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I attach my first introductory blog on #EastNorse, depicting coming topics.
I will discuss periferal Swedish dialects that originate from a more archaic East Norse than #OldSwedish. I will also by rigorously comparing #WestNorse, #EastNorse and #Gutnish show that they do not derive from 8th century language similar to #OldWestNorse, but a 6th century late #ProtoNorse.
As it seems, that Mastodon does not support PDFs, so I will have to reconsider my format of any future blogs.

My first posting is on #FennoSwedish. In parallel in this chain you find two spontaneous samples from #Pargas between Turku and the Åland Islands.
Old traits common in Finland:
-Neuter & non-referential pronoun ”he” ’it’, also compounded ”hehe” ’it-that’ & ”hete” ’it-there’ -Small words with initial d- in Swedish begin with t- in dialect: ”teh” =”där” ’there’; ”To” =”Du” ’you’; ’tåte” =”dylik-där” ’such there’.
-Short stressed CV-syllables ”sama” ’same’.
-Retained diphthong ”göutar” ’boys’

Some traits found in this dialect:

-Retained -mb- ”tuumbana” =Sw ”tummarna” ’the thumbs’

-Vowel balance ”talo” =Sw ”tala(r)”

-Retained (non-affricated) ge/gi and ke/ki: ”gär” [gæ:r] =Sw ”gör” [jœ:r], in three separate areas in Finland + Ukraine Swedish & all dialects in Estonia.

-Innovative negation ”inga”, in Southern Finland only.

-masculine nominative ending incorporated as a suffix to mark adjectives: ”nyyärt” ’new’ & ”viktigärt”.

Modern #Icelandic is another Nordic vernacular that would be much easier to understand for Scandinavians if it weren’t so innovative(!) in its phonology and puristic in its new derived vocabulary. Also this is often misrepresented in stating that “strange Scandinavian dialect X” must be mutually comprehensible with Icelandic because both sound “old” (read rather “strange”).
Yet, unlike #Närpesiska, and unlike any ”Dialect X” except #Övdalian, Icelandic is indeed very archaic in morphology.

By and large #WestNorse preserves more of #ProtoGermanic than #EastNorse. An exception is the verbal stem gā/*ga- ’go’, which in #OldSwedish was used in the present tense and at times in the infinitive. Else its inflection was suppleted by forms of the verb ”ganga”.
In West Norse ”gá” is attested very sparsely indeed, and instead ”ganga” is used throughout the paradigm.
In past research there was an idea that gā could have been borrowed from #LowGerman, but today this is not deemed probable.

A further oddity: While Danish and central Swedish has ”gå(r)” from #EastNorse ”gā”, the vocalism in many archaic peripheral dialects of Swedish point to East Norse ”ga-” with a short vowel. Similar conditions concern the verb ”stå” ’stand’ from either ”stā” or ”sta-”. This is astonishing since few other content word stems in Old Norse are known to have been comparably short. The closest parallel would ve the preterits of class 5 strong verbs ie. gǎf ˈgaveˈ & sǎt ˈsatˈ. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.25555.22569/1

Descendants of *ga- and *sta-, where the vowel unexpectedly rhymes with descendants of “dra(gha)” ‘to draw’ and “ta(gha)” ‘to take’, occur in the eastern (near-extinct) dialects of Estonian Swedish in Harju county, in the northernmost dialects of Sweden in Norrbotten and in the #FennoSwedish dialects of Ostrobotnia and East Nyland. Early attestations indicate that this was also originally valid in the rest of Nyland and the south-western provinces of Åboland and Satakunda https://kaino.kotus.fi/fo/?p=article&fo_id=FO_1327b955da7c1120152e50b71df3b002&word=g%C3%A5

The short vowel in peripheral Swedish dialects of the verbal stem ”sta-” ’stand’ could offer a clue to solve a riddle, namely why this verb doesn’t exist with long ō in ancient Germanic. This is very expected since the Indo-European root contains *h2 and *eh2- otherwise always renders *ō in Proto-Germanic. But short -a- could correspond to a vocalised *h2 in a zero-grade stem *sth2-. The problem is no such stem is known for this verb except perhaps *sth2-ye/yo-, which is claimed to give *staj-.

Almost everywhere we have to infer the short */a/, on the basis that no other good explanation accounts for the vowel quality. Lengthening of ga- > gā- and *sta- > stā- is a very natural development, since there are no other CV-stems of content words in the language. In one dialect it has still been attested short in modern times: In the moribund or extinct Swedish dialect of Harju-Risti or “Kors” parish in Estonia the 1. person plural cohortative is/was “găm” (‘let’s go!’).

Since West Norse is generally more archaic, sincere efforts were made to derive these diphthongs, ranging from iæ to iu, from a purportedly original Common Scandinavian iǫ. Since contrast never emerges from nowhere attention has been paid to consonants nearby these diphthongs, but to little avail.
Any historical phonologist examining these data without a West Norse bias will have to concede, that the phoneme has not split in the East, but rather: more than one phoneme have merged in the west.

@elmerot In the picture, which is from 2017, I put it as an offshoot during the #umlaut era, that is sixth century CE. I use its official English name #Övdalian. In that case it would be older than East Norse. Now, that may be too early, if we can explain forms like ”singa” ’to sing’ (Swedish ”sjunga”, Old Icelandic ”syngva”) as a later innovation. That will be one of my blog topics.

@iohannan Thanks, I was not aware of an English, different term! Interesting if it would.be that old, and hard to corroborate, since there are loans from all eras.

@elmerot Many refer to it as #Elfdalian in English. So cool to have the association with ”elfs” even if it is coincidental (”älv” meaning ’river’ in Swedish).
#Övdalian is based on the name of the language in the language itself: ”Övdalsk”
Actually it is also now recorded by both names by SIL, even mentioning “Elfdalian” first: https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/ovd

@iohannan Cool, thank you for the explanation, might be useful!
#dialekter
#dialects

@kennetmattfolk Dett språåk - kvartifråån e’e?

@iohannan Ja ein av dåm foo såm ennu kan talo hehe gamla Pargassveinskåga. Dagans göutar talo fiinsveinskå hiityvi.

@magnus I readily acknowledge his street credibility. I haven’t seen his list of publications though.