Icelandic Orthography - Icelandic Alphabet, N-Rule (Paperback)

Chapters: Icelandic Alphabet, N-Rule. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 30. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: The modern Icelandic alphabet consists of the following 32 letters: It is based upon a Latin alphabet with diacritics, in addition it includes the character eth Do and the runic letter thorn (pictured to the right). AEae and Oo are considered letters in their own right and not a ligature or diacritical version of their respective letters. Often the glyphs are simplified when handwritten, for example the ligature ae (considered a separate letter) may be written as ae, which can make it easier to write cursively. The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from a standard established in the 19th century, by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask primarily. It is ultimately based heavily on an orthographic standard created in the early 12th century by a document referred to as The First Grammatical Treatise, author unknown. The standard was intended for the common language of Scandinavia, alias Old Norse. It did not have much influence, however, at the time. The most defining characteristics of the alphabet were established in the old treatise: The later Rasmus Rask standard was basically a re-enactment of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent North Germanic conventions, such as the exclusive use of k rather than c. Various old features, like o, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries, so Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th century changes are most notably the adoption of e, which had previously been written as je (reflecting the modern pronunciation), and the abolition of z in 1973. The names of the letters are: The letters a, a, e, e, i, i, o, o, u, u, y, y, ae and o are considered vowels, and the remainder are consonants. T...More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=23