1. This section of the website is dedicated to our experimental
project which aims at reconstruction of Norn as a usable language.
See the Nynorn philosophy page for more detailed explanations of the
objectives.
Our reconstruction is mostly based upon the Shetland dialect. The
most distinctive feature of Nynorn in phonetics is the palatalised
pronounciation [lj,nj]
of ll,nn
like in the most of Shetland. (Of course, if you prefer the
Foula/Westside pronunciation [dl,dn], you may carry on with
it; see a more detailed coverage of this matter in Dialects). In
the grammar, it has been decided to use the four-case system, as
preserved in the Ballad of Hildina and The Lord's Prayer. But, once
again, variations can be possible.
In general, it should be mentioned that the presented version of
Nynorn is, so to say, at the "beta" stage and subject to further
corrections. There will likely be a major update (further referred
to as "Great Revision") when all found mistakes will be indentified
and improvements brought in. Feel free to use our forum to suggest
things that could and should be improved.
2. The most common guidelines for Nynorn are as follows. (This is a rough
overview and certain things may be added later on. See also the chapter on the
Nynorn grammar for more details.)
2.1. The material remaining from Norn is to be used to the
greatest extent and has priority over Old Norse or Scandinavian
stuff. Our task is only to get rid of some superficial influences
that Norn experienced from Scots:
2.1.1. [äi] is restored back to the original [i] (occasionally
[e])
2.1.2. the definite article de, coming from Scots is removed;
2.1.3. the preposition to is replaced with its Scandinavian equivalent
til (also widely present in the surviving texts);
2.1.4. infinitives are assigned the ending -a, they have lost in most
cases;
2.1.5. -in > -ing in masculine names;
2.1.6. -in > -andi in present participles.
2.2. At the same time, a few things connected to Scots have been left
untouched, due to our desire to stay as close to the Norn material as possible:
2.2.1. Nouns ending at -ek which is a merging of the Scandinavian
-ing- and Scots -ack, -ock
( < Gaelic -ach) are preserved; they conjugate like the -ing
names, with which they have mixed a lot (words like hutrikin <
*hudrek, mulikin, muttikin make us believe such words at least could
take the definite article or what was left of it);
2.2.2. the ending of the names of agent -er (< ON -ari) is left
unchanged, despite sporadic examples of ON -ari. This decision can be
explained by the fact that -er in the given context descends both from
-ari and -ir, another Old Norse suffix for agent. (The same process
has f.ex. also happened in Danish.)
2.2.3. female abstract names in -in (ON -an,
-ing) are left unchanged;
2.2.4. several expressions quoted by Jakobsen as being of Scandinavian origin
were translated into Nynorn and are given in bold in the dictionary.
2.3. Bearing in mind we will not find many useful terms among the registered
Shetland/Orkney words, why not to borrow some from Old Norse or contemporary
Scandinavian languages?
In this particular case a systematic approach is followed. We can
reconstruct the needed words according to phonological
correspondance between Norn and Old Norse or another language. For
example, we need a word for 'ghost', but the ON term for it
draugr is not registered in Norn records. However, we have
Shetland Norn/Scots words like
hjog < ON
haugr,
bjog < ON
baugr,
joga < ON
auga. So by analogy we could postulate that ON
draugr would give
*drjog in Norn (the asterisk is used for a reconstructed form,
never met in life). But there are no Norn words that begin with
drj-! All of them drop the
-j-:
drøg < ON
drjúgr,
drøl- < ON
*drjól-/drýl-. So our final answer is
*drog < ON
draugr.
To be quite fair, we must admit that we lied in the beginning,
there really is a Shetland word which originates from ON
draugr, namely
drow. However, this is rather a contamination of the respective
Old Norse word and the Low Scots
trow and is not a direct descendant from
draugr. But whatever the truth is, the
above-mentioned reconstruction of the form
*drog is just a good example of our method. However, had there been no L.Sc. word
trow,
draugr would have most likely appeared in Norn as
*drog!
3. Nynorn orthography.
3.1. The Nynorn alphabet consists of 24 letters:
Aa Bb Dd (Ð)ð Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv
Yy Øø Åå
The letter ð does not occur in the beginning of the word,
its capital counterpart Ð is mentioned only for
completeness sake.
3.2. We have introduced several letters which have an etymological value
only:
3.2.1.
ð - for ON ð. This letter reads as zero sound (like in Faroese), except 2 positions: rð
and gð, where you can read it either like
[r, g] or [rd, gd] respectively. Notice that the usage
of
ð in the Nynorn dictionary is not quite consistent and is subject to Great
Revision.
3.2.2. å (reads as o) - for ON á and a, which gave
o in Norn. This applies only o
in stressed syllables. In the unstressed syllables we have decided to use the
letter o: -som < -samr, as the spelling -såm has
been considered lame. (But you can always contest it!).
NB! ON ǫ is spelled as o, unless it is changed to a.
3.2.3.
y (reads as
i) - for ON
y and
ý.
It has been decided not to create a separate letter for
u <
ó due to the lack of a good sign for it and, more seriously,
because the change
ó >
ú must have likely occurred already in the Old Norse dialect
of Shetland and Orkney.
3.3. Various letter combinations.
3.3.1.
hj reads as
[j];
3.3.2. sj reads as English sh;
3.3.3. tsj reads as English ch.
3.4. A few more words on palatalisation. Long palatalised consonants can add
the -i to the preceding vowel (especially
o), although this is not a universal rule:
foiljda < folda,
skonjda,skoinjda < skunda,
goitt < gott, but
kolj < kollr,
konnj < korn,
knotti < knǫttr. We admit that in this case our orthography
is not quite consistent, so there may be changes during the Great Revision too.
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