Re: O-ogonek

Daniel:
> > It is used to show that it is an umlauted <a> afaik. It's called
> > "o med kvist" or "o med hake" here in Scandinavia. That's "o with
> > a twig" or "o with a hook".
Both Danny and James wondered:

> If I understand correctly, ON o-ogonek became modern å. [Orthographically,
> is the ring actually representative of a letter o?]
Hmm... o-ogonek was [O], i.e. short. Afaik <å> developed
from <á> which was the long from of /a/ and possibly rounded
already in ON times. So - but this is a mere guess - I think
that o-ogonek still is <o> and pronounced [O] or in some cases
it went back to <a> [a] due to analogy. That is, if all the
words in a paradigm had <a> and only one had <o-ogonek> then
it was likely to change back to <a> as well.

I think this is correct. BPJ? Anyone? Please? :)

Daniel