Ǿ vs. Œ vs. Æ: An Old Norse Spelling Conundrum

Thanks to Muninn, now if only he'd visit us more often! Thank you Dr. Crawford!

Funny how the first thing I thought at 5:30 was that Munin came to remind him and he himself said it at 5:49. Very informative & detailed video, loved it

When I tutored people in Old Norse years ago, I used normalized archaic spelling and reconstructed pronunciation...and I connected words/structures to their modern, mainland Scandinavian counterparts when those existed. Too many linguists teach it as either "a Norse language that isn't old" (oddly spelled modern Icelandic) or "an old language that isn't Norse" (more important as a parallel to Greek and Sanskrit, than as the ancestor to Swedish and Danish). Thank goodness for your channel and your teaching style; it's encouraging that you show people the "old" AND the "Norse" aspects of the language.

Even though this is his livelihood, It still amazes me how much information is stored in his head. Enough to make frequent videos in the mountains while avoiding scripts lol

In Russian the word for to think is «Думать» and the legislative council is called the «Дума». “Dumat’” and “Duma” respectively. Since the Vikings made a big impact on Slavic culture, I was wondering if maybe the word was borrowed from the Old Norse “døma”?

It's just annoying that even we Danes who have "ø" on our keyboard, using the standard way of getting an acute atop a vowel doesn't work - so I can easily do "´"+"o" giving "ó", but "´"+"ø" just gives me "´ø". Sad times...

Öðin out there trying to learn his Norse from Dr. Jackson Crawford. I just so happen to very much appreciate this channel with A passion

As an English teacher, I feel your pain in the brain fart of coming up with an example.

The problem is made worse because people of the time were writing down things in the way that they knew how. However that didn't necessarily match the way someone who lived 1 or 2 centuries earlier wrote.

I was really impressed to hear the pronunciation of your Swedish g being correct for both "gås" and "gäss" which makes me want to ask if this distinction is made in Old Norse as well, that being the difference of consonants before front and back vowels?

I don't think I am alone in wishing you would increase the volume/sound level in you presentations. I have to hold the speaker near my ear to hear what you are saying and when doing so, I cannot see the screen.

Always happy to see Faroese examples in your videos. Ø in Modern Faroese comes from three separate phonemes in ON: ø, ǿ/œ, and ǫ. However, the reflex of ǫ can also be a, since some words analogise either all vowels to a or all vowels to ø, so for instance alda - ǫldu becomes alda - aldu but saga - sǫgu becomes søga - søgu. And yes, we do also have a distinct æ but it's not just from ON æ but also from ON é, so réttr > rættur in addition to gás - gæss > gas - gæs.

THANK YOU, Dr. C! Keep up the great work!

I enjoyed this interesting digression into an arcane topic. As an speaker and writer of a variety of American English, I find it a charming luxury to have a distinct symbol for each vowel sound. Also interesting that people who were making do with 16 runes, when switching to another writing system, sorted out the vowel sounds so nicely.

It would be really interesting to learn more about orthography in Old Norse writing (not the modern standardised orthography). What changed from early writings to the later ones, and what would be the differences between writings from Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden? There are probably many interesting details.

When you write Danish but is missing the æ ø å Æ Ø Å letters they are normally transcribed as ae oe aa AE OE and AA respectively so there is a nice symmetry to using the ø with an accent. \`{\o} should do it.

I løved this. Thænk you!

Ǿf ǿf ǿf says the pig in danish. ( Œuf œuf œuf means egg egg egg in french - I can't hear the difference between Ø and Œ)

Letters fascinate me.

makes tons of sense - as all your uploads impressively do - but how do I coax an accented o-slash out of my keyboard? or an o-caudata for that matter? And thanks 🙏 for your unwavering patience with the unavoidable “Besserwisser” crowd on the web - we who appreciate your work do so with a depth that is difficult to convey ❣️