Re: Beauty of Old Norse (was Re New to the list)

BP Jonsson wrote:

> My Icelandic teacher claimed that Snorri Sturluson probably would have had
> an easier time understanding modern Swedish than modern Icelandic, because
> while mIc. has preserved the grammar it has changed the phonology
> radically, while Swedish is essentially the other way around.
Sounds like nonsense to me.  We adapt very readily (at least here in the
Anglophone nations of immigration) to very weird phonologies of our native
tongue, as long as they preserve all or most of the relevant distinctions.
Scrambled grammar, as in creolized varieties, is much tougher to follow.

--

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