Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1970, Page 89

Gaelic taom — a Norse loan?
97
Modern Gaelic ao when the latter ceased to be a diphthong
(tenth or eleventh century?). O.N. also possessed three long
falling diphthongs: /ei/ (/ai/ in the earlier stages), /au/ and /øy/,
none of which seem to have been very similar to members of
the Gaelic inventory of diphthongs during the period of lin-
guistic contact: in Gaelic borrowings from Norse, the O.N.
diphthongs are almost invariably rendered by Gaelic monoph-
thongs. Thus, /e:/ in modern Hebridean place-names and other
Norse loans may represent O.N. e, ee, ø, ei and øy which have,
in these cases, been rendered in Middle Gaelic as e. Similarly,
/o:/ or /o:/ (Middle Gaelic ó) often represents O.N. au as well
as ó and q.
In an earlier article in Fróðskaparrit10 I have shown that
one O.N. vowel or diphthong could, in principle, develop in
different directions in Gaelic, either during or after the pro-
cess of borrowing. This may very well have happened to O.N.
ø. Marstrander* 11 has demonstrated the probability that the
Middle Gaelic man’s name Elóir12 represents a hypothetical
O.N. cognomen *heløri. All spellings show that the / must have
been non-palatal and followed by a vowel which, to the Gaelic
ear, was non-front. This interpretation, if it is correct, con-
firms the reasonable assumption that ø, as the z’-umlaut of ó,
had not reached its position as a front vowel in the early
stages of Norse-Gaelic contact.13 It must, naturally, have been
different from ó and moving towards the front position which
10 “Norse steinn in Hebridean Place-names”, Fróðskaparrit, 13. bók,
Tórshavn, 1964, especially pp. 228 ff.
11 Bidrag til det norske sprogs historie i Irland, Oslo, 1915, especially
pp. 50 and 145.
12 Written Eloir (Four Masters 888 and Chronicon Scotorum 886),
Elóir (Four Masters 885), and Eoloir (Annals of Ulster for the year 885).
15 It may or may not be significant in this connection that Faroese
/ø/, whether long or short originally, is to this day treated as if it were
a non-front vowel after the consonants k and g, which have not become
palatalized in this position: /kø:va/ ‘to choke, to extinguish’ (O.N. kófa),
/ger.a./ ‘to fatten’ (O.N. gøða). Phonetically it is nevertheless a rounded
front vowel in the modern language.