From what I've heard, Iceland does actively combat the modernisation of their language. they never adapt words from outside like other nordic languages have a tendency to do, but whenever a new thing is introduced, it gets a Icelandic word.
@@davidbergfors6820 In theory, yes, but there is a bit of a difference between official language and what actual Icelanders speak. And they do adapt words, so the word for a cell phone is (or was?) gemsi which is an adaptation of the acronym GSM. There's also the word kósý from English cosy. So the "never" is not quite true. As for gonun: well, kept alive I guess but Icelandic has changed a lot these past 1,000+ years.
@larsliamvilhelm While you are correct, that's also semantics. For all intents and purposes, when people say "Old Norse" what they mean is normalised Old West Norse as written by the likes of Snorri Sturluson. So yes, technically "Old Norse" is only the pre-West-East-split stage, but in practice it's the 12th century West speak. As for the Old Icelandic moniker, it's a bit misleading as many of the things that separate Old Icelandic, Old Faroese, and Old Norwegian hadn't really happened yet, so the whole æ vs ø vs œ sound change hadn't gone through yet. Post Black Death however, is a whole different story; language changes happened fast after that. So yeah, you are correct but with an asterisk.
@@weepingscorpion8739 You are absolutely correct, but I'm going to nitpick your example. When naming new things in Icelandic we either make up new words or repurpose old words. Then culturally words often end up adapted as per your "kósý" example. Gemsi for cell phone is an inspired use from the acronym, but it is a repurposed older Icelandic word that used to refer to a young lamb (and more). Similar to how the word for telephone, sími, is an older word that meant line, or a thread.
English also had þ and ð, but the printing press killed them. The thorn (þ) was represented with y so English speakers mistakenly thought old printing would say things like "ye olde taverne" when it was actually saying "þe olde taverne" (the old tavern)
Wasn't "the old tavern" example actually with ð? "ðe old tavern" as when you write cursive, ð looks like the belly of the D is just the handle of the Y woven into eachother? I am not sure if I am making sense and I could be wrong, but tthere is that british youtube guy who talks about old english and I feel like I remember him talking about this with ð and Y, and þ is more into "tha" pronounciation.
@@pervysagemkdin fact English at some point had only Þþ, not Ðð. The difference between [θ] and [ð] was positional, so the sounds did not need separate letters. But in Modern English the positional nature of th-sounds is lost.
@@pervysagemkd When people wrote þ in cursive it started to look more like a fancy Y (with the tail going in the opposite direction) as the curve at the top became gapped rather than connected - so it roughly went from þ, to a fancy P, to a fancy Y (if that makes sense).
@@RanmaruRei Are you sure this is correct? They're basically the same mouth position but one is voiced and the other vocieless. This still exists just pronounce the words 'THis' and 'THing'. The first is vocieless (put your hand on your throat you'll feel nothing) and the second is voiced (put your hand on your throat feel vibration). Perhaps your use of the word positional is throwing me off.
Worth noting for anyone watching this that the Finnish language is *completely* different from English and the other Nordic languages. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are mutually intelligible with some effort. Icelandic is a more preserved form of the common ancestral language (not surprising since they developed on an island). English has a lot more French and Latin influence. And Finnish is not related at all to any of the languages in Europe. Finland is culturally part of the Nordic countries, but their language is virtually no more related to the European languages than Arabic is. (I learned this the hard way, the first time I visited Finland thinking my Swedish skills would help me. Nope.)
@@tonikaihola5408 There's the Hungarian language too, but it's nowhere near as closely related to Finnish as Estonian is. Uralic, but a more distant branch of it.
@@tonikaihola5408 Finnish and Estonian are both on the finnic branch of uralic languages. Norwegian, danish and swedish as well as icelandic are germanic languages, so they are indeed different language families.
@@Patralgan yeah I ment that but my brain went thrrrrrrppp and I confused the word Nordic with the word Scandinavian either way Finland is my favourite scandinavian country
Our Finnish girly was a bit left out in the video. We obviously are aware of the Norse mythology and have been influenced by it somewhat but we are not taught about it in school or anything (maybe briefly mentioned? I don't remember being taught about Odin etc). And we don't have Finnish variations for the names of the Norse gods. In a way fun to have her there nonetheless but she is definitely approaching the subject from a certain distance. Would be fun to hear about Finnish mythology sometime cuz it is also very interesting and quite different from the Norse stuff in many ways.
Yeah, I don’t know why they brought her there since Finns are a completely different culture than the Norse. Someone in the production team didn't do their homework
Yeah, Finland has never followed norse mythology, and their language is not related to them at all. It's Nordic because of the location and flag but that's about it.
@@CrisSelene Well, adjacent culture, and heavily influenced by Norse culture, and also somewhat influenced Norse culture. For example Odin being a shamanic character is Finnic influence. There's been a lot of mixing, including cultural mixing between Finns and Scandinavians since the stone age, as both groups developed right next to each other, and in fact, both groups kind of developed from the same exact stone age culture that was in the area back in the day.
This was really fun. Surprised it wasn't mentioned that many days of the week in English are named after Norse gods. Tuesday - Tiu/Tyr; Wednesday - Odin/Woden; Thursday _ Thur/Thor; Friday - Frigg
@@pemanilnoob Not Norse gods, actually. Germanic gods. It's just that the Norse mythology and Germanic mythology are 2 mythologies split off of the same one originally. The English used to have this religion with their own name for the gods from the Germanic side, but the religion was pushed out by Christianity, which is why English also uses these names for their days.
As a dane, who’s obsessed with norse mythology, is was dying to bug in and explain EVERYTHING. It was however also interesting to hear how the other nordic countries pronounce the names and things from norse mythology
However you can understand icelandic cos old icelandic and old norwegian were the same idiom and have the same roots just compare old Norwegian with old Icelandic it's the same dialect separated by geographical isolation 💡💡💡🥂🥂🥂🥂 go ahead and find your happiness 😊
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea No he wont, I have plenty of Icelandic friends and I can't understand nothing when they are speaking. Maybe a simple word here and there, but understand the language no and I speak one of the closest dialects to old Norwegian.
@@UglesethYou distorted what I said above so that a Norwegian who speaks modern Norwegian would understand modern Icelandic, and better study and speak old Icelandic because from it, modern Icelandic becomes easier to understand. I said this because I know well that modern Icelandic is quite separate from Norwegian and other Viking Norse languages today. Unfortunately, the separation was so profound that there is no current intelligibility between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages of the European continent. There is only random exchange of words between them. The same thing for a current Icelander, he needs to study Old Norwegian and speak this language well and from then on, modern Norwegian becomes much easier and more accessible for him because there is no direct intelligibility between Icelandic and Norwegian. But as the 2 languages share a strong history together with Old Norse, they can both have a linguistic exchange and reach a deep natural understanding because they are sister languages, even though they are heavily changed as they are now.
@@Bubajumba You distorted what I said above so that a Norwegian who speaks modern Norwegian would understand modern Icelandic, and better study and speak old Icelandic because from it, modern Icelandic becomes easier to understand. I said this because I know well that modern Icelandic is quite separate from Norwegian and other Viking Norse languages today. Unfortunately, the separation was so profound that there is no current intelligibility between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages of the European continent. There is only random exchange of words between them. The same thing for a current Icelander, he needs to study Old Norwegian and speak this language well and from then on, modern Norwegian becomes much easier and more accessible for him because there is no direct intelligibility between Icelandic and Norwegian. But as the 2 languages share a strong history together with Old Norse, they can both have a linguistic exchange and reach a deep natural understanding because they are sister languages, even though they are heavily changed as they are now.
This is a bit difficult for the Finn because you can pronounce them like they are written there (as she did) or more like Swedes would pronounce. Minor correction is finns would have Mjölnir and Asgård. I think she said Mjolnir and Asgard. Again Å isn't a finnish letter so we would have to pronounce it the swedish way. As she mentioned we have our own mythology, so we don't really have our own words for these. Interested to hear that they study this a lot in other nordic countries. We just quickly mention them in Finland. At least when and where I went to school.
Good point! Also, for the record, "Mjolnir" is spelled "Mjölner", in Swedish. "Mjöl" is the Swedish word for "Flour", so in a modern setting the name of the hammer could be literally interpreted and "The flour maker". The name is however meant to mean something along the lines of "The Crusher" or "The Pulverizer". So, not too far off I guess.
@@vicolin6126Interesting. So it's related to the English word "mill", which is also a device that pulverizes grain into flour. Similarly, in German we have "mahlen" (to grind), "Mühle" (mill) and "Mehl" (flour).
@@alexj9603 Not exactly, but all of our languages are related. "Mjöl" is flour, while "kvarn" is mill. "Mala" means " to grind". So, I was only taking the name "mjölner" and interpreting it in modern Swedish. "Mjölnare" = "person who makes flour". My point was that the name can still be somewhat understood if you interpret it this way.
@@vicolin6126 Sure. If you go into scientific details, things get more complicated. But along the broad lines it doesn't seem completely wrong to "translate" Mjölnir as "Müller" (mill owner or person who makes flour ). I guess I'll call that hammer by this name from now 😝.
Very interesting how the girl from Iceland had so much background on the subject. I love the way Icelanders keep their language alive. I heard it’s the language that has changed the least in the past 500 years.
Icelandic was changed a bit, but it still looks similar to Norse, as the dude that created Icelandic (by slightly modifying West Norse) didn’t modify it too much, just enough for it to be another language, but it is still very similar in spelling, and most words are cognates, and most conjugated forms for most of the cognates are the same, and, other Norse languages like Faroese and Old Norwegian / Old Danish / Old Swedish are also very similar to Norse, but they are like simplified Norse with spelling that’s a bit more different than Icelandic spelling, and there’s also East Norse which is similar to West Norse, but kinda different at the same time! However, each language was created by one dude, and languages do not belong to the groups of ppl that were made to learn them, and it’s incorrect to say ‘their’ language etc, and, the pretty languages, including all the Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages and the modern Celtic languages and a few others, were inspired by beautiful nature, and Norse was created by a warrior / raider dude with a lot of natural artistic talent, and the other Norse languages were created by modifying Norse, so they all come directly from Norse - technically, the creation of new languages doesn’t depend of how many thousands of years have passed etc, it all depends on whether a new dude decides to modify a language or multiple languages (and create a new language by using them as a base and by creating new words) and it also depends on how much he decides to modify them, so, there are many languages that are the same as they were one thousand years ago, because no new dudes decided to created a Middle and a Modern version etc, but there are also many languages that were modified at least twice or even more than twice, which have at least an Old version and a Middle version and a Modern version that are different languages basically, but, Icelandic wasn’t modified that much, so there isn’t much difference between Modern Icelandic and Middle Icelandic and Old Icelandic, as they look like the same language, from what I have seen so far, but languages such as English and Norwegian and Dutch etc were changed more, so the Modern versions look quite different, and English comes mostly from Norse, anyway, and Dutch was also influenced a lot by both English and Norse! Anyways, superiority terms and possessives like Angel and love and oro and girl and their only reflect me, and cannot be misused by ppl in any way!
I highly recommend learning the prettiest languages ever Norse / Icelandic / Dutch / Norwegian / Gothic / Faroese / Danish, which are as pretty / refined / poetic / magical / perfect / heavenly / amazing / elvish / logical / cool / unique / special / epic as English, as these heavenly languages are way too pretty not to know and the most fun to see and hear and speak and learn etc, and also Welsh and the other modern Celtic languages, which are also super gorgeous and elvish, and, I highly recommend listening to all the Skáld songs and memorizing all the lyrics, including the songs Óðínn and Flúga and Rún and NorðrLjós and Gleipnir and LjósÁlfr and Grótti and SólarLjóð and Hross and Troll Kalla Mik and SæKonungar and Ríðum Ríðum and ElverHøy and Níu and ValFreyjuDrápa and Rauðr Loginn Brann and Fimbulvetr and Villeman Og Magnhild and Hinn Mikli Dreki and Då Månen Sken / Yggdrasill etc, as they are the best introduction to Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages, and they all have super epic and beautiful melodies as well as pretty vocals, and they perfectly fit these heavenly languages, and are very áddìctive like the Norse languages - today’s topic was real fun, as my protector Chip is the real-life Odin / Thor / Loki etc, and I am The Freya, and we are the beings who reflect all the interesting characters from Norse mythology and from Greek mythology etc and from Disney and stories and lyrics and poems etc and The Gods etc!
I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound! For example... - hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat - mæra sounds like mera - ávast sounds like avast - nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r - líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr - frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda - þat sounds like that - ræðir sounds like reidhir - hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr) - gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr - hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used) Also... - hæll sounds like heyl - saltr sounds like solt:r - mæla sounds like mala - drápa sounds like drapa or dropa - kæra sounds like kaera or kaira - ferr sounds like fer:r - jafna sounds like yavna - hœgri sounds like heoyri - girðing sounds like girdhing - hádegi sounds like haodegi - ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust The word... - verr sounds like ver - ekki sounds like eki or ehki - þverra sounds like thverra - gegna sounds like gekna - vefja sounds like vevya - yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic - ætla sounds like etla - ofn sounds like ovn - náliga sounds like naoliga - sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written - ofleti sounds like ofleti The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word... I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse... The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined... By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
Here are some of the most important sounds + pronunciation rules in Icelandic, as Icelandic has one of the easiest / prettiest / coolest pronunciations ever, having a category 1 pronunciation with super cool modern sounds! - the eth letter ð is an approximant of the letter D (a less obvious D similar to the D in the Spanish word nada and like the TH in the English words this and that) and the thorn letter þ is an approximant of T (a less obvious T that’s sort of lisped, and it is the same sound as the TH in the English words think and thing, though it sounds closer to a normal T sound in Icelandic) More pronunciation rules and sounds in Icelandic... - the HV is pronounced KV - the NN is pronounced as a TN if it comes after Æ and after EI / EY and after a long vowel such as Á / É / Í / Ó / Ú (but it is a normal N sound if it comes after the short vowels A / E / I / O / U and in inn word combinations, and I recommend adding a very soft breathy H sound to the ‘inn’ word ending in masculine words to make it a bit different from the word ending ‘in’ which is the feminine word ending, like I do, as I pronounce the inn more like ihn in masculine nouns and masculine adjectives that have the inn word ending, which represents the definite article in nouns, tho there are also three articles that aren’t added to the noun, namely hinn and hin and hið, so, one can say hinn stormur or stormurinn and hinn storm or storminn as both mean the storm in nominative and accusative) - the LL is usually pronounced TL in most words and if the LL is at the end of the word it sounds more like a weak T sound - the RN is pronounced with an extra soft ‘nasal’ T sound between the R and the N (so a word like þarna sounds like thartna) - the FL / FN letter combinations are pronounced PL / PN (so F becomes a P sound if it’s before an L or an N) - the G is ultra soft in short words like ég and mig etc, so it is pronounced more like an H sound (so ég sounds like yeh) and the G in the middle of the words is kinda soft (in words like segja / saga / segir etc it is a soft G that is still a G sound and not an H) and the Gs and GGs can also sound like Ks in many of the words if they are at the end of the word or even in the middle of the word and sometimes even at the beginning of the word (same as in Old Norse) tho Gs are usually pronounced like a normal G sound if they are at the beginning of the word (except for a few words) - the KK / TT etc is pronounced more like HK / HT as a soft breathy H sound is included before the K / T sound when there is a double consonant and even when there are two different consonants (for example, ekki sounds like ehki and óútreiknanlegt sounds like outreihnanleht etc) - the letter F is usually pronounced like a V if it’s in the middle of the word or at the end of the word (so leyfa sounds like leyva) and it is pronounced like a normal F sound if it’s at the beginning of the word or very close to the beginning of the word (for example, if a words starts with af, the af is pronounced af, not av) The diphthongs and umlauts and vowels in Icelandic... - AU is pronounced EOI (normal e sound + normal o sound + normal i sound said 2gether fast in one sound) - EI / EY are pronounced EI / EY (same as they are spellt) - the Æ / æ is usually pronounced ai in most Icelandic words (but hvenær seems to be pronounced kvenar and not really kvenair, so it depends on the word) - Ö is an EO sound (normal e sound + normal o sound said 2gether in one sound, like the œ in the French word cœur) - Ó is usually pronounced OU - O is usually pronounced UO and sometimes as an O sound (depending on the word) - Ú is a normal u sound - U is a more rounded YU sound (like the u in the French word mur and it is also the same sound as the Ü in Hungarian and German and the same sound as the UU in Dutch in words like muur and duur) tho in some words it is pronounced like a normal U sound (especially at the beginning of the word in words like ungur, and when there are multiple Us in the same word it’s usually the last U that is pronounced like YU and most other Us are pronounced like a normal U sound in that kind of words) - Á is an AU sound in almost every word (there are only a few exceptions) - A is a normal a sound and the A before NG / NK is pronounced like an AU sound just like the Á (so að ganga sounds like ath gaunga and it means to walk) - É is an YE sound (normal i sound + normal e sound) - E is a normal e sound (full e sound) - Í / Ý is a normal i sound - I / Y is a half i sound (this sound is very similar to how the i is pronounced in most English words like fit and chips and this, so it’s sort of like a weak i that goes more towards an e sound, but it isn’t a full e sound, and it isn’t a full i sound either, so it’s right between an i sound and an e sound)
We have a range of mountains called Jotunheimen in Norway. I have never heard the word Jørmungandr in my life, but I see that’s another word for Midgardsormen.
@@niravelniflheim1858 Yes he was one of Lokes children, but became Midgardsormen when the gods (æsene) threw him into to the see. In school they never mentioned his name before he was Midgardsormen. The names/words of the OP are not difficult to pronounce though as a Norwegian.
It's pronounced properly for her dialect. Åsgard can be pronounced with a long Å, or as "Åssgår" depending on your dialect. My parents say "Åssgår", while I say "Åååsgar".
I got the same feeling from the swedish lady, I felt like they were reading the word shown(in english). Pretty certain we in Sweden say AsgÅrd, the swedish lady did not say it like that but more like Asgard which sounded odd. There were some other nitpicks but it could be dialects and all of that depending on where in Sweden you grew up.
The Icelandic girl was also wrong about a few things. She said that Frigg and Ásgarður were spelt Frig and Ásagarður which completely changes the pronunciation.
Hey, Magda from Sweden here! I know Oden is more proper, but Odin is also a way to say it. I should've mentioned both but forgot at that moment. (Fick ingen info innan vi filmade så kunde inte förbereda) Also, I'm not sure but perhaps dialects could be a reason? Thanks for correcting and watching~
It's fine, it was a long time since I learned of these in school and I would be unsure of some of them, like Heimdall. Also I'm reading on wikipedia that Tyr was called Ti in sweden (this is under Tyr though, quite confusing). Would've been helpful if you guys had had a few minutes to check up on these things before shooting.
I think that Odin are a Common way og saying it, in Skåne (Halland and Blekinge), mayby because of the danish influence, from their occupation of the regions? I know that that is the variation that boys and PET's are named.
Some of these names were a bit weird ones to pronounce as a Finn since Norse mythology is foreign mythology to us (I'm still really glad that Finland was part of this🥰🥰 Thanks!). I could sometimes get mixed up how to say these the "Finnish" way, because I would have heard how to pronounce them in English way... well that would mainly only be Thor😅 Or otherwise mix it up an accidentally pronounce it more tge Swedish way than the Finnish way😅 And I think it's also a good thing to acknowledge that Finnish is from different language group than the rest here.
Finnish mythology is certainly distinct from Norse, but I wouldn't say totally foreign. Finnish mythology is really a mixture of Uralic, North Germanic and Baltic elements mixing together since the Bronze age.
I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound! For example... - hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat - mæra sounds like mera - ávast sounds like avast - nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r - líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr - frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda - þat sounds like that - ræðir sounds like reidhir - hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr) - gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr - hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used) Also... - hæll sounds like heyl - saltr sounds like solt:r - mæla sounds like mala - drápa sounds like drapa or dropa - kæra sounds like kaera or kaira - ferr sounds like fer:r - jafna sounds like yavna - hœgri sounds like heoyri - girðing sounds like girdhing - hádegi sounds like haodegi - ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust The word... - verr sounds like ver - ekki sounds like eki or ehki - þverra sounds like thverra - gegna sounds like gekna - vefja sounds like vevya - yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic - ætla sounds like etla - ofn sounds like ovn - náliga sounds like naoliga - sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written - ofleti sounds like ofleti The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word... I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse... The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined... By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
It's also why you see 'Ye Olde' abused so much n things that pretend to be old. The early printing presses didn't have a thorn character (the typeset came from Germany which had already dropped the character) so Y was used. We never said 'Ye' we said 'Þe' which was changed to 'the' when printers finally noticed that 'th' was a much better swap than a Y :)
I just want to point out that Old Norse doesn't equal Old Norwegian. Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic are all derived from Old Norse. Old Swedish, which descended from Old Norse, also did have the thorn however. I just thought maybe you were equating Norse with Norwegian since you didn't mention any other languages than Norse, Swedish and English.
In fact both thorn and eth (the letter she mentions earlier) existed in old English although they were used somewhat interchangeably there compared to Icelandic where they represent unvoiced and voiced "th" sounds respectively
@@Aetheraev Its fun to see how often eth just turned into "d" in languages that used to use eth. Example: Icelandic - brauð; Norwegian - brød; English - bread. Its the same for Odin and many other words.
As people *always* get this confused: Modern Icelandic doesn’t sound like Old Norse. Not even a little. Both Icelandic grammar and words are very close to Old Norse, but the pronunciation has changed tremendously. (While pretty much all linguists know this very well, people in general seem unaware of it.)
@@anton7354 Well sort of. We have the spelling, as Icelandic was at the very least still written as Old Norse up until the 1400s. Exact pronunciation will always just be an educated guess.
Well, we have indirect knowledge of everything, so everything is just an "educated guess". It makes no sense to single out the pronunciation of ancient languages as something particularly unknown when we have mountains of evidence from how sounds change, to what words Old Norse speakers never spell wrong, to comparative evidence with all the other Indo-European languages that to claim that "we didn't KNOW how Old Norse sounded" is either simple ignorance or selective skepticism.
One thing I notice about the differences in culture here is, the American Woman is VERY giggly and says "like" a lot, while the others are more calm & laid back. I'm an American Man living in Sweden, and it's always fun to see things you never notice before
They chose an American airhead on purpose to make the distinctions more pronounced. Otherwise they have a video about slight differences in vowels and consonants.
@@SuStelit’s pretty obvious how related the spoken language are with German, English, Dutch, and Scandinavian. So when you using extremely common old words there isn’t really a difference. Poor Finish girl.
As an American woman, I found her pretty obnoxious. I'm someone who's passionate about mythology and language, and damn was it was frustrating that a person who still sounds like a high school student was representing our nationality in this conversation.
As a mithology fan , i like to hear the names of characters from people of Nordic countries , even though i knew how theses words are pronounce ,the pronunciation of Mjolnir suprised me the most
Mjölnir (is), Mjölner (fi, sv) and Mjølner (no, da). The ö/ø is pronounced similar to the i in bird. But the length varies. To my Swedish ear it sounded just as different accents of English. E.g. Australian vs Irish.
I always cringe at the English way. It was always Mjölner for me and then I saw Marvels Thor 😂 aj aj aj... a god of myth on the big screen and what comes out of his mouth? Mjooolniiiiiir 😂. It sounds like how someone from "Gnällbältet" would say it, (a very whiny dialect of Swedish.) What is worse is there is an actual swede in those movies being forced to say it in English.
Actually it's not "Norse mythology", but Germanic. After all, the Germanic tribes of the time also included the Nordic tribes. Over the centuries, different countries and languages developed from these tribes. In German, just like in Norwegian, some days of the week are named after old gods and the old gods are exactly the same. And some first names (Torsten, Wotan, Freya, Hildegard) also come from the old gods.The entire history has been distorted through films and comics.
The special letters ð and þ are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley! I highly recommend learning the prettiest languages ever Norse / Icelandic / Dutch / Norwegian / Gothic / Faroese / Danish, which are as pretty / refined / poetic / magical / perfect / heavenly / amazing / elvish / logical / cool / unique / special / epic as English, as these heavenly languages are way too pretty not to know and the most fun to see and hear and speak and learn etc, and also Welsh and the other modern Celtic languages, which are also super gorgeous and elvish! By the way, I highly recommend listening to all the Skáld songs and memorizing all the lyrics, including the songs Óðínn and Flúga and Rún and NorðrLjós and Gleipnir and LjósÁlfr and Grótti and SólarLjóð and Hross and Troll Kalla Mik and SæKonungar and Ríðum Ríðum and ElverHøy and Níu and ValFreyjuDrápa and Rauðr Loginn Brann and Fimbulvetr and Villeman Og Magnhild and Hinn Mikli Dreki and Då Månen Sken / Yggdrasill etc, as they are the best introduction to Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages, and they all have super epic and beautiful melodies as well as pretty vocals, and they perfectly fit these heavenly languages, and are very áddìctive like the Norse languages - today’s topic was real fun, as my protector Chip is the real-life Odin / Thor / Loki etc, and I am The Freya, and we are the beings who reflect all the interesting characters from Norse mythology and from Greek mythology etc and from Disney and stories and lyrics and poems etc and The Gods etc!
I'm guessing whoever made the phonetic transcriptions isn't particularly familiar with phonetics. Like for example in the American pronunciation of "Loki", there's a quite obvious diphthong in the first vowel and yet it was written as a monophthong.
Btw fun fact. Norway has like a billion dialects so I got genuinly confused for some of the pronounciations the norwegian girl had. Cause it's different from what I'm used to.
Because I think the norwegian girl is not even norwegian like she's not native her name is Farida that's an arab name so I don't understand why they picked her
@@charbelkhoury3986 She could be first generation born in Norway and therefore the name, but I agree that she doesn’t sound native to me, and I can hear it especially when she pronounces Mjølner. She might also have been born abroad but living in Norway since she was a kid, maybe.
I heard a language professor claim that to learn a Scandinavian language it will be easier for 95% of people to learn fluent German first, and then to forget 80% of the grammar and just wing it from there. Funnily enough, the only ones I've heard get proper good at Danish, when learning from the adult stage, have been Germans. Britts who've lived here for 30 years still cock up worse than Germans who've lived here for 5.
@@FrisiiBattleBrotherRaymon Frisian and Dutch are closely related to Low Saxon and English. The similarities they share with German are more likely influenced by Low Saxon, which was the main language for people in the Hanse.
The Finnish girl was a little outsider in this because Finnish is totally different language group and Norse mythology is foreign mythology from Finns' point of view.
Yes, altough there were Norse people interacting with Finns and vice versa and Finland spent centuries as a Swedish colony, so it's not crazy to think that the Finns learned about the Norse pantheon through cultueral exchanges and trade with their Norse neighbours.
I would not say totally foreign. There has been a major overcorrection regarding the relationship between Finnish and Norse mythology. Several key concepts came to Finnish mythology from Germanic speaking peoples.
The opening of topic is full correct Finns aren't weren't and never will be nordics and germanics they're Asians Uralics finnics altaics til today, they have your own religion language and idioms separated from the moriec vikings germanics in History simple as that. Neighborhood doesn't means never means equality in culture, Langs and beliefs and ADN too...
The "gard" in Asgard can be also found in slavic languages as "gord", "gorod" or "grad". Because it means "enclosure", so applies to a garden or a fortified settlement.
@@HappyBeezerStudios: Garden is in german a Garten, in my dialect spoken (german pronoucion!) Gaarda. Guard , guarding comes from french language, Royal ( body)guard would be in germanic something like Kinglic ( Life) Watch as unit or kinglic ( life) warden as person. Königliche Leibwache/ königlicher Leibwächter. Related words to warden are Wächter/ Wärter / Wart.
Marvel may have made these characters more popular , but that doesn't means that people may know the real history of them , i like Nordic Mithology of MCU , but also really interested in the mithology itself
The only thing Marvels popularization of Norse mythology gets right, are probably the names and the family relation between Odin, Frigg and Thor. Loki is not Thor's brother in Norse mythology, which will probably blow the minds of fans of the Marvel films. 😄
I hate what marvel did with my ancestors beliefs honestly. It seems very spiteful as well as they cast an african american to play Heimdall who is known to be the fairest of the Aesir having the whitest skin. Why not fearure african gods if they want diversity! That would showcase the diversity of culture in the world far better
To those that have studied the Norse mythos, pronouncing the words is yet different again, but actually closer to Icelandic which shares both the spelling and pronouncing closer to how it was done back in the 600-1200s. You guys forgot to mention the days of the week are named after the Norse mythos. Wednasday: Odinsdag, Friday: Frigadag, Thursdag: Thorsdag, Tuesday: Tyrsdag, Monday: Manadag, Sunday: Sundag
I think Faroese and some western Norwegian dialects are more conservative when it comes to pronounciation. With exceptions of course, Icelandic kept the Th for example.
Well Friday is both from Frigg and Freya. I always thought of it as Freya's day (which makes more sense considering what it represents as well) however I just recently had to go back and learn more since so many reference Frigg. "Frey's day" is also closer to the English (and Norwegian) sound.
@@se6369 Yes the "th" (both the th and d) sounds went away, sadly. For Norwegians I mean. I believe R's also diverged a bit and got less enunciated. Although it's still somewhat present.
This was really fascinating. As an American who has very little knowledge of this region of the world, this was eye opening. I am learning how to speak Danish so this taught me some more words and their proper pronunciations. I have only known the American pronunciations of Norse Gods and items from their mythology. This makes me excited the book I am going to start reading about Norse Mythology. This made me feel like I am connecting more to acesteral roots since I recently got ancestry results and found that I have small traces of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. My surname actually stems from the Old Norse word "bryggja."
In Finland, I think they don't teach Norse mythology at school, maybe briefly mentioned like Finnish mythology, but I remember at least studing Roman and Greek mythologies.
I wish we could still refer to all the Germanic/Norse gods in English as English speakers traditionally did. For example, Odin in Old English and, I believe, Middle English is Woden. Thor is Thunor, Freyr is Frea, Baldr is Bældæg, Loki is Lōc or Loptr, Njörðr is Neorð, Heimdallr is Hēimdǣl, Skadi is Scēaðe, and Tyr is Tiw. There are many more examples I haven't mentioned. Fun fact: many of our days are named after these gods. Tyr/Tiw is Tuesday or, as Old English called it, Tiwesdæg. Odin/Woden is Wednesday/Wōdnesdæg, Thor/Thunor is Thursday/þunresdæg, and Frīg/Frigg is Friday/frīġedæġ.
Compare english day names to french day names and compare what germanic/ Roman gods did: Tiu/Mars, Wodan/ Merkur, Thor/ Jupiter, Freia/ Venus. And moon- la lune.
Theses gods are the same the Kurganian Indo Europeans gods, just change the dialects of Kurganian, french, english, greek , danish, ukranian, latvian they all have the same gods the rituals and feasts and clothes were changed by each group of each dialect bit the essence is the same. Mentally, Emotionally, today english in grammar, politics, linguistics, cultures follows the greek, french, welsh, latin views of mithology the germanics and backstages views normands curred of from all anglophony
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea I’m aware of the PIE ancestry to this but a lot of the old gods we say in English was changed to be a bit more nordic sounding when we have the names for the same Germanic gods already there but we don’t say them for some reason I think Viking and ether reason idk but confusing
@@brian0902 Don't be intrigued by the Kurgan heritage in European culture, it is a fact, because it is precisely this that justifies the mixture of beliefs and mythologies between Celts, Germans, Latin Slavs and Hellenics in a profound way. Don't let distrust lead you into error and denial, the Kurganian scientifically is already a solid scientific reality from 4 centuries of intense hard-earned studies in the international community, it was not a gift from heaven or a miracle, they were scientific achievements that should never be ignored or disrespected , question yourself and evolve in a better direction. Goodbye, without more for now with you and I wish you good studies since today.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAteaI know this, and I tell people down to it even when people's ideology changes, like the Iranian peoples accepting Islam or many Europeans accepting Christianity. When we look into DNA, we see characteristics with PIE culture and DNA. I don't know why; people are too shocked about it. Before civilization, people are nomads, and humanity has a common ancestor. So, even besides PIE, why do people try to separate themselves from other people? It makes zero sense to me when the only thing truly dividing us is culture and skin color and even then it truly shouldn’t divide us. So why don't people even want to try to see PIE evidence and straightaway try to say that's not true is beyond me. People say, "Oh, it's just justifying European colonialism." The exact same time I told them I don't believe this PIE theory justifies the colonial history of Europe. When I go into this, I'm trying to show people about the past and how people are connected in different ways, maybe culture or DNA. I tell people there were horrible things that Europeans and other people have done, and no amount of history of the past or future will justify it. But you can't deny things without looking at the evidence that we have found.
Those Icelandic letters she was referring to are found in the English phonetics system. They are taught to ESL learners in order to be able to pronounce any word in English. I can read whole texts written with phonemes.
They're not officially used in English anymore but they are used by some dictionaries/institutions to help teach the pronunciations. They're also officially used as part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and were used in Old English. Eth and thorn (ð þ); Old English also used Wynn and Yogh (ƿ ȝ), as well as Ash (æ).
þ and ð were indeed the letters for the voiceless dental fricative and the voiced dental fricative. In english they were used almost interchangeably for both, with þ being more common at the beginning of words and ð more common in the middle and end.
Yes, they are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley!
By the way, I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound! For example... - hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat - mæra sounds like mera - ávast sounds like avast - nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r - líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr - frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda - þat sounds like that - ræðir sounds like reidhir - hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr) - gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr - hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used) Also... - hæll sounds like heyl - saltr sounds like solt:r - mæla sounds like mala - drápa sounds like drapa or dropa - kæra sounds like kaera or kaira - ferr sounds like fer:r - jafna sounds like yavna - hœgri sounds like heoyri - girðing sounds like girdhing - hádegi sounds like haodegi - ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust The word... - verr sounds like ver - ekki sounds like eki or ehki - þverra sounds like thverra - gegna sounds like gekna - vefja sounds like vevya - yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic - ætla sounds like etla - ofn sounds like ovn - náliga sounds like naoliga - sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written - ofleti sounds like ofleti The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word... I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse... The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined... By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
Here are some of the most important sounds + pronunciation rules in Icelandic, as Icelandic has one of the easiest / prettiest / coolest pronunciations ever, having a category 1 pronunciation with super cool modern sounds! - the eth letter ð is an approximant of the letter D (a less obvious D similar to the D in the Spanish word nada and like the TH in the English words this and that) and the thorn letter þ is an approximant of T (a less obvious T that’s sort of lisped, and it is the same sound as the TH in the English words think and thing, though it sounds closer to a normal T sound in Icelandic) More pronunciation rules and sounds in Icelandic... - the HV is pronounced KV - the NN is pronounced as a TN if it comes after Æ and after EI / EY and after a long vowel such as Á / É / Í / Ó / Ú (but it is a normal N sound if it comes after the short vowels A / E / I / O / U and in inn word combinations, and I recommend adding a very soft breathy H sound to the ‘inn’ word ending in masculine words to make it a bit different from the word ending ‘in’ which is the feminine word ending, like I do, as I pronounce the inn more like ihn in masculine nouns and masculine adjectives that have the inn word ending, which represents the definite article in nouns, tho there are also three articles that aren’t added to the noun, namely hinn and hin and hið, so, one can say hinn stormur or stormurinn and hinn storm or storminn as both mean the storm in nominative and accusative) - the LL is usually pronounced TL in most words and if the LL is at the end of the word it sounds more like a weak T sound - the RN is pronounced with an extra soft ‘nasal’ T sound between the R and the N (so a word like þarna sounds like thartna) - the FL / FN letter combinations are pronounced PL / PN (so F becomes a P sound if it’s before an L or an N) - the G is ultra soft in short words like ég and mig etc, so it is pronounced more like an H sound (so ég sounds like yeh) and the G in the middle of the words is kinda soft (in words like segja / saga / segir etc it is a soft G that is still a G sound and not an H) and the Gs and GGs can also sound like Ks in many of the words if they are at the end of the word or even in the middle of the word and sometimes even at the beginning of the word (same as in Old Norse) tho Gs are usually pronounced like a normal G sound if they are at the beginning of the word (except for a few words) - the KK / TT etc is pronounced more like HK / HT as a soft breathy H sound is included before the K / T sound when there is a double consonant and even when there are two different consonants (for example, ekki sounds like ehki and óútreiknanlegt sounds like outreihnanleht etc) - the letter F is usually pronounced like a V if it’s in the middle of the word or at the end of the word (so leyfa sounds like leyva) and it is pronounced like a normal F sound if it’s at the beginning of the word or very close to the beginning of the word (for example, if a words starts with af, the af is pronounced af, not av) The diphthongs and umlauts and vowels in Icelandic... - AU is pronounced EOI (normal e sound + normal o sound + normal i sound said 2gether fast in one sound) - EI / EY are pronounced EI / EY (same as they are spellt) - the Æ / æ is usually pronounced ai in most Icelandic words (but hvenær seems to be pronounced kvenar and not really kvenair, so it depends on the word) - Ö is an EO sound (normal e sound + normal o sound said 2gether in one sound, like the œ in the French word cœur) - Ó is usually pronounced OU - O is usually pronounced UO and sometimes as an O sound (depending on the word) - Ú is a normal u sound - U is a more rounded YU sound (like the u in the French word mur and it is also the same sound as the Ü in Hungarian and German and the same sound as the UU in Dutch in words like muur and duur) tho in some words it is pronounced like a normal U sound (especially at the beginning of the word in words like ungur, and when there are multiple Us in the same word it’s usually the last U that is pronounced like YU and most other Us are pronounced like a normal U sound in that kind of words) - Á is an AU sound in almost every word (there are only a few exceptions) - A is a normal a sound and the A before NG / NK is pronounced like an AU sound just like the Á (so að ganga sounds like ath gaunga and it means to walk) - É is an YE sound (normal i sound + normal e sound) - E is a normal e sound (full e sound) - Í / Ý is a normal i sound - I / Y is a half i sound (this sound is very similar to how the i is pronounced in most English words like fit and chips and this, so it’s sort of like a weak i that goes more towards an e sound, but it isn’t a full e sound, and it isn’t a full i sound either, so it’s right between an i sound and an e sound)
100% relateable with what the icelandic woman said about connecting to your roots. I'm half-arab half-mexican, and I love studying Myan mythology and learning Yucatec, as well as learning about bedouin culture and pre-islamic arab traditions.
Because they always have to make Finland be the odd one out, lol... I saw this hilarious post from a Finn a while back giving Swedish the same treatment that Finnish often gets by having a list of the word for “hand” in every Finnic language and then the Swedish word (which is “hand”) so that Swedish could be the odd one out for once.
Well, they share a land border with Sweden and are kind of on the Scandinavian peninsula. Lots of Finns speak Swedish, and their flag has the northern cross. They are often included in discussions of Nordic / Norse / Scandinavian things.
I understood you bro, you're missing samis,kommis,estonians, livonians,karelians,vepsians and Hungarians, chuvashes the big family finnic italic hunnic true in the world 🌎🌍🫂🍻🍻💎 Teach to the Koreans the real culture idioms and mithology of finnic italic hunnic cultures and idioms to Koreans bros and sis really they don't know nothing. 💙💙💙
Honestly, probably depends on where you're from, dialects in Norway are so varied, that these type of comparisons never feel right, all these eastern Norwegians with their rolled R :P Here on the west coast we don't have that fancy rolled R, as ours is more like in German or French.
Mjølner is the bokmål way and then the dialect is changing that. The Norwegian representant should do the same as the one from sweden and do it the written way. Isnt the nynorsk similar pronounced too?
jag trodde vi sa oden??? det lärde vi oss iallafall i min skola bruh the way they spelled the swedish words, especially asgård, is buckwild 💀 oh my god, when the american said "you guys don't like the letter a :)" i rolled my eyes to the bsck of my head. idk whether she's talking about the actual a or the å but if it's the latter: YOU are the ones who for some reason replaced the å with a letter that sounds nothing like it because you can't comprehend languages having different letters
Traditionally, the Anglo-Saxon (ancestors of the English) tribes that worshipped a variation of the Norse pantheon. Unfortunately many records from that time period have been lost. From what we know the equivalent names form this video were Woden (1:39), Frig (2:47), Thunor (4:01), there was no known Loki equivalent (5:25), the name of Thunor's hammer has been lost to time but we do know he had one (6:31), there was no known Heimdall equivalent (8:35), Tiw (11:09), it has been reconstructed as Esageard but it is not known if that were the equivalent (12:30). The original religion of the Anglo-Saxons is a really interesting topic, that unfortunately, has mostly been lost to the sands of time.
To add to this Donar of course survives in the word Donner (thunder) Donnerstags (thursday) is named after him. Freitag is freias day (Friday). Wodan should be wodansday probably wednesday in english but this got lost in german.
@@tobiast5908 That's cool that German also holds on to this heritage in some form! In English we have some derived words as well: Mona --> Monday, Tiw --> Tuesday, Wodan --> Wednesday, Thunor --> Thursday, Frig --> Friday, and Ēostre --> Easter.
@@davidoregan_ Great to know, thx Looked up the roots for tuesday in german and it also refers to the Germanic god of war but it appears the name that we use is based on a latin translation of his name while the original saxon equivalent ziu (in english the first part of tuesday ) was lost. Eastern = Ostern . Moon = Mond. Mondtag = day of the moon. Monday Sonntag = day of the sun- sunday Interestingly and not related to the old mythology but to England an old name for saturday still in use in northern germany is Sonnabend which translates to "sunday eve". Original only the evening before sunday was meant by this, but later the term got extended to apply for the full day, same as Christmas eve. And apparently the reason why this name was coined were missionaries from the british isles, a direct translation from old english. Well back in those days imo there wasnt much linguistic difference between southern britain and northern germany anyway. The more romanized south of germany uses a different name for this day (which btw threatens to become dominant nationwide these days, though originally it wasnt used in the north). Sorry this got so long Keep it up
Its interesting how different I myself would pronounce each word compared to the pronounciations for the Norwegian girl in this video. Some of the time I thought to myself «really?» because I pronounce it in such a different way. It almost didn’t sound Norwegian to me. But of course, I get told by people that they sometimes have difficulty understanding me even though we speak the same language. (My dialect is difficult to place, its not uncommon, but its different from what you’d hear in the bigger cities). Norwegians could probably have their own video with pronounciations with different dialects. Also, I had more norse mythology in school than a few months in high school. I remember learning about it in both 4. grade and some years before high school. Some was taught during religion, language and social studies. But that might differ based on the school and when you grew up. Curriculums are changed all the time, not surprising at all.
This was so interesting. Listening to the different pronunciation of vowel sounds from the various northern lands shows the changes over time and location really well. The biggest surprise for me was 'Asgard'! That was not what I was expecting! :) It seems to my ear that Icelandic pronounces words somewhat differently to the others, and as she said, Norse mythology was her passion, so she'd researched it more and had a better understanding of where the words originated.
Why do you spell "Luke" for Swedish, Norwegian and Danish? It's spelled "Loke" (if not Loki). And the girls are saying it that way in their language. The subtitles are not good, more like guessing.
@@OnnarashiWell, I am Faroese, and most of your o's sound nothing like our o's but more like our u's. Maybe you still keep the o in Loke but the o's "Med Tore på sporet" are definitely pronounced as [u], not [o].
We're always lumped in the same bunch and way less known than our Nordic brethren. Not really anyone's fault per se, but they should've done some research. Now ask the other Nordics to pronounce names from Finnish mythology and they'll be utterly lost. 99.9% of them would be completely unknown to them plus the language is so different, it's mostly impossible for them to even guess. Even Finns don't know a ton about their own mythology, Kalevala being the obvious standout and maybe a few songs/colloquialisms/proverbs.
@larsliamvilhelm No, you would sing them still.. for the same reason many Finns speak "rally English", it just goes the other way around. And please, do a favour and never ever try say out loud "perkele" ! (that goes for English speakers too)
Those Icelandic letters are also Old English, LOTS if Nordic influence in Old English--; Beowulf etc."The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years." -- Even though OE come from Angles and Saxons and Jutes. "The Jutes (/dʒuːts/ JOOTS) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nations, along with the Angles and the Saxons: The Jutland Peninsula, possible homeland of the Jutes"
This is so interesting and I am binging these videos with Nordic languages ❤ I am Slovak and it’s interesting that instinctively I knew how to pronounce the names “correctly”. My pronunciation was closest to Finnish. Quite surprising but love it❤❤❤❤
Oi! Our American is making us sound so ditsy because of her saying like before she answers and as shes talking. She also giggles a lot or laughs to cover her insecurities with public speaking. Her speaking, made me acutely aware of how we have a lot of inflection in our voice and how we speak. This was very informative.
Good on you to take notes from this, you are more noble than I, haha. I couldn't help but cringe during most of the video. I sure wish they would have had an American with an ounce more charisma.
Very interesting. I've heard some of these names still being used in Germany (I live in Western Germany). I've heard of/seen ladies having names such as Gudr (Gudrun in German), Gunnr, Hilda, Sigrun, etc. Also, some other names like Björn, Erik (very common), Gunnar, Freja/Freya, Helge, and Thorsten (literally used to work with a guy with this name). Even though Germany was under the strong grip of Christianity, they still managed to maintain some old culture and rich traditions until this day. Some traditional German/Germanic names are still being given to newborn babies in modern-day Germany.
@@gautamprasadkraoI’m also from western Germany and I know a Brunhilde and a Hilda! And Brunhilde can be quite impressive, she looks so kind, but when someone angers her… better hope you’re in a safe distance.
Nonono. Sesselja does not represent me as an Icelander. I have no idea where she gets some of this from. For example, she removed a g from Frigg and added an a to "Ásgarður" so she said "Ásagarður". She must be from Hafnarfjörður. The other stuff was how I would say it though. (Also, she made an error. I'll use the same example as in the video. Originally, "Heimdallur" was spelled "Heimdallr", so there was no "u" before the "r". But that was in Snorra-Edda, which was written in the 13th century)
So true. It was quite embarrasing how she butchered the name Frigg. It is not written with one g and not pronounced the way she pronounced it. Also it is Ásgarður and not Ásagarður. I can't imagine where she could have heard this from.
I was interested in what sounded like a light t sound in the dallur/dallr part. At least compared to everyone else. I'm Swedish so that one surprised me. Do you pronounce it with that soft t in there as well?
This is an awesome video! I am comparing Norse gods with the Anglo-Saxons, where we get our Tuesday thru Friday. Tuesday is from Tiw, the god of war (similar to Roman Mars, Tyr in Norse); Wednesday is from Woden (Similr to Mercury in Roman, and Odin in Norse), Thursday is from Thunor (Similar to Jupiter in Roman, Thor in Norse); and Friday is from Frig (Venus in Roman, Frigga in Norse). I enjoy how they explain the Norse gods and the worlds! Now for the romance languages such as Spanish, Tuesday would be Martes (Mars), Wednesday would be Miercoles (Mercury), Thursday would be Jueves (Iovis or Jupiter), Friday would be Viernes (Venus). We need the the Romance language speakers and the Germanic language speakers together and go over the days of the week!
The gods of these cultures were all Indo-European gods, when they spoke Kurganian the cults were the same when they started to speak different languages like Proto-Hellenic, Proto-Armenian, Proto-Sanskrit, Protoraci, Protodacian, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Polytheism changed the rites but the gods were the same with different names and cults and different languages and the Indo-European mythologies are very similar because they are Kurgan mythologies. And the English language heavily inherited almost all Indo-European traditions because in its formation it mixed deeply with almost all Indo-European languages and cultures in the European continent. Just these facts, or rather the entire summary of these facts.
German: Monday - Montag - day of Mani Tuesday - Dienstag - day of Tiu/Tiz (Tyr) Wednesday - Mittwoch - middle of the week (used to be Wodensdag but the church managed to ban the word) Thursday - Donnerstag - day of Donar (Thor) Friday - Freitag - day of Frī(j)a (Frigg) Saturday - Samstag - day of sabbat (Judeo-Christian) Sunday - Sonntag - day of Sunna (Sól)
Loved this. Please do Greek mythology names next. Every country seems to have a unique pronunciation of those, so I'd love to hear an actual Greek comment on it :-)
The Icelandic letters are part of Western Germanic Rune Alphabet, and was part of Danish, Norweigan, Swedish dialects of Old Norse, and Old English as well, and as someone else mentioned, the reason for them dropping out are largely due to the Printing Press being a german Invention, and making letters for it being quite a specialized skillset in the early years of its spread.
Germanic names like Dustin, Thorsten/Thurston, and Thorin are all connected by Þor- and all mean things like "thor's stone, lightning bolt, thunder, brave, brave warrior, valiant fighter".
02:59 no Frigg is not pronounced as Frig in Icelandic - it's pronounced as Frigg with an emphasis on two G's. I have never heard anyone say Frigg as Frig
How big are the chances that they can find a Faroese person in Korea that is also willing to participate in this? There are only 54k of you within your own islands
So as a Danish kid (45 today), I was reading a lot of stories about Norse mythology. I have a book called "Nordiske Gude, og Helte sagn" and I was obsessed about it. A proper English translation of that title would probably be "Fables of Norse Gods and Heroes". Now... When I grew older and first encountered the word "Norse", my initial response was something similar to "....the heck is that?". Let me explain. In Denmark, we don't have a word like "Norse" to pinpoint what mythology we're talking about. What the English language call "Norse Mythology", we call "Nordisk Mytologi". "Nordisk" means that it comes from the north. "Nord" translates directly to "North". If you write "Nordiske", the first word of the book title, into Google translate, it spells "Nordic". I'm very ADHD, and autistic as well. My brain works in mysterious ways.... The word "Norse" just stuck with me.. ..and not in a good way. I felt my obsession as a kid was butchered. "Norse.... Gimme a break! It's called Nordic!" I concocted a theory. I think that the first English speaking person who had to explain this to another English speaking person, must have had a lisp or something... All excited, trying to explain this mythology from the north..... "Ahh, yes... Norse...." Writing it down... Cementing it. .. It's just a fun theory, but I still don't like that word...
Mjolnir/Mjölner is always so funny to me because if it wasn't for the "don't translate names" rule, it would be "grinder" (as in grinding to flour) or, to translate meaning, "crusher". Here comes Thor with his hammer Crusher! Only the worthy can lift Grinder!
In English, Ð ð and Þ þ are letters we used before the advent of movable type; they were called "eth" and "thorn," respectively, and had the same phonological value as they do in modern Icelandic and Faroese. Because printing sets made on the continent didn't include them, they would use letters that looked similar from those sets, for example replacing ð with Y in "ðe" (which is where Ye Olde Shoppe type things came from) or transcribing them as "th." That's in addition to two other casualties of movable type, yogh (Ȝ ȝ) and wynn (Ƿ ƿ).
Awesome. I was listening to a video on how the languages evolved from German (Anglo and Saxon region) to Old English to English, and if English and German speakers can understand Old English.
Yes, they are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley!
By the way, I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound! For example... - hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat - mæra sounds like mera - ávast sounds like avast - nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r - líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr - frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda - þat sounds like that - ræðir sounds like reidhir - hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr) - gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr - hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used) Also... - hæll sounds like heyl - saltr sounds like solt:r - mæla sounds like mala - drápa sounds like drapa or dropa - kæra sounds like kaera or kaira - ferr sounds like fer:r - jafna sounds like yavna - hœgri sounds like heoyri - girðing sounds like girdhing - hádegi sounds like haodegi - ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust The word... - verr sounds like ver - ekki sounds like eki or ehki - þverra sounds like thverra - gegna sounds like gekna - vefja sounds like vevya - yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic - ætla sounds like etla - ofn sounds like ovn - náliga sounds like naoliga - sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written - ofleti sounds like ofleti The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word... I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse... The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined... By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
(Icelandic person here) It's Ásgarður in Icleandic, but I understand the mistake. It was interesting how nobody asked about the windy "H"-y "R"'s we have haha
@@sesseljafririksdottir5139 Aaa já það hefði verið gaman að sjá hvernig allir stafa allt 😁 en geggjað að sjá íslending í þessum myndböndum, er þetta allt í Bandaríkjunum eða hvar er þetta?
I usually don'tlike these videos when someone from Norway is attending, because while most countries have multiple unique dialects, many of the Dialects in Norway are so distinct from each other that someone from a different country whould probably believe that they are from completely different countries, and there are even some norwegians who struggle to understand each other. The phrase "in norwegian we say such and such" makes very little sense considering the fact that that depending on the location in Norway, we say entirely things. And from a linguistic point of view, the norwegian dialects that are usually represented in these videos are often among the ones that could be considered watered down, "less norwegian" forms of the language.
We in Germany/ Austria/ Switzerland have the same problem, when speaking in dialects. This is the reason why in 1873 Standard German was invented and introduced.
@@brittakriep2938 I can imagine, especially with all those smaller kingdoms and duchies that used to be there during the Holy Roman Empire. The problem in Norway is that while we have two separate standardised written forms of the language to chose from, there is no standardised form of the spoken language.
@@bjokvi91 : The HRE was at first divided only into tribal duchies ( Swabia, Frankonia, Bavaria, Saxony, Thuringia and some margraviates ( see austrian state Steiermark). So in the same tribal Region you are usually, but not allways able to understand your ,tribesmen' and their subdialects. But when you leave your ,tribal' Region and come to the Territory of annother tribe, who has annother dialect and subdialects, the problems start. IT IS not only a different pronoucion, sometimes letters or whole syllables are Cut or added, unknown different words for the same thing are used, Same Word means different things, evern sometimes slightly different grammar. In large Towns most people prefer Standard German, especially young people ( they are often No more able to speak dialect. Most people today speak a mix of Standard German and dialect, or a rather downwatered dialect. But you still can find elderly rural people, who still speak propper dialect.
@@brittakriep2938 The language challenges seem somewhat similar to what they are here, with how letters or whole syllabels are cut or added, how the same words can mean different things, how the grammar can be slightly different, and how different places have unique words for things. Personally i've lived in the same town my whole life and speak a watered down version of the local dialect, which many people around the country struggle to understand, but the real version of the local dialect is mostly spoken by older and more rural people, and can be hard to understand even for other locals, with several words that to my knowledge only exists here in this town and the surrounding areas, and that cannot be found in any dictionary that i know of.
@@bjokvi91 : To some degree I can understand you. I am from South West Germany, my dialect is called Schwäbisch ( swabian), I also never moved. For the reason that i am a conservative rural man ( Britta is my girlfriend) and my parents stopped farming and cattle in 2001, I still prefer dialect over Standard German ( as a southener Standard German IS to prussian for me). But: In contrast to many people in my age I can still speak my dialect ( local variant) rather properly, I am everywhere revognized as Swabian, but my luckyly still allive parents are Last Generation, which learned Swabian dialect correctly
I think what could've made the video better is if they had a screen with the words and their spelling WITH SPECIAL CHARACTERS like Ö, ö, Ð, ð, Þ, þ in all different languages. That way the others can visualise how it's spelled, but also put like pronunciation underneath so they see how special characters are pronounced.
Icelander here, I have never heard Frigg pronounced that way with the soft (and single) 'g'. It's always way closer to the way the Finnish girl pronounces it. Same with Asgard, I've only ever heard Ásgarður, never heard Ásagarður (with that additional 'a'). I wonder where her pronounciations come from, if it's her own personal pronounciation or if she's heard it somewhere else.
Speaking of Icelandic "R". When she says Icelandic pronounciatiation of Thor, Baldur, Asgard and Garther, I can swear she says the last letter as Czech "Ř". This isn't the first time I have heard Icelander say it like that.
We danes also use both Frigg and Freja. However i learned that Freja was more common here. Also fits better with the day named after her. Friday (Frigg's day), which in danish is called fredag (Freja's day). Also our pronunciation is different than the swedish. Definately more noticeable a difference than Odin. The American woman wasn't far off by saying that Heimdal sounds german. Since heim also means home in german.
As a Dane it's so funny to have this line-up of an American, to create a "foreign" baseline followed by all the other Nordic Countries that all, at least to me, can be described as melodic in one way or another and then have the line-up end with just the harsh, punchy vocal of the Danish language. The Tyr one really highlighted that for me.
But icelandic are changing hardly the phonetics today by english, it's not the same idiom of 500 years before, scots dorics and english are changing Icelandic roots, and basque too
Or she is more interested in the subject. I meet many Icelandic people that are pretty blank. I dont think they are much more into it than the the scandinavian countries tbh.
As a Swede. I felt we were very misrepresented. Next time perhaps get a Swedish speaking person to represent Sweden, at least when it’s about language and pronunciation.
Germanic language squad: (American) English: rhotic “r” pronunciation Icelandic: closest to Old Norse pronunciation Sweden: pitch accents Norwegian: middle-of-the-road Danish: closest to German pronunciation Finnish: happy to be here! 😊
In Norway we pronounce some of the names differently. Both Loke and Loki, or Mjølne, Mjølner, and Mjølnir. It depends on dialects, and in some cases written language (we have 3 official). The Norwegian girl said Mjølnir first time, and Mjølner the second time. Both is correct. Some will also pronounce the r’s more like the Danish girl.
in the netherlands Thor as called Donner. Literally Thunder. Its why we have the word Donder and Donderdag. to us he was not the god of thunder, he literally was the thunder
Same thing in English. Thunor (written as Þunor, because Old and Middle English had the thorn just like Old Norse did) was the Old English word for Thor, and that’s where we got Thunder and Thursday from.
But the Anglo-Saxons from northern Germany completely occupied what is now England and brought the Anglo-Saxon language there. The Celtic language was completely suppressed. Frisian, which is still spoken by some people in northern Germany, is very similar to English.
@@TheBarser: But Niedersachsen is still named after the Saxons , and Niederdeutsch/ Low(land) German, spoken in german states Niedersachsen, Schleswig - Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and mecklenburgish part of Mecklenburg - Vorpommern has still similarities to english. And : Schleswig and Holstein had been up to 1864 ruled by danish King, but only as a socalled Personal Union '. The duchy Holstein was settled only by german people, and in duchy Schleswig german people had been more than danish people.
@@brittakriep2938 slesvig was not always filled with germans. They arrived later and when they where the majority is kinda the reason it was justified by bismarck to annex it. Holstein is different
translation text error on Tor, NorWay we say TOR and proper Norwegian we do say Loke not luke but i guess i mentioned it, Mjolner is often used as Mjølner, yes Åsgard or ausgard(depending on dialect) :) great video
As an American, we were taught about Norse mythology along with Greek mythology when I was in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. In the 1990's. We even had T.V. shows and movies about it. I don't know why she wasn't taught this or has never heard of it.
Heimdall does not OPEN the gate between the worlds, he watches the paths, as a guard, and his main job is actually to look out for the start of ragnarok, the end of the world, and signal everyone by blowing in his horn.
So, I don't want to sound pedantic but as someone who studied Finnish for four years as a foreigner with native speakers who are top researchers in Finnish and Fenno Ugric linguistics, the O in Odin sounds long, not because of pronunciation, but because the tonic accent in Finnish is at the beginning of all words and it's extra accented in the beginning of sentences. The "Power" the American girl was talking about. To help the kind lady realise this, I encourage her to recite the first line of Kalevala several times ("Mieleni minun tekevi") and she'll say "ooooh" and it'll be a lightbulb moment. It's natural for her to not know, myself never realised why it was so hard to learn a certain rule in my language xD
Yes Faroese, alanders northern frisian are all Nordics germanics. Finns and Estonians and hungarians always even be asians not matter what they trying to do, they ever will be Asians Uralics finnics and altaics til eternity ✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️🌎👍💙🫂🥂. I say without hate .
@@Tenseiken_ I don't know if I understand your comment, but the God Odin is called both Odin or Oden depending on where in Sweden you come from. The difference is the ending of the word with in or en at the end.
in Faroese, which is the nationality missing from this video we call the first character: "Óðin", just like the Icelandic do, However we don't pronouce Ð at all, it is silent, so Odin would be "Óðin" which is pronounced, "Óin". When it comes to Thor, the H vanishes and we say Thor = Tór. Mjølnir is probably the closest to English, but you don't have Ø, so you use O instead. waw, You said Mjønir perfectly, that is how it is pronounced in Faroese. I'm impressed. we pronounce it like the Norwegians do. we say "Týr". it is also the name of a metal band here from the faroe Islands, they are very famous, they made metal versions of old Folk songs, they are very good, I'm sure some Americans know them. but yeah we use a special Faroese letter in the middle which is "Ý".
For Sweden: Tor (Not Thor) Oden (Not Odin) Loke (Not Loki) Mjölnir (Ö sounds like the o in a southern speaking "Love") Yggdrasil Frej Heimdall (Double L) Balder (Not Baldur) Tyr (Y is like the beginning of "you") Asgård ('as' is a short for asar. 'Asar' means gods. Gård is the word for farm or homestead. So, asgård means home of the gods. Å is sounding like the 'oh' in "oh really")
Yep. Nordics gods are the same Indo-European gods. Finnish gods are Asian Uralics gods, wizards and witches gods another level another roots. Totally diferentes in actions and ideologies.
@@TheRealBaldwinIV Yes, Tengrism is Siberian shamanism and another approach, it is much more mystical and naturalistic than European religions. But okay, let's not delve into any field of belief, let's stay on the superficial. I already knew this information, I didn't want to and I don't want to discuss it.
Interesting. It was a bit confused by the American reading the names in their modern English spellings, but then the Nordic participants sometimes reading the English spellings in their language’s pronunciation of the English word/spelling, and sometimes saying the slightly different version of the names from their own language. At that point, an English speaker could start saying the Old English versions of those gods, like Woden instead of Odin, or Thunor instead of Thor. Interesting to watch though.
@@poppi510 Not consistently. They are, for example, pronouncing the modern English version of the names in a Swedish accent sometimes, then saying the modern Swedish form of the name at other times, then saying the Old Norse versions of the names yet other times, iirc.
@@willmosse3684 probably because they learn it that way. They are closer to the original pronunciation than Germans or English people are. Aren’t they?
It was really interesting to watch this. My roots are in Anglesey (Ongl's ey) in North Wales. There were Viking settlements around Wales and the Irish Sea.. Although we speak Welsh, we have the same intonation and sing song accent as Nordic languages. When I watch programmes in Swedish I can hear the same accent as I hear at home.
Why is Norway the only country represented by a forigen immigrant that dont know the mythologi or the language? You can literally both see and hear it…
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Pretty sure she's born and raised here, but Farida is definitely not a norwegian name, nor would I guess she has deep roots in the country. I can't speak for the others, but they all both sound and look like the typical nordic girl.
@@Vinterfrid It is different in different parts of sweden. For example Odinsplan is a place in gothenburg, Odenplan is a place in stockholm. I and E are somewhat interchangeable in old norse and that is why some scholars believe Frigg and Freja to be or have been the same godess one time. Sleipner and sleipnir are another example of that. IK Sleipner in Norrköping and Sleipnir iceland horse assosciation in Västmanland for example. :)
@@andreasthemetalpunk9552 In Swedish we say "Oden", not only in books its in both spoken an written language. If you are talking aboud old norse that was spelled " Óðinn", which is the closest to the iclandic. But I was talking about Swedish, and for Swedish "Odin" is incorrect
nordic is oden and tor english is odin and thor. in frisii the north is oden and tor in frisia the south is wodan and donar. in north frisia is oden and tor in south frisia is wodan and donar.
I find it quite abnoying hearing the woman saying: "In America: all the time when it's actually in the US or english speaking countries. America is a big continent no only USA. Beside that I found this video very interesting, specially learning how the words it's pronounced in Iceland because it's the language most close to vikings.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
In Sweden we say "Oden", not "Odin".
Pretty much yes.
As a Swede it was this i was searching for. I'm a shamed that she don't know better...
She didn’t spell it that way. Blame the editors.
Both Oden and Odin are acceptable ways of spelling in the Swedish language
She forgot to translate
It's pretty obvious that Iceland being an island far from European mainland really helped in keeping that old norse feeling alive. It sounds great.
From what I've heard, Iceland does actively combat the modernisation of their language. they never adapt words from outside like other nordic languages have a tendency to do, but whenever a new thing is introduced, it gets a Icelandic word.
@@davidbergfors6820 In theory, yes, but there is a bit of a difference between official language and what actual Icelanders speak. And they do adapt words, so the word for a cell phone is (or was?) gemsi which is an adaptation of the acronym GSM. There's also the word kósý from English cosy. So the "never" is not quite true.
As for gonun: well, kept alive I guess but Icelandic has changed a lot these past 1,000+ years.
@larsliamvilhelm While you are correct, that's also semantics. For all intents and purposes, when people say "Old Norse" what they mean is normalised Old West Norse as written by the likes of Snorri Sturluson. So yes, technically "Old Norse" is only the pre-West-East-split stage, but in practice it's the 12th century West speak. As for the Old Icelandic moniker, it's a bit misleading as many of the things that separate Old Icelandic, Old Faroese, and Old Norwegian hadn't really happened yet, so the whole æ vs ø vs œ sound change hadn't gone through yet. Post Black Death however, is a whole different story; language changes happened fast after that. So yeah, you are correct but with an asterisk.
@@weepingscorpion8739 You are absolutely correct, but I'm going to nitpick your example. When naming new things in Icelandic we either make up new words or repurpose old words. Then culturally words often end up adapted as per your "kósý" example. Gemsi for cell phone is an inspired use from the acronym, but it is a repurposed older Icelandic word that used to refer to a young lamb (and more). Similar to how the word for telephone, sími, is an older word that meant line, or a thread.
One of very few languages that rarely import words. They just make new words from existing ones.
English also had þ and ð, but the printing press killed them. The thorn (þ) was represented with y so English speakers mistakenly thought old printing would say things like "ye olde taverne" when it was actually saying "þe olde taverne" (the old tavern)
That's cool I actually learnt something new. Thanks!
Brain is satiated.
Wasn't "the old tavern" example actually with ð? "ðe old tavern" as when you write cursive, ð looks like the belly of the D is just the handle of the Y woven into eachother? I am not sure if I am making sense and I could be wrong, but tthere is that british youtube guy who talks about old english and I feel like I remember him talking about this with ð and Y, and þ is more into "tha" pronounciation.
@@pervysagemkdin fact English at some point had only Þþ, not Ðð. The difference between [θ] and [ð] was positional, so the sounds did not need separate letters. But in Modern English the positional nature of th-sounds is lost.
@@pervysagemkd When people wrote þ in cursive it started to look more like a fancy Y (with the tail going in the opposite direction) as the curve at the top became gapped rather than connected - so it roughly went from þ, to a fancy P, to a fancy Y (if that makes sense).
@@RanmaruRei Are you sure this is correct? They're basically the same mouth position but one is voiced and the other vocieless. This still exists just pronounce the words 'THis' and 'THing'. The first is vocieless (put your hand on your throat you'll feel nothing) and the second is voiced (put your hand on your throat feel vibration). Perhaps your use of the word positional is throwing me off.
love that the subtitles butcher everything
Yeah. The subtitles were strange. Some kind of simplified phonetics?
I don't love that.
@@rolandkarlsson7072Americanized phonetics, definitely not standard.
Better like this than on other videos where they write the same word but talk about big differences between accents.
Worth noting for anyone watching this that the Finnish language is *completely* different from English and the other Nordic languages. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish are mutually intelligible with some effort. Icelandic is a more preserved form of the common ancestral language (not surprising since they developed on an island). English has a lot more French and Latin influence. And Finnish is not related at all to any of the languages in Europe. Finland is culturally part of the Nordic countries, but their language is virtually no more related to the European languages than Arabic is. (I learned this the hard way, the first time I visited Finland thinking my Swedish skills would help me. Nope.)
Estonian is very much related to Finnish, don’t forget about our dear neighbor 🇪🇪
@@tonikaihola5408 There's the Hungarian language too, but it's nowhere near as closely related to Finnish as Estonian is. Uralic, but a more distant branch of it.
@@tonikaihola5408 Finnish and Estonian are both on the finnic branch of uralic languages.
Norwegian, danish and swedish as well as icelandic are germanic languages, so they are indeed different language families.
@@tigerman1978 I was responding to the claim that "Finnish is not related to any European language"
@@tonikaihola5408 yeah, finnish very much are related to other european languages.. not just the nordic ones
It's indeed a bit awkward for Finns since many of those usually aren't discussed because we have our own mythology and characters
Finland is the best nordic country even though they are not nordic
@@drill_don684 yes we are. We're not Scandinavian like some other Nordic countries
@@Patralgan yeah I ment that but my brain went thrrrrrrppp and I confused the word Nordic with the word Scandinavian either way Finland is my favourite scandinavian country
Swede here, I had no idea about Finnish mythology! I will have to look that up 🤗
In the Netherlands we say Donar instead of Thor, and Wodan instead of Odin.
Our Finnish girly was a bit left out in the video. We obviously are aware of the Norse mythology and have been influenced by it somewhat but we are not taught about it in school or anything (maybe briefly mentioned? I don't remember being taught about Odin etc). And we don't have Finnish variations for the names of the Norse gods. In a way fun to have her there nonetheless but she is definitely approaching the subject from a certain distance. Would be fun to hear about Finnish mythology sometime cuz it is also very interesting and quite different from the Norse stuff in many ways.
Yeah, I don’t know why they brought her there since Finns are a completely different culture than the Norse. Someone in the production team didn't do their homework
Yeah, Finland has never followed norse mythology, and their language is not related to them at all. It's Nordic because of the location and flag but that's about it.
Would actually have made more sense having a German on. You'd have germanic cognates with the norse gods like Wutan (Odin) and Donner (Thor).
Yeah definitely, I've only heard those names only in Marvel movies😅
@@CrisSelene Well, adjacent culture, and heavily influenced by Norse culture, and also somewhat influenced Norse culture. For example Odin being a shamanic character is Finnic influence. There's been a lot of mixing, including cultural mixing between Finns and Scandinavians since the stone age, as both groups developed right next to each other, and in fact, both groups kind of developed from the same exact stone age culture that was in the area back in the day.
This was really fun. Surprised it wasn't mentioned that many days of the week in English are named after Norse gods. Tuesday - Tiu/Tyr; Wednesday - Odin/Woden; Thursday _ Thur/Thor; Friday - Frigg
It's not just English though, pretty much all the Nordic languages use the same except Saturday, so it would be kind of obvious to them all.
I’ve never once heard that in my life. I would NEVER have guessed the days of the week come from Norse gods. They look and sound nothing alike
@@pemanilnoob Not Norse gods, actually. Germanic gods. It's just that the Norse mythology and Germanic mythology are 2 mythologies split off of the same one originally. The English used to have this religion with their own name for the gods from the Germanic side, but the religion was pushed out by Christianity, which is why English also uses these names for their days.
@@rexx23ify79 …okay?
Honestly the fact that “Norse god” was not really the part I was trying to convey in my own comment, but thanks anyways I guess
@@rexx23ify79 And we strangely have a Moon day, a Saturn day and a Sun day. 😄
As a dane, who’s obsessed with norse mythology, is was dying to bug in and explain EVERYTHING. It was however also interesting to hear how the other nordic countries pronounce the names and things from norse mythology
They chose a really good voice for Denmark.
super clear speaking voice.
Yea, clear speaking is not usually our strong suit.,..
So long as you get the first 2 letters right and then the length... Yea that'll do.
As a norwegian, I am so happy over icelandic language. I don't understand icelandic, but I respect that language very much.
However you can understand icelandic cos old icelandic and old norwegian were the same idiom and have the same roots just compare old Norwegian with old Icelandic it's the same dialect separated by geographical isolation 💡💡💡🥂🥂🥂🥂 go ahead and find your happiness 😊
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea No he wont, I have plenty of Icelandic friends and I can't understand nothing when they are speaking. Maybe a simple word here and there, but understand the language no and I speak one of the closest dialects to old Norwegian.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAteaMost Norwegian people don't understand Icelandic or old Norwegian for that sake. Very different from how we speak now
@@UglesethYou distorted what I said above so that a Norwegian who speaks modern Norwegian would understand modern Icelandic, and better study and speak old Icelandic because from it, modern Icelandic becomes easier to understand.
I said this because I know well that modern Icelandic is quite separate from Norwegian and other Viking Norse languages today.
Unfortunately, the separation was so profound that there is no current intelligibility between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages of the European continent. There is only random exchange of words between them.
The same thing for a current Icelander, he needs to study Old Norwegian and speak this language well and from then on, modern Norwegian becomes much easier and more accessible for him because there is no direct intelligibility between Icelandic and Norwegian.
But as the 2 languages share a strong history together with Old Norse, they can both have a linguistic exchange and reach a deep natural understanding because they are sister languages, even though they are heavily changed as they are now.
@@Bubajumba You distorted what I said above so that a Norwegian who speaks modern Norwegian would understand modern Icelandic, and better study and speak old Icelandic because from it, modern Icelandic becomes easier to understand.
I said this because I know well that modern Icelandic is quite separate from Norwegian and other Viking Norse languages today.
Unfortunately, the separation was so profound that there is no current intelligibility between Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages of the European continent. There is only random exchange of words between them.
The same thing for a current Icelander, he needs to study Old Norwegian and speak this language well and from then on, modern Norwegian becomes much easier and more accessible for him because there is no direct intelligibility between Icelandic and Norwegian.
But as the 2 languages share a strong history together with Old Norse, they can both have a linguistic exchange and reach a deep natural understanding because they are sister languages, even though they are heavily changed as they are now.
This is a bit difficult for the Finn because you can pronounce them like they are written there (as she did) or more like Swedes would pronounce. Minor correction is finns would have Mjölnir and Asgård. I think she said Mjolnir and Asgard. Again Å isn't a finnish letter so we would have to pronounce it the swedish way.
As she mentioned we have our own mythology, so we don't really have our own words for these. Interested to hear that they study this a lot in other nordic countries. We just quickly mention them in Finland. At least when and where I went to school.
Good point! Also, for the record, "Mjolnir" is spelled "Mjölner", in Swedish.
"Mjöl" is the Swedish word for "Flour", so in a modern setting the name of the hammer could be literally interpreted and "The flour maker". The name is however meant to mean something along the lines of "The Crusher" or "The Pulverizer". So, not too far off I guess.
@@vicolin6126Interesting. So it's related to the English word "mill", which is also a device that pulverizes grain into flour. Similarly, in German we have "mahlen" (to grind), "Mühle" (mill) and "Mehl" (flour).
@@alexj9603 Not exactly, but all of our languages are related. "Mjöl" is flour, while "kvarn" is mill. "Mala" means " to grind". So, I was only taking the name "mjölner" and interpreting it in modern Swedish. "Mjölnare" = "person who makes flour". My point was that the name can still be somewhat understood if you interpret it this way.
@@vicolin6126 Sure. If you go into scientific details, things get more complicated. But along the broad lines it doesn't seem completely wrong to "translate" Mjölnir as "Müller" (mill owner or person who makes flour ).
I guess I'll call that hammer by this name from now 😝.
Finland has great and interesting mythology of their own, I hope she has a chance to tell the others about it some day.
Very interesting how the girl from Iceland had so much background on the subject. I love the way Icelanders keep their language alive. I heard it’s the language that has changed the least in the past 500 years.
1000 years *
Icelandic was changed a bit, but it still looks similar to Norse, as the dude that created Icelandic (by slightly modifying West Norse) didn’t modify it too much, just enough for it to be another language, but it is still very similar in spelling, and most words are cognates, and most conjugated forms for most of the cognates are the same, and, other Norse languages like Faroese and Old Norwegian / Old Danish / Old Swedish are also very similar to Norse, but they are like simplified Norse with spelling that’s a bit more different than Icelandic spelling, and there’s also East Norse which is similar to West Norse, but kinda different at the same time!
However, each language was created by one dude, and languages do not belong to the groups of ppl that were made to learn them, and it’s incorrect to say ‘their’ language etc, and, the pretty languages, including all the Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages and the modern Celtic languages and a few others, were inspired by beautiful nature, and Norse was created by a warrior / raider dude with a lot of natural artistic talent, and the other Norse languages were created by modifying Norse, so they all come directly from Norse - technically, the creation of new languages doesn’t depend of how many thousands of years have passed etc, it all depends on whether a new dude decides to modify a language or multiple languages (and create a new language by using them as a base and by creating new words) and it also depends on how much he decides to modify them, so, there are many languages that are the same as they were one thousand years ago, because no new dudes decided to created a Middle and a Modern version etc, but there are also many languages that were modified at least twice or even more than twice, which have at least an Old version and a Middle version and a Modern version that are different languages basically, but, Icelandic wasn’t modified that much, so there isn’t much difference between Modern Icelandic and Middle Icelandic and Old Icelandic, as they look like the same language, from what I have seen so far, but languages such as English and Norwegian and Dutch etc were changed more, so the Modern versions look quite different, and English comes mostly from Norse, anyway, and Dutch was also influenced a lot by both English and Norse!
Anyways, superiority terms and possessives like Angel and love and oro and girl and their only reflect me, and cannot be misused by ppl in any way!
I highly recommend learning the prettiest languages ever Norse / Icelandic / Dutch / Norwegian / Gothic / Faroese / Danish, which are as pretty / refined / poetic / magical / perfect / heavenly / amazing / elvish / logical / cool / unique / special / epic as English, as these heavenly languages are way too pretty not to know and the most fun to see and hear and speak and learn etc, and also Welsh and the other modern Celtic languages, which are also super gorgeous and elvish, and, I highly recommend listening to all the Skáld songs and memorizing all the lyrics, including the songs Óðínn and Flúga and Rún and NorðrLjós and Gleipnir and LjósÁlfr and Grótti and SólarLjóð and Hross and Troll Kalla Mik and SæKonungar and Ríðum Ríðum and ElverHøy and Níu and ValFreyjuDrápa and Rauðr Loginn Brann and Fimbulvetr and Villeman Og Magnhild and Hinn Mikli Dreki and Då Månen Sken / Yggdrasill etc, as they are the best introduction to Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages, and they all have super epic and beautiful melodies as well as pretty vocals, and they perfectly fit these heavenly languages, and are very áddìctive like the Norse languages - today’s topic was real fun, as my protector Chip is the real-life Odin / Thor / Loki etc, and I am The Freya, and we are the beings who reflect all the interesting characters from Norse mythology and from Greek mythology etc and from Disney and stories and lyrics and poems etc and The Gods etc!
I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse...
The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
Here are some of the most important sounds + pronunciation rules in Icelandic, as Icelandic has one of the easiest / prettiest / coolest pronunciations ever, having a category 1 pronunciation with super cool modern sounds! - the eth letter ð is an approximant of the letter D (a less obvious D similar to the D in the Spanish word nada and like the TH in the English words this and that) and the thorn letter þ is an approximant of T (a less obvious T that’s sort of lisped, and it is the same sound as the TH in the English words think and thing, though it sounds closer to a normal T sound in Icelandic)
More pronunciation rules and sounds in Icelandic...
- the HV is pronounced KV
- the NN is pronounced as a TN if it comes after Æ and after EI / EY and after a long vowel such as Á / É / Í / Ó / Ú (but it is a normal N sound if it comes after the short vowels A / E / I / O / U and in inn word combinations, and I recommend adding a very soft breathy H sound to the ‘inn’ word ending in masculine words to make it a bit different from the word ending ‘in’ which is the feminine word ending, like I do, as I pronounce the inn more like ihn in masculine nouns and masculine adjectives that have the inn word ending, which represents the definite article in nouns, tho there are also three articles that aren’t added to the noun, namely hinn and hin and hið, so, one can say hinn stormur or stormurinn and hinn storm or storminn as both mean the storm in nominative and accusative)
- the LL is usually pronounced TL in most words and if the LL is at the end of the word it sounds more like a weak T sound
- the RN is pronounced with an extra soft ‘nasal’ T sound between the R and the N (so a word like þarna sounds like thartna)
- the FL / FN letter combinations are pronounced PL / PN (so F becomes a P sound if it’s before an L or an N)
- the G is ultra soft in short words like ég and mig etc, so it is pronounced more like an H sound (so ég sounds like yeh) and the G in the middle of the words is kinda soft (in words like segja / saga / segir etc it is a soft G that is still a G sound and not an H) and the Gs and GGs can also sound like Ks in many of the words if they are at the end of the word or even in the middle of the word and sometimes even at the beginning of the word (same as in Old Norse) tho Gs are usually pronounced like a normal G sound if they are at the beginning of the word (except for a few words)
- the KK / TT etc is pronounced more like HK / HT as a soft breathy H sound is included before the K / T sound when there is a double consonant and even when there are two different consonants (for example, ekki sounds like ehki and óútreiknanlegt sounds like outreihnanleht etc)
- the letter F is usually pronounced like a V if it’s in the middle of the word or at the end of the word (so leyfa sounds like leyva) and it is pronounced like a normal F sound if it’s at the beginning of the word or very close to the beginning of the word (for example, if a words starts with af, the af is pronounced af, not av)
The diphthongs and umlauts and vowels in Icelandic...
- AU is pronounced EOI (normal e sound + normal o sound + normal i sound said 2gether fast in one sound)
- EI / EY are pronounced EI / EY (same as they are spellt)
- the Æ / æ is usually pronounced ai in most Icelandic words (but hvenær seems to be pronounced kvenar and not really kvenair, so it depends on the word)
- Ö is an EO sound (normal e sound + normal o sound said 2gether in one sound, like the œ in the French word cœur)
- Ó is usually pronounced OU
- O is usually pronounced UO and sometimes as an O sound (depending on the word)
- Ú is a normal u sound
- U is a more rounded YU sound (like the u in the French word mur and it is also the same sound as the Ü in Hungarian and German and the same sound as the UU in Dutch in words like muur and duur) tho in some words it is pronounced like a normal U sound (especially at the beginning of the word in words like ungur, and when there are multiple Us in the same word it’s usually the last U that is pronounced like YU and most other Us are pronounced like a normal U sound in that kind of words)
- Á is an AU sound in almost every word (there are only a few exceptions)
- A is a normal a sound and the A before NG / NK is pronounced like an AU sound just like the Á (so að ganga sounds like ath gaunga and it means to walk)
- É is an YE sound (normal i sound + normal e sound)
- E is a normal e sound (full e sound)
- Í / Ý is a normal i sound
- I / Y is a half i sound (this sound is very similar to how the i is pronounced in most English words like fit and chips and this, so it’s sort of like a weak i that goes more towards an e sound, but it isn’t a full e sound, and it isn’t a full i sound either, so it’s right between an i sound and an e sound)
As a lifelong fan of Norse folklore, I love to hear you folks to try fun words like Jormungandr, Yggdrasil, and Jotunheim.
We have a range of mountains called Jotunheimen in Norway. I have never heard the word Jørmungandr in my life, but I see that’s another word for Midgardsormen.
ДА!)
@@blue2mato312 Huh. Jormangandr is one of Loki's kids. (He had 3 very weird kids).
@@niravelniflheim1858 Yes he was one of Lokes children, but became Midgardsormen when the gods (æsene) threw him into to the see. In school they never mentioned his name before he was Midgardsormen. The names/words of the OP are not difficult to pronounce though as a Norwegian.
Jormungandr would not be pronounced at all in Swedish. We use the "midgårdsormen" word for him, which is literally midgard serpent.
The girl representing Norway does not pronounce properly in Norwegian. Does she know Norse mytholgy and names at all? Åsgård.
It's pronounced properly for her dialect. Åsgard can be pronounced with a long Å, or as "Åssgår" depending on your dialect. My parents say "Åssgår", while I say "Åååsgar".
@@Niobesnuppa Her dialect? What dialect is that? She pronounces Mjølner wrong f.ex. first time, correct second time,
In her language it would be آسگارد 😂
I got the same feeling from the swedish lady, I felt like they were reading the word shown(in english). Pretty certain we in Sweden say AsgÅrd, the swedish lady did not say it like that but more like Asgard which sounded odd. There were some other nitpicks but it could be dialects and all of that depending on where in Sweden you grew up.
The Icelandic girl was also wrong about a few things. She said that Frigg and Ásgarður were spelt Frig and Ásagarður which completely changes the pronunciation.
Hey, Magda from Sweden here! I know Oden is more proper, but Odin is also a way to say it. I should've mentioned both but forgot at that moment. (Fick ingen info innan vi filmade så kunde inte förbereda) Also, I'm not sure but perhaps dialects could be a reason? Thanks for correcting and watching~
I do understand that were little time for you to prepare since you did not get to know the words beforehand. You did a good job despite that! :)
I believe that Oden is more of english version. Odin (DK/NO) is the correct way, and when a swede pronouns it, the I is more visible/hearable.
@@PSimonsenactually as a swede we do say Oden, and in the English version they use Odin. Look it up.
It's fine, it was a long time since I learned of these in school and I would be unsure of some of them, like Heimdall. Also I'm reading on wikipedia that Tyr was called Ti in sweden (this is under Tyr though, quite confusing). Would've been helpful if you guys had had a few minutes to check up on these things before shooting.
I think that Odin are a Common way og saying it, in Skåne (Halland and Blekinge), mayby because of the danish influence, from their occupation of the regions?
I know that that is the variation that boys and PET's are named.
Some of these names were a bit weird ones to pronounce as a Finn since Norse mythology is foreign mythology to us (I'm still really glad that Finland was part of this🥰🥰 Thanks!).
I could sometimes get mixed up how to say these the "Finnish" way, because I would have heard how to pronounce them in English way... well that would mainly only be Thor😅
Or otherwise mix it up an accidentally pronounce it more tge Swedish way than the Finnish way😅
And I think it's also a good thing to acknowledge that Finnish is from different language group than the rest here.
Finnish mythology is certainly distinct from Norse, but I wouldn't say totally foreign. Finnish mythology is really a mixture of Uralic, North Germanic and Baltic elements mixing together since the Bronze age.
I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse...
The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
@@GOAT-rl2uqUralic and Baltic are the same.. unless you mean slavic?
The letter that is used in Icelandic at 04:38 was previously used in Old Norse, Old Swedish, and Old English. In English, it was called 'thorn'.
It's also why you see 'Ye Olde' abused so much n things that pretend to be old. The early printing presses didn't have a thorn character (the typeset came from Germany which had already dropped the character) so Y was used. We never said 'Ye' we said 'Þe' which was changed to 'the' when printers finally noticed that 'th' was a much better swap than a Y :)
I just want to point out that Old Norse doesn't equal Old Norwegian. Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic are all derived from Old Norse.
Old Swedish, which descended from Old Norse, also did have the thorn however. I just thought maybe you were equating Norse with Norwegian since you didn't mention any other languages than Norse, Swedish and English.
It's not really just a letter, It's a rune which means it's supposed to have magical properties.
In fact both thorn and eth (the letter she mentions earlier) existed in old English although they were used somewhat interchangeably there compared to Icelandic where they represent unvoiced and voiced "th" sounds respectively
@@Aetheraev
Its fun to see how often eth just turned into "d" in languages that used to use eth. Example: Icelandic - brauð; Norwegian - brød; English - bread. Its the same for Odin and many other words.
As people *always* get this confused:
Modern Icelandic doesn’t sound like Old Norse. Not even a little. Both Icelandic grammar and words are very close to Old Norse, but the pronunciation has changed tremendously.
(While pretty much all linguists know this very well, people in general seem unaware of it.)
To be fair, we have only indirect knowledge of how actually Old Norse sounded. 🙂
Exactly. Their double LL's pronounced as TL etc. And all the aspiration everywhere (breathiness).
@@anton7354 Well sort of. We have the spelling, as Icelandic was at the very least still written as Old Norse up until the 1400s. Exact pronunciation will always just be an educated guess.
Well, we have indirect knowledge of everything, so everything is just an "educated guess". It makes no sense to single out the pronunciation of ancient languages as something particularly unknown when we have mountains of evidence from how sounds change, to what words Old Norse speakers never spell wrong, to comparative evidence with all the other Indo-European languages that to claim that "we didn't KNOW how Old Norse sounded" is either simple ignorance or selective skepticism.
@@vampyricon7026
> is either simple ignorance or selective skepticism.
Potentially both 😁
One thing I notice about the differences in culture here is, the American Woman is VERY giggly and says "like" a lot, while the others are more calm & laid back. I'm an American Man living in Sweden, and it's always fun to see things you never notice before
They chose an American airhead on purpose to make the distinctions more pronounced. Otherwise they have a video about slight differences in vowels and consonants.
@@SuStelit’s pretty obvious how related the spoken language are with German, English, Dutch, and Scandinavian. So when you using extremely common old words there isn’t really a difference.
Poor Finish girl.
As an American woman, I found her pretty obnoxious. I'm someone who's passionate about mythology and language, and damn was it was frustrating that a person who still sounds like a high school student was representing our nationality in this conversation.
As a mithology fan , i like to hear the names of characters from people of Nordic countries , even though i knew how theses words are pronounce ,the pronunciation of Mjolnir suprised me the most
Mjölnir (is), Mjölner (fi, sv) and Mjølner (no, da). The ö/ø is pronounced similar to the i in bird. But the length varies. To my Swedish ear it sounded just as different accents of English. E.g. Australian vs Irish.
I always cringe at the English way.
It was always Mjölner for me and then I saw Marvels Thor 😂 aj aj aj... a god of myth on the big screen and what comes out of his mouth? Mjooolniiiiiir 😂. It sounds like how someone from "Gnällbältet" would say it, (a very whiny dialect of Swedish.) What is worse is there is an actual swede in those movies being forced to say it in English.
@@elincarlsson6388it's also kind of funny that the supposed Nordic god is played by a hot Australian hunk
Actually it's not "Norse mythology", but Germanic. After all, the Germanic tribes of the time also included the Nordic tribes. Over the centuries, different countries and languages developed from these tribes. In German, just like in Norwegian, some days of the week are named after old gods and the old gods are exactly the same. And some first names (Torsten, Wotan, Freya, Hildegard) also come from the old gods.The entire history has been distorted through films and comics.
The special letters ð and þ are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley!
I highly recommend learning the prettiest languages ever Norse / Icelandic / Dutch / Norwegian / Gothic / Faroese / Danish, which are as pretty / refined / poetic / magical / perfect / heavenly / amazing / elvish / logical / cool / unique / special / epic as English, as these heavenly languages are way too pretty not to know and the most fun to see and hear and speak and learn etc, and also Welsh and the other modern Celtic languages, which are also super gorgeous and elvish!
By the way, I highly recommend listening to all the Skáld songs and memorizing all the lyrics, including the songs Óðínn and Flúga and Rún and NorðrLjós and Gleipnir and LjósÁlfr and Grótti and SólarLjóð and Hross and Troll Kalla Mik and SæKonungar and Ríðum Ríðum and ElverHøy and Níu and ValFreyjuDrápa and Rauðr Loginn Brann and Fimbulvetr and Villeman Og Magnhild and Hinn Mikli Dreki and Då Månen Sken / Yggdrasill etc, as they are the best introduction to Norse / Germanic / Nordic languages, and they all have super epic and beautiful melodies as well as pretty vocals, and they perfectly fit these heavenly languages, and are very áddìctive like the Norse languages - today’s topic was real fun, as my protector Chip is the real-life Odin / Thor / Loki etc, and I am The Freya, and we are the beings who reflect all the interesting characters from Norse mythology and from Greek mythology etc and from Disney and stories and lyrics and poems etc and The Gods etc!
I'm guessing whoever made the phonetic transcriptions isn't particularly familiar with phonetics. Like for example in the American pronunciation of "Loki", there's a quite obvious diphthong in the first vowel and yet it was written as a monophthong.
Btw fun fact. Norway has like a billion dialects so I got genuinly confused for some of the pronounciations the norwegian girl had. Cause it's different from what I'm used to.
Because I think the norwegian girl is not even norwegian like she's not native her name is Farida that's an arab name so I don't understand why they picked her
@@charbelkhoury3986 She sounds native to me.
@@charbelkhoury3986 She could be first generation born in Norway and therefore the name, but I agree that she doesn’t sound native to me, and I can hear it especially when she pronounces Mjølner. She might also have been born abroad but living in Norway since she was a kid, maybe.
@@charbelkhoury3986Yeah she didn’t sound native
It's interesting to see this as a German and hearing how similar it is to some scandinavian pronounciations
frisian and dutch are similar to german
I heard a language professor claim that to learn a Scandinavian language it will be easier for 95% of people to learn fluent German first, and then to forget 80% of the grammar and just wing it from there. Funnily enough, the only ones I've heard get proper good at Danish, when learning from the adult stage, have been Germans. Britts who've lived here for 30 years still cock up worse than Germans who've lived here for 5.
@@FrisiiBattleBrotherRaymon Frisian and Dutch is different and both completely different from German. They aren't similar in the slightest.
which language had most similarity to german? danish?
@@FrisiiBattleBrotherRaymon Frisian and Dutch are closely related to Low Saxon and English. The similarities they share with German are more likely influenced by Low Saxon, which was the main language for people in the Hanse.
The Finnish girl was a little outsider in this because Finnish is totally different language group and Norse mythology is foreign mythology from Finns' point of view.
Yes, all these names/concepts have Germanic origins. :-)
Yes, altough there were Norse people interacting with Finns and vice versa and Finland spent centuries as a Swedish colony, so it's not crazy to think that the Finns learned about the Norse pantheon through cultueral exchanges and trade with their Norse neighbours.
I would not say totally foreign. There has been a major overcorrection regarding the relationship between Finnish and Norse mythology. Several key concepts came to Finnish mythology from Germanic speaking peoples.
@@GOAT-rl2uq You really like spamming this, do you.
The opening of topic is full correct Finns aren't weren't and never will be nordics and germanics they're Asians Uralics finnics altaics til today, they have your own religion language and idioms separated from the moriec vikings germanics in History simple as that.
Neighborhood doesn't means never means equality in culture, Langs and beliefs and ADN too...
The "gard" in Asgard can be also found in slavic languages as "gord", "gorod" or "grad". Because it means "enclosure", so applies to a garden or a fortified settlement.
Like how a royal guard protects the king. Or the verb guarding.
But the correct pronounciation is "gård" (sounds like "goard"). The letters 'A' and 'Å' are pronounced quite differently.
@@HappyBeezerStudios: Garden is in german a Garten, in my dialect spoken (german pronoucion!) Gaarda. Guard , guarding comes from french language, Royal ( body)guard would be in germanic something like Kinglic ( Life) Watch as unit or kinglic ( life) warden as person. Königliche Leibwache/ königlicher Leibwächter. Related words to warden are Wächter/ Wärter / Wart.
Bulgarian has both gord (горд) and grad (град), but they have different meanings. Gord means proud and grad means city
Vikings has some old-norse names for some cities/places in the east. Miklagård is one
Marvel may have made these characters more popular , but that doesn't means that people may know the real history of them , i like Nordic Mithology of MCU , but also really interested in the mithology itself
The only thing Marvels popularization of Norse mythology gets right, are probably the names and the family relation between Odin, Frigg and Thor. Loki is not Thor's brother in Norse mythology, which will probably blow the minds of fans of the Marvel films. 😄
To be honest, i do even HATE marvel, for degrading these GODS into superheroes.
Marvel is nothing but a poor imitation of Norse mytholgy.
Hollywood
I hate what marvel did with my ancestors beliefs honestly. It seems very spiteful as well as they cast an african american to play Heimdall who is known to be the fairest of the Aesir having the whitest skin. Why not fearure african gods if they want diversity! That would showcase the diversity of culture in the world far better
To those that have studied the Norse mythos, pronouncing the words is yet different again, but actually closer to Icelandic which shares both the spelling and pronouncing closer to how it was done back in the 600-1200s. You guys forgot to mention the days of the week are named after the Norse mythos.
Wednasday: Odinsdag, Friday: Frigadag, Thursdag: Thorsdag, Tuesday: Tyrsdag, Monday: Manadag, Sunday: Sundag
I think Faroese and some western Norwegian dialects are more conservative when it comes to pronounciation.
With exceptions of course, Icelandic kept the Th for example.
Well Friday is both from Frigg and Freya.
I always thought of it as Freya's day (which makes more sense considering what it represents as well) however I just recently had to go back and learn more since so many reference Frigg.
"Frey's day" is also closer to the English (and Norwegian) sound.
@@se6369 Yes the "th" (both the th and d) sounds went away, sadly. For Norwegians I mean. I believe R's also diverged a bit and got less enunciated. Although it's still somewhat present.
This was really fascinating.
As an American who has very little knowledge of this region of the world, this was eye opening. I am learning how to speak Danish so this taught me some more words and their proper pronunciations.
I have only known the American pronunciations of Norse Gods and items from their mythology.
This makes me excited the book I am going to start reading about Norse Mythology.
This made me feel like I am connecting more to acesteral roots since I recently got ancestry results and found that I have small traces of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. My surname actually stems from the Old Norse word "bryggja."
Velkommen til det det danske sprog :)
In Finland, I think they don't teach Norse mythology at school, maybe briefly mentioned like Finnish mythology, but I remember at least studing Roman and Greek mythologies.
I studied all three of them during my spare time.
Finland is ever another culture idiom and mithology the uralic mithology.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea You keep spelling it wrong, it’s mythology. I have no clue where you got the i to begin with.
That's very dumb to study Roman and Greek ones instead of your own.
I have no idea how to pronounce loki in finnish
I wish we could still refer to all the Germanic/Norse gods in English as English speakers traditionally did. For example, Odin in Old English and, I believe, Middle English is Woden. Thor is Thunor, Freyr is Frea, Baldr is Bældæg, Loki is Lōc or Loptr, Njörðr is Neorð, Heimdallr is Hēimdǣl, Skadi is Scēaðe, and Tyr is Tiw. There are many more examples I haven't mentioned. Fun fact: many of our days are named after these gods. Tyr/Tiw is Tuesday or, as Old English called it, Tiwesdæg. Odin/Woden is Wednesday/Wōdnesdæg, Thor/Thunor is Thursday/þunresdæg, and Frīg/Frigg is Friday/frīġedæġ.
Compare english day names to french day names and compare what germanic/ Roman gods did: Tiu/Mars, Wodan/ Merkur, Thor/ Jupiter, Freia/ Venus. And moon- la lune.
Theses gods are the same the Kurganian Indo Europeans gods, just change the dialects of Kurganian, french, english, greek , danish, ukranian, latvian they all have the same gods the rituals and feasts and clothes were changed by each group of each dialect bit the essence is the same.
Mentally, Emotionally, today english in grammar, politics, linguistics, cultures follows the greek, french, welsh, latin views of mithology the germanics and backstages views normands curred of from all anglophony
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea I’m aware of the PIE ancestry to this but a lot of the old gods we say in English was changed to be a bit more nordic sounding when we have the names for the same Germanic gods already there but we don’t say them for some reason I think Viking and ether reason idk but confusing
@@brian0902 Don't be intrigued by the Kurgan heritage in European culture, it is a fact, because it is precisely this that justifies the mixture of beliefs and mythologies between Celts, Germans, Latin Slavs and Hellenics in a profound way. Don't let distrust lead you into error and denial, the Kurganian scientifically is already a solid scientific reality from 4 centuries of intense hard-earned studies in the international community, it was not a gift from heaven or a miracle, they were scientific achievements that should never be ignored or disrespected , question yourself and evolve in a better direction. Goodbye, without more for now with you and I wish you good studies since today.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAteaI know this, and I tell people down to it even when people's ideology changes, like the Iranian peoples accepting Islam or many Europeans accepting Christianity. When we look into DNA, we see characteristics with PIE culture and DNA. I don't know why; people are too shocked about it. Before civilization, people are nomads, and humanity has a common ancestor. So, even besides PIE, why do people try to separate themselves from other people? It makes zero sense to me when the only thing truly dividing us is culture and skin color and even then it truly shouldn’t divide us. So why don't people even want to try to see PIE evidence and straightaway try to say that's not true is beyond me. People say, "Oh, it's just justifying European colonialism." The exact same time I told them I don't believe this PIE theory justifies the colonial history of Europe. When I go into this, I'm trying to show people about the past and how people are connected in different ways, maybe culture or DNA. I tell people there were horrible things that Europeans and other people have done, and no amount of history of the past or future will justify it. But you can't deny things without looking at the evidence that we have found.
Those Icelandic letters she was referring to are found in the English phonetics system. They are taught to ESL learners in order to be able to pronounce any word in English. I can read whole texts written with phonemes.
They're not officially used in English anymore but they are used by some dictionaries/institutions to help teach the pronunciations. They're also officially used as part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and were used in Old English. Eth and thorn (ð þ); Old English also used Wynn and Yogh (ƿ ȝ), as well as Ash (æ).
þ and ð were indeed the letters for the voiceless dental fricative and the voiced dental fricative. In english they were used almost interchangeably for both, with þ being more common at the beginning of words and ð more common in the middle and end.
Yes, they are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley!
By the way, I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse...
The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
Here are some of the most important sounds + pronunciation rules in Icelandic, as Icelandic has one of the easiest / prettiest / coolest pronunciations ever, having a category 1 pronunciation with super cool modern sounds! - the eth letter ð is an approximant of the letter D (a less obvious D similar to the D in the Spanish word nada and like the TH in the English words this and that) and the thorn letter þ is an approximant of T (a less obvious T that’s sort of lisped, and it is the same sound as the TH in the English words think and thing, though it sounds closer to a normal T sound in Icelandic)
More pronunciation rules and sounds in Icelandic...
- the HV is pronounced KV
- the NN is pronounced as a TN if it comes after Æ and after EI / EY and after a long vowel such as Á / É / Í / Ó / Ú (but it is a normal N sound if it comes after the short vowels A / E / I / O / U and in inn word combinations, and I recommend adding a very soft breathy H sound to the ‘inn’ word ending in masculine words to make it a bit different from the word ending ‘in’ which is the feminine word ending, like I do, as I pronounce the inn more like ihn in masculine nouns and masculine adjectives that have the inn word ending, which represents the definite article in nouns, tho there are also three articles that aren’t added to the noun, namely hinn and hin and hið, so, one can say hinn stormur or stormurinn and hinn storm or storminn as both mean the storm in nominative and accusative)
- the LL is usually pronounced TL in most words and if the LL is at the end of the word it sounds more like a weak T sound
- the RN is pronounced with an extra soft ‘nasal’ T sound between the R and the N (so a word like þarna sounds like thartna)
- the FL / FN letter combinations are pronounced PL / PN (so F becomes a P sound if it’s before an L or an N)
- the G is ultra soft in short words like ég and mig etc, so it is pronounced more like an H sound (so ég sounds like yeh) and the G in the middle of the words is kinda soft (in words like segja / saga / segir etc it is a soft G that is still a G sound and not an H) and the Gs and GGs can also sound like Ks in many of the words if they are at the end of the word or even in the middle of the word and sometimes even at the beginning of the word (same as in Old Norse) tho Gs are usually pronounced like a normal G sound if they are at the beginning of the word (except for a few words)
- the KK / TT etc is pronounced more like HK / HT as a soft breathy H sound is included before the K / T sound when there is a double consonant and even when there are two different consonants (for example, ekki sounds like ehki and óútreiknanlegt sounds like outreihnanleht etc)
- the letter F is usually pronounced like a V if it’s in the middle of the word or at the end of the word (so leyfa sounds like leyva) and it is pronounced like a normal F sound if it’s at the beginning of the word or very close to the beginning of the word (for example, if a words starts with af, the af is pronounced af, not av)
The diphthongs and umlauts and vowels in Icelandic...
- AU is pronounced EOI (normal e sound + normal o sound + normal i sound said 2gether fast in one sound)
- EI / EY are pronounced EI / EY (same as they are spellt)
- the Æ / æ is usually pronounced ai in most Icelandic words (but hvenær seems to be pronounced kvenar and not really kvenair, so it depends on the word)
- Ö is an EO sound (normal e sound + normal o sound said 2gether in one sound, like the œ in the French word cœur)
- Ó is usually pronounced OU
- O is usually pronounced UO and sometimes as an O sound (depending on the word)
- Ú is a normal u sound
- U is a more rounded YU sound (like the u in the French word mur and it is also the same sound as the Ü in Hungarian and German and the same sound as the UU in Dutch in words like muur and duur) tho in some words it is pronounced like a normal U sound (especially at the beginning of the word in words like ungur, and when there are multiple Us in the same word it’s usually the last U that is pronounced like YU and most other Us are pronounced like a normal U sound in that kind of words)
- Á is an AU sound in almost every word (there are only a few exceptions)
- A is a normal a sound and the A before NG / NK is pronounced like an AU sound just like the Á (so að ganga sounds like ath gaunga and it means to walk)
- É is an YE sound (normal i sound + normal e sound)
- E is a normal e sound (full e sound)
- Í / Ý is a normal i sound
- I / Y is a half i sound (this sound is very similar to how the i is pronounced in most English words like fit and chips and this, so it’s sort of like a weak i that goes more towards an e sound, but it isn’t a full e sound, and it isn’t a full i sound either, so it’s right between an i sound and an e sound)
100% relateable with what the icelandic woman said about connecting to your roots. I'm half-arab half-mexican, and I love studying Myan mythology and learning Yucatec, as well as learning about bedouin culture and pre-islamic arab traditions.
Why is Finland here when talking about norse mythology? 😃
Because they always have to make Finland be the odd one out, lol...
I saw this hilarious post from a Finn a while back giving Swedish the same treatment that Finnish often gets by having a list of the word for “hand” in every Finnic language and then the Swedish word (which is “hand”) so that Swedish could be the odd one out for once.
Well, they share a land border with Sweden and are kind of on the Scandinavian peninsula. Lots of Finns speak Swedish, and their flag has the northern cross. They are often included in discussions of Nordic / Norse / Scandinavian things.
@@barrettdecutler8979 yeah but Finland got nothing to do with the mythology and we are not taught about it 😃
@@ristusnotta1653 would be interesting to have a segment of Finnish mythology and have other Nordic countries (representatives) try to pronounce it!
@@barrettdecutler8979 Finland is not a Scandinavian country.
It is a Nordic one, though.
LOVE the subject and the girls are great but the editors haven't done their job on this one. Too many misspellings in the subtitles to mention
Tyr: "In Danish we say *demeaning spit towards your enemy*"
That made me laugh
"I futhark in your general direction!" 💂
As finnish person, I feel really lost here
I understood you bro, you're missing samis,kommis,estonians, livonians,karelians,vepsians and Hungarians, chuvashes the big family finnic italic hunnic true in the world 🌎🌍🫂🍻🍻💎 Teach to the Koreans the real culture idioms and mithology of finnic italic hunnic cultures and idioms to Koreans bros and sis really they don't know nothing.
💙💙💙
@@TuaTeMauAkauAteaitalians are Indo-European bro
Another sweet episode from thischannel. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada
In norwegian, we would definitely not say Mjolnir like the norwegian suggested here. it would be similar to the Swedish Mjølner
In Norway we say Mjølner not Mjølnir
Honestly, probably depends on where you're from, dialects in Norway are so varied, that these type of comparisons never feel right, all these eastern Norwegians with their rolled R :P
Here on the west coast we don't have that fancy rolled R, as ours is more like in German or French.
@@VampyrMyggThe Swedish girl even said she faked her accent to sound less regional
Thats true. But as a norwegian her accemt is very wierd@@BigmanDogs
Det samme i Danmark
Mjølner is the bokmål way and then the dialect is changing that. The Norwegian representant should do the same as the one from sweden and do it the written way. Isnt the nynorsk similar pronounced too?
jag trodde vi sa oden??? det lärde vi oss iallafall i min skola
bruh the way they spelled the swedish words, especially asgård, is buckwild 💀
oh my god, when the american said "you guys don't like the letter a :)" i rolled my eyes to the bsck of my head. idk whether she's talking about the actual a or the å but if it's the latter: YOU are the ones who for some reason replaced the å with a letter that sounds nothing like it because you can't comprehend languages having different letters
Både Oden och Odin används. I Göteborg finns t ex Odinsgatan och i Uppsala Odensgatan.
@@samanthaholmgren7699sSå är det. Odin med I är sedan gammalt.
@@andreasthemetalpunk9552 Sedan gammalt är det 'Oden'.
@@Vinterfrid Fast med ett 'i'.
Modern svenska.
Traditionally, the Anglo-Saxon (ancestors of the English) tribes that worshipped a variation of the Norse pantheon. Unfortunately many records from that time period have been lost. From what we know the equivalent names form this video were Woden (1:39), Frig (2:47), Thunor (4:01), there was no known Loki equivalent (5:25), the name of Thunor's hammer has been lost to time but we do know he had one (6:31), there was no known Heimdall equivalent (8:35), Tiw (11:09), it has been reconstructed as Esageard but it is not known if that were the equivalent (12:30). The original religion of the Anglo-Saxons is a really interesting topic, that unfortunately, has mostly been lost to the sands of time.
Aa far as i know the german equivalents:
Wodan (Odin)
Donar (Thor)
Freia (Frigg)
I think the others were the same as in this video
To add to this
Donar of course survives in the word Donner (thunder)
Donnerstags (thursday) is named after him. Freitag is freias day (Friday).
Wodan should be wodansday probably wednesday in english but this got lost in german.
@@tobiast5908 That's cool that German also holds on to this heritage in some form! In English we have some derived words as well: Mona --> Monday, Tiw --> Tuesday, Wodan --> Wednesday, Thunor --> Thursday, Frig --> Friday, and Ēostre --> Easter.
@@davidoregan_
Great to know, thx
Looked up the roots for tuesday in german and it also refers to the Germanic god of war but it appears the name that we use is based on a latin translation of his name while the original saxon equivalent ziu (in english the first part of tuesday ) was lost.
Eastern = Ostern .
Moon = Mond.
Mondtag = day of the moon. Monday
Sonntag = day of the sun- sunday
Interestingly and not related to the old mythology but to England an old name for saturday still in use in northern germany is Sonnabend which translates to "sunday eve". Original only the evening before sunday was meant by this, but later the term got extended to apply for the full day, same as Christmas eve. And apparently the reason why this name was coined were missionaries from the british isles, a direct translation from old english. Well back in those days imo there wasnt much linguistic difference between southern britain and northern germany anyway.
The more romanized south of germany uses a different name for this day (which btw threatens to become dominant nationwide these days, though originally it wasnt used in the north).
Sorry this got so long
Keep it up
m.th-cam.com/video/bm_MthEgsaA/w-d-xo.html
Its interesting how different I myself would pronounce each word compared to the pronounciations for the Norwegian girl in this video. Some of the time I thought to myself «really?» because I pronounce it in such a different way. It almost didn’t sound Norwegian to me. But of course, I get told by people that they sometimes have difficulty understanding me even though we speak the same language. (My dialect is difficult to place, its not uncommon, but its different from what you’d hear in the bigger cities).
Norwegians could probably have their own video with pronounciations with different dialects. Also, I had more norse mythology in school than a few months in high school. I remember learning about it in both 4. grade and some years before high school. Some was taught during religion, language and social studies. But that might differ based on the school and when you grew up. Curriculums are changed all the time, not surprising at all.
This was so interesting. Listening to the different pronunciation of vowel sounds from the various northern lands shows the changes over time and location really well. The biggest surprise for me was 'Asgard'! That was not what I was expecting! :) It seems to my ear that Icelandic pronounces words somewhat differently to the others, and as she said, Norse mythology was her passion, so she'd researched it more and had a better understanding of where the words originated.
Its not a pronaunciation of the English word Asgard it is the Icelandic word for Asgard or Asgård in swedish
Why do you spell "Luke" for Swedish, Norwegian and Danish? It's spelled "Loke" (if not Loki). And the girls are saying it that way in their language.
The subtitles are not good, more like guessing.
Exactly. I'm Norwegian and we say it as "Loke". We also say "Heimdal", "Mjølner", "Odin", "Tor" and "Tyr".
@@Onnarashisame as in danish
In Swedish and Norwegian, o becomes u but is still spelled o. I don't know why they did it for Danish though.
@@weepingscorpion8739 No, "O" is just"O" in Norwegiam, not "U". Source: I'm Norwegian.
@@OnnarashiWell, I am Faroese, and most of your o's sound nothing like our o's but more like our u's. Maybe you still keep the o in Loke but the o's "Med Tore på sporet" are definitely pronounced as [u], not [o].
why was the finnish person even there? finns have finnish mythology, not norse
True.
They are hardies ignorants they put Finns with all germanics and celtics countries as england US etc they're crazy, help them all.
We're always lumped in the same bunch and way less known than our Nordic brethren. Not really anyone's fault per se, but they should've done some research.
Now ask the other Nordics to pronounce names from Finnish mythology and they'll be utterly lost. 99.9% of them would be completely unknown to them plus the language is so different, it's mostly impossible for them to even guess.
Even Finns don't know a ton about their own mythology, Kalevala being the obvious standout and maybe a few songs/colloquialisms/proverbs.
@larsliamvilhelm No, you would sing them still.. for the same reason many Finns speak "rally English", it just goes the other way around. And please, do a favour and never ever try say out loud "perkele" ! (that goes for English speakers too)
@@esaedvikyeah, next time woman goes to pick lingonberries. sits on one and becomes pregnant from that "lingonberry"... really shouldn't believe her
Those Icelandic letters are also Old English, LOTS if Nordic influence in Old English--; Beowulf etc."The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years." -- Even though OE come from Angles and Saxons and Jutes.
"The Jutes (/dʒuːts/ JOOTS) were one of the Germanic tribes who settled in Great Britain after the departure of the Romans. According to Bede, they were one of the three most powerful Germanic nations, along with the Angles and the Saxons: The Jutland Peninsula, possible homeland of the Jutes"
This is so interesting and I am binging these videos with Nordic languages ❤ I am Slovak and it’s interesting that instinctively I knew how to pronounce the names “correctly”. My pronunciation was closest to Finnish. Quite surprising but love it❤❤❤❤
Oi! Our American is making us sound so ditsy because of her saying like before she answers and as shes talking. She also giggles a lot or laughs to cover her insecurities with public speaking. Her speaking, made me acutely aware of how we have a lot of inflection in our voice and how we speak. This was very informative.
Good on you to take notes from this, you are more noble than I, haha. I couldn't help but cringe during most of the video. I sure wish they would have had an American with an ounce more charisma.
The ladies of the valkyrie army:
Brynhildr
Dvisna
Eir
Geirahöd
Geiravör
Geirdriful
Geirskögul
Glinsvard
Goldr
Göll
Göndul
Grimhildr
Gudr
Gunnr
Heltring
Herfjötur
Herja
Hervif
Hervör
Hilda
Hildr
Hjalmprimul
Hjörprimul
Hladgoudr
Hljod
Hlökk
Hrist
Hruma
Hrund
Kára
Lemgalhildr
Mist
Nálgunk
Novila
Osdi
Ölrún
Pögn
Prima
Prúdr
Randgrídr
Reginleif
Sigrún
Sigurdrífa
Skagarand
Skalmöld
Skeggjöld
Skögul
Svaneydan
Svanngidr
Svanvít
Sváva
Sveid
Sveidana
Svipul
Tanngridr
Vald
Valrun
Vus
Very interesting. I've heard some of these names still being used in Germany (I live in Western Germany). I've heard of/seen ladies having names such as Gudr (Gudrun in German), Gunnr, Hilda, Sigrun, etc. Also, some other names like Björn, Erik (very common), Gunnar, Freja/Freya, Helge, and Thorsten (literally used to work with a guy with this name). Even though Germany was under the strong grip of Christianity, they still managed to maintain some old culture and rich traditions until this day. Some traditional German/Germanic names are still being given to newborn babies in modern-day Germany.
@@gautamprasadkraoI’m also from western Germany and I know a Brunhilde and a Hilda!
And Brunhilde can be quite impressive, she looks so kind, but when someone angers her… better hope you’re in a safe distance.
@@jennyh4025 haha... duly noted!
Nonono. Sesselja does not represent me as an Icelander. I have no idea where she gets some of this from. For example, she removed a g from Frigg and added an a to "Ásgarður" so she said "Ásagarður". She must be from Hafnarfjörður. The other stuff was how I would say it though.
(Also, she made an error. I'll use the same example as in the video. Originally, "Heimdallur" was spelled "Heimdallr", so there was no "u" before the "r". But that was in Snorra-Edda, which was written in the 13th century)
Sama hér 😅
So true. It was quite embarrasing how she butchered the name Frigg. It is not written with one g and not pronounced the way she pronounced it. Also it is Ásgarður and not Ásagarður. I can't imagine where she could have heard this from.
@@arnigeir2308 She's probably got it from Ásatrúarfélagið, Which is a newer religion (based on an old one),
I was interested in what sounded like a light t sound in the dallur/dallr part. At least compared to everyone else. I'm Swedish so that one surprised me. Do you pronounce it with that soft t in there as well?
@@Eyrenni Yes. Double L is pronounced sort of like tl. There are few exceptions, particularly regarding peoples nicknames
This is an awesome video! I am comparing Norse gods with the Anglo-Saxons, where we get our Tuesday thru Friday. Tuesday is from Tiw, the god of war (similar to Roman Mars, Tyr in Norse); Wednesday is from Woden (Similr to Mercury in Roman, and Odin in Norse), Thursday is from Thunor (Similar to Jupiter in Roman, Thor in Norse); and Friday is from Frig (Venus in Roman, Frigga in Norse). I enjoy how they explain the Norse gods and the worlds! Now for the romance languages such as Spanish, Tuesday would be Martes (Mars), Wednesday would be Miercoles (Mercury), Thursday would be Jueves (Iovis or Jupiter), Friday would be Viernes (Venus). We need the the Romance language speakers and the Germanic language speakers together and go over the days of the week!
The gods of these cultures were all Indo-European gods, when they spoke Kurganian the cults were the same when they started to speak different languages like Proto-Hellenic, Proto-Armenian, Proto-Sanskrit, Protoraci, Protodacian, Proto-Celtic, Proto-Italic, Proto-Germanic, Polytheism changed the rites but the gods were the same with different names and cults and different languages and the Indo-European mythologies are very similar because they are Kurgan mythologies. And the English language heavily inherited almost all Indo-European traditions because in its formation it mixed deeply with almost all Indo-European languages and cultures in the European continent. Just these facts, or rather the entire summary of these facts.
German:
Monday - Montag - day of Mani
Tuesday - Dienstag - day of Tiu/Tiz (Tyr)
Wednesday - Mittwoch - middle of the week (used to be Wodensdag but the church managed to ban the word)
Thursday - Donnerstag - day of Donar (Thor)
Friday - Freitag - day of Frī(j)a (Frigg)
Saturday - Samstag - day of sabbat (Judeo-Christian)
Sunday - Sonntag - day of Sunna (Sól)
Saturday its a pagan day means day of Saturn it's never related to sabbat is the day of Chronos.
Loved this. Please do Greek mythology names next. Every country seems to have a unique pronunciation of those, so I'd love to hear an actual Greek comment on it :-)
The Icelandic letters are part of Western Germanic Rune Alphabet, and was part of Danish, Norweigan, Swedish dialects of Old Norse, and Old English as well, and as someone else mentioned, the reason for them dropping out are largely due to the Printing Press being a german Invention, and making letters for it being quite a specialized skillset in the early years of its spread.
Germanic names like Dustin, Thorsten/Thurston, and Thorin are all connected by Þor- and all mean things like "thor's stone, lightning bolt, thunder, brave, brave warrior, valiant fighter".
Dustin is filtered through the French Norman language, though.
Tolkien got the name of his dwarf character Thorin Oakenshield from Þorínn in the edda poem _Völuspá._
02:59 no Frigg is not pronounced as Frig in Icelandic - it's pronounced as Frigg with an emphasis on two G's. I have never heard anyone say Frigg as Frig
True. She was way off. Quite embarrasing actually.
Og hún segist hafa lært um Norræna goðafræði í þrjú ár
@@Zetor1234she also said once a week in middle school
She was also wrong about Ásagarður. There is no A between Ás and Garður.
Could you please bring a faroese person if you ever make another one of these??🙏🙏
Ikr? I mean, I'd volunteer but... :)
How big are the chances that they can find a Faroese person in Korea that is also willing to participate in this? There are only 54k of you within your own islands
yeah thats a fair assumption to make, but i know of at least a few faroese people living in SK@@hmvollbanane1259 🤔
@@hmvollbanane1259 just go to the shipyard in S. Korea, you will probably find one there overlooking the building of Mærsk containerships :)
So as a Danish kid (45 today), I was reading a lot of stories about Norse mythology. I have a book called "Nordiske Gude, og Helte sagn" and I was obsessed about it.
A proper English translation of that title would probably be "Fables of Norse Gods and Heroes".
Now...
When I grew older and first encountered the word "Norse", my initial response was something similar to "....the heck is that?".
Let me explain.
In Denmark, we don't have a word like "Norse" to pinpoint what mythology we're talking about. What the English language call "Norse Mythology", we call "Nordisk Mytologi".
"Nordisk" means that it comes from the north. "Nord" translates directly to "North".
If you write "Nordiske", the first word of the book title, into Google translate, it spells "Nordic".
I'm very ADHD, and autistic as well. My brain works in mysterious ways....
The word "Norse" just stuck with me.. ..and not in a good way. I felt my obsession as a kid was butchered. "Norse.... Gimme a break! It's called Nordic!"
I concocted a theory. I think that the first English speaking person who had to explain this to another English speaking person, must have had a lisp or something...
All excited, trying to explain this mythology from the north.....
"Ahh, yes... Norse...."
Writing it down...
Cementing it.
..
It's just a fun theory, but I still don't like that word...
Mjolnir/Mjölner is always so funny to me because if it wasn't for the "don't translate names" rule, it would be "grinder" (as in grinding to flour) or, to translate meaning, "crusher".
Here comes Thor with his hammer Crusher!
Only the worthy can lift Grinder!
Could be translated to Miller too: Here comes Thor with his hammer Miller.
Thursday is Thors day.
Tuesday = Tyr's day
Wednesday = Wotan's/Odin's day
Thursday = Thor's day
Friday = Frigg's day
In English, Ð ð and Þ þ are letters we used before the advent of movable type; they were called "eth" and "thorn," respectively, and had the same phonological value as they do in modern Icelandic and Faroese. Because printing sets made on the continent didn't include them, they would use letters that looked similar from those sets, for example replacing ð with Y in "ðe" (which is where Ye Olde Shoppe type things came from) or transcribing them as "th." That's in addition to two other casualties of movable type, yogh (Ȝ ȝ) and wynn (Ƿ ƿ).
Awesome. I was listening to a video on how the languages evolved from German (Anglo and Saxon region) to Old English to English, and if English and German speakers can understand Old English.
Ash, Eth, Thorn, Wynn and Yogh. RIP
And the handwritten form of þ, especially in blackletter writing, looked very similar to y when printing came around.
Yes, they are the eth and the thorn sounds, which are approximants of D and T - these letters are the original letters that were used to spell the sounds, and both Norse and Icelandic have them both, and Old English also has them both, and Faroese and Elfdalian have the ð letter, and I think Gothic has them too, and, the UR ending from Icelandic is spelled R in Norse, for example, vindr vs vindur, which mean wind, and, the word dal means dale / valley!
By the way, I am upper intermediate level in both Old Norse and Icelandic, and I have the right Norse pronunciation, which is the most logical, and by the way, I will use DH for the TH sound in the English words this and that, which is the approximant of D and not the approximant of T like the TH in the English word think, and I will use AO for the ‘closed’ A sound that is like an A and O sound said 2gether in one sound (similar to the A sound in Hungarian) that melts into a soft O sound!
For example...
- hvat sounds like hvat or vat or kvat
- mæra sounds like mera
- ávast sounds like avast
- nágrindr sounds like naogrind:r
- líkligr sounds like liklig:r or likliguhr
- frænda sounds like freinda or freoynda or frenda
- þat sounds like that
- ræðir sounds like reidhir
- hárr sounds like haruhr or har:r (could have also been har / harr)
- gæfr sounds like gev:r or gevuhr
- hverfa sounds like hverva or verva or kverva (any of them or all 3 could’ve been used)
Also...
- hæll sounds like heyl
- saltr sounds like solt:r
- mæla sounds like mala
- drápa sounds like drapa or dropa
- kæra sounds like kaera or kaira
- ferr sounds like fer:r
- jafna sounds like yavna
- hœgri sounds like heoyri
- girðing sounds like girdhing
- hádegi sounds like haodegi
- ørendislaust sounds like eorendislaust
The word...
- verr sounds like ver
- ekki sounds like eki or ehki
- þverra sounds like thverra
- gegna sounds like gekna
- vefja sounds like vevya
- yfir sounds like ɪvɪr as in Icelandic
- ætla sounds like etla
- ofn sounds like ovn
- náliga sounds like naoliga
- sauma could have been pronounced either saima or seoyma like in Icelandic or both or even sauma as it is written
- ofleti sounds like ofleti
The emphasis of stress in Norse languages such as Norse and Icelandic etc is always at the beginning of the word - for compound words made of multiple smaller words, one should add a bit of stress at the beginning of each word that the compound word is made of and the most stress always at the beginning of the compound word...
I don’t think there was any fixed way of pronouncing the diphthongs, and it’s most likely that the pronunciation of diphthongs such as AU would differ depending on the word, including pronunciations such as ai / au / ao / eoy / oy / ey etc, and it may have also differed depending on the region and accent, and the Æ in Norse can have many pronunciations, depending on the word, so it can sound like e / ei / a / eoy / oey / uey / ai / ea / ae etc, depending on what sound sounds best and the most natural and easiest to say in each word, so one should use one’s intuition a lot in Norse...
The Rs are always different depending on the region and depending of the speaker in every language, but in Germanic languages, a soft normal R is usually used by most speakers and by younger speakers, and I highly recommend using a soft normal R in Norse and in all other languages that aren’t English as soft Rs have the best and most refined sound, soft Rs that are pronounced as fast as possible being the types of Rs that truly suit such refined languages as Norse and the other Germanic languages, whereas hard or prolonged or thrilled Rs sound very harsh and unrefined...
By the way, it’s also important to know that in Norse and Icelandic the G is usually pronounced like a K sound, especially at the end of the word, and in many words the G is pronounced K even in the middle of the word, and there are also some words where the G is pronounced as a K even when it is at the beginning of the word, so it is normal to hear a lot of K sounds when there is a G in spelling - for example, lots of speakers of Icelandic will pronounce even the G in góðan (góðan daginn) as a soft K sound, without even realizing, and this pronunciation rule comes from Norse!
(Icelandic person here) It's Ásgarður in Icleandic, but I understand the mistake. It was interesting how nobody asked about the windy "H"-y "R"'s we have haha
Hahaha þau spurðu mig ekki um stafsetninguna 😆 Var sjálf bara ha? Þegar ég sá hvernig þau skrifuðu Ásgarður
@@sesseljafririksdottir5139 Aaa já það hefði verið gaman að sjá hvernig allir stafa allt 😁 en geggjað að sjá íslending í þessum myndböndum, er þetta allt í Bandaríkjunum eða hvar er þetta?
@@joninarebekka2966Þetta er í suður Kóreu held ég
@@holmaringi-skolin253 Jeg forstod det du sa på islandsk her, morsomt! Og litt av det de over deg skrev, men bare stykkvis.
I usually don'tlike these videos when someone from Norway is attending, because while most countries have multiple unique dialects, many of the Dialects in Norway are so distinct from each other that someone from a different country whould probably believe that they are from completely different countries, and there are even some norwegians who struggle to understand each other.
The phrase "in norwegian we say such and such" makes very little sense considering the fact that that depending on the location in Norway, we say entirely things.
And from a linguistic point of view, the norwegian dialects that are usually represented in these videos are often among the ones that could be considered watered down, "less norwegian" forms of the language.
We in Germany/ Austria/ Switzerland have the same problem, when speaking in dialects. This is the reason why in 1873 Standard German was invented and introduced.
@@brittakriep2938
I can imagine, especially with all those smaller kingdoms and duchies that used to be there during the Holy Roman Empire.
The problem in Norway is that while we have two separate standardised written forms of the language to chose from, there is no standardised form of the spoken language.
@@bjokvi91 : The HRE was at first divided only into tribal duchies ( Swabia, Frankonia, Bavaria, Saxony, Thuringia and some margraviates ( see austrian state Steiermark). So in the same tribal Region you are usually, but not allways able to understand your ,tribesmen' and their subdialects. But when you leave your ,tribal' Region and come to the Territory of annother tribe, who has annother dialect and subdialects, the problems start. IT IS not only a different pronoucion, sometimes letters or whole syllables are Cut or added, unknown different words for the same thing are used, Same Word means different things, evern sometimes slightly different grammar. In large Towns most people prefer Standard German, especially young people ( they are often No more able to speak dialect. Most people today speak a mix of Standard German and dialect, or a rather downwatered dialect. But you still can find elderly rural people, who still speak propper dialect.
@@brittakriep2938
The language challenges seem somewhat similar to what they are here, with how letters or whole syllabels are cut or added, how the same words can mean different things, how the grammar can be slightly different, and how different places have unique words for things.
Personally i've lived in the same town my whole life and speak a watered down version of the local dialect, which many people around the country struggle to understand, but the real version of the local dialect is mostly spoken by older and more rural people, and can be hard to understand even for other locals, with several words that to my knowledge only exists here in this town and the surrounding areas, and that cannot be found in any dictionary that i know of.
@@bjokvi91 : To some degree I can understand you. I am from South West Germany, my dialect is called Schwäbisch ( swabian), I also never moved. For the reason that i am a conservative rural man ( Britta is my girlfriend) and my parents stopped farming and cattle in 2001, I still prefer dialect over Standard German ( as a southener Standard German IS to prussian for me). But: In contrast to many people in my age I can still speak my dialect ( local variant) rather properly, I am everywhere revognized as Swabian, but my luckyly still allive parents are Last Generation, which learned Swabian dialect correctly
I’m Jeminas biggest fan! Fan number one!💁🏼♀️
Faroe Islands should be representing in the panel too. It's the missing link between Icelandic and the other.
I think what could've made the video better is if they had a screen with the words and their spelling WITH SPECIAL CHARACTERS like Ö, ö, Ð, ð, Þ, þ in all different languages. That way the others can visualise how it's spelled, but also put like pronunciation underneath so they see how special characters are pronounced.
Icelander here, I have never heard Frigg pronounced that way with the soft (and single) 'g'. It's always way closer to the way the Finnish girl pronounces it. Same with Asgard, I've only ever heard Ásgarður, never heard Ásagarður (with that additional 'a'). I wonder where her pronounciations come from, if it's her own personal pronounciation or if she's heard it somewhere else.
Totally agree with you. Never heard ÁsAgarður... always Ásgarður... and Frigg is pronounced with 2 g's. (harder).
I enjoy how Icelandic "R" sounds. So softly with smooth vibration.
💙🫂♾️🍻
Speaking of Icelandic "R". When she says Icelandic pronounciatiation of Thor, Baldur, Asgard and Garther, I can swear she says the last letter as Czech "Ř". This isn't the first time I have heard Icelander say it like that.
We danes also use both Frigg and Freja. However i learned that Freja was more common here. Also fits better with the day named after her. Friday (Frigg's day), which in danish is called fredag (Freja's day). Also our pronunciation is different than the swedish. Definately more noticeable a difference than Odin. The American woman wasn't far off by saying that Heimdal sounds german. Since heim also means home in german.
As a Dane it's so funny to have this line-up of an American, to create a "foreign" baseline followed by all the other Nordic Countries that all, at least to me, can be described as melodic in one way or another and then have the line-up end with just the harsh, punchy vocal of the Danish language.
The Tyr one really highlighted that for me.
As a Norwegian Icelandic is the most accurate to Norse Mythology, since they almost speak the same now as that time
Icelandic is very much close to old norse, but stating that people nowadays speak norwegian like they did as that time is a huuuuuge stretch.
@@aIesssandra Never said that, said Icelandic is close to old norse
@@omgwerockhard My bad, I've dyslexia and read it wrong 😅
😂😂😂😂
But icelandic are changing hardly the phonetics today by english, it's not the same idiom of 500 years before, scots dorics and english are changing Icelandic roots, and basque too
I think they should have tried on some harder names. Like Yggdrasil, Särimner, Ratatosk or Utgårdaloke...
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is from the Jungle Book.
Lol yeah, I meant Ratatosk :D @@reineh3477
@@reineh3477 indeed it is. OP meant Ratatosk I suspect :p
I think that you meant Ratatosk (Ratatǫskr), the squirrel. Not Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. 😉😃
@@Kramplarv I think so too.
Iceland is very famous for its sagas so I can see why the islandic girl seems to me more knowledgeable and very proud of the culture. Love her!
Or she is more interested in the subject. I meet many Icelandic people that are pretty blank. I dont think they are much more into it than the the scandinavian countries tbh.
As a Swede. I felt we were very misrepresented. Next time perhaps get a Swedish speaking person to represent Sweden, at least when it’s about language and pronunciation.
Germanic language squad:
(American) English: rhotic “r” pronunciation
Icelandic: closest to Old Norse pronunciation
Sweden: pitch accents
Norwegian: middle-of-the-road
Danish: closest to German pronunciation
Finnish: happy to be here! 😊
Finnish is Uralic like Estonian not Teutonic
In Norway we pronounce some of the names differently. Both Loke and Loki, or Mjølne, Mjølner, and Mjølnir. It depends on dialects, and in some cases written language (we have 3 official). The Norwegian girl said Mjølnir first time, and Mjølner the second time. Both is correct. Some will also pronounce the r’s more like the Danish girl.
No, just two: bokmål and nynorsk.
@@mariiris1403
Yes, it’s only two official Norwegian written languages, but some write ‘Riksmål.’ But it’s not official though.
@@oh515 Exactly, and it is just a conservative form of bokmål.
@@oh515 Riksmål is the easiest for Danes to read. It's exactly like a dyslexic typing in Danish the way it's said.
@@andersjjensen Well, if we're including Riksmål, then we should also include Landsmål.
in the netherlands Thor as called Donner. Literally Thunder. Its why we have the word Donder and Donderdag. to us he was not the god of thunder, he literally was the thunder
Same thing in English. Thunor (written as Þunor, because Old and Middle English had the thorn just like Old Norse did) was the Old English word for Thor, and that’s where we got Thunder and Thursday from.
Huge parts of modern English comes from Danish and Norway, because of Vikings. So, not so much Germany but Danish.
She's talking about the pronunciation. If an English speaker says "Heim" they will read it as "High-m".
But the Anglo-Saxons from northern Germany completely occupied what is now England and brought the Anglo-Saxon language there. The Celtic language was completely suppressed. Frisian, which is still spoken by some people in northern Germany, is very similar to English.
@inotoni6148 the angles where fromt jutland which became danish about 1500 years ago, until the 1860s when germany took southern Jutland
@@TheBarser: But Niedersachsen is still named after the Saxons , and Niederdeutsch/ Low(land) German, spoken in german states Niedersachsen, Schleswig - Holstein, Hamburg, Bremen and mecklenburgish part of Mecklenburg - Vorpommern has still similarities to english. And : Schleswig and Holstein had been up to 1864 ruled by danish King, but only as a socalled Personal Union '. The duchy Holstein was settled only by german people, and in duchy Schleswig german people had been more than danish people.
@@brittakriep2938 slesvig was not always filled with germans. They arrived later and when they where the majority is kinda the reason it was justified by bismarck to annex it.
Holstein is different
translation text error on Tor, NorWay we say TOR and proper Norwegian we do say Loke not luke but i guess i mentioned it, Mjolner is often used as Mjølner, yes Åsgard or ausgard(depending on dialect) :) great video
As an American, we were taught about Norse mythology along with Greek mythology when I was in seventh, eighth and ninth grade. In the 1990's. We even had T.V. shows and movies about it. I don't know why she wasn't taught this or has never heard of it.
We do say Frigg with two g's in Iceland, I have never heard it pronounced like she is pronouncing it in the video.
It's interesting your observation it's indicates a change in linguistic and grammar of Icelandic of today ❤❤❤❤
Heimdall does not OPEN the gate between the worlds, he watches the paths, as a guard, and his main job is actually to look out for the start of ragnarok, the end of the world, and signal everyone by blowing in his horn.
But I thought he operated the bifrost, which acts as a bridge among the nine realms?
No, it is a bridge, it is not a device. Nobody operates it, you watched too much marvel movies....@@barrettdecutler8979
@@barrettdecutler8979 From Marvel?
Wednesday is Odin's day.
Yes, why the day is called "onsdag" in Denmark.
Woden's Day, in fact
in English it's Woden
So, I don't want to sound pedantic but as someone who studied Finnish for four years as a foreigner with native speakers who are top researchers in Finnish and Fenno Ugric linguistics, the O in Odin sounds long, not because of pronunciation, but because the tonic accent in Finnish is at the beginning of all words and it's extra accented in the beginning of sentences. The "Power" the American girl was talking about. To help the kind lady realise this, I encourage her to recite the first line of Kalevala several times ("Mieleni minun tekevi") and she'll say "ooooh" and it'll be a lightbulb moment. It's natural for her to not know, myself never realised why it was so hard to learn a certain rule in my language xD
Pretty cool how Iceland kept some of the old Norse language like the symbol for “th” looks just the rune for Thor’s hammer Mjolnir. Super cool
Would have been interesting to see a representative from the Faeroe Islands as well!
Hevði veri stuttligt
It would've made so much more sense to have a Faroese person there instead of a Finnish person
Yes Faroese, alanders northern frisian are all Nordics germanics.
Finns and Estonians and hungarians always even be asians not matter what they trying to do, they ever will be Asians Uralics finnics and altaics til eternity ✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️✈️🌎👍💙🫂🥂.
I say without hate .
True bro faroese and northern frisian, alandic etc
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea Or German/Englishman
In Sweden we say Oden or Odin
Ah yes I can totally see how you SAY THE WORD by you typing it.
@@Tenseiken_ I don't know if I understand your comment, but the God Odin is called both Odin or Oden depending on where in Sweden you come from. The difference is the ending of the word with in or en at the end.
@@Tenseiken_?
Oden, never "Odin" (unless you're into Anglicisms).
@@cognomen9142 I'm from Sweden and I've heard both but yes mostly we say Oden, at least we do in the southern part of Sweden.
in Faroese, which is the nationality missing from this video we call the first character: "Óðin", just like the Icelandic do, However we don't pronouce Ð at all, it is silent, so Odin would be "Óðin" which is pronounced, "Óin". When it comes to Thor, the H vanishes and we say Thor = Tór. Mjølnir is probably the closest to English, but you don't have Ø, so you use O instead.
waw, You said Mjønir perfectly, that is how it is pronounced in Faroese. I'm impressed. we pronounce it like the Norwegians do. we say "Týr". it is also the name of a metal band here from the faroe Islands, they are very famous, they made metal versions of old Folk songs, they are very good, I'm sure some Americans know them. but yeah we use a special Faroese letter in the middle which is "Ý".
That was very interesting. thank you =)
For Sweden:
Tor (Not Thor)
Oden (Not Odin)
Loke (Not Loki)
Mjölnir (Ö sounds like the o in a southern speaking "Love")
Yggdrasil
Frej
Heimdall (Double L)
Balder (Not Baldur)
Tyr (Y is like the beginning of "you")
Asgård ('as' is a short for asar. 'Asar' means gods. Gård is the word for farm or homestead. So, asgård means home of the gods. Å is sounding like the 'oh' in "oh really")
In Denmark we have Odin and Mjølner, but besides those, we agree 🙂
Mjölner is how it's spelled in Swedish. And the forms Frö, Hemdal and Åsgård are to be preferred.
Ti brukade vara den svenska formen av Tyr men nu säger man väl egentligen bara Tyr
You misspelled Mjölner...
Finnish Gods aren't similart to Scandinavian at all. They have quite different roots.
Yep. Nordics gods are the same Indo-European gods.
Finnish gods are Asian Uralics gods, wizards and witches gods another level another roots. Totally diferentes in actions and ideologies.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea They are similar to other Uralic ppls and Tengrism/Siberian shamanism
@@TheRealBaldwinIV Yes, Tengrism is Siberian shamanism and another approach, it is much more mystical and naturalistic than European religions.
But okay, let's not delve into any field of belief, let's stay on the superficial.
I already knew this information, I didn't want to and I don't want to discuss it.
@@TuaTeMauAkauAtea Ealriht
Interesting. It was a bit confused by the American reading the names in their modern English spellings, but then the Nordic participants sometimes reading the English spellings in their language’s pronunciation of the English word/spelling, and sometimes saying the slightly different version of the names from their own language. At that point, an English speaker could start saying the Old English versions of those gods, like Woden instead of Odin, or Thunor instead of Thor. Interesting to watch though.
Why? They use their pronunciation.
@@poppi510 Not consistently. They are, for example, pronouncing the modern English version of the names in a Swedish accent sometimes, then saying the modern Swedish form of the name at other times, then saying the Old Norse versions of the names yet other times, iirc.
@@willmosse3684 probably because they learn it that way. They are closer to the original pronunciation than Germans or English people are. Aren’t they?
@@poppi510 Yes. All I’m saying is that they are doing it differently with different names and words. It’s not a big deal though.
@@willmosse3684 ok. I’m just curious. We have a lot of Wotan streets in Germany, primarily because of Wagner probably
It was really interesting to watch this. My roots are in Anglesey (Ongl's ey) in North Wales. There were Viking settlements around Wales and the Irish Sea.. Although we speak Welsh, we have the same intonation and sing song accent as Nordic languages. When I watch programmes in Swedish I can hear the same accent as I hear at home.
Love hearing my family's native tongue íslensku because I was not taught to speak it but am trying to learn now
Friday is Freija day.
Fridag is the day of Odins wife "Frigg"
@@fastertove i want to say that too
@@fastertove Freja Beha Erichsen is a Danish model.
@@FrisiiBattleBrotherRaymon Danish model Freja Beha Erichsen is arguably Denmark’s most celebrated fashion export.
Don't know her, and I frankly don't care about fashion... Why is that relevant? @@sashakasprzyk5683
Why is Norway the only country represented by a forigen immigrant that dont know the mythologi or the language? You can literally both see and hear it…
Yeah, I was wondering about that. Pretty sure she's born and raised here, but Farida is definitely not a norwegian name, nor would I guess she has deep roots in the country. I can't speak for the others, but they all both sound and look like the typical nordic girl.
@@jarlhenrikBut she seems to have a latin accent 😅
@@jarlhenrik dont even have to see the name, her nose is a dead give away. probably near eastern or north african background.
We don’t say “Odin” in Swedish, we say “Oden” so that part wasn’t correct haha
Not in the school books but in tradition we say Odin.
@@andreasthemetalpunk9552 No, that is not correct. In tradition we say 'Oden'.
@@Vinterfrid It is different in different parts of sweden. For example Odinsplan is a place in gothenburg, Odenplan is a place in stockholm. I and E are somewhat interchangeable in old norse and that is why some scholars believe Frigg and Freja to be or have been the same godess one time. Sleipner and sleipnir are another example of that. IK Sleipner in Norrköping and Sleipnir iceland horse assosciation in Västmanland for example. :)
@@andreasthemetalpunk9552 In Swedish we say "Oden", not only in books its in both spoken an written language. If you are talking aboud old norse that was spelled " Óðinn", which is the closest to the iclandic. But I was talking about Swedish, and for Swedish "Odin" is incorrect
nordic is oden and tor english is odin and thor. in frisii the north is oden and tor in frisia the south is wodan and donar. in north frisia is oden and tor in south frisia is wodan and donar.
I find it quite abnoying hearing the woman saying: "In America: all the time when it's actually in the US or english speaking countries. America is a big continent no only USA.
Beside that I found this video very interesting, specially learning how the words it's pronounced in Iceland because it's the language most close to vikings.
This was so interesting! Loved it.