Hello Eysteinn!

It has always been my intention to enlighten
people about the difference (or lack thereof)
between ON and MI but not until they can appreciate
what I'm talking about; that is, after they've taken
a dive into the material.

As for the quickest method to learn ON I would
indeed suggest that it would be to come to
Iceland for a few months and immerse yourself
in the language. If, however, you do not have
the resources to do that we are trying to provide
a good alternative.


> Old: Mörðr hét maðr er kallaðr var gígja; hann var sonr
> Mod: Mörður hét maður er kallaður var gígja; hann var sonur
> etc.

This is all very well. It is indeed true that
Old Icelandic is _a subset_ of Modern Icelandic;
every legal OI sentence is also a legal MI sentence
but the reverse is not true - there is a lot of
MI that is not valid OI.

A challenge for you, Eysteinn. Take some random
sentences from Morgunblaðið and do another
Old vs. Mod. check.

In my opinion we could just as well write
"Ólafur konungur vegur orm" as
"Óláfr konungr vegr orm". The main point
is to focus on the vocabulary of the old
texts, their spelling and pronunciation is
of secondary importance.

So: "Modern Icelandic with Old Norse Vocabulary"
could be a new name for the course. Catchy title, eh?;)

Regards,
Haukr

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