Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Page 100

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HREINN BENEDIKTSSON
century.70 The existence of this pronunciation in the East is reported
by Arni Magnússon.71 However, perhaps this case is not so typical
or important as it is generally considered to be. From Árni Magnús-
son’s statements it is not manifest whether this was a universal
feature, i. e. that the diphthong [ai] did not exist, or if the older
pronunciation survived in a few words only. To-day we still have
remnants of this pronunciation, e. g. geslcur for gœskur ‘my good
fellow’, gerkvöld for gœrkvöld ‘yesterday evening’. Árni Magnússon
says:72
Lekur pro lœkur; kiete pro kœte et similia has until recently been the
common pronunciatio in the Eastern Fjords. In the youth of those who
are now (1703) middle-aged, old people said this, and young people also,
in some words. Now it is said to be mostly abolished propter com-
mercium of the Northerners, who have migrated there, especially
women.
Thus it is clear that in Árni Magnússon’s time this pronunciation
was preserved in a few words only, but his statement is not precise
enough to decide whether it had been universal or at least predomi-
nant one generation earlier.
Instead of ancient long close é we find, sporadically as early as the
first half of the thirteenth century, the spelling ie, whose frequency
greatly increases in the following centuries. The modern equivalent
invariably is [je]. In a letter, dated July 28, 1651, to Ole Worm, the
Danish scholar, Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson makes observations
about this sound which seem to imply a dialect difference at his time.
He says:73
70 See footnote 40.
71 Árni Magnússons levned og skrifter, II, pp. 251f.
72 Ibid., p. 251:
Lekur pro lækur, kiete pro kiæte et similia hefur til skammrar stundar
vered almenneleg pronunciatio í Austfiördum. I ungdæmi þeirra sem nu
(1703) eru midalldra sögdu þad gamler menn, hiner yngre og i sumum
ordum. Nu skal þad ad mestu af lagt vera, propter commercium Nor-
lendskra er þangad liafa bygdum fared, hellst qvennfolk.
73 See Bj. M. Ó1 sen, “Om overgangen é — je i islandsk,” Arkiv jor nordisk
filologi III (1886), p. 191.