Moreover, the common people tend to follow the usages of their poets not only in poetry, but in general diction, pronunciation, tonality, and spelling.
It is therefore not surprising that Scandinavian speech and writing remain readily intelligible between clans and tribes. Linguistically they are tied together by poetry, the stories of heroes and occasionally of scoundrels, recited dramatically around fires in longhouses and log huts throughout the Neoviking culture.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE FOR
NEOVIKING NAMES AND WORDS
For those who are interested, here are descriptions of how Neoviking words and names are pronounced. There are dialectal irregularities, particularly between tribes, but taking the Scandinavian peninsula as a whole, those irregularities are modest.
Consonants—Most of the consonants are pronounced more or less as in Anglic, with the following exceptions: The letter g is almost always pronounced hard, as in go; the exceptions to this can be ignored here. J is pronounced like the y in yes. If you wish to go a step further in refinment, R is trilled in stressed syllables, but not in unstressed.
In most dialects, the two-letter consonant kj is pronounced like the ch in “chair,” and we recommend this. In other dialects it is pronounced as sh, or intermediate between ch and sh. The sound of another two-letter consonant, sj, is more difficult to describe. For simplicity,
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we recommend that you pronounce it like sh. Actually, in some jytska dialects it is pronounced somewhat like wh, but with the lips more or less compressed, giving the wh somewhat the sound of fwh. The other dialects vary somewhat, pronouncing sj more or less like the familiar Anglic sh, but mostly with the lips more rounded and the tongue-tip raised.
Vowels—The following are approximations: A is pronounced aw or ah, depending on the letters which follow, and varying with the dialect, but aw more often than ah. The pronunciation of e resembles ay in “pay,” or the e in “yet,” but ay more often than not. I is pronounced ee or ih, but ee more often than not. O is pronounced like oo in “boot,” or (more or less) as short oh, but oo more often than not. U is pronounced rather like “yew,” or as similar to the u in ‘put,” but “yew” more often than not. Y is always a vowel, and can be approximated by saying ee with the lips rounded. A is pronounced as “oh.” A is rather like the ai in “air,” or sometimes as eh. The doubled vowel ad is simply a longer a, rather like ai in a drawled “air,” the second a marking the dropping of a soft r in older Scandinavian, and is found before a v and sometimes before an n. O and 0 are pronounced rather like the ur in “fur,” but with the r only suggested, not fully sounded.
There are no diphthongs in the Neoviking dialects, except for ei (pronounced “eye”) and au (pronounced “ow’) in some proper nouns.
Thus “lagman’ is pronounced “lawg-mahn”; “Isbjørn” is “ees-byurn ; and “Järnhann” is “Yairn-hahn.”
If one wishes, of course, one can go further than the above in approaching actual Neoviking pronunciations. For example, the sounds tend to be articulated with lips and tongue-tip, rather than farther back in the mouth, and usually the stress is on the first syllable.
In 29th century Neoviking, all the dialects are tonal. In some the tonality is moderate. In others it is as ex-
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treme as in the dialects—the so-called sjungande sven-ska, “singing Swedish”—spoken on the Ostrobothnian coast during the technological era. Unfortunately, tonality can only be learned by listening.
LUNAR CALENDAR OF THE WOLF CLAN (& OTHERS)