Norn language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Norn | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Shetland, Orkney and Caithness | |
| Language extinction: | by the 18th century (19th century at the latest) | |
| Language family: | Indo-European Germanic North Germanic West Scandinavian Norn |
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| Language codes | ||
| ISO 639-1: | none | |
| ISO 639-2: | gem | |
| ISO 639-3: | nrn | |
| Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. | ||
Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken on Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. After the islands were pawned to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, it was gradually replaced by Scots.
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[edit] History
It is not known exactly when Norn became extinct. The last reports of Norn speakers are claimed to be from the 19th century, but it is more likely that the language was dying out in the late 18th century (Price 1984: 203). The more isolated islands of Foula and Unst are variously claimed as the last refuges of the language in Shetland, where at least there were people "who could repeat sentences in Norn" (Price 1984: 204), probably passages from folk songs or poems, as late as 1893. Walter Sutherland from Skaw in Unst, who died about 1850, has been cited as the last native speaker of the Norn language. However, fragments of vocabulary survived the death of the main language and remain to this day, mainly in place-names and terms referring to plants, animals, weather, mood, and fishing vocabulary.
Dialects of Norse had also been spoken on mainland Scotland — for example, in Caithness — but here they became extinct many centuries before Norn died on Orkney and Shetland. Hence, some scholars also speak about "Caithness Norn", but others avoid this. Even less is known about "Caithness Norn" than about Orkney and Shetland Norn. Next to no written Norn has survived. What remains includes a version of the Lord's Prayer and a ballad.
Michael Barnes, professor of Scandinavian Studies at University College London, has published a study, The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland.
[edit] Classification
Norn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish and Danish. More recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into an Insular Scandinavian and Mainland Scandinavian languages, grouping Norwegian with Danish and Swedish based on mutual intelligibility and the fact that Norwegian has been heavily influenced in particular by Danish during the last millennium and has diverged from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language, and might even have been mutually intelligible with it.
Few written texts remain but it is accepted to have a common root with Faroese or the Vestnorsk dialects of Norway. It is to be distinguished from the present day 'dialect', termed by linguists Shetlandic.
[edit] Sounds
The phonology of Norn can never be determined with much precision due to the lack of source material, but the general aspects can be extrapolated from the few written sources that do exist. Norn shared many traits with the dialects of south-west Norway. This includes a voicing of /p, t, k/ to [b, d, g] before or between vowels and a conversion of /θ/ and /ð/ ("thing" and "that" respectively) to [t] and [d] respectively.
[edit] Grammar
The features of Norn grammar were very similar to the other Scandinavian languages. There were two numbers, three genders and four cases (nominative, accusative, genitive and dative). The two main conjugations of verbs in present and past tense were also present and like all other North Germanic languages, it used a suffix instead of a prepositioned article to indicate definiteness as in Danish/Norwegian/Swedish today: man(n) ("man"); mannen ("the man"). Though it is difficult to be certain of much of the aspects of Norn grammar, documents indicate that it may have featured subjectless clauses, which were common in the West Scandinavian languages.
[edit] Sample text
The following are Norn and old Norse versions of the Lord's Prayer, a Christian prayer: [1]
- Orkney Norn:
- Favor i ir i chimrie, / Helleur ir i nam thite,
- gilla cosdum thite cumma, / veya thine mota vara gort
- o yurn sinna gort i chimrie, / ga vus da on da dalight brow vora
- Firgive vus sinna vora / sin vee Firgive sindara mutha vus,
- lyv vus ye i tumtation, / min delivera vus fro olt ilt, Amen.
- Shetland Norn:
- Fy vor or er i Chimeri. / Halaght vara nam dit.
- La Konungdum din cumma. / La vill din vera guerde
- i vrildin sindaeri chimeri. / Gav vus dagh u dagloght brau.
- Forgive sindorwara / sin vi forgiva gem ao sinda gainst wus.
- Lia wus ikè o vera tempa, / but delivra wus fro adlu idlu.
- For do i ir Kongungdum, u puri, u glori, Amen
- Nordic countries Old (West) Norse:
- Faþer vár es ert í himenríki, verði nafn þitt hæilagt
- Til kome ríke þitt, værði vili þin
- sva a iarðu sem í himnum.
- Gef oss í dag brauð vort dagligt
- Ok fyr gefþu oss synþer órar,
- sem vér fyr gefom þeim er viþ oss hafa misgert
- Leiðd oss eigi í freistni, heldr leys þv oss frá ollu illu.
A Shetland "guddick" (riddle) in Norn, which Jakob Jakobsen heard told on Unst, the northernmost island in Shetland, in the 1890s.
The same riddle is also known from the Faroe Islands.
Shetland Norn (Jakob Jakobsen)
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Faroese
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English translation
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Icelandic translation
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The answer is a cow. Four teats hang, four legs walk, two horns and two ears stand skyward, two eyes show the way to the field and one tail comes shaking (dangling) behind.
[edit] References
- Barnes, Michael P. The Norn Language of Orkney & Shetland. Lerwick: Shetland Times 1998. ISBN 1-898852-29-4
- Price, Glanville. The Languages of Britain.London: Edward Arnold 1984. ISBN 978-0713164527
[edit] Further reading
- Barnes, Michael P. "Orkney and Shetland Norn". In Language in the British Isles, ed. Peter Trudgill, 352-66. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
- Jakobsen, Jakob. An Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland. 2 vols. London/Copenhagen: David Nutt/Vilhelm Prior, 1928-32 (reprinted 1985).
- Low, George. A Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Schetland. Kirkwall: William Peace, 1879.
- Marwick, Hugh. The Orkney Norn. London: Oxford University Press, 1929.
- Rendboe, Laurits. "The Lord's Prayer in Orkney and Shetland Norn 1-2". North-Western European Language Evolution 14 (1989): 77-112 and 15 (1990): 49-111.
- Wallace, James. An Account of the Islands of Orkney. London: Jacob Tonson, 1700.
[edit] External links
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