Old East Norse

Old East Norse was a dialect of Old Norse which evolved into the languages of Old Danish and Old Swedish from the 9th century to the 12th century.

Between 800 and 1100, East Norse is in Sweden called '' Runic Swedish'' and in Denmark ''Runic Danish''. The use of ''Swedish'' and ''Danish'' is not for linguistic reasons as the differences between them are minute at best during the more ancient stages of this dialect group. Changes had a tendency to occur earlier in the Danish region and until this day many Old Danish changes have still not taken place in modern Swedish rendering Swedish as the more archaic out of the two concerning both the ancient and the modern languages, sometimes by a profound margin but in all differences are still minute. They are called ''runic'' because the body of text appears in runes.

Runic Old East Norse is characteristically archaic in form, especially Swedish (which is still true for modern Swedish compared to Danish). In essence it matches or surpasses the archaicness of post-runic Old West Norse which in its turn is generally more archaic than post-runic Old East Norse. While typically "Eastern" in structure, many later post-runic changes and trademarks of EON had yet to happen.

Language history

The combinations -mp-, -nt-, and -nk- mostly merged to -pp-, -tt- and -kk- in Old West Norse at around the 7th century, marking the first distinction between the Eastern and Western dialects. The following table illustrates this (note the mutual influence of East and West Norse on each other):

An early difference between Old West Norse and the other dialects was that Old West Norse had the forms ''bú'' "dwelling", ''kú'' "cow" (accusative) and ''trú'' "faith" whereas Old East Norse had ''bó'', ''kó'' and ''tró''. Old West Norse was also characterized by the preservation of ''u''-umlaut, which meant that for example Proto-Norse *''tanþu'' "tooth" was pronounced ''tǫnn'' and not ''tann'' as in post-runic Old East Norse; OWN ''gǫ́s'' and runic OEN ''gǫ́s'', while post-runic OEN ''gás'' "goose".

The phoneme ''ʀ'', which evolved during the Proto-Norse period from ''z'', was still clearly separated from ''r'' in most positions, even when being geminated, while in OWN it had already merged with ''r''.

Monophthongization of ''æi > ē'' and ''øy, au > ø̄'' started in mid-10th-century Denmark.M. Schulte. "Phonological developments from Old Nordic to Early Modern Nordic I: West Scandinavian." ''The Nordic languages vol. 2'' pp. 1081–1096. Monophthongization
page 1082
/øy/
page 1082
Reduced vowels
page 1085
/ref> Compare runic OEN: ''fæigʀ'', ''gæiʀʀ'', ''haugʀ'', ''møydōmʀ'', ''diūʀ''; with Post-runic OEN: ''fēgher'', ''gēr'', ''hø̄gher'', ''mø̄dōmber'', ''diūr''; OWN: '' feigr'', '' geirr'', '' haugr'', ''meydómr'', ''dýr''; from PN *faigiaz, *gaizaz, *haugaz, *mawi- + dōmaz (maidendom; virginity), *diuza ((wild) animal).

Feminine o-stems often preserve the plural ending -aʀ while in OWN they more often merge with the feminine i-stems: (runic OEN) ''*sōlaʀ'', ''*hafnaʀ''/''*hamnaʀ'', ''*wāgaʀ'' while OWN ''sólir'', ''hafnir'' and ''vágir'' (modern Swedish ''solar'', ''hamnar'', ''vågar''; suns, havens, scales; Danish has mainly lost the distinction between the two stems with both endings now being rendered as -er or -e alternatively for the o-stems).

Vice versa, masculine i-stems with the root ending in either ''g'' or ''k'' tended to shift the plural ending to that of the ja-stems while OWN kept the original: ''drængiaʀ'', ''*ælgiaʀ'' and ''*bænkiaʀ'' while OWN '' drengir'', ''elgir'' (elks) and '' bekkir'' (modern Swedish '' drängar'', ''älgar'', ''bänkar'').

The plural ending of ja-stems were mostly preserved while those of OWN often acquired that of the i-stems: ''*bæðiaʀ'', ''*bækkiaʀ'', ''*wæfiaʀ'' while OWN ''beðir'' (beds), '' bekkir'', '' vefir'' (modern Swedish ''bäddar'', ''bäckar'', ''vävar'').

Old Danish

Until the early 12th century, Old East Norse was very much a uniform dialect. It was in Denmark that the first innovations appeared that would differentiate Old Danish from Old Swedish''The Nordic Languages''; ''202. The typological development of the Nordic languages I: Phonology''. 1. Proto-Nordic
1853
2. Common Nordic
1855
3. Old East Nordic
18561859
4. Old West Nordic
1859
/ref>^:3 as these innovations spread north unevenly (unlike the earlier changes that spread more evenly over the East Norse area) creating a series of isoglosses going from Zealand to Svealand.

In Old Danish, merged with during the 9th century.Tarrin Wills
''The Anonymous Verse in the'' Third Grammatical Treatise
Retrieved from Internet Archive January 13, 2014. From the 11th to 14th centuries, the unstressed vowels -''a'', -''o'' and -''e'' ( standard normalization -''a'', -''u'' and -''i'') started to merge into -''ə'', represented with the letter ''e''. This vowel came to be epenthetic, particularly before ''-ʀ'' endings.Oskar Bandle, et al; ''The Nordic Languages, An International Handbook on the History of the North Germanic Languages'', Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 2002 At the same time, the voiceless stop consonants ''p'', ''t'' and ''k'' became voiced plosives and even fricative consonants. Resulting from these innovations, Danish has ''kage'' (cake), ''tunger'' (tongues) and ''gæster'' (guests) whereas (Standard) Swedish has retained older forms, ''kaka'', ''tungor'' and ''gäster'' (OEN ''kaka'', ''tungur'', ''gæstir'').

Moreover, the Danish pitch accent shared with Norwegian and Swedish changed into '' stød'' around this time.

Old Swedish

At the end of the 10th and early 11th century initial ''h-'' before ''l'', ''n'' and ''r'' was still preserved in the middle and northern parts of Sweden, and is sporadically still preserved in some northern dialects as ''g-'', e.g. ''gly'' (lukewarm), from ''hlýʀ''. The Dalecarlian dialects developed as Old Swedish dialects and as such can be considered separate languages from Swedish.

Text example

This is an extract from '' Västgötalagen'', the Westrogothic law. It is the oldest text written as a manuscript found in Sweden and from the 13th century. It is contemporaneous with most of the Icelandic literature. The text marks the beginning of Old Swedish as a distinct dialect.

Dræpær maþar svænskan man eller smalenskæn, innan konongsrikis man, eigh væstgøskan, bøte firi atta ørtogher ok þrettan markær ok ænga ætar bot. ..Dræpar maþær danskan man allæ noræn man, bøte niv markum. Dræpær maþær vtlænskan man, eigh ma frid flyia or landi sinu oc j æth hans. Dræpær maþær vtlænskæn prest, bøte sva mykit firi sum hærlænskan man. Præstær skal i bondalaghum væræ. Varþær suþærman dræpin ællær ænskær maþær, ta skal bøta firi marchum fiurum þem sakinæ søkir, ok tvar marchar konongi.

If someone slays a Swede or a Smålander, a man from the kingdom, but not a West Geat, he will pay eight örtugar (20-pence coins) and thirteen marks, but no weregild. ..If someone slays a Dane or a Norwegian, he will pay nine marks. If someone slays a foreigner, he shall not be banished and have to flee to his clan. If someone slays a foreign priest, he will pay as much as for a fellow countryman. A priest counts as a freeman. If a Southerner is slain or an Englishman, he shall pay four marks to the plaintiff and two marks to the king.

References

{{Germanic philology

Norse language, Old
North Germanic languages