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

John Cowan wrote:

> > 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 ' 'ç ¨'thorn' and 'eth') into Old Norse -
>
>Really?  After all, England and the North shared the Runic script in
>common,
>from which  tently derived (as is shown by its tree-based name if nothing
>else).  But you are saying that the Northern use of   Latin letter* was
>derived directly from English practice?
AFAIK, yes. This is what I've learnt from my Icelandic language history here
in Iceland. It's not common knowledge here in Iceland though; people would
refuse to believe that such letters that we pride ourselves in were foreign.
And in England, well, how many people have ever _seen_ 'thorn' and/or 'eth'?
An Irish woman once asked me how to pronounce 'thorn' (which she, and most
others, confused with 'p'). When I tried to equate it with English 'th', as
in, for example, the word 'thorn', and subsequently told her this was an
English letter, she became utterly confused. I tried to write something like
"þis is þe man", but she didn't understand what I was talking about.
  Anyway, take a look at any book about OE or ME, and you'll find plenty of
texts using the 'thorn', and somewhat fewer with 'eth'.

Oskar
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