Reconstructing The Norn of Caithness part one: vowels

Reconstructing The Norn of Caithness part one: vowels Jeanette Harris published for free online on January 8th 2020. I have been a researcher of Germanic and Sino-Tibetan languages for the last ten years. A native of Wick in Caithness, my attention turned to the Caithness dialect and the Norn language that preceded it. For my interest in Germanic languages, I had decided to focus on Yola, Ulster and Lowland Scots, and Norn. I also speak Faroese, Danish, Yola and modern Shetlandic - Shaetlann. This is the first of several publications I have readied to be published on Caithness, Orkney and Shetland Norn. I will also be sharing my research on the Yola Language, Scots, and the Blue Hmong Language. All of the Caithness Norn samples and comparisons to Old Norse, and sometimes Norwegian, come from “The Third Norn Dialect - That of Caithness” (The Viking Congress, Lerwick, 1950) - Per Thorsen. That is to say that the Caithness Norn words I have selected for this article, are those collected in Per Thorsen’s work, as are the comparisons he uses in Old Norse and Norwegian. However, I have developed my own spelling for Caithness Norn, so the Caithness Norn words do not look the same. The personal conclusions I have reached and my analysis of Caithness Norn phonology are all my own work. For the next articles I plan to look at direct evidence from place-names and the words in Caithness dialect books, many Norse words were not included in Per Thorsen’s article. Introduction Caithness is the most northeasterly of Scotland’s mainland regions, taking its name from a Celtic speaking people called the Catti, who may have spoken non-Celtic dialects before becoming Celticized. Caithness, Orkney and Shetland make up the Norse part of Scotland. Although Scotland as a whole became a part of the wider Norse society, Norse culture was most active and present at a local level in the three aforementioned places. A type of Norn was spoken in the Outer Hebrides too, but the Norn language here was confined to certain groups of people, the majority of communities in the Outer Hebrides seem to have had Gaelic as their main language. This was not so in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland. Early Gaelic found its way to Orkney, where previously a kind of P-Celtic functioned as the prestige language. But Gaelic was never greatly established here, and the recorded history of these islands since then shows that Norn was the local language of these islands. The Norse in the Hebrides underwent some simplification of noun-endings and phonology, but it didn’t diverge to the extent that Norn developed in Shetland, Orkney and Caithness. The Shetland dialects of Norn were the best recorded. While there are a substantial number of Orkney Norn words present in the Orkney Scots dialect, there is only one text, the Lord’s Prayer, which gives an example of spoken Orkney Norn. This poem uses a phonology which is quite different to what has been recorded of Orkney Norn elsewhere. The Norn in Caithness is only recorded in words and grammatical borrowings into Caithness Scots, making it difficult to determine much about the language. From what can be observed, Caithness and Orkney Norn share much more in common than either of them do with the Shetland dialects. Orkney Norn seems to have had different dialects, some contrasting palatals and diphthongs, internal lenition and initial sound changes, like þ- for t-. Caithness Norn and Orkney Norn may have made a dialect continuum. In Caithness, I have observed that Norse place-names in Caithness may fall into a Northern or Pentland Firth area, and an eastern area around Lybster. Along the coast the two areas are linked. Inland Caithness where there was upland agriculture, more crofting, the language was Gaelic. The Gaelic and Norse speaking people may have carried these lifestyle traditions on from long before either became established exactly as they are today. Caithness Norn shows some evidence of dialects being present too, there may be a contrast between a variation between þ- for t- like there was on Orkney, as well as changes in the realization of vowels, such as aa, á, ò, and ì and ai, and y and ỳ. The written Caithness Norn here not based closely on other Scandinavian alphabets, Caithness Norn had rather different phonemes to most Norse dialects. Long vowels follow Scottish Gaelic by being marked with a grave accent, except aa which may be pronounced /o:/. y is always a long vowel, and pronounced the same as ì, ỳ is pronounced similarly or the same as ai. Orkney and Caithness Norn seem to have had variants of Old Norse ei. In Old East Norse this sound was æi. Orkney seems to have had è, ì, ei and ai as variants, Caithness Norn shows ei and ai. È in Orkney may not have always been a pure vowel /e:/ but with similar variation to this sound in Scottish Gaelic. Most types of Norn show different forms of internal and sometimes initial lenition. In Foula Norn, this is remarkably similar to initial consonant mutation in Celtic Languages. Old Norse barn becomes /wadn/, written bhadn in one spelling of Foula Norn (word originally from the Hildina Ballad). Lenition more commonly affects g and t in Orkney and Caithness Norn, Old Norse final t became ð in Icelandic. In Norn it was more common for an internal t to become /ð/. Normally the orthographic Old Norse ð is deleted in Norn, or may harden. The Caithness and Orkney dialects do preserve this sound to an extent though. This is in part dialectal, but there may also be other factors that come into play to determine why this sound stays at times. In Caithness Norn, þ is the voiceless sound, whereas ꝧ represents the voiced sound. The vowels ä and ö represent /æ/ and /ø/, these sounds aren’t distinct phonemes in Caithness Norn, but may be written as allophones. They are mainly included for the sake of completeness. a, aa, á, b, d, e, è, f, g, h, i, ì, j, k, l, m, n, o, ò, p, r, s, t, u, ù, v, w, hw, y, ỳ, þ, ꝧ, ä, ö The precise realization of these sounds has yet to be completely decided upon or given a pronunciation guide, but apart from the sounds explained above, most are self explanatory. Note that hw occurs only at the beginning of words, hwat, hwar, hwal, hwìt etc. Norn used articles that were attached onto the end of the noun as in most other Scandinavian languages. The exception is Jutlandic. Evidence shows that later Norn in Shetland used da as the definite article, as in modern day Shaetlann. Although easily attributed to being a Scots borrowing, it may have been an innovation in Norn. ‘Da’ is related to ‘det’ in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, as the modern continental languages uses a standalone definite article when adjectives are used. Below are a list of some of the sound changes between Old Norse and Caithness Norn, focusing on vowels here. Note that Caithness Norn may not have had its birth in the Old Norse period, but instead in the Proto-Norse period. Old Norse a á á á especially when followed by another vowel or silent consonant in monosyllabic words já e é eg i í í íg ó jó u ú y Caithness Norn a aa or u, e.g. aave – spoon net, háfr. In Orkney this sound becomes ò. á /wa/-/ua/, initial syllables after consonant e.g. skári – skár, or skòr. In this case skári has two meanings in Old Norse, becoming skòri with the meaning ‘young gull’ and skár with the meaning ‘swath in mowing’, Norwegian skåre. ey or è e.g. rá – rey/rè, gráði – slight breeze, Caithness grey or grè. Sometimes ò as in gjá – gjò, this may not be vowel breaking as this word, Gaelic geodha seems neither inherently Norse nor Gaelic. e sometimes ì in monosyllabic words which lose -r, þefr – tif, ‘scent’ perhaps þif also. Another variant is feff, some words in Caithness Norn may have such different variants because these words are originally from other languages, and original and more ‘Norseified’ versions have survived. Often è, as in flèta or flèt, from flétta - plait. Commonly ai, veggr – wall, Caithness waig. i ai or ì, especially in words that lose their ending, skítr –skait, originally skìt. Shortened in monosyllabic words, vík – wik. ai – ey e.g. kvíger – heifer, kweyag/kwaiag. -ag is a suffix borrowed from Gaelic, or may be only present in words which come from a substrate. Commonly becomes ì or i in monosyllabic words, before n or generally, lón – lìn, bróðr briꝧer. No evidence of vowel breaking with ó, ó becomes commonly ì brjósk – bìrsk, perhaps as börsk with an allophone. Becomes e in un-stressed syllables, hömull – ammel, elsewhere likely u. Preserved and written ù, skrúf – skrù, brúk – brùk. Becomes u, possibly /ʌ/, klyfberi – kluber. This does not happen on Orkney. Icelandic drynja, Danish drøne, Caithness drùnji. The Icelandic verb takes ‘u’ in conjunction due to umlaut, in Caithness u or ù seems the general ý au ei ey jǫ pronunciation where Icelandic might have y. Scots has 'drune', all from Proto-Germanic *drunjaną, showing that rather than a sound change, the Caithness Norn and Scots preserve the original Proto-Germanic vowel. ỳ - Norwegian nygle - nỳl, skýla - protect, Caithness skỳl - shelter or shade, klýpa - pinch, Caithness klỳp - scratch with nails. oa or ou, naust – boatshed, Caithness noast – boat landing place, ausa – bail out water, Caithness ous. In Orkney this sound was generally ou. May become ai, þeisti – black guillemot, Caithness taist. Or ei, veita - watercourse from mill, Caithness Norn weit. Preserved, written ae, gleypa – swallow, glaep – gulp, seize, swallow. Vowel breaking didn’t always occur in the local Caithness Norn, a trend inherited from ProtoNorse or Proto-Germanic and preserved in different ways in West Norse. E.g. ON mjǫlkvi – milt of a fish, Caithness maak. Apocope was common in Orkney and Caithness Norn, it may have been the normal pronunciation to have apocope on nouns and verbs in much of Caithness and Orkney, with the more central Norse areas using a more Old-Norse like pronunciation. Apocope is the norm in the Jutlandic language of Western Denmark. To my knowledge, no-body has yet commented on the archaic phonology of Norn in Caithness and Orkney. West Shetland Norn shows a clear correspondence to the Old West Norse language, particularly to developments in Faroese and Icelandic. Orkney and Caithness Norn on the other hand, seem to have inherited their phonology in part from a Proto-Norse or Proto-Germanic stage. It might be possible that Proto-Germanic was being partly used on both sides of the North Sea, even before the much later Viking colonization of Britain. This might therefore mean, that some of the North-Germanic languages around the North-Sea came from original homeland distribution centers of Proto-Germanic or Proto-Norse. The same can likely be said for the original Eastern Norse languages, like Jamtlandic and Finland-Swedish. It is noteworthy that Iron Age burial grounds appear in Finland during the Proto-Norse period, and often these sites lie in areas which are FinlandSwedish speaking. It might be possible to find evidence of a pre-Viking Norse influence in Caithness and Orkney archaeological sites. This article may be quoted, copied or re-posted without prior permission so long as a link is provided to this article or the title ‘Reconstructing the Norn of Caithness, part one: vowels’ - Jeanette Harris. All of the Caithness Norn words used in this article were taken from Per Thorsen’s The Third Norn Dialect - That of Caithness (The Viking Congress, Lerwick, 1950). All discussion on Orkney and Caithness Norn traits come from personal observations.