Johan Schalin, PhDJun 1, 2023
Spoiler alert: I intend to start blogging about #EastNorse language history. Not only #VikingAge or #runic or Medieval #OldDanish and #OldSwedish, but also older #ProtoNordic and digressions into modern dialects, #Elfdalian and Fenno-Swedish. Hang on and boost if you think your followers are interested.
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 2, 2023
My blogs will feature some elements from my existing research, This includes #umlaut, including the spread of #rounding, and #breaking.
#EastNorse and #Gutnish, perhaps #Övdalian, have a different story to tell here and may contribute a lot to the reconstruction of how the process originally proceeded.
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 4, 2023
I attach my first introductory blog on #EastNorse, depicting coming topics.
I will discuss periferal Swedish dialects that originate from a more archaic East Norse than #OldSwedish. I will also by rigorously comparing #WestNorse, #EastNorse and #Gutnish show that they do not derive from 8th century language similar to #OldWestNorse, but a 6th century late #ProtoNorse.
As it seems, that Mastodon does not support PDFs, so I will have to reconsider my format of any future blogs.
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 4, 2023
My first posting is on #FennoSwedish. In parallel in this chain you find two spontaneous samples from #Pargas between Turku and the Åland Islands.
Old traits common in Finland:
-Neuter & non-referential pronoun ”he” ’it’, also compounded ”hehe” ’it-that’ & ”hete” ’it-there’ -Small words with initial d- in Swedish begin with t- in dialect: ”teh” =”där” ’there’; ”To” =”Du” ’you’; ’tåte” =”dylik-där” ’such there’.
-Short stressed CV-syllables ”sama” ’same’.
-Retained diphthong ”göutar” ’boys’
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhD
Before taking on harder subjects, let’s debunk a myth circulating in Finland and Sweden: No! The dialect in #Närpes or #Närpesiska is not the ”oldest” #FennoSwedish dialect! And moreover, it has remarkably little in common with “Swedish spoken in Stockholm in the 1500s” (see link). The myth is fuelled by the impression that “incomprehensible”=“archaic”. In fact Närpesiska is incomprehensible mainly for the opposite reason: it is full of phonological innovations. https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-1281219
Fredrik Lindström: Närpesiska liknar stockholmska - så som man talade på 1500-talet (Från 2018)

Åbodialekten liknar 1800-talets stockholmska.

Jun 9, 2023 at 6:30amWeb
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 9, 2023
Modern #Icelandic is another Nordic vernacular that would be much easier to understand for Scandinavians if it weren’t so innovative(!) in its phonology and puristic in its new derived vocabulary. Also this is often misrepresented in stating that “strange Scandinavian dialect X” must be mutually comprehensible with Icelandic because both sound “old” (read rather “strange”).
Yet, unlike #Närpesiska, and unlike any ”Dialect X” except #Övdalian, Icelandic is indeed very archaic in morphology.
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 13, 2023
Among dialect scholars in Finland some want to name the dialect of #Kronoby as the most archaic. As a researcher specialised in #vocalism I willingly subscribe to that: unlike #Närpes (and unlike #Icelandic) no secondary diphthongisation and better preserved #OldNorse syllable quantity. Unlike some #FennoSwedish dialects a distinction is maintained between öi (vf. #WestNorse ey) and öu (cf. West Norse au) https://kronomagasinet.wordpress.com/om-krombi/
Om Krombi

På den här sidan hittar ni lite information om Kronoby och Kronobydialekten. Vill du bidra? Kontakta oss genom att skriva en kommentar i Postlådan eller genom att skicka e-post direkt till krombidi…

Kronomagasinet.com
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 15, 2023
By and large #WestNorse preserves more of #ProtoGermanic than #EastNorse. An exception is the verbal stem gā/*ga- ’go’, which in #OldSwedish was used in the present tense and at times in the infinitive. Else its inflection was suppleted by forms of the verb ”ganga”.
In West Norse ”gá” is attested very sparsely indeed, and instead ”ganga” is used throughout the paradigm.
In past research there was an idea that gā could have been borrowed from #LowGerman, but today this is not deemed probable. 🧵👇🏻
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJul 23, 2023
A further oddity: While Danish and central Swedish has ”gå(r)” from #EastNorse ”gā”, the vocalism in many archaic peripheral dialects of Swedish point to East Norse ”ga-” with a short vowel. Similar conditions concern the verb ”stå” ’stand’ from either ”stā” or ”sta-”. This is astonishing since few other content word stems in Old Norse are known to have been comparably short. The closest parallel would ve the preterits of class 5 strong verbs ie. gǎf ˈgaveˈ & sǎt ˈsatˈ. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.25555.22569/1
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJul 23, 2023
Descendants of *ga- and *sta-, where the vowel unexpectedly rhymes with descendants of “dra(gha)” ‘to draw’ and “ta(gha)” ‘to take’, occur in the eastern (near-extinct) dialects of Estonian Swedish in Harju county, in the northernmost dialects of Sweden in Norrbotten and in the #FennoSwedish dialects of Ostrobotnia and East Nyland. Early attestations indicate that this was also originally valid in the rest of Nyland and the south-western provinces of Åboland and Satakunda https://kaino.kotus.fi/fo/?p=article&fo_id=FO_1327b955da7c1120152e50b71df3b002&word=g%C3%A5
lacka - Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål

lacka - Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål

lacka - Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDNov 18, 2023
The short vowel in peripheral Swedish dialects of the verbal stem ”sta-” ’stand’ could offer a clue to solve a riddle, namely why this verb doesn’t exist with long ō in ancient Germanic. This is very expected since the Indo-European root contains *h2 and *eh2- otherwise always renders *ō in Proto-Germanic. But short -a- could correspond to a vocalised *h2 in a zero-grade stem *sth2-. The problem is no such stem is known for this verb except perhaps *sth2-ye/yo-, which is claimed to give *staj-.
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDNov 18, 2023
Almost everywhere we have to infer the short */a/, on the basis that no other good explanation accounts for the vowel quality. Lengthening of ga- > gā- and *sta- > stā- is a very natural development, since there are no other CV-stems of content words in the language. In one dialect it has still been attested short in modern times: In the moribund or extinct Swedish dialect of Harju-Risti or “Kors” parish in Estonia the 1. person plural cohortative is/was “găm” (‘let’s go!’).
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDNov 21, 2023

My blogging on #EastNorse has not been terribly regular (see thread above) but here I go with a theme that I work on:

I sifted the whole Old Swedish known vocabulary for words where correlates of (Late) Old (West) Norse (=ON) <jǫ> occur.
They are very diverse and include:

iæ(>jä) (commonest)

ia (in some older texts/in some words), becomes iæ

iø(>jö)

io (which becomes iø>jö in later Swedish)

io (which stays as jo in later Swedish)

iō (before rdh/rt)

iu

Whence this stunning diversity? 👇🏻

Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDNov 21, 2023
Since West Norse is generally more archaic, sincere efforts were made to derive these diphthongs, ranging from iæ to iu, from a purportedly original Common Scandinavian iǫ. Since contrast never emerges from nowhere attention has been paid to consonants nearby these diphthongs, but to little avail.
Any historical phonologist examining these data without a West Norse bias will have to concede, that the phoneme has not split in the East, but rather: more than one phoneme have merged in the west. 👇🏻
Show threadLoukas (They/Them) 🏳️‍⚧️Jun 15, 2023
@iohannan ah, so that's why going from Sweden to Norway feels like travelling back in time.
Show threadMagnusJun 13, 2023
@iohannan You seriously try to question the authority of an expert from På Spåret?
Show threadJohan Schalin, PhDJun 13, 2023
@magnus I readily acknowledge his street credibility. I haven’t seen his list of publications though.