greenoaks wrote:i have been playing Nordic Countries for a while now and have noticed how nordic sounding the names are. places like Trondelag, Reykjavik, Svalbard & Sjaelland. so what happened with Stockholm and Oslo? how come they are so easy for an englishman to say when everything else sounds like i'm gurgling a glass of water.
this is not a criticism. australia has many places founded by white settlers and many that derive their names from the natives which are easy to identified as such and difficult for non locals to pronounce. the usa is the same with many places of british/french names and some from their native population.
so what happened with Stockholm and Oslo?
There are plenty of English words with Nordic and Germanic origins. If you're interested, there're some excellent editions of Beowulf from Old English into Modern English that do a good job of using the older words. Seamus Heaney is probably the most poetic and interesting, but my level of middling expertise is more with middle English.
If you'd like to hear someone make a good go at old English, and hear how similar it is in terms of pronunciation to scandivian languages:
Beowulf reading in Old English with translationAnd yes, that is English, just Old English.
the world is in greater peril from those who tolerate or encourage evil than from those who actually commit it- Albert Einstein
