Lord's prayer in Orkney Norn

[Ljun]

The best preserved text of Orkney Norn is the 'Lords Prayer'.

Orkney Norn 1700:

Favor i ir i chimrie,

Helleur ir i nam thite,

gilla cosdum thite cumma,

veya thine mota vara gort

o yurn sinna gort i chimrie,

ga vus da on da dalight brow vora

Firgive vus sinna vora

sin vee Firgive sindara mutha vus,

lyv vus ye i tumtation,

min delivera vus fro olt ilt, Amen.

or On sa meteth vera.



English 1662:
Our Father, which art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy kingdom come;

thy will be done,

in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our trespasses,

as we forgive them that trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation;

but deliver us from evil.

[For thine is the kingdom,

the power, and the glory,

for ever and ever.]

Amen.

[Hrafn]

I know Hnolt analized the form 'olt' to be historical Dat.sg.N.

And i ofcourse agree on that. But also think that must have been true for Orkney norn. If you look on page 331 in "nordiske minde, især sproglige på Orknøerne" by Jakob Jakobsen, then you will find the phrase "Ta'r a' gort" which he intepreet as "þat er alt gört".

He does however say, that he thinks it is most likely that this 'a' comes from scotish 'all'. But he does not tell why.

I cant proov that Jakobsen is wrong about the etymology of 'a', but if he is we got another example of 'allr'.

One with 'fro ollt' where we can see the dative form, not by the ending, but by the vowel. And we know dative is used here in old norse too. And the other example, we got 'a' where old norse would use a form of 'allr' without any u-mutation.

The lack of 'u' in 'olt' does not proov it is not a dative form, the case ending system at that time was corrupt, which is also shown in 'nam thite'. Another thing which supports it could be a dative form is that as far i know, we dont have en example of initial a > o in orkney norn, so if not analogical caused by confusion, it must be directly derived from old norse öllu. And the 't' in 'olt' maybe just be because 'll' changed in a similar way it did in icelandic and faroese.

And we know examples of dative in orkney norn. So i think it is likely that there really was a distinct dative and a distinct accusative form in the time Orkney Norn was alive and spoken as the normal language and english only was spoken by few. And is it not that orkney norn we want to reconstruct?

[Hnolt]

Hrafn wrote:

I know Hnolt analized the form 'olt' to be historical Dat.sg.N.

This is not correct, I've been always saying that 'olt' is an old accusative form (Acc.sg.N.).

Quote:

One with 'fro ollt' where we can see the dative form, not by the ending, but by the vowel. And we know dative is used here in old norse too. And the other example, we got 'a' where old norse would use a form of 'allr' without any u-mutation.

The lack of 'u' in 'olt' does not proov it is not a dative form, the case ending system at that time was corrupt, which is also shown in 'nam thite'. Another thing which supports it could be a dative form is that as far i know, we dont have en example of initial a > o in orkney norn, so if not analogical caused by confusion, it must be directly derived from old norse öllu. And the 't' in 'olt' maybe just be because 'll' changed in a similar way it did in icelandic and faroese.

Your ideas are really interesting, but you're missing one point: -t in 'olt' and 'ilt' comes from the Nom/Acc.sg.N. ending, it was never used for dative. As for the vocalism of the word, it has to be said that 'l' is often labialising preceding vowels, English 'all,wall,tall' is an example that first pops up in mind. In several languages 'l' is interchangeable with 'v/w'. It might have been an interchange between ON 'a' and 'ǫ' as well, but in any case this is not the old dative form, that's quite clear. And the following 'ilt' is 100% the old nominative/accusative form. So I think we're on the right path.

Quote:

And we know examples of dative in orkney norn. So i think it is likely that there really was a distinct dative and a distinct accusative form in the time Orkney Norn was alive and spoken as the normal language and english only was spoken by few. And is it not that orkney norn we want to reconstruct?

I don't mind using old dative in set expressions (like it's done in Danish), but I still think that the language of the prayer is already free of dative as a regular case.

[Hrafn]

We've talked about it before, i wrote a post on the 02, 2011 (Dative case). Here is the link:

http://nornlanguage.forumup.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=22&mforum=nornlanguage


We agreed that orkney had a dative cased used in a locative sense. Or did i misunderstand you?

In a similar way poetic danish use dativ -e
and accusative form in adjective -en.

example: "Han gik fra vilden skove"

[Hnolt]

Hrafn wrote:

We've talked about it before, i wrote a post on the 02, 2011 (Dative case). Here is the link:

http://nornlanguage.forumup.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=22&mforum=nornlanguage


We agreed that orkney had a dative cased used in a locative sense. Or did i misunderstand you?

What I said and meant exactly was that Orkney Norn (known to us through the Lord's Prayer) no longer had dative as a grammatical case. But it might well remain in numerous expressions, some of which are quoted by Marwick in his dictionary "Orkney Norn". I never mentioned that this sort of dative forms had the locative function only.

[Àdhamh]

[Harris]

Can anyone explain why 'thine' and 'thite' are spelled with <th> in this text? I thought they would be pronounced /t/ but I can't see any reason why they would have been recorded as <th> unless the speaker differentiated them in some way from other <t>s. Perhaps for etymological reasons, or by analogy with English/Scots/Norse?

Thanks!

Harris

[Kråka]

Hey!

There is no certitude as to how ON /þ/ mutated in Orkney. Some sources point towards /t/ while others have preserved /þ/. It may be that /þ/ had not changed to /t/ everywhere in Orkney when Norn stopped being used. Or maybe the Prayer is written in a more conservative form of Norn (phonetically speaking). English "th" is sometimes rendered as "t'" In Orkney Scots. So it may have depended on speakers. Also, a study on the history of dialectal transformations in the Faroe Islands may help us in imagining what may have happened in Orkney. Anyways, I don't believe has given a possible answer to this question. Hnolt or Ljun may have better theories though ... :S

[Hnolt]