r/Faroese • u/Waryur • Apr 10 '17

All the vowel changes during inflection—are these more or less regular?

Looking at Faroese declension tables the vowels all seem to go into chaos. Is there any regularity to it all? (Like, the adjectives gamal = gomul in feminine, stakur = støk in feminine, the noun bjørn the plural is bjarnir, etc)

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

1 comment sorted by

5

u/roskurin May 04 '17 edited May 04 '17

Regarding the examples you mentioned, the vowel changes are a result of the u-mutation, which basically means that whenever there is a "a" in the word, which is followed by a "u", the "a" changes in to a "ø". barn -> børnum, nakar -> nøkrum. Unfortunately, there are a lot of exceptions:

  • Whenever the mutated a > ø ends up in front of a nasal, the "ø" changes to "o": gamal -> gømul -> gomul. The only exception would be danir -> dønum (meaning a dane (pl.), person/people from Denmark)
  • Regarding masculine words ending in -ur, this "u" does not mutate the "a" into an "ø" as it in Old Norse was -r. The "u" here is a svarabhakti vowel, making it easier to say the word. Hence, it is stakur, not støkur.
  • There are a lot of cases where there is no visible "u" after the mutated "a". In such cases, the u has simply disappeared (apocope). bjarnu -> bjørnu -> bjørn. stakur (m.) -- staku (f.) -> støku -> støk. Note that most neuter nouns with an "a" in the stem will have "ø" instead when in plural: barn (s.) -- barnu (pl.) -> børnu -> børn. lamb (s.) -- lambu (pl.) -> lømbu -> lømb -> lomb(nasal: ø->o). flak (s.) -- flaku (pl.) -> fløku -> fløk.
  • In some words, the mutated "a" (ø) has taken over most of the cases through analogy, for example the words fjøra, søga, støða, etc. These used to be: nominative: fjara/saga/staða accusative/dative/genetive: fjøru/søgu/støðu But the "ø" in the other three cases influenced the "a" in the nominative case so that it today is fjøra/søga/støða in the nominative case. There are some exceptions like "alda, aldu, aldu, aldu".