What could have caused such a massive change in sound in the period of 200 years? Was there some sort of sluring epidemic in Scandinavia at the time? Was communication between the elderly and the young impaired because of this?
So Wiktionary (link to article on Mjǫllnir) and some other sources say that Old Norse Mjǫllnir likely comes from Proto-Norse *Melluniaʀ, in turn from Proto-Germanic *Meldunjaz, from Proto-Indo-European *meldʰ-n- ("lightning."), with the agentive suffix -jaz.
Fine.
I have no problem with the initial Mjǫ-, because the /u/ in *Meldunjaz, being a back vowel, would logically cause the /e/ in the previous syllable to break to /jɑ/, and the same /u/ would likewise logically cause that /jɑ/ to shift through u-mutation to /jɒ/~/jɔ/, thus Mjǫ- (and later—through merger of short /ɒ/~/ɔ/ to /ø/, or else through i-mutation also to /ø/ due to the /i/ in -nir—Mjö- or Mjø- or even Mjœ-).
I also have no trouble with the final /z/ in *Meldunjaz going through the expected shift to /ʀ/, and then to /r/.
Nor do I have any problem with the unstressed /u/ being lost by the time of ON due to syncope of unstressed vowels. I also understand that the /u/ was not a-mutated to /o/ by the /ɑ/ in -jaz, because /j/ and /ij/ block a-mutation. However, before it lost due to syncope, it would have been fronted to [ʉ] (later [y]) due to i-mutation from the /j/ in the following syllable (but this had to have happened only after the initial /u/ caused the /e/ to break into /jɑ/, because [ʉ] and [y] are not back vowels and would not cause breaking). Similarly, in Old West Norse dialects, the /ɑ/ in -iaʀ would have been fronted and raised to /ɛ/ ([æ]~[ɛ]) due to ʀ-mutation (btw, is this the same thing as iʀ-mutation, or are they different?).
I am, however, having some trouble with the rest:
- First, I don't understand why /ld/ in *Meldunjaz would lose the /d/ and be compensatorily geminated to the /lː/ in Mjǫllnir and hypothetical Proto-Norse form *Melluniaʀ. I understand that such a sound change of /ld/ > /lː/ occurred in the history of Swedish, but I've never seen examples of it in Old Norse. The only similar change in Old Norse I can think of is the well-documented /lθ/ > /lː/. But the postulated Proto-Germanic form is again *Meldunjaz, not *Melþunjaz.
- Second, I'm having trouble with the shift from the /njɑ/ in PG -njaz and PN -niaʀ to the /ni/~/nɪ/ in ON -nir (where ⟨ɪ⟩ is the small-caps ⟨I⟩ representing the near-close/high front unrounded vowel; Reddit's typeface doesn't show the important serifs that distinguish from the dotless i). Why didn't it in
From Wiktionary I know that singular "wing" was either Wēngijaz or Wēinga with a "Wēingan-" root in PG (although I don't know which as Wiktionary presents both). Also, what I want translated is "wings" as in the plural form.
As for Wayland/Volund, Wikipedia says it was either Wēlandaz or Wēlanduz in PG, although what I want translated for it is "Wayland's" as in the genitive form.
My understanding is that in Proto-Norse (so I assume in PG as well) the word order for the genitive was reversed (from English), so that it'd have been something like "Wing Wayland's". But that's about as much as I know.
Also, I ask for the PN, PWG and PG for comparison purposes.
Hi all, I'm having a rummage through this sub's resources too, but could anyone recommend some good sources on proto-Norse to use in conjunction with Elder Furthark? Looking into using runes in some art but very much conflicted over using Elder with Old Norse, let alone using the runes based on modern English spelling/phonetic spelling. Bit of a minefield but trying to be respectful. TIA!
I believe the "þ" would become eth, and the ijā would become "ie" I believe? I am not certain so I thought I would ask here. Would be interesting to know how it would have played out...
Today, I wanted to try to focus on a single particular problem and two of the suggested solutions for it. More generally, I want to make a point that runology offers not just "cool stones" or "epic symbols", but that the corpus contains some really riveting and heartbreaking stuff, even without any exotic mysticism and exaggerated theatrics.
We will be looking at the Opedal stone (aka N KJ76), particularly the section swestar minu liubu meʀ wage. We are especially focusing at the word swestar, which is a cognate of German Schwester and English sister.
Patrick Niles summarizes this particular problem:
> The form swestar is one of the most problematic in the Older Runic language. Though it is obviously an instance of the word for ‘sister’, the ending -ar has defied a satisfactory analysis ever since the inscription was unearthed in 1890.
The stone is heartbreaking in its actual content; a man named Wāgaʀ (or conceivably Wagaʀ) is telling of his attachment to his departed sister, presumably named Borō. He has carved, approximately, 'my sister, beloved to me, to Wāgaʀ'.
It is simple, on the surface, to understand the general words expressed here. Looking to other related languages, it is clear that swestar is generally identical to German Schwester, to Old English sweostor and Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌹𐍃𐍄𐌰𐍂 (swistar). In classical Old Norse, the same text would be, approximately, systir mín, ljúf mér, Vági.
However, it is difficult technically to understand the word form swestar in relation to the known Old Norse form, which is systir (or with runes sustiʀ). If we are to believe that systir came from swestar, then there are two obvious questions to contend with:
- Why does the Old Norse form systir lack the original core /swe-/?
- Why does the Old Norse form systir show unstressed /-ir/, rather than expected /-r/?
To elaborate on the first point, Proto-Norse /swe-/ should not naturally change to /sy-/. (I won't delve further into the question of the core /swe ~ sy/ here.) On the second point, Proto-Norse unstressed /a/ does not naturally change to /i/, but rather it normally vanishes entirely (undergoing syncope). In other words: if the Proto-Norse base form was swestar, then the expected outcome for Old Norse is merely *svestr – NOT systir.
Unfortunately for us, r-stems are highly irregular and rare in the corpus. Specifically, the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word is *swestēr, wit
... keep reading on reddit ➡I’m an amateur, so I don’t think I’d be up to reconstruct them myself, but I need given names for these languages for a mod I’m making for CK2. I was wondering if there are any straightforward lists of names for these languages, specifically in those languages or reconstructed rather than through an intermediary language.
I know that’s a long list of languages, but I thought it’d be better to make one thread rather than spam the subreddit with individual requests for each one.
AMA.
Professor was talking about the legal structure of Pre-Spanish America then rambled off about the other Native Americans in the North and commented that they fought against exploring Vikings, defeated their exploration parties and even drove them out of Greenland. Then he went on about how the few abandoned norsemen and their forgotten descendants that remained in Greenland, barely scrapped by and had a miserable existence there while also fighting a new different group that had come to the Americas thousands of years after the original native american settlers/inhabitants, through Alaska and expanded throughout the Artic region called Proto Eskimo/Inuit. This new group went on to expand in Greenland and exterminated the remaining norse colonies or mixed with them.
I had never heard anything about any of that. How accurate is it and what really happened with Viking/Norse explorations and settlements in North America and Greenland?
(Native English speaker here) The relationship of Icelandic and Old Norse fascinates me, and the many cognate words in Icelandic and English got me wondering about relationship of Old Norse and Old English. If you're interested in this stuff, The History of English Podcast has a scatter of early episodes looking at the evolution of P-I-E to proto-Germanic to Old English, the influence of Old Norse, where the voiceless/voiced sound shifts branch off, inflexions being dropped and added. The focus is English and there are unfortunately few references to Icelandic, but you if you like how words and languages evolve, you might enjoy it.
Also, please refrain from giving away spoilers. I'm still in the third season.
Thank you!
IMAGES OF RUNESTONE HERE (mediocre quality...)
The title of this post is extremely clickbait-y, admittedly, but it really is impossible to overstate the importance of this runestone. The full article, written by Michael Schulte – also the writer of Urnordisch: Eine Einführung (roughly "An Introduction to Proto-Norse") and numerous other articles on Old Norse and Proto-Norse – is available in the Russian publication Scandinavian Philology (aka Скандинавская филология). TO READ THE WHOLE THING, CLICK HERE (p. 73)! He wrote the article in Norwegian, but I will try to get across the major points, as well as make some personal observations/clarifications both for the uninitiated and the initiated.
My post will delve into some very nerdy and difficult linguistics, so, don't feel bad if any of this flies over your head! Just skip to the parts you're interested in.
Let's get the bad news out of the way first:
> Det må dessverre sies at det er umulig å tolke innskriftdelen på flatsiden (linje 2 og 3), selv om det ble brukt fotogrammetri for å lage en 3D-modell av hele runesteinen (se den detaljerte rapporten i Iversen mfl., 2019).
> ### Unfortunately, it must be said that it is impossible to interpret the inscription's flat side (lines 2 and 3), even though photogrammetry was utilized to create a 3D model of the entire runestone [...].
^(While the report mentioned here, full title "Irilen på Øverby i Vingulmark", was made available to Schulte, I have not been able to get my hands on it.)
This explains why the initial articles that I saw last year, written by journalists (who, no offence, know next to nothing about philology), gave the account that they gave: The inscription has "35 runes", but it says lu irilaʀ raskaʀ runoʀ. Obviously, this accounted for far less than 35 runes, but this really is the only "unambiguous" – relatively speaking, of course – part of the inscription.
These reports also offered a dubious translation: 'Carve the runes, swift earl!' I believe Schulte provides a far better understanding, so let's get into it.
Basic major points are that...
The stone is carved in the
... keep reading on reddit ➡
One distinctive trait that makes Swedish and Danish stand out from Norwegian is that some feminine words that have "o" whereas Norwegian (and Icelandic) have "u".
- bod (hence English booth) vs bud
- ko vs ku
- bro vs bru
- tro vs tru
Now, I thought this was a spontaneous lowering of /u:/ to /o:/ in word final position but the final consonant in one of the words leaves that out. Also, there is an interesting phenomena in Elfdalian, where long /u:/ becomes /au/ but not in those words, where it is /u:/, likewise the i-umlaut of this vowel is distinct from i-umlauted /u:/ that also diphtgongizes to /oy/, the i-umlaut of /u2/ merges with i-umlauted /iu/ and is reflected as /y:/ as in tsyr, compare Icelandic kýr both from kûR.
Is the difference between german Kuh (OHG kuo) and english cow (OE cu) related?
Or something else?
Lately I've been searching for resources about Old Frankish and Proto-Norse. I'm curious in the history of the early Germanic languages, and have tried to write a step-for-step phonological history of Dutch, going back to late Proto-Germanic, based on the English phonological history page.
But so far, I've only found a few resources.
For Frankish, Wiktionary so far provides a resource and some lemmas of Frankish on their About page, but there aren't really any cited sources, and the sound shifts might seem to be in conflict with the German Wikipedia page on Frankish at times. And the English Wikipedia page doesn't offer much help besides lemmas. There also seems to be an old book about Frankish, but aside from these four resources, there is practically nothing written about the earliest phase of the Franconian dialects. Not much especially, about sound shifts. Are there more? Why is there so few information - shouldn't it be easier to reconstruct Frankish, because of the excellent reconstructions of Proto-Germanic and the attestations of Old Dutch, northwestern Old High German and Old French?
Regarding Proto-Norse, there seem to be even less resources. Wikipedia's page on Proto-Norse provides a general overview, and the page on the phonological history of English, regarding the Northwest Germanic period, provides a little more. Luckily, Johan Schalin's Tcoimom Suntuubi site, provides actual paradigms with a few citations. But I'm still wondering why there isn't more. Are there any more resources on Proto-Norse, especially on the sound shifts and morphological/grammatical changes?
TL:DR; I'm unable to find many resources for Frankish and Proto-Norse, but interested if there are any more.
If I loaded this question incorrectly, I apologize.
Today, I wanted to try to focus on a single particular problem and two of the suggested solutions for it. More generally, I want to make a point that runology offers not just "cool stones" or "epic symbols", but that the corpus contains some really riveting and heartbreaking stuff, even without any exotic mysticism and exaggerated theatrics.
We will be looking at the Opedal stone (aka N KJ76), particularly the section swestar minu liubu meʀ wage. We are especially focusing on the word swestar, which is a cognate of German Schwester and English sister.
Patrick Stiles summarizes this particular problem:
> The form swestar is one of the most problematic in the Older Runic language. Though it is obviously an instance of the word for ‘sister’, the ending -ar has defied a satisfactory analysis ever since the inscription was unearthed in 1890.
The stone is heartbreaking in its actual content; a man named Wāgaʀ (or conceivably Wagaʀ) is telling of his attachment to his departed sister, apparently named Borō. He has carved, approximately, 'my sister, beloved to me, to Wāgaʀ'.
It is simple, on the surface, to understand the general words expressed here. Looking to other related languages, it is clear that swestar is generally identical to German Schwester, to Old English sweostor and Gothic 𐍃𐍅𐌹𐍃𐍄𐌰𐍂 (swistar). In classical Old Norse, the same text would be, approximately, systir mín, ljúf mér, Vági.
However, it is difficult technically to understand the word form swestar in relation to the known Old Norse form, which is systir (or with runes sustiʀ). If we are to believe that systir came from swestar, then there are two obvious questions to contend with:
- Why does the Old Norse form systir lack the original core /swe-/?
- Why does the Old Norse form systir show unstressed /-ir/, rather than expected /-r/?
To elaborate on the first point, Proto-Norse /swe-/ should not naturally change to /sy-/. (I won't delve further into the question of the core /swe ~ sy/ here.) On the second point, Proto-Norse unstressed /a/ in the ultima does not naturally change to /i/, but rather it normally vanishes entirely (undergoing syncope). In other words: if the Proto-Norse base form was swestar, then the expected outcome for Old Norse is merely *svestr – NOT systir.
Unfortunately for us, r-stems are highly irregular and rare in the corpus. Specifically, the reconstructed Proto-Germanic word is \
... keep reading on reddit ➡