Wiktionary talk:About Old Norse

e, ę

I would prefer that we not use 'ę'. - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Why not? If I remember, we do already have some entries that use it. —CodeCat 20:07, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I've never seen that character used in a normalisation before. Wikipedia suggests it's a variant of (or, it exists in free variation with) æ. And looking through Category:Old Norse, no, I can't find it in any of our entries. - -sche (discuss) 21:18, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

ǫ, ö

Do any of my fellow Norse-knowing editors have a preference for ǫ vs ö? 'ǫ' strikes me as somehow more authentic, but 'ö' is more likely to display correctly (and not as a box), and is possibly easier for users to input. I suggest we have redirects to whichever form we use from whichever form we disuse (hard redirects, perhaps, whenever no other language has a word with the same spelling; soft redirects otherwise), or at least include the other form somewhere in the main entry (even as a 'blacklink', i.e. unlinked alternative form) so a search for it will find the right entry. - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

I don't think we should skimp on proper representation of symbols at the encoding level, just because font support is lacking. If we use ǫ, then some people won't see it correctly. If we use ö, nobody will see it correctly. :) —CodeCat 20:09, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Hehe :) good point! I still think we should mention hjörr somewhere in hjǫrr, because 'ö' is how Wikipedia (w:Níðhöggr) and many web editions of Norse texts present the letter. An alternative to including them as blacklinks (i.e. nonlinks) is to make them parameters of a template which don't display but which are found by the search function (the technically ugly but effective way de.Wikt handles misspellings)... but blacklinks are probably best. - -sche (discuss) 20:28, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Currently, two Old Norse entries use 'ö' in their titles: fjör and fjörð. Both are {{alternative form of}} entries, but the difference between 'ǫ' and 'ö' could be compared to the difference in older vs newer English texts between 'u' and 'v' in cases like 'heauen' vs 'heaven' and 'vp' vs 'up'. So: should we simply not have 'ö' entries, or should we start creating 'ö' redirects (soft redirects) for all of the other words that are spelt with 'ǫ'? - -sche (discuss) 22:36, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

I think ö is mainly used in imitation of modern Icelandic, or when the character ǫ is not available. I don't think it's actually ever used in manuscripts. —CodeCat 22:59, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

kv, qu

I presume we will normalise 'qu' to 'kv'. - -sche (discuss) 19:26, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's the current practice already. See kvelja. —CodeCat 20:10, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

more variation than can be accounted for in a table

I suspect there is more variation in the representation of Old Norse words than can be accounted for in a table. For example, "z" is sometimes normalised to "st" (fremz→fremst), sometimes "sk" (fannz→fannsk), sometimes "z" (unz→unz), sometimes "s" (hroptz→Hropts, allz→alls). (This isn't a very helpful comment, I just suppose it's good to note that there may be instances in which our normalised spellings cannot be reached by the table alone.) - -sche (discuss) 22:04, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

alternative forms - trial entries

I've set up hljóð, hliod, hlioð as examples of the format that was being discussed in the BP. Critique and tweak as needed. - -sche (discuss) 20:58, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Do you think we should use macrons in the headword line if there is no accent in the title already? —CodeCat 21:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

You mean on hliod, hlioð? I wouldn't — the point of those entries is that they're the exact spellings the manuscripts use. People can look at the normalised spelling in the definition line to see where the accent is. - -sche (discuss) 21:17, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

œ, ǿ

There seems to be a new trend in at least Nordic (Norwegian for sure) tradition of normalising what in the past has normally been written as <œ>. In the 5th edition of the Norwegian Norrøn ordbok, <ǿ> is the only letter being used. This makes me wonder: Should we continue using <œ> (that is, status quo), should we move towards using <ǿ>, or should we using both some how? Personally, I'm leaning towards <ǿ>. What do you guys thing? Mulder1982 (talk) 09:51, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think we should follow trends, but majority practice. —CodeCat 19:31, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree; switching from <œ> to <ǿ> is a good move for several reasons:

1. <ǿ> is clearly the long counterpart of <ø>, whilst <œ> has no obvious relation to <ø>
2. <œ> is easily confused with <æ> (from what I heard, this was semi-intentional, because Icelandic merged them both to <æ> and <œ> was already a known character in e.g. French. If correct, this is a parallel to the use of the newer Icelandic <ö> instead of <ǫ>). I know several examples where confusion has become a problem, especially since <œ> and <æ> become identical in some italic fonts. For example in the online edition of Norsk stadnamnleksikon, every instance of <œ> has been erroneously changed to <æ>, presumably because the person/people who digitised the book did not have enough knowledge of the topic to a) know that there were two different symbols in use in the book and b) tell them apart (not that I blame them, I own a paper copy of the book and it is impossible to tell <œ> and <æ> apart with the font that is used).
3. <œ> is not any closer to the Norse manuscripts than <ǿ> is. Old Norwegian manuscripts mostly used <ꝍ> (without any length marks, I was told)
4. Unicode support has come a long way. Few, if any, users will have troubles seeing the <ǿ> today. Free Unicode fonts exist and users on really old systems will probably have other problems with rendering Wiktionary correctly anyway.
5. In dictionaries, the transition to <ǿ> seems to be almost complete in major Norwegian works. Bokmålsordboka, Nynorskordboka and also the Swedish SAOB.se all use <ǿ> in their etymologies, whilst NAOB.no uses the accent-less <ø> (no distinction between short and long vowel). Etymological dictionaries Våre arveord and Norsk etymologisk ordbok use <ǿ> and <ø> respectively. The Danish dictionaries at ordnet.dk still use <œ>, though.

84.208.172.88 04:23, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

At the same time, <æ> and <œ> form a natural pair, both indicating long vowels. —Rua (mew) 13:03, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

That is true, but they still differ from the other long vowels, that have an acute accent to indicate length. Another thing is that unlike <œ>, <æ> did not really have a short counterpart for most of the period when Old Norse was spoken (written <ę> in early manuscripts, it would soon be replaced by <e>, reflecting the merger of the sounds they represented). The ONP project (at the University of Copenhagen) uses not only <ǿ>, but also <ǽ>, to indicate that the vowel is long. The confusion between <æ> and <œ> is highlighted too:

The most noticeable deviation from normal practice in editions and dictionaries is the choice of the graphs ǽ and ǿ for the long æ- and ø- phonemes (in harmony with Noreen’s grammar and standard linguistic usage). The choice of ǽ and ǿ (rather than æ and oe) was made partly with a view to the spelling of the manuscripts but mainly on the basis of practical and pedagogical considerations: as a result there is an acute accent over all long vowels in normalised text and unfortunate confusion between æ and oe (esp. in italics) can be avoided.

The First Grammatical Treatise also recommended acute accents over all long vowels. 84.208.172.88 18:22, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

ǫ, ø

I am trying to make a page for the adjective dǫkkr as a variant form of døkkr. But when I try to open a page for dǫkkr, it seems to automatically redirect to døkkr. Does anyone know what is going on here? Are ǫ and ø considered to be the same letter, and if so, why?--Barend (talk) 23:46, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Huh, when I clicked the red link dǫkkr above, it did indeed open a new page. But when I type "dǫkkr" into the "Search Wiktionary"-box, it sends me to døkkr. Weird.--Barend (talk) 23:47, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

What is this døkkr anyway? u-mutation of a gives ǫ, not ø. ø only arises from u-mutation of e. —CodeCat 00:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Who knows? /ø/ can also arise from i-mutation of /o/. I can't tell you more about the etymology. Wherever it came from, it's there.--Barend (talk) 10:15, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

@Barend:: When you type a term into the search box, the system looks first for the exact term you searched for, and if it doesn't find it, it looks for any term where the diacritics are different. So when dǫkkr was a red link, the system looked for anything that's a diacritic variant of "dokkr" and took you to døkkr. If it can't find any diacritic-variation results, or if it finds multiple diacritic-variation results (try typing dokkr or dökkr into the search bar now that both dǫkkr and døkkr are blue links), then it takes you to the Search results page. But clicking on a red link will always take you to the editable page; it's not the same as searching in the search box. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 14:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

@Angr:: Thank you for the explanation! --Barend (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

o vs. u

Wondering about this: I believe many manuscripts have <o> where we have <u>, e.g. Snorri Sturluson (the sole attestation of this term) refers to Vǫlospá, not *Vǫluspá, and my scholarly edition of that poem (Neckel/Kuhn, 5. Auflage, Heidelberger Universitätsverlag) has nío and not níu in the second stanza (nío man ec heima). I know too little about the historical dev't of Old Norse and Old Icelandic spelling to tell which form is more standard. I hear manuscript spellings and later, Icelandic-influenced editions differ quite strongly. Which are to be taken as the lemma form, the forms with <o> or <u>? — Mnemosientje (t · c) 09:05, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, what's the deal with <c> vs. <k>? Abovementioned edition has ec for ek, but retains the <k> in lauki. Is there a significance to this alternation?— Mnemosientje (t · c) 09:09, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

It's presumably the same as what's found in Middle Dutch, k before front vowels, c otherwise. —Rua (mew) 09:30, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

@Rua: But e.g. in Hávamál stanzas 1 and 2 I find "kominn" beside "scoðaz", and many similar examples elsewhere — Mnemosientje (t · c) 09:01, 19 June 2020 (UTC)