Old Norse and Earlier English Pronunciation

[Baker, John M.]

        I'm sure that practical considerations play a major role here.
After all, most people study poetry to appreciate the text, not to study
the language from the period.  Chaucer just doesn't work with a modern
pronunciation; the lines do not scan and often do not rhyme.  With only
occasional exceptions, Shakespeare's work tolerates a modern
pronunciation pretty well.  We can go back further with prose:  The
Morte Darthur (1485) is always read with modern pronunciation.  I don't
know if we could read poetry from that time with a modern pronunciation
or not.


John Baker


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Subject: Old Norse and Earlier English Pronunciation

Thanks to Amy for the information. I have removed her "OT" designation
because this is clearly a linguistic topic and relates directly to
issues involving the rationale for pronunciation of written texts.

Do the Icelanders give some rationale for reading 13th century texts
with 21st century pronunciations? If not, then it must be so obvious to
them that they do not even think of giving a rationale--any more than we
see a need for giving a rationale for not reading 16th century texts
(Wyatt, for example) with 16th century pronunciations, even though the
actual differences might well be viewed as considerable to a
philologist.

I have been told by Icelanders who are also medievalists that the early
texts are linguistically quite accessible to living Icelanders. These
are highly literate people, of course. But my guess is that, even though
the phonological differences may seem considerable to a nonnative
speaker, they seem relatively minor to an Icelander; insisting on the
earlier pronunciations would seem trivial and distracting. I can't
imagine teaching "Fairie Queen" and insisting on 16th century
pronunciations. They probably feel the same way about classic ON
literature. Moreover, given that the texts range in age from 900-1400,
there is no single pronunciation set that would be completely accurate
for all texts.

It does seem a bit odd that I could not imagine teaching Chaucer or
"Gawain" and not insisting on authentic pronunciations. This may be in
part simply tradition. But I suspect that the tradition is rooted in the
native speaker perception that Chaucer spoke the equivalent of a
psycholinguistically different language, whereas Shakespeare just spoke
"funny" English.

Stage presentations, of course, have their own constraints: a tug of war
between intelligibility and verisimilitude. Historically accurate
renderings of Shakespeare would be even less intelligible.
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