[Wikipedia-l] Re: Old Norse

Wed Jan 5 05:33:21 UTC 2005

Hello Vegard, Mark, etc.,

An Old Norse project sounds fine with me -- either as a Wikipedia or as a 
Wiktionary. I am reasonably competent in Old Norse and can provide a bit of 
help along the way -- although I cannot promise to spend a lot of time on 
it, since there are so many other things I need to tend to also (including, 
first and foremost, the Nynorsk Wikipedia and the English one).

Arguments against an Old Norse Wikipedia might be its proximity to 
Icelandic -- to which it is so similar that the difference between 
normalised Old Norse and Icelandic orthography can be summed up in a 
handful mostly one-to-one rules.
Thus, Old Norse -r after consonant corresponds to Icelandic -ur; the Old 
Norse O with ogonek (a C-like shape under) corresponds to Icelandic ö; Old 
Norse long ø corresponds to Icelandic æ; Old Norse -k in personal pronouns 
corresponds to Icelandic -g; and the Old Norse grammatical ending -t 
corresponds to Icelandic -ð. Otherwise, the morphology and syntax are 
mostly the same (with some archaic forms in Old Norse being lost in 
Icelandic), but Icelandic has undergone a relatively dramatic expansion of 
its vocabulary in the recent century or so.

Regarding the name, I suggest that the language be called norrœnt (with oe 
digraph) or norrønt with acute accent over the ø (not possible to type in 
Eudora...). The name gamalnorska ("Old Norwegian") would not have been used 
as a self-designation in the time of Old Norse as a mother tongue. Also, 
the language was used both in Norway and Iceland, as well as as a mostly 
spoken language in Sweden and Denmark before the languages of these 
countries started to drift apart.

As for writing system, orthography etc., there is clearly a potential for 
disagreements there. My take on the matter would be that using the latin 
alphabet rather than the (Runic) Futhork makes the most sense, and that 
some degree of normalisation of the spelling is needed. (Should one write 
bók, bok, or boc, for instance?)

The wiki language code :non: sounds fine with me.

-Olve

At 22:54 03/01/2005 +0000, you wrote:
>From: "Vegard Aukrust" <vegara at stud.ntnu.no>
>I want to start a Wikipedia page in old norse (gamalnorska), and I suggest 
>the language code "gno".

>From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>I'm not sure the current environment is the best place for a request 
>regarding Old Norse. But anyhow, I have a question: will you use the runic 
>script, or the latin script?

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org