Correspondences between Old Norse and English (Patreon)

In teaching Old Norse, I like to emphasize how closely related it is to English. In the grand scheme of things, these were one language "only" 1500 years or so ago, and there are still many visible signs of their relationship. Much like there are regular correspondences between sounds in different dialects of English (think of the way the "eye" sound is consistently replaced by "ah" in the southern U.S.), there are regular correspondences between the sounds of Old Norse and the sounds of English.

I teach my Old Norse students some of the most consistent correspondences, so that they'll be able to make educated guesses about new vocabulary. One of the easiest to pick up on right away is that /ei/ in Old Norse is almost always spelled /o/ in cognate English words, so "ein-" = "one," "heim-" = "home", "stein-" = "stone," etc. But there are others. Since English spelling is more conservative than the pronunciation of any contemporary English dialect, the correspondences are often more "visible" in the spelling than they are "audible."

Until recently I hadn't taken the time to make a handout to help students recognize them, but I have now, and I thought that some Patreon supporters might be interested in it, too. As usual, it's a .pdf attachment to this post, and you might only be able to see the attachment if you click on this individual post on my Patreon page.