Re: About icelandic

On Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:56:12 -0800 (PST), Sébastien de
Mapias <sglrigaud@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:52d17c38-5f00-465e-b513-13ac1d132b46@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

Hi,
I was once told that people from Iceland can read very
old tales/stories written kind of a thousand years ago
(for example take the Eddas and more or less be able
to read them right away without to much difficulties)...

Is that true ?

Pretty much, yes. The original manuscripts would cause
difficulty, because the script is unfamiliar, the spelling
is irregular, and there are many, many scribal
abbreviations, but edited versions in which the
abbreviations have been expanded and the spelling normalized
can for the most part be read quite easily. Normalized Old
Icelandic spelling is by no means identical to modern
Icelandic spelling, but most of the differences are quite
consistent, and one quickly becomes accustomed to them.

Occasional misunderstanding is possible in the case of words
whose meanings have changed a bit over the centuries.

Has Icelandic language that little evolved for centuries
that they can afford to read very old texts ?

The pronunciation has changed quite a bit. So has the
vocabulary, but most of the old words are still familiar,
though in some cases they've acquired additional meanings or
even changed meanings. The syntax has also changed a bit,
but the old grammatical constructions are generally
understandable, even when they wouldn't be used nowadays.

In short, the language has changed less than most, partly
because there's been a deliberate effort to preserve it, but
it's changed more than is often supposed.

Brian
.

Quantcast