattr branter *brantaz
widow ekkja ænkia *ain(a)kjōn
to shrink kreppa krimpa *krimpan
to sprint spretta sprinta *sprintan
to sink søkkva sænkva *sankwian
Det är interesant!
Dimas Tjahjono Dradjat sannerligen
Oj, vad bra stavning folk har.
I wonder if you get students from non-indo-european cultures that attempt to learn these languages. Do they have a harder time in comparison?
tibs2403 my guess is yes because they don't have the cognates that english has to springboard off, but thats just vocabulary. i imagine they have about a comparable time learning the archaic grammar
Cool lesson. Thanks i love vikings
It would be nice if more attention was brought to the eastern dialects too.
My mother's family were Icelandic immigrants (to the Winnipeg area) and almost immediately lost the language altogether. I don't think it would be worthwhile for me to learn it not (outside of an academic interest) at this point as I understand that all Icelanders speak fairly fluent English.
How do you trill your Rs at the end of words so well? Whenever I try, I end up adding a schwa at the end after.
I suspect that if you understand the evolution of the words and changes in their spelling you can likely understand the differences in the languages.
Wonder when the lj-, dj- hj-, gj- in swedish all became pronounced as j, and in the case of gj almost always spelled as g or j...
in norwegian they say lys, but is swedes ljus (jus) (meaning "light"), dyr in norwegian and danish but djur (jur) in swedish for animal (cognate of dear in english), "helt" in norwegian (not sure about danish) and "hjälte" (jälte) in swedish for hero, although I think some finland swedish speakers still pronounce the l, and h in ljus and hjärta and such and some old recordings like from the 40s and even later of acting and singing people pronounced the h in hjärta even in modern swedish from sweden, but i don't know if they actually pronounced it in daily speech or just for this more formal and theatrical speech and singing.
Unremarkable Also note that in Norwegian we can choose whether we want to say “djup” (jup) instead of “dyp”. Also, in some nynorsk dialects one can say “ljos” (jos) instead of “lys”. Just as a little heads up. 🙂
Which is more similar to Traum? Draumr or drøm
Why doesn't OEN use a J in "skiuta"? In Sweden today, we write it "skjuta". Are they just different spelling conventions or is there another explanation?
Skiuta was the spelling in (at least) Old Swedish (en.wiktionary.org/wiki/skiuta, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swedish#Orthography ). Consistently using 'j' is fairly modern: sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yngre_nysvenska#Ortografi
You might've heard of Lars Johan Hierta (hjärta in modern spelling).
"J" as a separate letter didn't develop until the 14-1500's. Earlier it was the same as I.
How can we find out who the landnamsmænd were
Does the English word skeet come from Old Norse skyt then?
As a dane, Old west norse is similar to german?
Einn stein = Ein Stein
Auga = Auge
Danish : En sten
Øje
did not modern english had Æ until (historically relatively) recent?
why doesnt this apply to gutnish? I can't even find that many spoken samples of the language, it makes it ever more interesting.
I love the video btw :)
Gutnish stands on its own and doesn't, for example, undergo monophthongization of diphthongs.
If you search it as a Swedish dialect you can get quite a few examples of it. It is "Gotländska" in Swedish, or "Gutiska", "Gutemål" or "Gutamål". There are videos on youtube :)
I think I finally get why your Danish sounds a a little strange (yes, I realise you speak Norwegian, not Danish, this is in no way meant to be overly critical!). You don't mumble enough! No, really, try mumbling a little bit, it'll sound much closer to native speech :p
He could have a potato in his mouth while speaking ;)
And i asked him to mumble less (in English) ^^
I speak Norwegian 🇳🇴
vatten is still today pronounced vat'n ;)
Highly depend on your dialect :) I am from the north and I defiantly say vat'n but I live in the south and here many do not.
talar þú Svenskú?
Ég skil Sænsku
Why modern norwegian and swedish sound more similar than modern swedish and danish if swedish and danish come from old east norse and norwegian from old west norse? Or is it a perspective thing? I'm finnish, yet i hear lots of local swedish daily here.
it was because Danish had more German/French influence in the pronunciation I think
@@Alex.af.Nordheim yes, Danish is influenced by german/french. Me as a Norwegian understands swedish better than Danish, Even tho Norwegian come from old West Norse while swedish come from old east norse
Norwegian dialects (rural ones) derive from Old West Norse, while the most common official language (Bokmål) is more Danish (so East Norse). Norwegian has a split identity due to is complex history (being part of Danmark for a long time)
Erik bokmål (when it started to be developed after independence) closely followed the speach of the Bergen elite. In that sense in was a spoken standard.
@@Alex.af.Nordheim no french in danish. Lot of Low German, Frisian & Old English sounds in Danish.
Fun fact: Danish was the administrative language in Norway for +400 years. In the same period Low German was the administrative language in Denmark. Danno-Norwegian state consisted of Norway, Iceland, Denmark, Schleswig & Holstein
(+ Gothland & the Scanian lands Halland, Blekinge and Skåne - Scanian was widely spoke on the Danish side of Øresund until 100y ago).
Denmark was much more multilingual with east norse, west norse and low german dialects evenly represented in Copenhagen. High German has influenced Swedish quite a bit which is why High German speakers finds its easier to learn Swedish than Norwegian or Danish.
Until about 100-200y ago Danish and Swedish where much closer than today and the mutual intelligibleness between dialects spoken in Stockholm and Copenhagen only disappeared 50y ago along with the decline of danish and swedish regional dialects.
Can you provide sources, please?
It was the Norwegians that settled Iceland. Thus Icelandic comes from Norwegian.
Indeed
Wrong. When the Norwegians settled in Iceland they spoke Old West Norse. It was only after that when the Old West Norse started to split into Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian.
@@Gondaldin Yes, ofcourse! Thank you for reminding!
@@Gondaldin yeah but old west norse was primarly spoken in norway and Icelandic settlers where from western norway
Zerx True, but it is still a different language from Old Norwegian and Norwegian. Saying that Icelandic came from Norwegian is like saying that my brother is my father.
(en dröm , flera drömmar, att drömma, jag drömmer)
This is why old Swedish spelled
"head" - Huvud as "Hufvud" instead.
Am I mistaken but is English not the easiest simplest language?
Question: Is it possible that the speakers of old norse just drop the personal pronouns just like in Modern Spanish since the verb is conjugated according to each personal pronoun?
update squad sound in
When talking about shooting. You say S K I * * * *. U pronounce the letters individually. But in modern (Swedish at least) we use the very common sje-sound [ɧ]. Wasn't that used back then?
keep in mind that morden day language is very different from 1000 years ago.
No, that palatalisation occurred quite a bit later. Old Swedish and Old Danish would have been pretty similar.
How do you think is it a coinfidence that the pronouns han/he and hon/she match with the German names of the animals Hahn/rooster and Huhn/hen?
Something different: I never heard you talking about when and why all the north Germanic languages lost the N in the end of the infinitive, while west Germanic languages preserved it: germ. geb-en, dtch. gev-en, oldengl. geofan.
You sound like the old people in the Deutsch club. That's a good thing! Thank u, interesting.