Talk:Icelandic literature

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[edit] About the Etymology of Edda

The meaning grandmother (of poetry or something like that) is still considered to be the most likely origin (see Íslensk orðsifjabók by Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon). A derivation from the place name Oddi is phonetically impossible. There is no known rule deriving e from o. (Unless you count the verb koma, which is an oddity and the correspondence e-o there is of a later origin.) But the meaning is admittedly speculative.

And Snorri Sturluson was just raised at Oddi, he spent most of his life elsewhere.

Cheers 157.157.63.150 20:27, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, he was educated at Oddi, wasn't he? And Ásgeir Blöndal is a rather old source. --D. Webb 23:25, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry I forgot to check in yesterday, but the IP-number above is me. Snorri was educated at Oddi, but that is really not the point. Ásgeir Blöndal is the current bible in the field (name a more recent etymological dictionary, if you can), but as I have other sources as well, I believe him. I didn't check them last evening, so I may stand corrected on some points, especially, come to think of it, about the age of koma-kemur, but how would you derive Edda from Oddi. Cite the relevant sound laws, please, just-so stories are not accepted.

Cheers Io 15:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually o/e sound changes are not uncommon in Indo-European languages. Think of logos/lego or ergon/organon or petomai/potē or stello/stolos or menō/monē in Ancient Greek. Or preco/procus in Latin or homo which is from earlier hemo. Or Proto-Indoeuropean newos which in Latin becomes novus (cf. PIE swépnos → L. somnus; PIE swésor → L. soror; PIE welo → L. volo). So, koma/kemur isn't really surprising, nor sofa/sefur, even geta/got or other examples if you can find them in Icelandic. --D. Webb 18:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned on your user page, none of these changes were still in function in the time of Old Icelandic. Koma/kemur: Kemur used to be kømr, which ø later mutated into an e. Got stems from gjóta, not geta, and those two verbs belong to two different ablautclasses. Sofa is also irregular, having lost a v after the s. Edda and Oddi, on the other hand, are perfectly regular, each belonging to their different declension classes, and behaving excellently.

Cheers Io 20:54, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned on my user page, I'm not sure the missing v makes a lot of difference. If none of these changeswere in function in the 13th century then that may make the hypothesis unliklier, but the question is then when they ceased to be in function and whether possibly Snorri could have known of an older function that wasn't felt by the speaking public at the time thus coining the term in a learned way. Should we maybe discuss this on a single talk page? :) --D. Webb 23:46, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Future improvements suggestions

See suggestions on the Talk:Icelandic literature/Comments page. Cheers hamiltonstone (talk) 12:56, 23 January 2008 (UTC)