Re: About icelandic

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:54:11 +0000, António Marques
<m.ap@xxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:gfvh2n$s36$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

Brian M. Scott wrote:

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:00:29 +0000, António Marques
<m.ap@xxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:gfvdub$k5r$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

[...]

I don't know, but... with just a little training I think a
german or french or portuguese speaker could read texts
written in those languages a thousand years ago.

Definitely more than just a little training in the case of
German, and I think in the case of French as well; I've no
opinion about Portuguese.

The earliest portuguese texts are ~ 13th century, so
there's no way to tell. But by just a bit more latitude
that the Oaths of Strasburg are french, there are a lot
of pseudo-latin texts beginning about the 9th century in
which the last of the 'classical' sound laws can be seen
taking place. That settled, the grammar was pretty much
in place (whereas french, for instance, still had to
lose the nominative/oblique thing, granted).

My impression of german came from MHG; I supposed that
modern speakers who are moreover used to know their
dialect besides the standard language wouldn't have too
hard a time understanding it.

But a thousand years ago you'd be looking at OHG.

But I admit it probably requires more than a little
training; though I'm still not convinced Icelandic is so
exceptional as advertised.

I've seen an Icelander, an artist who did not seem to be
especially interested in languages, read Old Norse with no
training at all. She participated in our þing for a while,
but I think that she was more interested in these odd
Americans who wanted to read ON than in the language or
literature itself.

[...]

Brian
.

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