Old Norse vs Modern Icelandic: A Demonstration 

Very good modern Icelandic. A few points from a modern Icelander. The demonstrative pronoun (ábendingarfornafnið), sá, is still used in modern Icelandic. I use it every day. Sá dreymandi er Auðunn hét, would though be considered very formal and old fashioned sentence. Sá maður er kom fyrstur að slysinu ..., Sá maður sem/er ég virði mest..., are sentences that are not strange in modern Icelandic (especially written) and you can read such sentences in the news media. I sometimes use, er, instead of, sem. It is certainly more formal but not strange. In modern Icelandic it is polite to use borða for eat, if you are talking about people, but you use éta when referring to animals. But modern Icelanders still often use éta for people because Icelanders often are not polite and because it is natural to use the word éta if the person is eating with greed or in a messy way or you are angry with him for some reason. I would think that a modern Icelander would ask a troll not to éta him rather than not to borða him. I think a troll eating a man would not be civilized deed enough to deserve the word borða. I apologize for my English, it is much worse than your Icelandic. I love your channel.

@@annatraustadottir4387 Do not apologize. Your English was excellent.

@thesatanic6 If you read this you are not getting the joke and there is no self deprecation or self-hatred going on and just try to have some sense of humor.

I would think that fishing in that sentence would almost always be translated to veiðar, "...var hann að veiða einn á ströndinni" I would also replace nær with nálægt, Auðun býr nálægt Eyjafjallajökli, It would be nær if you were talking about another place beeing near, like "Það eru tveir vegir heim til Auðuns og hann keyrir veginn nær Eyjafjallajökli" Your Icelandic pronounciation is great, I would love to discuss more about the Icelandic language but my english is definetly not as good as your Icelandic. The main problem with Icelandic is that there are so many words for the same things that you can almost newer translate Icelandic word for word (wich is why Google translate does not work) you have to translate sentences.

Ha, how self effacing of you.Absolutely love you and your channel( the transatlantic english accent was an affect that hollywood employed and the masses copied) Look forward to being able to afford everything you produce and take your courses direct from you.

I speak Icelandic at home with my mom, and not very often, but I heard some old Norse accent too, some of the i's and u's were out of place. I've always been taught by my mother that old Norse is basically the same as Icelandic, but apparently a lot of the words and pronunciations are different. Probably could learn old Norse pretty easily though, as it still looks pretty similar.

It was not perfect but cloos

we have this difrence in double LL. what about FL ? I mean like pronunciatoon of words like kafla or skofla. Did that change from old norsk as well ?

Íslenskan er nánast alveg einsog gamla Norskan. Eina sem hefur eiginlega breyst (Sem er mjög umdeilt) er varðar framburð eru stafirnir Æ og É..... "Æ" var meira að mig minnir einsog "ei" og "é" einsog "e". Og afhverju er það umdeilt? Vegna þess að nýja Norskan, Sænskan og Danskan hefur svo mikið breyst undanfarin 600 ár að ég held við munum aldrei vita með vissu hvort sá framburður var réttur einsog ég minntist á og aðrir sem stúdera gömlu Norskuna. Ég persónulega tel framburð Íslendinga líklegastur til að hafa verið notaður í gömlu Norskunni aðalega afþví við getum enn skilið hvert einasta orð í Snorra Eddunni og höfum enn djúpann skilning á því hvaðan orðin koma og hvernig þeim var beygt á miðöldum. Lestu td. gömlu stjórnaskrá Danmörku og Svíþjóð frá 13. öld. Þú munt skilja hvert einasta orð, þó eru nokkur gömul þýsk orð en við skiljum þau líka. Þar með hefur gamla Norskan öll þau kjarna orð sem voru notuð í Skandinavíu, Saxónísku og engilsaxnesku (gömlu enskunni) sem við notum enn í dag eða geymum í orðaforða okkar í bækum eða undirmeðvitund. bara Td. beyging á orðum einsog Torf, Tyrfa, Tarfur gefur auga leið að orðin þýða það sama en þarna er hægt að breyta nafnorð yfir í sagnorð og koll að kolli. En þú svosem veist þetta. Við erum Íslendingar og stoltið okkar getur vel afvegaleitt umræðuna og veikt sannfæringamátt okkar til nágrannalanda okkar er varðar framburð. Ég hef þó miklar áhyggjur af framtíð Íslenskunnar, unga kynslóðin eftir 1990 er farinn að nota ensku slettur yfir annað hvert orð og skólarnir leggja ekki næga áheyrslu á mikilvægi tungumáls okkar. ég man að ég var algjörlega áhugalaus á Snorra eddu og heimskringlu td. í grunnskóla afþví námsefnið var kynnt á eins leiðilegann hátt og mögulega var. Það þurfti ekki nema smá myndræna og heilræna kynningu á efninu svo það myndi fanga athygli mínu, þvílíks skömm því ég fór ekki að lesa þessar bækur með neinum skilningi né metnaði fyrr en ég varð þrítugur. Bara það að bæta við lesningu á Völsungarsögum gefur okkar meira innsýn inní hugarheim Norðmanna og Svía fyrir Kristnitöku og þar sjáum við greinilega að Baldur sonur Óðins er í raun Jesú Kristur.

@@siggi250290 Sure..........

Indeed,agreed 👍🧙‍♂️!

Can I ask you a question?

​@@sadness5828 no

You haven’t heard a lot of fireignets speak then :)

Why you moved away if i may ask?

Hvernig lýsir það sér? Það er auðvitað munur á milli kynslóða en svo sláandi eins þú ert að lýsa.

That's so crazy to hear! My father in law lived in Germany(on an US AF base) from birth until 8 yo(in the mid 1950s until the mid 1960s).When he went back to cost for a month in the 1980s and again in the 2010s, he said that both times it sounded very different. He speaks German on a daily basis, with people in Germany and in the US. He says he can tell the person's general age by how they speak(they are all from the same area, Frankfurt mostly- so not a regional thing).

Everyone else says down lmao

As a Norwegian I don't understand how he is dropping his voice so low.. it would be considered threatening.. men should sing higher than and more.. happily 😁

@@Strykehjerne it could be that's how his teacher naturally spoke. Or just easier to speak like that

@@myNamesTakin nah.. it's just.. his pitch definitely rises when he leaves the Old, serious mode. And goes with the modern 😉 (My comment is probably more related to his American, in a low, slow, deliberate mode . even compared to all the British dialectical variants). Not sure I really find it threatening at all 😉.. I have friends that speak like he does.. it is probably just a personal thing. Just Sounds introverted to most Norwegians. Remember. I don't understand Icelandic, off hand at all.. not sure I understand all Norwegians either.. With new Icelandic friend, we quickly switch to a mix of English and they rely on some kind of Danish education that some have had (I think - ? Which complicates things, because Danes and Norwegians aren't necessarily instantly mutually intelligeble to each other .. ) Personally I find Faroese easier than Icelandic. But that's just a little random. As I have a English/Norwegian bilingual brain from birth) I just find it fascinating. His vantage point, ours, and the past and the present - all right there - in words. ❤️ We Scandinavians all sing a lot, in a lot of different ways.. Mostly Not loudly. But we sing 🎵🎶 and get through a lot of different pitches. (My French friends think I sound like a turkey 🦃 when I speak Norwegian on the phone 🤪)

​@@Strykehjerne And as a Swede I think Norwegians often sounds a bit to.... "happy" because of the higher pitch :-) Even though my dialect is heavily influenced by Old West-Norse we still tend to go down in the end, unless it is a question. Though the difference highly depends on what Norwegian dialect is spoken. Some are very very close, other not so close. However I too seem to have an easier time understand Faroese easier than Icelandic as some words seem to be closer to how we pronounce them, but far from all are though.

jonko82 in Sweden we still use "äta" but the Danes say "spise"

@@erikz1337 in Norwegian, we use both 'spise' and 'ete'. ;)

@@erikz1337 In Denmark we can say "spise" and "æde". "Æde" is reserved for animals, "spise" for humans. "Æde" is generally considered rude, for some reason. I believe "spise" comes from German.

@@mroldnewbie Yeah, "æde" is considered a rather vulgar manner of eating, i.e. grabbing your food with your grubby paws instead of a knife and fork.

Interesting. In German we have "essen", which is the normal way of "eat", "speisen" which is more fancy, and "fressen" which is vulgar or reserved for animals. As in "Fleischfresser" (Carnivore) or "Friss ...!" (Eat ...!).

That's pretty grossly simplified. I would really like to know what you base that on.

Hi Scorpion, how comprehensible is Icelandic to you? Both modern and old. I only speak English, some bad German and a little bad swedish, so I’d value your opinion. All the best to you

Eg hevði eisini skilt tað soleiðis

@@weepingscorpion8739 did you just reply to yourself

Icelandic people and Faroese people understand each other even though they do not speak 100% the same language. However when it comes to Icelandic Faroese people are the closest to the old Norse than any other country that used to speak the language. I have often met people from Faroe Islands and spoken to them with no problems. Both understanding them and they understanding me. That is because Iceland and Faroe Islands are the greatest countries in the world when it comes to our over 1000 year old cultures.

Weirdly, the thing I've had most trouble with as an English speaker is differentiating between þ and ð. Saying það is kind of rough when both letters are transcribed in english in my head as "th."

That’s odd because English has both sounds. The ‘th’ in thin is like þ , the ‘th’ in that is like ð.

@@ivarszickus4570 We have the sounds but we use them more or less interchangeably, and a lot of them change depending on ones accent.

@@littlesnowflakepunk855 Yeah. My dialect only has [ð], but only word-initial. Everywhere else it's [v], and [θ] (þ) is [f]. that [ðat] - that [ðaʔ] father ['fɑ:ðə] - fava ['fɑ:va] bath [bɑθ] - baf [baf] But I can distinguish between [θ] and [ð].

@@ivarszickus4570 One has to understand in English, the hard TH versus the soft th has no meaning for us, both are simply Th, there is no need for distinction in English (and thus no symbols for them). But then there is much about how English sounds and how it is written that is not distinctly clarified with the symbols of our alphabet as well. So as a fellow native English speaker I can wholly empathize with littlesnowflakepunk. We may have both the sounds...but there simply is no distinction and thus no need to clarify, I suspect the only reason we have a hard and soft Th sound at all is merely the vestigial remains of older languages in English's genesis. For little snowflake...I feel the way to know the difference is to listen to the sounds and write as you hear it...hard or soft. Then repeat as read. As long as your brain knows which symbol is hard and which is soft your tongue will follow suit with practice.

A German would have more in common linguistically with an Old English speaker than a modern English speaker, as you described.

@@chuckfriebe843 from comments on vids about Old English people also very often mention Danish as very close to what English was back then.

Yeah, we English-speakers experienced that little hiccup in 1066.

We need to see Dr. Crawford default dance in old Norse

That second one is super class though no lie, I wanna learn icelandic so bad but I just cannot figure out the tongue roll thing at all, so im doomed.

@@tuckerrichardson2606 I found a way that sorta works for me if you'd like for me to share

@@Vissepisse11 éta is used to describes an animal who is eating vs if a human or humanoid eats/consumes it is described they are dining (borða) but you can use éta in this instance as well but it wouldn't be a scholarly description

alveg sammála dýr éta og menn borða var alltaf sagt við mann ef maður notaði vitlaust orð yfir þetta þegar ég var lítil

Do you really mean W, or WH?

@@Correctrix Nice username, and I see you're living up to it 😄

Also Jamska (Jämtländska) is interesting. The county Jämtland is bordering Norway, and has been Norwegian for long times, in the middle of the Scandinavian peninsula. Many years ago I read an old book (from the 1940s - 1950s) about Jamska, comparing to (then) modern Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic and Old Norse. Nowadays very few people still speak the old dialects of Jamska, which is a petty I think, but when I came across that book people over 70ys couldn't speak Swedish. The grammar was much closer to Old and Icelandic than Norwegian nor Swedish, the vocabulary had some Swedish, but the greater part was words that were the same as Old Norse, Norwegian, some more similar to Icelandic and words and expressions that were used in Swedish now 150-200 years ago. I was around 14 - 15 when I read it, and it gave me a lifelong interest in the evolution and relationship between languages. Somehow it also gave me a "key" to look for words that look similar, but they mean different things. Often they are derived from the same origin, but the meanings have drifted apart, and vice versa. Swedish is heavily effected by German, Old Low German particularly, which is a reason we use a lot of different words than in Norwegian and Danish. Those worlds can still exist in Swedish but are very rarely used. (The typical example that stretches to English is "wind-eye"; window - vindu (Danish), - vindue - (Norwegian), - fönster (Swedish, from the Low German 'Vinster', in German 'Fenster', coming from the Latin 'fenstere'.) Sweden took in that word during the 'Hansa' era, when both Stockholm and Visby were trading centers and had a lot of Low German speaking living there. They were pretty wealthy people, and wanted glass windows, not mostly hatchets, 'vindaughe'. However, the word still exists, though rarely used, now 'vindöga' in Swedish, usually for a hatchet or a tiny window to an attic or loft. 'Glugg', 'vindsglugg' are synonyms for 'vindöga' in Swedish, but I think 'glugg' also is familiar to our Icelandic speaking brothers and sisters as 'gluggi'!

Benni That’s interesting! Do you mean it’s more sing-songy like a poem? Or is it the pronunciation itself?

@@keegster7167 the pronunciation and the tone.

As someone who knows both fluently, i'd say that's a pretty good comparison. It's hard to put a direct comparison on it. I'd say it ranges from Early Modern English to WW2 English.

Thats true im norwegian and i been to iceland and seen Icelanders try and say that their version is the true version yet its closer to modern swedish. Infact they pronounce things far far from what is old norse in fact finnish is closer then swedish but not as close to Norwegian, in fact we have a tribe here in the northern fjord of norway who's language hasn't changed in over 2000 years. Sadly their community is dying out.

@@fredyyfredfreddy It actually isn't, in the 1200s Icelandic and Norwegian had been sepperated by 300 years but they were quite identical even though Norwegian was changing faster, 1250s Old Norwegian is actually extremely close to modern Icelandic even though it's very different from modern Norwegian.

@@Thunor93 Hi! I'm swedish-finnish, and except for borrowwords, those two languages are extremely different. Finnish is closer to hungarian, relative-wise :)

@@Raua12 If you look at the comment, we can be pretty sure that the guy was trolling

Near perfect?

@@olawcristophersoun1373 That's what I wrote.

@@anna_k_89, I am Icelandic you silly person. Was no perfect, not even near. Pass able.

@@olawcristophersoun1373 Það er þá baaara algjörlega þín skoðun. Mér fannst'etta bara rugl töff hjá'onum. ;)

In Swedish we say Äta, so that's pretty interesting. 'Bord' means table in Swedish, so is it a kind of animals eat but people dine kind of vibe to it? Seems like each of the Nordic countries have retained different bits and pieces of old Norse.