(no subject)

[vyvyanx]

Today I have been mostly tidying, cleaning and making food for DM coming round tonight. Also, over the last few days, I have been involved in a most amusing email conversation with my old friend CA (who works with grahamb) about Indo-European roots, English historical sound change, and such things. It's most enjoyable. It's the sort of thing I often seem to post about on usenet. I rarely post, but when I do, my posts are generally about historical linguistics, even if the relevant group is supposed to be about nethack or bdsm or local affairs. (I hasten to add that I don't start off-topic threads about linguistics; I just follow up when the conversation turns to, say, the correct pronunciation of Mjollnir in Old Norse, or the history of gender-neutral pronouns in English, or dialectal variation, as it does from time to time.)
This week, I think I will do some work on my website; I haven't updated it substantially for a long time.

Comments

[dreamserpent.livejournal.com]

what is the correct pronunciation og mjollnir,

i've never said it outloud, but in my head i always just say Mih-Jole-nir, but i bet that J makes a Y noise or something silly like that.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

without recourse to proper phonetics, it's something like 'mYOL-neer', iirc.

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

Yes, the "j" is pronounced like English consonantal "y". The argument on the group was, it seems (looking back at my post in 1998!) primarily about the nature of the first vowel, spelt in Modern Icelandic as "ö" (that's an "o" with a diaeresis, if it doesn't display properly). To quote my original post:
"In early Old Icelandic manuscripts, Mjollnir's first vowel is written
(usually) as a "hooked o" i.e. like an o with a reversed cedilla under it.
Before the mid-thirteenth century, this sound is thought to have been
pronounced like the vowel in British English RP "bought" i.e. a mid-low
back rounded vowel, only not as long a vowel as in British English.
During the latter part of the century, this vowel was fronted, and merged
with "slashed o" i.e. o with a diagonal line through it, which was
pronounced similarly to the ö you describe above (though it was a rounded
sound, unlike the English vowel). The i of Mjollnir seems to have been
pronounced more like the vowel in English "eat" (only shorter) than in
"it" at the earliest period."