LL-L: "Language varieties" 05.JUL.2000 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Stefan Israel [stefansfeder at yahoo.com]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" 05.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

Comments on how close Old English and Old Norse of the
900's likely were:

> From: Criostoir O Ciardha [paada_please at yahoo.co.uk]

> I believe that the differences in Old Norse and Old
> English so far as I can determine are mainly
> syntactical and micro-grammatical [...]
> One innovation of Old English that Norse did not
> develop was the lenition of [sk] to [sh], cf:
> Ingelsk:
> English, fisk: fish, skirt: shirt and so on.

It's not perfectly clear when Old English [sk] became
[S] as in fisc > fish; in the 900's, it may very well
still have been [skj] (using [j] to refer the sound in
"yoyo").  Indeed, the lack of lenition in Scots
(kerk/church, breg/bridge etc.) may reflect this:
Scots may have shifted [skj] back to [sk] due to
interacting with Norse, with its [sk], while further
south, [skj] lenited fully to [S].

> Norse appears more archaic and yet lacks the
complicated
> inflections - so far as I know - of Old English.

Actually, Old Norse inflection was more complicated
than Old English's.  The two had essentially the same
grammatical categories, but the endings no longer
resembled each other as obviously, and the endings had
differing effects on the root in the two languages.
For example, the word “shield” was:
                 Old English      Old Norse
  nominative  sceold/sciold  skjo,ldr
  accusative   sceold            skjo,ld
  dative         sceolde           skildi
  genitive      sceoldes          skjaldar
                                 (o, standing for a
very o-like ah sound)

Both words share sk__ld with similar vowels, and
speakers appear to have focused on the similar roots,
and to have stripped the non-essential variables,
including most of the grammatical endings, as is
common in language contact situations.  It is
presumably no coincidence that the Old English
inflections lasted longest in the southwest, outside
the Danelaw.

>> 2. The two sentences given as examples appear to me
>> very different. Can we
>> assume that a "ciepend" and a "kaupmathr" without
>> linguistic training would
>> recognise the similarity of the spoken forms

A large amount of the lexicon would be similar enough
for easy understanding, e.g. OE finger:: ON fingr,
arm/earm::arm-,  hund::hund-, an, twa, threo:: ein,
tva, thriu,  ic seo::ek se ("I see").
The dictionary forms OE mann/monn vs. ON madhr look
more difficult, but the accusative of madhr was mann;
speakers making the effort to try to communicate would
quickly learn to recognize such partially familiar
words, particularly in context.

And, as Criostoir points out:

> The whole theory of comprehension between Old
> English and Old Norse speakers is based on the
> premise that both individuals had some patience and
> a willingness to make a little effort to be
> understood
[...] many speakers of both Old English and Old Norse
-
> particularly in the transitional zones of speech -
> would have been bilingual in both tongues

And of course, within half a generation you would have
some children growing up completely bilingual, those
who had ample exposure to both Angle-Saxon and Norse
populations.

>> 3. Further to 2, even if the printed words are
>> similar, was the pronunciation? Consider the
>> difficulty of understanding some regional
>> accents even when the speaker is using standard
>> vocabulary and grammar.

Norwegian has ample dialect differences today, but the
differences appear to have been much less 11 centuries
ago-- it had 11 centuries less time to differentiate,
after all.  There are not many differences between Old
Icelandic and Old Norwegian texts, including poems,
where the language could not be changed much without
disrupting the complicated meter.  To this day, there
are only small regional differences within Icelandic.

As far as Angle-Saxons and Norse communicating,
differing pronunciations would certainly be an initial
hurdle, but the similarity of the languages would
allow speakers trying to communicate to recognize the
other's words faster.  As with any contact between
somewhat related languages, speakers can hammer out
communication if they try, but usually at the expense
of focusing on the essentials and stripping a lot of
the non-essential aspects.

Stefan Israel
sisrael at imap.pitt.edu

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