Old Norse and the Modern Scandinavian Languages
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- Опубликовано: 20 окт 2024
- What language is closest to Old Norse? Every language (including Icelandic or Elfdalian/Älvdalska) is a mix of old and new features.
Dr. Jackson Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Nordic Program Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder (formerly UC Berkeley and UCLA). He is a historical linguist and an experienced teacher of Old Norse, Modern Icelandic, and Norwegian.
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I consider this a replacement for two old videos, "Old Norse vs. Modern Icelandic" and "What language is closest to Old Norse?" (by the altar of all that is holy, I will not put a question mark in a video title again).
I imagine that caused a massive migraine due to your eyes rolling and smacking yourself in the forehead while reading the comments. 😂
Your pronunciation of Swedish is very good.
Only significant thing that's off is a few things like the vowel in "dom" and "tar" and the pitch accent.
There is a question mark dangerously close to the title of this video. Consider this my Stern Warning.
Hello Dr. Crawford. I have an unusual request. I was wondering if you could do a video about your thoughts on the British movie The Ritual on Netflix. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it, but it is a horror movie that takes place in Sweden and has a connection with Norse mythology. I would like to hear an expert's opinion on the film and what may be authentic or inauthentic in what the film presents regarding Norse Mythology and possibly any other thoughts and context you could provide.
"There is a sort of musical tone to swedish and norwegian that is not present in danish." - that's a harsh truth right there...
The fact that you can even simulate a vocal stød is impressive to me as a native Danish speaker. Really well done!
Your pronunciation is really good! (I speak swedish) and thank you for bringing up älvdalska! I wish our government put in more effort to keep that language alive. The only thing they've really done is open up a kindergarden in Älvdalen where they only speak älvdalska.
Ask your local politicians about it and choose who you vote for this autumn. You are part of "they".
There are more of these languages spread out in Scandinavia, like Bondska (Överkalixmål, Kalixmål). But eventually, most of them will probably disappear thanks to a standardization of the languages that is brought upon by the internet.
Jobbade i Lima några veckor och förstod bara en bråkdel av vad de lokala boende sade det var verkligen unikt och skilt från standardsvenskan.
Keeping language and dialects alive is up to the people, not the government. Unless you want the government to force people to speak in a certain manner.
I'm trying to learn Swedish so I can come visit.
Doing my best
So interesting that when you first talked about pronouncing the h in “what” or “why” etc in English, I was unable to reproduce it myself. BUT when you wrote out “hvat” as in the old west Norse, I was able to get it instantly. I speak a northern Norwegian dialect and although we no longer have this sound (I would say “ka” for hvat) it came really naturally to me. It just made sense to put the h before the v-sound instead of the other way around. OK as I am typing this I realize that this is probably not interesting to anyone but myself, haha.
ka kvat
LilleP Gud Dögg! SOO Agree
Nice Enuthiusm There Are U watching the Northern Lights Still Me Lady? Ya Know "Jeg elsker Deg" I Thank thatz Right Aye😄🤗
But east scandinavians have it - _vad,_ spelled _hvad_ not long ago (1906).
in faroese hvat
In English, the modern spelling is actually a reversal. For example, modern English "what" ultimately derives from Old English "hwæt". I'm not sure why the spelling changed, but the Old English pronouns "hwa, hwæt, hwær, hwæþer, hwelc" etc more closely show the relationship to even modern Scandinavian cognates.
Grea job with the "sj-sound" in swedish! Please do a video on the more distinct dialects of Scandinavia, such as jærsk, gutamål, bondska and älvdalska.
Could be interesting to cover lesser known but distinct dialects, such as in Orsa or conservative areas of Halland.
I also noticed that there was a similar sound to ⟨ɧ⟩ in your reading, Jackson, of the Voluspar. In Sweden, depending on where you are from, that voiceless fricative can be either fronted into an almost [f] should or in the back of the throat like an velar and/or postalveolar fricative [x].
I must add that the sj-sound is indeed well done. In some dialects, that ö in sjö is pronounced very close to a /ew/ as in ew in English.
He could try Mopedalska. It's one of the oldest southern dialects. More closely related to Scanian and Old Danish that the current dialects down here.
Mark LaPolla, nah the Sj sound wasn't that good, only in Skepp, which is the easy one to learn.
There are 4 more to learn. Sk- Sj- Stj- Sch- Tj- K- but just using [ɧ] throughout all of them works.
I lived in Sweden some 47 years ago and have managed to maintain the language over the years. For quite a while I've been trying to do my own independent study with Old Norse, as well as a comparison study involving all the Scandinavian languages. I have all the text books you promote, but there's nothing like in-classroom learning, because it helps having things explained by an instructor. Your videos are the next best thing. You've helped explain the things I've had questions for for a long time.
Isn't there some swedish classes in the US (I assume you are from the US? I mean there should be some native swedes doing it somewhere. It would be a good start I think
I guess I misread what the guy said, 5(!) years ago, must have thought he said he lost his ability for Swedish. Reason I said US is because there are quite a few people who moved there as kids and forgot the language. For most of Europe, you would still go back every now and then since it's so close.
@@john.premose
Just found this video and as a swede living in southern sweden I have to say your pronounciation is close to perfect in all languages. Crazy impressed!
Amazing video and very informative! I learn so much from you. :)
As a native Swede, I have to say your swedish is very good for an American. Your "sjö" was amazing for a non-native speaker! I sense that you struggle with "ä" as your pronunciation is unlike any dialect I have encountered at least. It is most commonly closer to 'ai' in the english 'pair', with a kind of smiling mouth.
46:10
That does actually happen in Norway too. You'll have people who say "fjedl" in stead of "fjell". This happens where I come from (Sunnhordland), although it is falling out of use. Nowadays it is only elderly people and some younger farmers that still use it, but it's interesting nonetheless.
I'm from the southwest, and I say fjedl (mountain), stodl (chair), adle (all). I'm not even that old (30s)
You even have "fjødd" for "fjell" in some eastern? Dialects.
Damn you are the coolest person. Haha thanks for this research. I’d love to sit through a lecture
This was great. Thanks a lot Dr. Crawford.
Very nice video as always. Just a few notes, however:
Faroese long 's pronunciation is closer to the stressed vowel in the English word . The -ki ending is also preaspirated though I have seen that some books on Faroese use the regular voiced vs. voiceless distinction but this is incorrect.
Also, I noticed "tað tekur", the masculine form would be "hann tekur" just like in Icelandic.
The Danish pronoun I (y'all) is always capitalised.
The Faroese word for cod is toskur. The -r- in -rsk- and -rst- clusters has a habit of disappearing so we have toskur but also tosti for thirst (tystur for thirsty), also the Faroese cognate to fresh is feskur.
As for Faroese þ > h, my speculation is that there's a slight chance that Gaelic _may_ have had some influence here. In Modern Scottish and Irish, the Medieval Irish has become an /h/ so the personal pronoun thu (you (sg.)) is in Scottish Gaelic pronounced like the English word who. But as I say this is just me speculating and I really should look in to that.
But as I said, a great video as always, and keep up the good work.
PS. most of the dialects of the Faroese island of Suðuroy have developed a glide in the pronouns you mentioned and it is possible to spell them out so you get: jeg elski tjeg, and tú elskar mjeg, however, I don't think many people are aware of this so you don't see it spelled out very often. They also do not use the words vit and tit for the plural pronouns but rather okur and tykur, which are most likely back-formations from the object forms okum and tykum (okkum and tykkum in Standard Faroese). But yeah, all this on Faroese is possibly a story worth its own video but as this afaict would fall outside the scope of your channel, the introduction made here is more than adequate.
Weeping Scorpion How interesting about the disappearing R. I speak a northern Norwegian dialect and I have noticed a lot of similarities with Faroese that doesn’t exist otherwise in Norwegian language. For instance I remember my grandpa saying «tøst» instead of «tørst» (thirsty).
We have similar dialects in Danish, where many longer vowels (or vowels followed by r) became short vowels, like, for instance, "tørst" becoming "tøst" (though the change in the "ø" sound from the r still remains)
Interesting about the loss of the r in clusters. This sometimes happens in southwestern Norwegian dialects as well, although that would usually be the uvular r being lost. So tørst (thirsty) becomes tyste and først/fyrst (first) becomes fyst. As children we often say tosk for the fish as well, until we are probably relearning that tosk means a stupid person while torsk refers to the cod. Still this r loss doesn't seem to apply universally in such clusters, as eg it can even become more complex than in standard Norwegian, as in norsk and norskt (neuter singular adjective).
The application of the 1st person plural pronoun okkar (or similar) is also seen in some places, but in Norwegian dialects the 2nd person plural pronoun dokker is nearly universal along the western coast from the southernmost to the northernmost tip of the country. There are a few exceptions, but they are not many.
I think losing R in words is pretty much universal in Norwegian, save for a few dialects in the south. bjørn>bjønn, torsk>tosk.
There appears to be two different processes being discussed here. One is the simple loss of an R, which apparently may happen to both the uvular as well as the thrilled R. The other phenomenon applies only with a thrilled R, and that it when it gets "merged" with a following d, l, n, s or t. The latter is very prevalent in both Norwegian and Swedish dialects, but never in those using the uvular R. What happens is that the consonant pair gets replaced with a retroflex variant of the second consonant.
Wait! That sounded like Johnny Cash speaking Faroese! Awesome!
We still use "dem" in Swedish as we do "de". They are used in Sweden as (They=de) and (Them=dem) with some exceptions.
Same thing in danish
Same thing in Norwegian as well.
That distinction will be dead in 3 generations at most mark my words
My Swedish teacher told me that if it's a sentence that makes sense to use "jag" in, it's de, and with "mig" it's dem.
@@theodorandren6850 Honestly I hope so, lol. It's such a pointless distinction to make. It isn't distinguishable in spoken Swedish, only in written.
Similar to Icelandic, dissimilation of long l, n, rn and sometimes even mm is quite common in the South and West of Norway as well. So fjell can become fjedl, stol > stodl, stein > steidn, barn > badn, korn > kodn, ville > vidle (adj =wild, but not the verb ville =would), alle > adle (=all pl, but it still is alt in sg neuter). Only a few dialects have komma > kobma (to come), but the feature does exist.
And in Setesdal (Agder, NO), ll has become dd (as in other dialects in the area). The dialect also has the loss of the letter l before k, g, v, m, p and of the letter k before n.
Setesdal: "Tvæ jento og tvei geuta jinge i fjøddou. Da aire foukka, tri kara, trjå jentu og trju bonn leika mæ ain neive og drakk mjåkk."
Norwegian (nynorsk): "To jenter og to gutar gjekk i fjella. Dei andre folka, tre karar, tre jenter og tre born leika med ein kniv og drakk mjølk."
English: "Two girls and two boys walked in the mountains. "The others folks", three guys, three girls and three children played with a knife and drank milk."
Yay, another linguistics video! I discovered your channel through your video on the Indo-European languages and it's nice to see another.
I recall once reading in an Icelandic saga, I can´t remember which one, but it struck me how amazingly close to English it was. As I recall it the sentence went ´Menn riða þar eftir oss.´which literally translates ´men ride there after us´ And what a typical Icelandic sentence that is, considering the endless feuds that fill the sagas.
In Swedish, the same phrase is "Män rider där efter oss.", which is still very similar! That being said, it would be grammatically preffered to say "Där rider män efter oss.", so word order has changed a bit.
Well, here in Norway you have about six different ways to say "I", depending on the dialect (I guess some would call it accent):
- Jeg
- Je
- Eg
- E
- Æ
- I
Æg
In Jutland, Denmark you’ll hear: jeg, jej, jah, A, Æ for “I”
Ej
@@ole7146 I've also heard Je I think.
I think I've heard jaj in music.
I have to add some to the word "tager" and "tar": Evnen in swedish you can say "tager" but it is often used in a question like "tager du?" (do you take?). This is however a some oldish style and aren't used that often.
The end "-om" was used in older swedish also and this we can see from lyrics from Bellman as "halkom" instad of "vi halkar" (we slips).
I must say that you have explained alot of my language, swedish, that I never have learned before.
Interesting that 'I love you' comes ''ek ann þer'' - it reminds me of the verb 'at ane' in danish, which means to notice or to sense, essentially. It would be 'Jeg aner dig', as in 'I sense you' (I'm danish ,so please, other Scandinavian speakers, let me know if its different for you)
I love your videos. Thanks for sharing. Have you considered including IPA notations when you describe pronunciation? It doesn't need to replace how you sometimes describe the sound value by giving examples from English, but its inclusion would help many of your international viewers, I'm sure.
I thank you immensely for often mentioning and considering the dialectal differences, that are very alive and, indeed, different!
Fascinating! I'm quite intimidated by you and the knowledge you've acquired. But just as intrigued. And very much looking forward to learning what you are teaching! Thank you so much for spending the time and effort in these videos.
One thing I noticed, the D in vad in Swedish is usually pronounced, which you didn't do. Sometimes it's left out, but it's usually when exclaiming suprise; then you may hear someone say ”va?!”, but otherwise it's vad with a D.
In casual spoken language, I think dropping the d is more common than not. But it surely depends on many factors, like how fast you're speaking, how old you are, what part of the country you are from, if you're making an effort to speak extra clearly etc.
No, I think we usually drop the "D" too. We don't say "VaD sa du?", it becomes "va sa du?". Same with "VaD vill du"=""Va vill du?". I think it especially true for the times when the next word begins with a consonant. If it begins with a wovel we may pronouce the "D", like with "Vad är?".
You absolutely nailed the Faroese pronunciation. Btw I would call these languages "Nordic", since the term "Scandinavian" often doesn't include Iceland and Faroe islands
North Germanic is better than all those options, since "Scandinavian" could imply that Icelandic is excluded, and "Nordic" could imply that Finnish is included.
@@zoushuu Oh, yes absolutely, agreed!
I was brought to your videos by Matt Colville's recommendation, and I find this quite informative and simple to understand.
It would be interesting to watch a video about the Swedish dialect in Finland. There are some Finnish and Russian influences, yes, but very little. It's still very different.
Good video, very interesting. Just a suggestion, but you might want to consider using time-stamps in the description in such a long video. Help people find the part they are searching for easier.
Given the length and scope, a lot of dialectal variations had to left out (e.g. that there are placece in Western Norway where fjell has become fjedl) but a quite widely spread variant is where the hv - kv shift has become a simple k - as in ka (kva), kem (hvem/kven) and kor (hvor/kvar; even if kor is an accepted form in nynorsk) / kordan, koss, korleis (hvordan).
That's just in pronouns. We still say "kvit" and "kval". (The v is also lost in the east. hvosso>hossen, hvat>hått)
It got to be a new thing, or they would have written it as "dl" in Norse times. There are a lot of similarities between the areas though. It is possible that it could be loan/influences as late as the 15th century.
vatterholm I wonder though. There must have been dialects back then as well. The region most icelandic would come from in norway is also the region that os most simular to modern icelandic. Mayebe even back then not all words were spoken the same way it was written by everyone.
Tager is understandable in Swedish as well though it sounds very archaic or formal. The Taga form is also used in some more archaic songs/hymns so is also understandable.
"Tager" is mostly used at weedings. "Tager du denna..."
A note from a Swede: we sometimes have emphasis on the vocal, especially in short words. Jag, as an example, have emphasis on the a. And the a does not sound the same everywhere: in "jag", its a long thats sounds different then an English a. If you take our word for allways - "alltid", the a is similar to the pronunciation in the a in English allways. The emphasis in "alltid" is on the double l. Its a bit against common sense, but somehow a double letter is almost allways pronounced very short compared to a single letter.
The pronunciation differ quite a lot between dialects, though. Especially in parts of Sweden that is close to the Norwegian border, Skåne (wish used to belong to Denmark) and Gotland.
I'd say that the "a" in "alltid" is more like "u" in the English word "cut". Had "alltid" been spelled "altid", then it would have bee pronounced like the "a" in the English word "bra".
You have that typical american norwegian accent, just like my English teacher! Thank you very much for your work. A bit off -topic but Nynorsk was created by Ivar Aasen during a very nationalistic period in Norwegian history, right after becoming independent from Denmark. The period known as the "National romantic period". During this period people was trying to find Norways own identity. We started romanticizing the Norwegian countryside, norwegian folk music (fx.myllarguten) and more! These cultural aspects were pulled into light and put on a pedestal. Ivar Aasen deliberately collected these countryside dialects (esp. from the areas Voss, Sogn and Hardanger) that was as untouched as possible by Danish influence. He compared them and and when in doubt also looked at old Norse as inspiration when creating Nynorsk. I see Nynorsk as something born from a period of strong nationalism. You've probably done videos about this topic though :)
Henrik All written languages are made up. Bokmål is basically just written Danish. I speak a northern Norwegian dialect which is most similar to Nynorsk, however I write Bokmål which is what I was taught in school. I always feel funny when I have to read out loud because it doesn’t match my spoken language at all. I wish I would have learnt Nynorsk instead.
Maybe we speak the same dialect then. I know what you mean. You're right, we're thaught Bokmål instead of Nynorsk and it's a bit wierd considering that Nynorsk is perhaps a bit closer to our dialect, or atleast the same catergory. Though, it also has to be said that over the years Nynorsk and Bokmål has become very similar to eachother compared to what they once were. It's refered to as radical bokmål/nynorsk and conservative bokmål/nynorsk. Nobody actually speaks precisely like bokmål is written either, just like with Nynorsk.
About the pronounciation thing. When people from Nordland pronounces bokmål, it sounds much flatter because our dialect has a flat intonation. ;) I've actually heard that the people that speaks most closesly to Bokmål is the people of Finnmark. But the funny thing is that he actually didn't care much for the northern parts of Norway when he was collecting data. He was mainly around the southern areas.
Henrik The only thing that doesn’t compute with Nynorsk is the lack of apocopé, but neither written language has that. As for Finnmark, yes originally there was no or little Norwegian dialect, because most people spoke Finnish/ Kvensk or Sami. They were forced to abandon their mother’s tongue in school, and the teachers were most likely southern. So they kept the original language melody and spoke as it was written. I’m grossly oversimplifying but that’s the basics. In northern Norwegian we do have quite a few linguistic features that are of Sami origin, still. Even as far south as Nordland. We were once a land of two peoples (I’m of both Norwegian, Sami and Finnish ancestry).
The Sami has been here for ages, even the vikings knew of them well! They are even appearing in the sagas from that era! We had a moment of ignorance back then and I'm glad that people opened up their eyes and stopped discriminating them and forcing them to become pure Norwegian. I hope that the focus on Sami culture and Language will get a higher priority in the Norwegian education. It should atleast be optional to learn the Sami language at school since they live amongst us so closely (and has been for many years) :) Sami culture and ancestry is just as interesting to me as viking culture.
Anyways, thank you for the interesting conversation!
nynorsk "me" for first-person plural pronoun coming from a verbal ending is a *very* interesting and odd feature. it reminds me of the common first-person plural pronoun in modern irish (western and northern varieties), where the first-person plural present verb ending -mid has been reanalyzed as the subject pronoun "muid"
Tager is swedish too but considered outdated and was only used formally I think, like "tager du denna brud" in marriage ceremonies. You still see this particular phrase in various articles if you google it.
I have just discovered your videos recently...so thankful for your talented work!!
Kudos to you for knowing about the dialect of Älvdalen
The R:s of Danish and Scanian are iconic and stereotyped.
In the dialect of Skåne/Scania (the southeastern variety in "Österlen", my dialect) in Sweden: gröt (or gröd, when exaggerated) - g(h)-rrö(t/d) - meaning "porridge". The dialect is now changing rapidly because of the standard language.
Not because of the standard language - it's been the norm there since 1680, but people now choose to discard the Scanian dialect for various reasons, mainly because it's perceived as low status and it's easier to make your way in the Swedish world if you don't speak half Danish.Sad but the same is happening to minority dialects and languages all over the world.
In my particular dialect of danish (that of Copenhagen) many words have been shortened from the "correct" way of saying them. For example "Tager" is "Tar" "Jeg" is "Jar", "Vil" is "Ve", "Kan" is "ka" and so forth.
Mind you, we still write them correctly, but the written form poorly reflect how they're usually spoken.
You use the longer form for emphasis. "Je' ka' ikke", "je' kan ikke" and "Jeg ka' ikke" mean different things.
Danish is the French of the Nordic language lmao
i'm actually pretty damn impressed by how you pronounced Danish. The fact that you let the "eg" in "jeg" roll off softly, sounds very alike to how we'd pronounce it in Denmark.
Our Scottish Gaelic is inflected. Old Norse had an influence on us, especially in the Isle of Lewis and Harris, where i live
john beag martin , I’m not sure about Gælic, but Scots (not scottish English) is indeed. There are tons of words that are the same or similar as in the Scandinavian languages.
Thank you Dr Crawford, absolutely fascinating lecture.
Great video. Also I liked the disappearing act at the end. It was very funny.
Absolutely love your work, thanks a lot for these very useful lessons!
I'm Icelandic who speaks Norwegian fluently. I find it so fascinating that the word in Old Norse ár (for year) in Old Norse is pronounced like år in Norwegian but written like ár in Icelandic.
Actually ... in Danish. "Jeg tager" (and the rest of the subjects) can be pronounced both "Jeg tar" (as you did), but also "Jeg tager". - or "ta'er" (with the "a" changing vowel )
Few danish people would notice which form you use although the latter might sound a bit more formal. (depending on dialect)
... same goes for danish "hvad" ... if you speak fast, you don't pronounce the D - but you can do it if you want and it would be equally valid.
Peter Mogensen Det går da an på, hvor i landet man kommer fra og nok ikke hvor hurtigt man taler.
Svårt att höra skillnad när ni inte uttalar orden
@@MrPetter1000 jeg beklager :) ;P
Great Video! Our old Swedish accent/dialect Gute spken on Gotland is VERY similar to Icelandic/Färöisk in many ways if you listen to "Skaoul" for Cheers, Jaouu- Yeahh! or their common word for "butter" "Smjör" ;)
Modern Icelanders have little difficulty understanding written Old Norse, the same can not be said about the other nordic nations. Icelandic has retained the grammar and the minor difference in spelling is not a obstacle. The vocabulary is familiar. I would say that by far the Icelandic is closest to Old Norse. I did not understand what you said about the difference between ann and an in Icelandic, I am probably misunderstanding what you were taking about but there is a difference between pronunciation of ann and an or enn and en in icelandic.
What can you share with us about the seeming absurdity of ett/en in Swedish (and Norwegian)? Is there indeed some grammatical rules hinted in old norse that explain when to use one over the other?
In modern language there is two sexes common, combination of male and female ,and neutral, ett is used for nouns wich are neutral and en for all other, which before late Middle Ages were either male or female.
ett hus, ett djur
en man, en kvinna, en hund (m), en katt (f)
This video was more than somehvat interesting. Great work :-)
My swedish heart is so happy about this😍
In the section of this video where the use of "I take" is explained (about 25 min), I would like to point out that Icelanders still use "vér" and " "ér" from old Norse when we want to be extra formal. It is spelled vér and þér.
Although at this point essentially only in written form. Even by my grandmother’s time in the 1930s according to her they would only use those when talking to the priest. Today you’d only encounter them in poems and speeches in parliament.
The palatalization outcomes of "skepp", "sjö" and "kittel" in the Swedish spoken in Finland (finlandssvenska) are like in Faroese. There are also other differences of pronunciation between finlandssvenska and sverigesvenska, like the lack of pitch accent in the former.
Thank you professor
Thanks for this great video! A couple of years ago I spent one year in Sweden as an exchange student. Watching the series "Vikings" brought me to this video. It is really fascinating how different european languages are connected and have influenced each other. Especially the connection between German, English and Swedish has helped me a lot to learn Swedish back then. By the way: If you speak Swedish, live next to Stuttgart and would like to do some language tandem with a German, please feel free to pm me. Wanna find out, if I am still on level B2 :)
I speak a small western dialect of norwegian, and it’s so cool to learn about where these differences came from! Like old west/east norse, and how they affected the norwegian language. I say me, dåke (y’all - dykkar/dykk in NN) ka (what) koffor (why) and kossen (how). We also pronounce all our -r’s like in france 😁 if you ever need a nynorsk «user» as well as someone with a rural western dialect, I can help 🤩
Many don't know this, but you 'can' use "korso" for "koffor/korsen/kosse", in written nynorsk, instead of "korleis". :)
As a Norwegian, history and language nerd who’s mom is a Norwegian language teacher, love your videos, but could you do a video on how and why the Danes decided to suddenly speak differently than Swedish and Norwegian, even though we too have been influenced byGerman and Dutch, mostly our western dialects on the west coast of Norway - Hansistic Leage, and how Danish would have sounded like today if not undergone that change?
Also a fee fun facts, the Icelandic Vikings came from Sogndal, western Coast of Norway, and according to my bf who is Icelandic, they understand easier if not fluent in Danish/Norwegian, the dialects from the western coast if spoken slowly and clearly. And you should check out the dialect from Setesdalen, Telemark Southern Norway, as they speak a dialect that few Norwegians understand and find the hardest out of the X hundred that we have if not in the thousands, as it’s the closest you get to Old Norse… again my bf understood it fairly well.
Nice Vid. I have a question for you. Do you know witche of the Scand understand the most of the Scand langu..?
Colorado is beautiful. Look much like my home place in eastern Dalecarlia (östra dalarna).
Colorado är vackert. Är väldigt likt varifrån jag kommer i östra dalarna (eastern Dalecarlia).
Note that just 80 years ago in official speech in Sweden, the forms Vi taga, I tagen, and De taga were recommended. This is still reflected in the phrase often seen on signs ”Obehöriga äga ej tillträde”, meaning ”Unauthorized do not have access.”
The äga is because unauthorized is in plural, and so it is ”äga ej”, instead of ”äger ej”.
Considering what has been done with Nynorsk, I really wish there would be an effort to reinstate these plural forms, and also with the form ”Vi tagom”. This -om first person form can be seen in the Christmas song Staffan var en stalledräng, where it’s ”Vi tackom nu så gärna”, instead of ”Vi tacka” or ”Vi tackar”.
I reckon you have heard it before, but for those of you interested in norwegian dialects this video is literally a journey from the border to Sweden all along the coast to the border with Russia. ruclips.net/video/3lmjIppbVtA/видео.html it starts at 1:12. Performed by a radio host that is a master of dialects and fun personalities.
Swedish dialects - swedia.ling.gu.se/info/litenkarta.html
Takk!
Swedish trip from north to south - funny version:
ruclips.net/video/LDW6Q9yvo_4/видео.html
Thanks for the link. It is really incredible how he gradually changes from one dialect to the next in the course of a few words, and covers several dialects in one sentence. Amazing!
Although "Kittel" is a Swedish word it is probably not used that very much. We probably say "Vattenkokare" or "kastrull" or "hurra" more often.
And the word "Tager" is also used in Swedish (in addtion to "ta"). It is just quite archaic and mostly used during weddings when a person is asked if he/she will take the other person (ie marry them) with "Tager du denna Maria Andersson att bli din äkta maka?".
We love you too, Mister Crawford! :)
Thank you for share Sir,Interesting.
Doctor, might you have anything to mention (perhaps you already have? If so, do please forgive this... and please point me in the right direction) on the language of Älvdalen (a.k.a., "Elfdalian") of Dalarna, Sweden (which used to be part of Norway)? I would **love** to hear anything that, over all others, YOU would have to share on that! :)
What's happening with your voice in this video? I can hear some sort of tape noise or something in the background when your voice goes all deep for some reason, and there's strange reverb at points as well. Did you have a lot of problems with this one?
2 years later I noticed the same :D
It's because he recorded the audio in different sessions and doesn't (didn't, 2 years ago) have the best gear. Hence the circumstances were always different resulting in different audio quality.
On the one hand echoes, "room" sound/reverb, reflection, absorption etc. change as soon as you step just a foot aside. Next in some takes he was a little closer to the microphone as in other takes. And lastly, we all get in a mood of speech and, for example, when we're really into a thing and talk about it, our voice will rise over time and our speed will probably increase, too. We might also get louder. Now we hear that take for 5 minutes and the next sentence is from a different recording session where he's just slowly starting out in a relaxed mood and voice.
Awesome as always. Since I started learning old norse I figure it wont be so hard to learn icelandic.
what do you think of the sogndal dialect ?
I'm Swedish, and as I'm sure you know there are some friendly rivalry between the different Scandinavian countries. Though if someone from the outside says something bad about them at least I will fiercely defend them. Regarding our languages though, we jokingly say that Norwegian is not an actual language, it's just Danish pronounced in a Swedish way. Norwegian is by far the nicest sounding of the Scandinavian languages though.
Erik Villeius I think much of it depends on the dialect. I really dislike the stockholm dialect and skånska of swedish but love dalecarlian. And bergensk dialect in norway sounds really weird compared to how they speak in Oslo.
Norwegian is just badly written Danish and badly spoken Swedish, and Danish isn't a language, it's a throat infection. :)
They say that about Swiss German too, the throat infection I mean. I am half Swiss and half Danish. Imagine the sound of me speaking... :)
Personally I could live with the throat infection if only we had sane pronunciation and grammar :)
As a Dane having tried to under stand Swiss German ... yeah... I can see your point.
Soft/hard palate: as an unlearned one, your description of sounds moving forward from velar/hard palate to the soft is difficult for me.
My tongue feels the back of my palate as soft; the front as hard.
Does your use of the adjectives refer to to hardness of sound rather than the physical hardness of the anatomy?
Nitpicking. As a Dane I would often pronounce the noun "gave" as "ga-u". In other words the v is not pronounced, but it changes the last vowel into a long u-sound. Your pronunciation is also correct, but a little formal or less sloppy (Norwegian kamelåså-video goes here)
Excellent!! Thank you so much. Hugs & sunshine 🌞 N
It's interesting to look at these changes from OWN and OEN to the modern languages and then look at my own local dialect of Swedish (Pitemål) and try to figure out where the influences came from. Being a northern Swedish dialect we drop a lot of sounds.
i ta, dö ta, han ta, vä tåga ,jä tåga döm tåga
Elfdalian also has nasal vowels which were present in proto-germanic, I think. Kinda cool.
Since the dialects in Norway are so different from each other, one should think that there was a noticeable difference in speech, already when Iceland was populated. What do the experts think about this?
Norway doesn't have more dialects than Sweden and Denmark. Our dialects just have higher status.
But yeah, there were dialectal differences even then. Like how Vestlandet/Trøndelag had "rangr" while Vika and the south had "vrangr". ek/jak, Icelandic/Hardanger -ur other Norwegian -er, Trønder/Icelandic "o-" vs others "u-" etc. But no dialects as distinct as today. Most of that happened after 1400.
Takk for svar, det er eit interessant tema.
Eg tenkte fyrst og fremst på at dei som slo seg ned på Island var frå Vestlandet (og kanskje Nord-Norge?), derfor skreiv eg slik eg gjorde.
Eg veit at Danmark og Sverige ogso har mange dialektar, synd at dei ikkje blir teken like godt vare på. Eg har vakse opp med ei gamal svensk dialekt, for mor mi er frå Österbotten. Desse finlandssvenske dialektane skulle ein sjå nærare på, for dei har mange «rare» ord og fleire av dei minner om ord i norske dialektar.
Innen det svenskspråklige området, skulle det bli veldig vanskelig hvis alle bare holdt på dialekten sin. Der er altfor stor dialektal variasjon (jeg skulle nok si at den, på mange måter, er mye større enn i Norge). For å klare å forstå hverandre, må man ha et felles standardspråk. Det vanlige, for dialektbrukere, er at man bruker dialekten sin heime og med kjente i bygda, men at man slår over til standardspråket i kontakten med talere utafra. De svenske dialektene lever ennå (det er en utbredt misoppfatning at de ryddes ut), men vi har dem ikke bare over hele Sverige og store deler av Finland, men også i deler av Estland og i et område i Ukraina - og hver bygd har sine quirks - så hadde man ikke hatt standardsvensk som et naturlig samlingssted, hadde man måttet ty til et annet språk. Det er dog sant at svenske dialekter ikke ses og høres så mye i det offentlige (TV, radio, etc.), men det har nettopp å gjøre med det at ikke alle lyttere da skulle skjønne hva som ble sagt. Det er også sant at ikke alle svenskspråklige snakker dialekt (ofte er det bare regionalt fargede varianter av standardspråket), men mange nok gjør det for at de skal leve videre.
@@g.m.s2559 Mener du kvensk? Kvenske innvandrere til Troms og Finnmark tilpasset seg kjapt det (nord-)norske språket da de kunne få eiendomsrett men med krav om å fornorske sine kvenske navn. Økonomiske insentiver får folk til å justere tradisjoner og endre seg.
Excellent video, your pronunciations of most of the languages are pretty spot on, I can hear that it's Swedish or Norwegian you are speaking, you Danish pretty far off though, as a Dane I find it much easier to understand your Swedish, Norwegian or even Icelandic, then it 's to understand your pronunciation of my own language.
Danish it's properly the hardest of the languages you actually speak, from the written word, we have a lot of words that are pronounced quite differently than the way it's spelled, unlike most other Scandinavian languages.
We unfortunately tend to have a lot of words which have silent letters, but in similar words are not silent and the part of words that are stressed in Swedish and Norwegian aren't necessarily the same part that is stressed in Danish.
For master course in Danish. Ask him to give directions in nautical terms 😂🤘
It is hard for me to judge the other pronunciations but a think to consider with danish is that fx. what 'hvad' sometimes you would pronounce the d making the sound 'vad' instead of 'var'.
Also to take 'tager', sometimes you say 'tar' also like the word tar in english, but in other case you prenounce the g and other letters similar to the danish word for roof 'tag'.
Hello. I am looking someone who specializes or shows a great interest in ancient Germania: the Chatti, the Cherusci, and the Marsi around the time of Arminius and the battle of the Teutoburg forest (possibly one of your peers or someone you know of comparable to your level of expertise on the Norse [of course, considering the limited evidence]). Even if in just good speculation, I'm very interested to know said person's thoughts on the subject(s). A point in the right direction would make me eternally grateful!!!!
Would be interesting to learn more about the extinct Norn language some day too!
31:26 you can say "jag tager" in swedish but it's old school
How would i say "The Viking" in Old Norse? Does Víkingr already mean this or do you have to add a different ending? Thanks
"víkingrinn" in definite singular nominative. Or you could say "sá víkingr".
vatterholm Thank you for the help!
3:15 From/frá in Swedish is från with an n, is this because of it developing from east norse or something similar or some other reason?
Dr. Crawford, I am thinking we know that English is less orthographic and i.e. Norwegian is midle orthographic. Lingvists examplify with standard writings but how about examplify with transcription? We can clearly see the differences in written words but would transcription show the real differences? Orthographic Word > Ord. Window > Vindu etc. I don't dare try for transcription.
Maybe it would be hard to do transcription on a forreign language. Also there are many dialects and no standard spoken language - at least not in Norway. Still it's a possibility for transcription since it's launched and a probate tool for lingvists.
Do you get my point? I mean. It is a difference in the visual standard writing and the phonetic pronounciation.
At what chronological/philological point(s) did old Icelandic/Norse become something called "new Icelandic"? I'm dealing with (not only) Adeline Ritterhaus's "Neuisländischen Volksmärchen..." from ca. 1900, and in spite of having translated other folk collections from the mid-1800's, hers is the first time I've encountered the literary distinction, "new Icelandic". -- ?
I think the intent behind the question could be clearer. Perhaps a better phrasing that expresses the question I and a few others have is 'to what extent would learning Modern Icelandic facilitate the comprehension of the written form of Old Icelandic the sagas are written in?' While sure, you could learn the extinct form directly, there are infinitely more resources available for living languages, from apps, to tv shows and movies, to other living speakers. As modern Icelanders read the sagas in school, the question I have, is would the sagas be of a similar level of comprehensibility to an Icelandic speaker as Middle English is to an English speaker? Again, I should emphasise I am purely referring to the written form, not the pronunciation.
From the examples given in the video, the Icelandic written form seems almost identical to the OWN written form, as close as say, the 17th century English of Dryden and Pope to modern English.
As a Copenhagener I would pronounce the wovel in torsk similar to o in the English word bored. But your pronounciation may be correct in Jutlandish dialect.
38:09 - When I was studying linguistics, we called the "soft palate" the velum and the "hard palate" the, well, palate, since the velum isn't really a palate but just soft tissue. But my point is that palatalization would thus be moving from the back, "soft" palate to the front, "hard" palate, which seems to be the opposite of what you've just described here. I'm curious, is there a difference in schools of linguistics. I know mine at the U of O in a minority school, but I'd imagine something like that would be universal.
Then again, maybe I misunderstood something.
iirc, Danish "I" as in you-plural is always capitalized, like English "I", for the example that you put up at 31:00
In modern Norwegian, a doubled consonant is also said to affect the duration that the consonant is held. But the more salient point is that it influences the duration of the preceding vowel. Some minimal pairs as examples: damen /da:men/ vs dammen /damen/ ; fine /fi:ne/ vs finne /fine/ ; or in nynorsk, døme /dø:me/ vs dømme /døme/.
I had assumed Old Norse would work the same, as we see the same traits across all the Scandinavian languages. It seems likely to me that this trait would have been inherited from Old Norse.
It's a bit more complex. In old norse you could have it for ways.
skin, skín, skinn and skínn, while in Norwegian you can only have long vowel or not long vowel/long consonant. "skin" vs "skinn". Besides a couple dialects.
So the forms above had to merge.
skin and skín merged to "ski:n" pretty universally, with a long vowel. But there's variation. For example westerners made the "o" in "skot" long, while easterners say "skott" instead. Everyone made the A long, such as in "mat".
skinn and skínn mostly merge into "skinn".
Thus double consonant came to mean that the vowel has to be short.
In Scania in Sweden we have the east Danish dialect that is not the same as Danish but more close to the dialect talked on the Bornholm island of Denmark.
Elvdalsk har nok mye tilfelles med vest-nordisk da herjedalen var en del av Norge frem til 1644.
Heilsan úr Føroyum.
Fróði Finnsson Your name is so cool!
Godan dagin! Kossu gongur?
Sæll frændi! Kveðja frá Íslandi.
Helsing frå Hordaland i Noreg.
Hilsen fra Danmark
Also as a Norwegian I’ve noticed a peculiar thing recently which is that for whatever reason foreigners, especially Americans, claims that Norwegian is Danish or a Danish language/dialect which of course isn’t true at all. Many Norwegians, my self included, struggle with understanding Danish, especially when they speak fast, and mumble, as opposed to Swedish. And I do believe this misunderstanding or false narrative comes from the fact, stated in this video that we took their written form. And yes some of our dialects is basically almost Danish, like in the South of Norway, Kristiansand and the surrounding counties, they speak a dialect very similar to Danish as Denmark is just a few hours south from Kr. sand across the strait, and into Jutland. And I hate Nynorsk, and it’s only one out of X amount of the different dialects that we have. Our dialects are the true Norwegian language, except certain ones heavily influenced by German, Dutch, and Danish.
People say icelandic is the language closest to old norse, but from what i have seen there is another language just as close or maybe even closer
It is perfectly ok to write «vi» in Nynorsk. «Me» was actually banned from textbooks in education for about fifty years.
hesin is singular form male. We have different words for it, depending on singular v plural and dependidng on the gender, male, female, no gender / mixed
I wonder why you chose the neutral from for Faroese (tað tekur) rather than the masculine (hann tekur) like with the other languages...
In Swedish "dig" (you), and "mig" (me) are pronounced "day" and "may" in everyday language. You CAN pronounce them as "meeg" and "deeg", but if you do, you really speak in poetic form, as if you're singing or reciting a poem.
One question Dr. Crawford. Nouns in the dative plural definite in Icelandic end in -unum but most native speakers (I think) pronounce them as -onum (myself included). This was not the case in Old Norse was it?
Examples:
jólunum = jólonum (The christmas)
hólunum = hólonum (the hills).
If you're not sure what I'm taking about try listening to this short song here:
ruclips.net/video/AsDgjzoWAho/видео.html
You can very clearly hear the words "jólunum", "bólunum", "hólunum" and "rólunum" pronounced as "jólonum", "bólonum", "hólonum", and "rólonum" respectively.
The lyrics are:
Það á að gefa börnum brauð
að bíta í á jólunum,
kertaljós og klæðin rauð,
svo komist þau úr bólunum,.
Væna flís af feitum sauð,
sem fjalla gekk á hólunum.
Nú er hún gamla Grýla dauð,
gafst hún upp á rólunum.
Þetta var mjög gott myndband, Jackson. Kveðja frá Reykjavík. This was a very good video, Jackson. Cheers from Reykjavík.
Note that Icelandic DOES have palatalization, the original one that was in Old Norse, but it hasn't gone the common way of mutating into a palatal affricate. This means that Icelandic "gj" and "kj" are pronounced as the voiceless (unaspirated and aspirated respectively) PALATAL stop [c], rather than the velar stop [k].
These palatal stops are noted as specific phonemes rather than just pure allophones before front vowel sounds (as they were in Old Norse) as the rules of their appearance follows the Old Norse phonology system rather than the Modern Icelandic one.
This means there are no palatal stops before the front /ʏ/ (u) and /œ/ (ö) as they came from Old Norse back /u/ and /ɔ/ (ǫ); there are palatal stops before the back /ai/ (æ) because it came from Old Norse front /ɛː/ (æ) and /øː/ (œ); and Old Norse front /ø/ resulting in palatal stops even after the merger of (ø) and (ǫ) into (ö), making a difference between Modern Icelandic "görðum", from Old Norse "gǫrðum", and "gjörðum", from Old Norse "gørðum".
This fact is quite apparent in the loanword "gæji", taken from English "guy", which breaks the predictability of spelling to sound by having a velar stop [k] in front of the (æ) just like in the language it was taken from, which sets it apart from all native words with "gæ" and "kæ" spelling from an original Old Norse word.
Of course, what Jackson Crawford was referencing when he said "palatalization" was the eventual of change palatal stops into palatal affricates, so this comment is really just a huge nitpick on semantics, but still, the more you know and all that biz.
You have a very good pronounciation in Swedish for being a native English speaker :)