W vs. V in Old Norse 

I used to say "Darth Wader" instead of "Darth Vader" because I had learned that in english they use "w" a lot, and we don't use it in my native danish. I think it's called hypercorrection.

One point about Icelandic pronunciation of "v". While it is commonly said that Icelandic has only /v/ and not /w/, the Icelandic /v/ (as well as all the other voiced fricatives in Icelandic) is actually pronounced as an approximant rather than a fricative. This means that Icelandic /v/ is actually most often [ʋ] rather than [v]. The reason I want to mention this is that I notice that while I and other Icelanders only have a single v-like sound, and don't therefore distinguish English /w/ and /v/, instead just replacing both with our Icelandic /v/, native English speakers usually don't hear me replace the /w/ with a /v/ sound (like the stereotypical German accent) but rather say that I pronounce /v/ as a /w/, saying "willage" instead of "village". This is interesting because I know for a fact that I pronounce all English /w/ and /v/ with my native Icelandic v-sound, so the fact that they hear a /w/ tells me that to some English speakers the labiodental approximant [ʋ] can in fact sound more like the labiovelar approximant [w] than the labiodental fricative [v]

I've always found it somewhat amusing that despite English being so innovative with its vocabulary it's been so relatively conservative with its consonants compared to the other Germanic languages, even preserving even the old proto-germanic "w" and "th" sounds that the other major Germanic languages lost. But that's just how languages evolve really.

A Crawford/Roper collaboration? I'll be here for that!

Great scholarship as always, sir!

I speak Westrobothnian and the W sound is exceptionally common here, it's pretty much the norm here. Clean V sounds is something we associate with some southern dialects.

I love your Old English hwens and hweres.

Hi, I'm from Västerbotten and I'm not familiar with the words "weit" and "war" being pronounced with a W, or atleast not in Northern Västerbotten. However, words that have historically had Hv- in Old Norse are pronounced with a W, for example in words like Wå 'what' and Wit 'white'. W does also appear in some words that did not have Hv-, like Wæri 'wolf' and Wåårr 'black grouse', but as i said earlier, not in "weit" and "war" which are pronounced as Vait and Vær here. But with that aside, great video as usual!

From wikipedia: "The Proto-Germanic phoneme /w/ was preserved in initial sounds in Old East Norse (w-), unlike in West Norse where it developed into /v/. It survived in rural Swedish dialects in the provinces of Skåne, Blekinge, Småland, Halland, Västergötland and south of Bohuslän into the 18th, 19th and 20th century. It is still preserved in the Dalecarlian dialects in the province of Dalarna, Sweden, and in Jutlandic dialects in Denmark. The /w/-phoneme did also occur after consonants (kw-, tw- etc.) in Old East Norse and did so into modern times in said Swedish dialects, as well as in the Westro- and North Bothnian tongues and other dialects in the north of Sweden. In summation, the /w/-sound survived in the East Nordic tounges almost a millenia longer than in the West Norse counterparts, and do still subsist at the present." In regards to this I mean that it is fair to say that the w-sound was retained in swedish (and danish) more widely and uniformed than Jackson suggests in this video - of course even more so in medievel times since the sources from the text above regards Swedish varieties from the modern period.

Cannot even tell you how many times I have asked myself this question. Thank you🙏

Not only Elfdalian, but also the dialects of Mora, Våmhus and Orsa in Dalarna have 'w'. Probably other dialects there as well. Also on the west coast you find 'w' in some places.

Was actually just discussing this on Reddit. Thank you for you work it’s really been life changing to be able to get this info without paying money (and because I’m not of age for college).

I'm quite sure w is still around after initial consonant in some Swedish dialects. Also kept in original hw- even though the h has been dropped later on. So "ett witt swin" would be accurate for "ett vitt svin".

This appears to be a common transition. Classical Latin had no "v" sound. The letter "v" was actually the vowel "u", which sounded like our "w" when it was in front of another vowel. The same relationship can be heard among modern Indians. Depending on their mother tongue, they may completely lack the "v" phoneme, rendering the letter as a vowel sounding very similar (but not identical) to our "w".

Also: The further south you go in Jutland - and less culturally isolated - the fewer W's. Though, the dialects retain W's after consonants almost to the old border of Slesvig-Holsten.

There is also an extremely practical reason why the Romans expressed "u" as "v" between consonants: "v" is much easier to engrave and etch on stone and marble. And on the note about Afrikaans: Having been exposed to Afrikaans in school for the first 18 years of my life, I would say you're pretty close to how people pronounce their "w"/"v" sounds in words. I have a friend who is Dutch, and she finds the biggest differences are in the "r"s as Afrikaans does have a rolling "r", and the "g"s sound more like they do in Flemish (which kind of explains why I have a much easier time understanding Flemish speakers, they literally sound like folks back home). Double "oo" is quite different as well, I don't know how to describe it in technical terms but it sounds longer? Whereas in Dutch it sounds like English voiced "O". Granted, I did grow up in Natal, which is not a prolific Afrikaans speaking part of the country and people either in Gauteng, the Capes and other parts may be able to spot regional or standardised variations more easily than my feeble ears. 😅

Good evening! I live in southern Bohuslän in Sweden. I have been experimenting a bit with my dialect for a few years, and now speak in a way that sounds rather elderly for someone in their late twenties (three grammatical genders, more strong verb conjugations etc.). One of the characteristics of this older dialect of Swedish, is that "v" when historically proceeded by an "h" is pronounced as "w", like you said. Thus "val" ("whale") becomes "waL", "vilken" ("which") "wecken" or "vila" ("to rest") "wiLa", and so on. Thank you for covering an interesting topic! Your videos are great!

Hope you're doing well Mr. Thsbks for the lessons:)

In ostrogothic Swedish (Östergötland), W is effectively still used in words such as "vart" (yes it is spelled with a V but W is the actual sound). Han vart (wart) sjuk - he became ill.

Dette var veldig interessant. Tusen takk skal du ha.

Man, this is one of my fav RU-vid channels, by far, the only thing it constantly lacks is in the audio, I'd highly encourage you to buy a lav mic. It's gonna make life better for everyone

Has anyone ever tried to cast you as Slim, the princely muleskinner, in a stage production of "Of Mice and Men"? I'm teaching the book right now and keep seeing you in my head when that character shows up, lol. Totally off topic, sorry!

The irony of this video is that Dr. Crawford has an unusual way of pronouncing wh sounds in English. He pronounces the h which makes it sound like his the first letter like hwat instead of what or hwen instead of when. I don’t mean this as a criticism of his accent. It’s just an observation.

Ye Oðinn Vili and Vé once alliterated with W’s. Supposedly *Wōdinaz, Wiljô and Wīhą (taken from wiki).

I understood that the v is pronounced with both the top & bottom lips rather than just the bottom lip as is pronounced in English, which vibrates the "v" sound to resemble a "w" sound, according to another norse speaker I heard from. This is the same V sound that is spoken in Sanskrit and all of it's derivative Indian languages. And this knowledge also helped me to refine pronunciation of the Sanskrit "V", as in Viṣṇu.

Dr. Crawford, I think what seals the deal that at least in the Danish that influenced English, must have had [w] is looking at Latin loans - initial Latin "v" was treated as "f" in all but the earliest Latin loans into Old English (a classic example is "fers" meaning verse). Since we know Romance of the time had [β~v] it wouldn't make sense for Norse [v] and Latin [v] to be treated differently.

Another time to visit after I make a time machine. Right after Monterey Pop

Very informative and helpful, thanks, Doc!

Hey Jackson I just got your copy of the Poetic Edda and cant wait to read it.👍

Persian and Hebrew (as well as languages that have numerous Persian and Arabic loanwords like Turkish and Ottoman Turkish) have the w-sound (a.k.a. the voiced labial-velar approximant sound) [written as the _Wāw_ Arabic letter in Arabic (initial/isolated form) - و] change to the v-sound (a.k.a. the voiced labiodental fricative, or sometimes a.k.a. the voiced labiodental approximant in some languages) [written as the _Vāv_ letter in Persian (initial/isolated form) - و - and the _Vav_ letter in Hebrew - ו]. This is evident in Persian (Fārsi dialect), Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Azeri, Uzbek, Uighur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkish and Ottoman Turkish with loanwords from Arabic as well as in native words [except in the Dāri dialect (and sometimes in the Tajiki dialect/language of Persian; it could have either a w-sound or a v-sound in depending on the area/region/subdialect)] from those languages; however, the w-sound is retained in at least some of the Kurdish Languages as well as Turkmen, Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi [though the latter 3 languages have *_both_* the w-sound *_*and*_* the v-sound, but the v-sound is generally sometimes substituted with the b-sound (a.k.a. the voiced bilabial plosive or stop) but (almost) never with the w-sound; while Turkmen seems to have no v-sound and thus only uses the Letter W for the voiced labial-velar approximant sound].

Might be a bit late on this, but you are the expert. Just how English words have evolved from old Norse and old English, like Jorð>Earth, Jarl>Earl, etc. Sometimes you get weird ones that don’t evolve the same way. Like how old Norse Veðr became Weather in English. Is it possible that based on vowel pattern evolution that there was once a form like Vjóðr for weather in the old Scandinavian languages? Or is that particular word just a weird one that didn’t evolve the same?

Very interesting

Low (North) German has 'v' in the word for evening, similar to Dutch 'avond'. 'b' is High German

I’d be interested in a lecture on jamtsk in connection to Old Norse, bc just as Elfdalian it sounds like an old surviving dialect. (My gran was from Jämtland)

Standard Danish it is "oplevelse" not "opplevelse" that looks Norwegian.

Interesting vid. Audio needs amplifying. But as for the material, Jackson always comes through. I have always had this question myself. I've always thought that Old Norse used "w" (disregarding the written V orthography, as in Latin), especially in consonant combinations like hvalr. Regional dialects always play a role in ultimate pronunciation too, and that is something that cannot be disregarded when discussing what is "correct". Of course languages evolve and absorb linguistic traits from other languages, and some complexities get simplified over time from these borrowings. Also, some simplifications happen natively due to vowel mergers (e.g. "e" and "ei") or consonant reduction (e.g. "wh" and "w") and to what I refer to as "lazy speech" conventions. [I'm sure there are more official linguistic terms for these effects like i-mutation, vowel fronting, elision, etc., and I've probably looked them all up and somewhat understood them when I did, but they tend to escape my conscious memory.] As an interesting side note, I was corrected the other day by a co-worker, when I pronounced Dasani (water) as "Dazani". She said that I was the only person she ever heard say it that way. I said that I tended to follow the convention of pronouncing an S with a fricative, "hard" Z sound between vowels, as it would have been in Old English. Even though Dasani sounds Italian, I still apply my convention. Of course this wouldn't hold up with all words in modern English, and definitely not if I was trying to pronounce a Romance language word correctly. But at any rate, I convinced her that many words do use this convention, like "laser", "fusion", "wiser", etc., but not all. Same convention may be applied to TH as to whether to use the hard or soft sound.

So it was a "W" sound for the majority of the Viking Period, but became a "V" sound around the late 900s?

Another fascinating video, thank you

I've seen some dialect poetry from northern England that makes losing/adding the W in Old English words like 'wolf' make sense from the way that 'O' sounds are often pronounced. English viewers might like to try pronouncing 'Odin' in a Geordie accent to see what I mean.

Your videos are really underappreciated. Thank you for providing this information, your videos are always a wealth of knowledge!

I wonder how much Latin orthography and education influenced elite pronunciation and whether that in turn ushered in that sound change.

If the distinction had been long lost in Iceland when literature written in the Latin alphabet, why then was there still a distinction in writing?

In Dutch, in the Netherlands, a "w" is indeed pronounced as a "v". But in the Dutch of Belgium, a "w" is always pronounced as a "w".

My last name is pronounced Vvirrta. Yet it is spelled Wirta. It has been explained to me that the letters were changed a few generations ago from the V to the W. This one explanation originates in Finland.

I am always disappointed that Elfdalian is not spoken in a place called Elfdale.

From what I gather, "w" in Dutch is a sort of cross between "v" and "w" in English.

Super awesome

1. Old Kentish or Old Saxon may have had an initial v sound. A Southern dialect is the source of “vixen”. 2. Spanish v and b are pronounced similarly (not identically) to English b. To clarify spelling, Mexicans ask “¿B de burro o v de vaca?”, literally “B of donkey or v of cow?”.

Ye I know that in ‘Katwijk’ in the Netherlands they, up until very recently, used the W that the English use too, the one closer to u. While standard Dutch W is closer to V. There are many more dialects though in the Netherlands that use that W that’s present in English.

Dr Crawford-color letters on the gray-ish background are difficult to read. Fantastic lecture as always.

In The Pickwick Papers (1836) Dickens makes the Londoner Sam Weller consistently say 'v for 'w' e.g. ven, vy, vith for when, why, with. Sounds odd today. EDIT: reading on a bit, he also changes 'v's to 'w's e.g. "wentilation"

There's some interesting indirect evidence in the borrowings of "vindauga" into Old English and Old Irish - not only do you get Modern English "window" from the former, but Irish "fuinneog" - the interesting thing there is that initial /f/ in Irish is the normal outcome of Primitive Irish initial /w/ (hence "fear" = "man" cognate with Latin "vir" and Old English "wer" - although on the other hand that shift should have been complete several centuries before there were any Norsemen around to borrow words for windows from. But it's tantalising.

From Västerbotten here!!

Your theory makes sense to me. Changes in pronunciation can take place slowly with listeners understanding the variations as being the same. For example, I have noticed a growing tendency (via youtube) for speakers in England to pronounce "th" as "f". (For example, "with" comes out as "wif", where the speaker is using the lips for the fricative rather than the tongue.) As an American, listening to the sentences, I understand what they are saying due to context. But if someone were to say one of the words alone, I might not be sure of the meaning. (For example, for a word pronounced "wif", are they saying the word "whiff" or "with"?) In the US, most younger speakers no longer speak or hear the difference between "WH" and "W" (such as where and wear). There is no problem understanding the words due to context, but spelling can become an issue. At the same time, if a speaker of another language were to pronounce words beginning with "w" using a "v" sound, we would understand them - in context.

Actually, in every Danish dialect post-vocalic v is [w], although Standard Danish (rigsdansk) historically had a v-sound, although nowadays that’s mostly old-fashionef.

Very slightly off topic I think some Flemish speakers pronounce w without the v sound, but less breathy than in English. I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Just a note about the examples from the Romance languages: the /w/ sound shifted in all of the major languages to a /v/ sound as he describes; but in conjunction with consonants, different outcomes arose. Most of the time the sound is lost completely,even though it may survive in writing, as in French 'quatre' /katR/. A very few high frequency words do preserve the /w/ sound in some languages: Latin 'quattuor' becomes Italian 'quatro,' Spanish 'cuatro,' & Portuguese 'quatro.' Fair enough. The example of 'suave' is problematic and displays the complexity of the discussion. The Latin form is 'suavis,' which gives rise to the modern forms, but only as a modern borrowing by these languages from Latin. Old French has 'souef' with two vowels; Italian still has 'soave.' Both examples show a shift from /w/ to /o/. (Old French shows considerable change between the ninth century and the twelfth: 'ou' is /ō/ in the beginning, becoming /u/ by the end of the period, as in modern French). All the modern Western Romance languages borrowed heavily from Latin from the High Middle Ages through to the early Modern Period, reintroducing words in a more Latinate form that replaced inherited forms.

I speak a German Dialect that mixed with Danish here in America. My whole town does. And we pronounce the "w" as a "w" sound. And Originally my ancestors pronounced the "w" as a "v" sometimes a "w" depending on the word, but when the Danish dialect influenced it, "v" became a "w" sound. Nowadays we pronounce it as a "v" again. But some people still say "w" instead of "v" and some say "f" instead of "v" and even "th" instead of "d". The dialect is not at all standardized unfortunately. I unfortunately dont know what Danish dialect it was, all I know is I speak what we call in our dialect "Nordwesten-Saxonish Teutsk" and from what it looks like within what we call our dialect. "North-Western Saxon-German"

So prior to 900, would the Norse have said 'Withar' and 'Wali' instead of 'Vithar' and 'Vali' for the names of those gods?

Very interesting!

To broaden the field, the W in modern German is pronounced as a V. The V is pronounced as an F sound. What was the pronunciation of the W and V in Proto-Germanic?

I've always wondered how the 'th' becomes an 's' sound for a lot of elder Danes and Germans. Fx; 'THE TRUTH' becomes 'SE TRUCE'...

Always inciteful

What about the correspondences between v and b? For example, in Modern Frisian and Old English 'to live' has the stem 'libb-'.

In Swedish text from 1700-1800 wat is now "v "is often wirtten as "fv". I have no idea how it was pronounced. On the other hand "fw" was not a thing, even if the letter w was more commonly used than today. It looks more like letters like w and q were used to make names and such things look more fancy than having something to do with pronunciation.

Sorry, I watched the whole video but it looks like i got lost on the way 😵‍💫, so ultimately, what is the most authentic way to pronounce the old norse "v", [v] or [w] ? Please, be indulgent towards a young francophone suffering from ADHD and struggling to learn Old Norse 😢.

Unrelated question. Do you have any research that discusses the norse religion in the Lotharigina regions of the 9th century? Wikipedia points to some sources like The Franks, from Their First Appearance in History to the Death of King Pepin by Perry as mentioning the structure of norse gods given different names. I'm trying to understand the relationship between these people that shared religion while being somewhat culturally seperated before the rise of christianity. If geneology is to be believed I'm a fraternal descendant of Reginar Longneck through cadet house of percy. So the subject peaks my interest a great deal as a way of connecting to the past.

I thought [ʋ] is how modern scandinavian languages pronounce it. Edit: this is wr as in wrealy?

I am really struggling to read these captions. More contrast, please!

I can confirm that Afrikaans does use the "w" sound after consonants and not "v."

Your point about Västerbotten and Norrbotten dialects is unfortunately not completely true. Word-initial Old Norse v usually becomes β or ʋ, except in some words where it has remained w, always before a, like warg/wari from varg(r). I think what you are hearing in the recordings is a bibabial approximant, β̞, and maybe you were also misled by the fact that the ISOF for some reason transcribes that sound with w. After consonants it is always w though, like ʂwaʈʈ from svart(r). Hv also regularly becomes w, like wi:t from hvít(r). Seeing my dialect be misrepresented really makes me sad, especially since it is dying.

Mjölnir is it okay to wear as a Norse Christian. And in horn of the Gods and ancestors

Here i just thought it was a habit from German being my first language haha

In fact, it has still not happened all over Scandinavia. When you see parts of today's Småland and even larger parts of Jemtland with surrounding areas still use the w sound, it obviously has _not_ happened all over Scandinavia. There is a FB group saying "Jamtska ä ett språk" - and part of the uniqueness of that language is, modern Swedish spelling since 1906 is inadequate. V sounds in v/hv are pronounced w, and those in f/fv are pronounced v. A bit like, when did Roman Empire vanish? Well, not until end of World War I, at any rate ... you'd arguably thought of some earlier date.

Plot twist: they've rhymed w's with v's just as is.

Is English an older language than Old Norse then? Did the original Germanic settlers of the British Isles preserve older forms than the later Danish and Norwegian invaders?

👈👀 Look! A car! 4:00

So... I can keep pronouncing it as w as long as I'm focused on early medieval Norse? Cool.

just pull a really inappropriate Late Latin and use /β/ (bilabial fricative)

the sound is low. please fix in future videos

there is wayt to many things to comment on that swedish lady.. tho i have to ask you.. have you been bergtagen.. if? by Vittra or Troll?

Fyrstr

Voiliet!

Dutch *dab*

And then there is Polish that writes W and pronounces V...

Ven

Apparently my old comment was removed? weit and war are not correct at all, if you have found it written it is strictly orthographical. Pronounciation wise /w/ only comes from old norse hv (and specifically in kalix, from old norse vr), and [w] only occurs after consonants. The source you are using, isof's dialect recordings are VERY BAD. They do not reflect genuine dialects and the spellings/transcriptions are horribly done (isof in general is honestly more of a "fun company" than an actual dialectological body). If you would like, I could hook you up with tons and tons of scanned resources for Bondska/Västerbottniska/Norrbottniska. It really pains me to see my region misrepresented especially since the dialects here are moribund and heavily endangered.