PRINCE— THE FAEROE LANGUAGE. 153 



save in one south Norse dialectic group. This sound, which consti- 

 culture language,^ a tendency which has undoubtedly been stimulated 

 tutes such a difficulty for strangers who wish to acquire the genuine 

 Danish utterance, has not penetrated the Faeroe language to any 

 extent,^ although this vernacular has lost much of its original strength 

 through the disappearance of consonants. Many Danisms have crept 

 into the vernacular, but the purist school is now trying to eradicate 

 and replace them by older expressions. Faeroese, like modern Ice- 

 landic, has no distinctive tones, which play so prominent a part both 

 in Norwegian and Swedish. 



I am indebted for almost all the material embodied in the follow- 

 ing brief sketch to Miss M. E. Mikkelsen, a Faeroese lady now resident 

 in Copenhagen, who has been kind enough to give me the phonetics 

 of her native idiom and to sing for me several of the characteristic 

 ancient songs, one of which has been reproduced at the end of this 

 article. There is a small colony of Faerings in Denmark proper, 

 chiefly students at the Copenhagen University, who keep up their 

 island idiom and character as far as possible. 



The following extracts in both the accepted spelling and its 

 phonetic equivalent (with translation) will serve to illustrate the chief 

 differences of pronunciation existing in the modern use. The rules 

 for pronouncing the current orthography may be tabulated thus : 



Vowels: a; very flat as ae = a in 'hat'; d = oJi, when short; 

 when long= oA-a, a harsh diphthong •,e = e when short ; when long =^ 

 ae = a in 'hat,' a sound well represented by a; i and y as i in 'pin'; 

 i and V*as ni (ooi), in some dialects as Hi; o as o in 'smock,' some- 

 times as o ; 6 as Eng. long o, sometimes contracted to e or even o ; 

 It as Eng. 00 in ' foot ' ; a as Eng. ii in ' mute ' ; ae as flat a in ' hat ' 

 in short syllables, but as da in long syllables, something like the Cana- 

 dian diphthongal pronunciation of 'man' (maan) ; o as Germ, o, 

 open in short syllables and closed in long syllables. 



Consonants : dj and gj as Eng. j ; ^ d]f is never pronounced as 

 th in 'this,' as it occurs in mod. Icelandic, but is uttered as y when 



^ It seems to appear in such pronunciations as fo'lk ' people.' 

 ^ In some dialects as palatalized dy. 



"> The combination dh is used throughout this paper, owing to the diffi- 

 culty of obtaining the Icelandic character representing this sound. 



