Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Blaðsíða 98
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HREINN BENEDIKTSSON
younger generation had pure southern pronunciation, while the
middle-aged and older generations had mixed pronunciation.66
Therefore, although Einarsson does not state whether any of the 52%
group with northern pronunciation were ‘immigrants’ or descen-
dants of ‘immigrants’, who had acquired northern pronunciation, it
seems clear that, in this area, the southern pronunciation has been
encroaching upon the northern during the last decades.
4) In the fishing villages in the East we find a slightly different
case. In the village of Borgarfjörður, e. g., Einarsson found a higher
proportion than in FljótsdaLshérað of southern voiceless ð, l, m, n
before p, t, k, pure and mixed, or 52% instead of 48%. But whereas,
in Fljótsdalshérað, of the speakers with voiceless pronunciation,
ahout 50% were ‘immigrants’ or descendants of ‘immigrants’, in
Borgarfjörður only about 17% (2 out of 12 individuals) of the
‘southerners’ were ‘immigrants’. About two-thirds of the natives
using southern voiceless sounds were under middle age, whereas all
those who used the northern voiced sounds were middle-aged or old.
The explanation is that since the rise of these villages at the end of
the preceding century, fishermen from the South have been employed
in these villages during the summer, and in winter the men from the
East then go to the great fishing centres in the South.67 Thus, the
contact between the Eastern villages and the South has, in this case,
resulted in Southern influence in the East, not vice versa.
Kv- for hv- probably is a similar case. Guðfinnsson found that in
the mixed areas in the East and the South-West, kv- is much more
frequent, in proportion to hv-, in the villages and towns than in the
country-side.68
5) So far we have found no evidence bearing on the development
of jlámœli. Guðfinnsson was of opinion that it was rapidly spread-
80 lbid., pp. 545—548.
87 Ibid., pp. 549—552.
88 fíreytingar, p. 21; “An Icelandic Dialect Feature_,“ p. 359.