Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Side 102

98
HREINN BENEDIKTSSON
1683), born in Vestfirðir, the brother of Bishop Brynjólfur, the
letters i and y are used almost quite correctly according to the ancient
rules; indeed, they are so rarely misplaced that the conclusion seems
inescapable ‘that Gissur Sveinsson in his speech made the ancient
distinction between the sounds i and y, and ei and ey, so clearly that
he makes only very rare slips’.77 This applies at least to the short
vowels and the diphthongs. Apparently, long í and ý are not kept
apart as distinctly, but this may be due to a peculiarity of the writing,
causing these two letters to be easily confused.78 This makes it very
likely that there was, in the sixteenth and at least the early seventeenth
century, a dialect difference consisting in the distinction of these
sounds, in the North-West and possibly elsewhere, vs. the general
absence of distinction between them.
In the earliest period there are much greater difficulties in estab-
lishing such differences, owing to the fact that our main sources of
evidence—the manuscripts—are not dated or located. Let me,
nevertheless, mention a few possible cases of dialect difference in this
period.
Long Q, the result of the u-umlaut of long á, merged with ó when
it was nasal; cf., e. g., nQtt (< *náttu < *nahtu, with ö-stem
inflection instead of the original cons.-stem inflection, cf. Goth.
nahts) becoming nótt (cf. Mod. Icel. nótt [nouht:] instead of nátt
[nauht:], which would be the regular equivalent of nólt). Accord-
ingly, in the earliest scaldic poetry, we find nasal Q rhyming with
á or Q, e. g., in the poetry of Sigvatr Þórðarson (early eleventh
century), nQtt vs. sQttom (Austrfararvísur 214), Óláfr vs. mále
(Víkingarvísur 74). The earliest evidence of the change of Q to ó is
in the poetry of Steinn Herdísarson (about 1070), who rhymes, e. g.,
77 J. Helgason (ed.), KvœSabók séra Gissurar Sveinssonar; AM 147, 8t’° (ís-
lenzk rit síðari alda II, 2; Copenhagen 1960), p. 22:
... að Gissur Sveinsson hafi í máli sínu haldið fornri greiningu á
hljóðunum i og y, ei og ey, svo glöggri að hann villist ekki nema stiiku
sinnum.
7« Ibid., pp. 20 and 22.