Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Side 99

ICELANDIC DIALECTOLOGY: METHODS AND RESULTS
95
ing.U9 This might be supported by the fact that he found traces of
it in the town of Siglufjörður, in the North, in an area where it is
otherwise unknown. In summer, during the herring season, the
population of this town is multiplied by influx from all parts of the
country. However, in this case an additional factor is involved. Flá-
mœli is the only feature of pronunciation which is systematically
opposed on all levels of instruction and education, with the result, it
has been claimed, that it is losing ground in the youngest generation.
The outcome, however, is not certain.
The preceding survey shows that, as regards the recent dialect
differences, by which the country is divided into two, not too unequal,
parts, two southern features, linmœli and voiceless ð, l, m, n before
p, t, k, and one northern feature, kv- for hv-, are probably gaining
ground, whereas one—flámœli—is uncertain.
VIII
We have now seen that in many cases one of two opposed, geo-
graphically distributed, features is spreading at the expense of the
other. The result, in some cases at least, will probably be that, within
the not too distant future, the features which are spreading will have
superseded the opposed features so that the differences in question
disappear. The question therefore naturally arises whether, in the
past, as the result of certain phonologic changes, there may have been
temporary dialect differences, which have now disappeared. As a
matter of fact, in a few cases, there is solid and conclusive evidence
for the existence of such differences.
The case most frequently cited is the preservation in the East, as
late as the seventeenth century, of monophthongal pronunciation of
old long œ, which has otherwise been diphthongized to [ai], a
change of which there is evidence as early as the late fourteenth
nn fíreytingar, p. 27.