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

Patrick Dunn wrote:

>*grins*  I once told Dr. Deskis, my Old English prof, that Old Norse was
>the ugliest language I ever saw.  She said, "well, if you didn't read it
>with a midwestern accent, it wouldn't be so ugly!"  She was right.  :)
>Still, clusters like skzk still give me pause.
I would never even attempt to say Germanic phonotactics were anything but
"tolerant" (i.e. of clusters), and therefore perhaps a bit "crude" (don't
like the prescriptiveness in that word). Many difficult clusters appear in
modern English as well, such as [NTs] in 'strengths'. And, as your teacher
so eloquently taught you, never judge a language's "beauty" by its
orthography (though the beauty of the orthography can be readily judged, of
course). Nordic orthographic conventions differ considerably from the
Romance, which have characterized English orthography (pre-Norman English
orthography did have some influence on Nordic scribes, c.f. introduction of
the English characters 'þ' and 'ð' ('thorn' and 'eth') into Old Norse -
though 'ð' was completely redundant and should never have been there).
  Anyhow, we can't say if Old Norse was particularly beautiful or not. I
suspect it had a similar sound to it as continental Scandinavian of today
(Swedish and Norwegian). Icelandic sounds very different from the
Scandinavian languages, and very different from the old language as well (it
sounds like no European language you've heard before - lots of fricatives,
just about any consonant can be unvoiced + very melodic intonation). Though
I can't reliably judge, I believe modern Icelandic sounds considerably
better than the old form (and better than the Scandinavian langs as well).
Many Scandinavians have at least agreed with me in that Icelandic is the
most beautiful Nordic language.

One more thing: to Icelanders themselves, as well as some foreigners, the
beauty of Icelandic lies much more in its prosodic features than its "actual
sounds" (what are "non-prosodics" called again?). I would also be inclined
to think that this would very much apply to Old Norse as well. Old Norse/Old
Icelandic poetry is very heavily based on rhythm and intonation, and very
little on rhyme (which was introduced from Europe in medieval times). Also,
AFAIR, Old Norse was a pitch accent language, like Latin. But don't take me
at my word there (not the kind of info my school system has concerned itself
with).

Hope I've managed to maintain interest,

Kvedjur,
Oskar :)
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