4 ms·

This is interesting! Take Norwegian for instance, which is originally of West Norse origin. During the viking age, settlers (many of whom were outlaws in Norway

by kebman 6y ago

This is interesting! Take Norwegian for instance, which is originally of West Norse origin. During the viking age, settlers (many of whom were outlaws in Norway lol) sailed to the then newly discovered Iceland. These people all spoke West Norse, which was the language spoken in Norway at the time. The settlers in Iceland largely kept the West Norse language through the centuries, while mainland Norwegian was more and more influenced by their East Norse neighbours of Sweden and Denmark. So today, Icelandic and Norwegian are just about as different as Norwegian and German. While Norwegians will recognize a few words from Icelandic, most of it remains mutually unintelligible. Meanwhile, Icelandic people can readily understand the historic and archaic Old Norse texts without much translation—or certainly far more easily than a Norwegian would—where a Norwegian would struggle to understand most of it today.

Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> Meanwhile, Icelandic people can readily understand the historic and archaic Old Norse texts without much translation—or certainly far more easily than a Norwegian would—where a Norwegian would struggle to understand most of it today. This is not actually due to Icelandic being as conservative as you think. It is due to Icelandic intellectuals in the 19th century successfully pushing for the restoration of many old words that had gone out of use in the intervening centuries. Before the 19th-century language movement, Icelandic had lost a lot of that old vocabulary and had replaced them with borrowings from Danish.
- kebman 6y ago
  > This is not actually due to Icelandic being as conservative as you think. Many would say that is exactly proof of their conservationist nature! While there is some truth to your claim of the language not evolving in a fully dynamic or "natural" fashion (i.e. rather evolving with input from culturally conservative experts and intellectuals, which is how literally all Nordic languages evolve today as far as they're able to control it), Icelandic hadn't really lost that much of the original Norse, and certainly not as much as Norwegian did in the same amount of time. This is due mainly to a few factors. First of all, Norway became "danified" much quicker because the Black Death wiped out most of our nobility, leading Danish to become much more prominent much quicker over here. As such, Iceland had more of a choice in the matter. Second, Norway is in very close proximity to both Sweden and Denmark, leading to constant influence due to trade and even families migrating back and forth. On the other hand, it takes much more effort to get to Iceland, since you need to undertake a pretty long journey over the ocean to reach it. Like Norway, who was also under Danish rule, Iceland also went into a phase of revival and romanticism around the Napoleonic wars, leading both peoples to search for their roots. In Norway this struggle lead to the invention of Nynorsk (New Norwegian), which uses a lot of older dialect words—especially from West Norwegian dialects—compared to the almost completely Danish Bokmål (Book Language). These two written languages are still pretty similar, though, and thus pretty much unintelligible with Old Norse. Additionally, if you listen to Faroese, you'll find that it is also much closer to Old Norse than both Danish and Norwegain, despite the language arguably being much longer under Danish influence than both Norwegian and Icelandic.
  - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
    > Icelandic hadn't really lost that much of the original Norse. I would say that it did. Besides that loss of vocabulary which I mentioned, the phonological system of Icelandic has drastically shifted since the Old Norse era. Yes, on paper the language might seem conservative, but that is just the result of a conservative orthography. The actual sound of the Icelandic (and Faroese) language today bears little resemblance to Old Norse. The one big archaism modern Icelandic has going for it is its morphology, but this shouldn’t get more hype than it deserves.
    - kebman 6y ago
      Except Icelandic people can read Old Norse, and that's all the hype you need. It's a bit more difficult for Faroese. It's even more difficult for Norwegians and Danes who will only be able to pick out a word or two. That's the continuum. Equally, a Norwegian can read Danish, but it takes from one beer to a wedding reception to get used to their strange laryngeal pronounciation, at which point the Norwegian probably is so drunk that he speaks perfect Danish. That's hardly drastic, although it might look like it is on paper. What's drastic is the day after. (Swedes don't count, and Norwegians are more than happy to explain it to them... in their own language.) Skål!
      - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
        > Except Icelandic people can read Old Norse, and that's all the hype you need. Yes, but again, that is due to 1) the 19th-century language reform, and 2) a conservative orthography where the spelling remains the same even though modern Icelandic pronunciation is nothing like Old Norse. When it comes to languages being conservative or innovative, linguists examine the language itself over time, not just the present literary standard or the orthography used to write the language. So, yes, Icelandic has converged back towards Old Norse in certain ways due to artificial 19th-century efforts, but in the intervening centuries there were such massive innovations that praising Icelandic as conservative is disingenuous. Linguists tire of having to explain this (and some similar cases like Romanian versus the rest of Romance) to laymen.

by kebman 6y ago

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> Meanwhile, Icelandic people can readily understand the historic and archaic Old Norse texts without much translation—or certainly far more easily than a Norwegian would—where a Norwegian would struggle to understand most of it today. This is not actually due to Icelandic being as conservative as you think. It is due to Icelandic intellectuals in the 19th century successfully pushing for the restoration of many old words that had gone out of use in the intervening centuries. Before the 19th-century language movement, Icelandic had lost a lot of that old vocabulary and had replaced them with borrowings from Danish.

kebman 6y ago
> This is not actually due to Icelandic being as conservative as you think. Many would say that is exactly proof of their conservationist nature! While there is some truth to your claim of the language not evolving in a fully dynamic or "natural" fashion (i.e. rather evolving with input from culturally conservative experts and intellectuals, which is how literally all Nordic languages evolve today as far as they're able to control it), Icelandic hadn't really lost that much of the original Norse, and certainly not as much as Norwegian did in the same amount of time. This is due mainly to a few factors. First of all, Norway became "danified" much quicker because the Black Death wiped out most of our nobility, leading Danish to become much more prominent much quicker over here. As such, Iceland had more of a choice in the matter. Second, Norway is in very close proximity to both Sweden and Denmark, leading to constant influence due to trade and even families migrating back and forth. On the other hand, it takes much more effort to get to Iceland, since you need to undertake a pretty long journey over the ocean to reach it. Like Norway, who was also under Danish rule, Iceland also went into a phase of revival and romanticism around the Napoleonic wars, leading both peoples to search for their roots. In Norway this struggle lead to the invention of Nynorsk (New Norwegian), which uses a lot of older dialect words—especially from West Norwegian dialects—compared to the almost completely Danish Bokmål (Book Language). These two written languages are still pretty similar, though, and thus pretty much unintelligible with Old Norse. Additionally, if you listen to Faroese, you'll find that it is also much closer to Old Norse than both Danish and Norwegain, despite the language arguably being much longer under Danish influence than both Norwegian and Icelandic.
- Mediterraneo10 6y ago
  > Icelandic hadn't really lost that much of the original Norse. I would say that it did. Besides that loss of vocabulary which I mentioned, the phonological system of Icelandic has drastically shifted since the Old Norse era. Yes, on paper the language might seem conservative, but that is just the result of a conservative orthography. The actual sound of the Icelandic (and Faroese) language today bears little resemblance to Old Norse. The one big archaism modern Icelandic has going for it is its morphology, but this shouldn’t get more hype than it deserves.
  - kebman 6y ago
    Except Icelandic people can read Old Norse, and that's all the hype you need. It's a bit more difficult for Faroese. It's even more difficult for Norwegians and Danes who will only be able to pick out a word or two. That's the continuum. Equally, a Norwegian can read Danish, but it takes from one beer to a wedding reception to get used to their strange laryngeal pronounciation, at which point the Norwegian probably is so drunk that he speaks perfect Danish. That's hardly drastic, although it might look like it is on paper. What's drastic is the day after. (Swedes don't count, and Norwegians are more than happy to explain it to them... in their own language.) Skål!
    - Mediterraneo10 6y ago
      > Except Icelandic people can read Old Norse, and that's all the hype you need. Yes, but again, that is due to 1) the 19th-century language reform, and 2) a conservative orthography where the spelling remains the same even though modern Icelandic pronunciation is nothing like Old Norse. When it comes to languages being conservative or innovative, linguists examine the language itself over time, not just the present literary standard or the orthography used to write the language. So, yes, Icelandic has converged back towards Old Norse in certain ways due to artificial 19th-century efforts, but in the intervening centuries there were such massive innovations that praising Icelandic as conservative is disingenuous. Linguists tire of having to explain this (and some similar cases like Romanian versus the rest of Romance) to laymen.